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

Marvel Super Heroes has 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 leverage as a single blue mana Commander using the Bruce Banner side, before turning it into The Incredible Hulk for six mana when the time is right.

In this deck guide, I'll go over the strategies that work best with Commander as well as provide a template deck that you can use while highlighting the key cards and combos that are worth keeping should you want to make some changes or build an entirely new Commander deck yourself.

Overview of the commander

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

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

When you lock in the mana to transform Bruce Banner, you flip the card over to reveal The Incredible Hulk, an 8/8 creature with Reach and Trample. He also has Enrage, which means whenever he's dealt damage you put a +1/+1 counter on him. If he attacks when this damage is dealt, he is unused, and another combat phase takes place.

The benefits of building a custom Commander Deck

The difference between building your own Commander deck and upgrading or tweaking a Commander precon is that you're only taking into account the one leader in the deck, which in this case is Bruce Banner / The Incredible Hulk. The problem with many precons is that they hedge their bets and offer a large selection of cards and strategies, but ultimately the waters can get very muddy without a clear, direct goal. This happened with the Doom Prevails deck, which contains too many creatures that all work towards different goals, although they have good interactions with the two possible commander choices.

Tire list

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 will give you a strong idea of ​​what you should be looking for to build around this Commander.

I've also built the deck in Moxfield so you can take it for a test spin to see how it plays. I tested this deck for a few hours against popular precons of various power/console levels and tweaked it accordingly.

Strategy

Using this specific decklist as a guide, the strategy for a Bruce Banner / The Incredible Hulk deck should be to build incredibly powerful creatures and protect them as best you can by using equipment or spells that grant Indestructible.

Before you can even think about building these creatures or morphing your commander, you must first establish a strong mana base. This is done by making sure you don't miss your land drops, but also getting mana artifacts onto the battlefield alongside your mana dork creatures. The faster you can do this, the faster you will be 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 built around Bruce Banner / The Incredible Hulk.

Caltrops (artifact)

Caltrops are absolutely number one with no problem pairing with The Incredible Hulk specifically. If you can get your board into a position where The Incredible Hulk is indestructible, either for a turn or permanently, then he will take one damage from Caltrops every time you attack with him.

This triggers Enrage, which will give him a +1/+1 counter and remove him before triggering another battle phase. If it's indestructible, you can keep playing battle over and over again until you've dealt 21 points of Commander damage to every player at the table. There is no limit to the number of battle phases you can have as a result of Enrage being activated.

Hexing Squelcher (Creature)

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

It's a great utility card that can frustrate opponents early on, and if left on the battlefield you'll find yourself looking dangerous after just a few turns. Hexing Squelcher is a good substitute for giving creatures indestructible early.

Hulk, Strongest Ever (Creature)

It might seem odd to see another creature on this list, but for just four mana, you get a counter-duplicate 3/3 creature that pairs exceptionally well with The Incredible Hulk.

Given that +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 incredibly valuable. All 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 Coat (Artifact)

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

Although this deck also has Darksteel Plate, Mithril Coat is by far the better artifact because it can come into play with instant speed, allowing you to strategically put it into play at an opportune time or when a key creature is threatened.

Value

Based on the above deck, this Commander deck is worth $376.05 if you buy each card as a single on TCGPlayer. Some of these prices are slightly inflated because they are new cards from the Marvel Super Heroes set, and over time I expect these to settle from being $20+ to $10 or less.

There's no avoiding that this is expensive, especially if you come up with it without any existing decks or bulk to pull some of these cards from. While many of the newer cards are prone to future price drops, it's well worth keeping an eye on the market for Commander staples and steadily collecting them 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 less than 30 cents.

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

The artifacts in this deck work out pretty 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 work quite cheaply, with the most expensive being Bear Umbra at just $9.61. Level Up and Temur Ascendancy both hover around $2.50, while every other card is under $1.50.

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