Hulk SMASH! What else goes into the Hulk deck with Caltrops?
- Jace
- Dec 10
- 4 min read
The Magic's Marvel set Spoilers have just begun with everyone from Galactus to Namor and the Fantastic Four included! Reddit in particular has gone a bit wild for a certain cheeky Hulk combo:
And the flip side of Hulk is also be puny Banner:
But no-one cares about puny Banner...
Caltrops has done a mega price spike since the Hulk release, so we thought we might have a look at what else combos well with Hulk to smash all your opponents in the pod. We're ideally looking for pingers that work during combat, and give us a ping every bonus combat phase (so that we can go for infinite attacks - or at least enough that commander hulk can knock off a few threatening opponents in a turn).
Not quite infinite, but giving you a Hulk attack for every red mana you have: Pyrohemia feels like an autoinclude:
Also not quite infinite (after A LOT of attacks you will kill him), but you can pop a Sword of Fire and Ice on Hulk and have him ping himself each attack. Although, ironically, the protection from Red and Blue will stop a lot of the other shenanigans later in this article.
So how do you stop Hulk dying to your own Sword of Fire and Ice while you're going infinite? Well, just make him indestructible of course! And fortunately, the bonus sheet will give us the perfect new Heroic Intervention for that. But we might need a few more options so we should probably also include a Mithril Coat on him (although how we fit a Hulk into a hobbit's coat...).
Makeshift Munitions needs you to have stockpiled some treasure, but again gives you plenty of pings, and with Reaver Cleaver your Hulk can again go infinite (or at least make you oodles and oodles of treasure to sink into Puny Banner's card draws).
Similarly, Goblin Bombardment needs you to have stockpiled some creatures, but presumably your Bird of Paradise has done its job by the time Hulks in play and you wanted your (on theme) Anger in the bin anyway:
Gelectrode gives you a Hulk ping for every cheap instant you're holding so that those Brainstorms and Opts (Bruce is blue, right? So you can play those too) are each an extra Reckless Assault. And it's currently bargain bucket priced.
Similarly (although much more greedy), all those Brainstorms and Opts let Niv Mizzet, Parun (or Niv Mizzet, the Firemind) ping Hulk a few more times. While Dracogenius lets you pay 2 for each extra Hulk attack. Also Bruce Banner himself is not terrible with a Niv, so you get to use both sides of the card in this build. From an MtG Finance side of things, Dracogenius is significantly more like gelectrodes price than Parun, which is quite a bit pricier. In fact, a few TCGplayer sales of Parun and the price quickly doubles.
If you've got a set of Niv Mizzets in the build then popping a Curiosity, Keen Sense or Ophidian Eye on the Hulk or Niv Mizzet gives you some insta-win redundancy and isn't terrible on a gelectrode. Style points for putting Keen Sense on the Hulk and then pinging it with Niv though to get every extra attack?
And maybe fun value with Niv Mizzet and Pyrohemia: Ripjaw Raptor gives you 4 extra cards with Niv Mizzet every single turn?
But: what happens when your opponents have killed Hulk too many times for him to be affordable? You might want a bit of Redundancy and some extra uses for your Lava Dart, Munitions and Pyrhoemias: How about Vrondiss and Polyraptor? Polyraptor is particularly disgusting with a Pyrohemia...
Ideally though you'll never need the redundancy because you'll always draw your Lightning Greaves (how Hulk's going to fits in those boots...) or be holding a Deflecting Swat, or Redirect Lightning (because Swat is a crazy price now!) to protect him from all those pesky Swords to Plowshares. The deck would round out with a bit of ramp (Ranging Raptors?) and some extra card draw (Big Scores give the ramp and card draw). Then some utility stuff like Fire/Ice which gives you both Niv and enraging Hulk options?
I think this is going to be a really fun and unique Temur build and I'm super excited to completely ignore Puny Banner and HULK SMASH everyone in the pod.
Let us know what you think of these card selections on the socials.
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Jace & Garruk
