How to build a Bruce Banner / The Incredible Hulk Commander Deck in MTG

Marvel Super Heroes provided Magic: The Gathering with a huge wave of new, exciting Commander options to lead powerful new deck archetypes. Chief among these options is the Bruce Banner / The Incredible Hulk card, which you can use as a single blue mana commander using Bruce Banner's side before turning it into The Incredible Hulk for six mana when the time is right.

In this deck guide, I'll walk you through the strategies that work best with Commander, as well as provide you with a template deck you can use and highlight key cards and combos worth keeping in case you'd like to make some changes or build an entirely new Commander deck yourself.

Commander overview

In this guide I will be building a deck around Bruce Banner / The Incredible Hulk. This is one of the best Marvel Super Heroes Commander for its sheer versatility as a transformable card, tricolor mana identity, and pure power when it reaches its final form.

Bruce Banner is a one blue mana creature that is a 1/1 and if you pay XX you can draw X cards. This is incredibly useful for early game situations because not only does the mana base for your commander start at one, but card draw plays a secondary role in this deck to ensure you have the mana present to cast the huge creatures in the deck.

Once you lock down the mana for Bruce Banner's transformation, you flip the card to reveal The Incredible Hulk, an 8/8 creature with Reach and Trample. He also has Enrage, which means whenever he is dealt damage, you put a +1/+1 counter on him. If he is attacking while this damage is dealt, he is knocked back and the next combat phase takes place.

The benefits of building your own Commander deck

The difference between building your own commander deck and upgrading or modifying a commander precon is that you are only considering one direct leader of the deck, which in this case is Bruce Banner / The Incredible Hulk. The problem with a lot of biases is that they hedge their bets and offer a great selection of cards and strategies, but ultimately the waters can be very murky without a clear and direct goal. This is what happened to the Doom Prevails deck, which has too many creatures that work on different objectives, even though they have good interactions with the two possible Commander Choices.

List of decks

Below is the deck list I put together for Bruce Banner / The Incredible Hulk. I'll highlight some of the non-negotiable cards later in this guide, but this deck list gives you a strong idea of ​​what to look for around this commander.

I also built the deck in Moxfield so you can try it out and see how it plays. I put this deck through several hours of testing against popular precons of various power levels/bracket and tweaked it accordingly.

Strategy

Using this specific deck list as a guide, the strategy of a Bruce Banner / The Incredible Hulk deck should be to build incredibly powerful creatures and protect them as best as possible with equipment or spells that grant indestructibility.

Before you even think about building these creatures or converting your commander, you need to build a strong mana base first. You do this by not missing out on land drops, but also by getting mana artifacts onto the battlefield alongside your mana dork creatures. The faster you can do this, the faster you will become a threat to other players and be able to put the pieces of this deck together.

Key cards and combinations

I will now go over the non-negotiable cards for this deck or any deck that is built around Bruce Banner / The Incredible Hulk.

Caltrops (artifact)

Caltrops are the absolute number one to pair specifically with The Incredible Hulk. If you manage to get your board in a position where The Incredible Hulk is indestructible, either for the turn or permanently, then every time you attack with him, Caltrops will take one damage.

This triggers Enrage, giving him a +1/+1 counter and knocking him away before starting the next combat phase. If it's Indestructible, you can play the fight over and over until you've dealt 21 points of command damage to each player at the table. There is no limit to the number of combat phases you can have as a result of Enrage activation.

Hexing Squelcher (Creature)

While Hexing Squelcher is a bit pricey in most cases at over $20, it is the perfect card to help you build an aggressive board game with this deck. Not only can it not be reversed, but it only costs two mana and gives Ward – Pay Two Life to all your creatures. Any spells you cast while it's on the board also cannot be reversed.

It's a great utility card that can get your opponent down early on, and if you stay on the battlefield, you'll see yourself looking dangerous within a few turns. Hexing Squelcher is a great substitute for giving creatures Indestructible early on.

Hulk, The Strongest Ever (Creature)

It might seem strange to see another creature in this list, but for just four mana, you get a doubling 3/3 creature that pairs exceptionally well with The Incredible Hulk.

Since +1/+1 counters are already a big part of this deck, having a creature card that can double the counters of every Gamma creature every turn during your upkeep is incredible value. All of the Hulk and She-Hulk cards are Gamma creatures, even Professor Hulk, so again, the value of this particular creature is unmatched, especially for only four mana.

Mithril Cloak (Artifact)

The final non-negotiable is Mithril Coat, a three-mana artifact with Flash that attaches to a legendary creature for free when it enters and grants that creature Indestructible. The Mithril Coat itself is also indestructible.

While this deck also includes Darksteel Plate, Mithril Coat is a far superior artifact as it can come into play at instant speed, so you can strategically bring it into play at an opportune time or when a key creature is threatened.

Value

Based on the pack list above, this Commander pack is worth $376.05 if you buy each card as one on TCGPlayer. Some of these prices are slightly inflated since these are new cards from the Marvel Super Heroes set and I fully expect them to settle down from 20+ to $10 or less over time.

There's no getting around the fact that it's expensive, especially if you're coming at it without existing decks or bulk decks to pull some of these cards from. While many of the newer cards are susceptible to future price cuts, it pays to keep an eye on the market for commander clips and keep picking them up as and when you can for future decks.

Sorceries are easily the cheapest cards in this deck, with the most expensive card being Chandra's Ignition, which has a market value of around $6, while the cheapest is Epic Fight, which costs just under 30 cents.

Instant spells are much more expensive, with Fierce Guardianship leading at $54.63, followed by Heroic Intervention at $8.55 and Tamiyo's Safekeeping at $4.81.

Artifacts in this deck work out fairly reasonably, with Mithril Coat being the most expensive at $27.41, followed by Caltrops at $12.72. All remaining artifacts are under $5.

Enchantments also come pretty cheap, with the most expensive being the Bear Umbra at just $9.61. Level Up and Temur Ascendancy hover around the $2.50 mark, while every other card is under $1.50.

Finally, the land base only has 12 cards priced over $1, but three of them are over $10, so this is an area of ​​the deck you could potentially look to trim some of the value if you can find alternative lands that cost less.