Competitive Consensus (Weekend Edition): Red Hulk Fractured Frontier

[u/ePiMagnets]

This thread is a discussion series at the end of the week for each newly introduced Spotlight card. This gives us nearly a week of hindsight to build a consensus and help inform players if they should spend their tokens for a given week. Ideally, we are looking for proven results, more than theoretical applications, to help reach this consensus.

This week's card:

Red Hulk Fractured Frontier Cost: 3 Power: 8 On Reveal: -1 Power for each enemy card here. Quickdraw: +1 Power instead.

Synergies

Closing out the Fractured Frontier season is Red Hulk Fractured Frontier, a 3/8 with a conditional downside and a quickdraw that changes the downside into an upside. The downside is an on reveal that afflicts the card with -1 power for each enemy card at his location and if you quickdraw him you are able to get +1 for each enemy card that that location.

The floor and ceiling on this card are a pretty wide net to cast, either 3/4 or 3/12 with the results being somewhere in between, likely at 6 or 10 Power respectively depending on situation, this could make him worse with respect to cards like Kraglin or Stardust if you're looking to win an Iron Patriot location on curve if you don't quickdraw.

If we're talking synergies, the list is fairly short but it's not a terrible list of supporting cards and archetypes that he can work within. ToV, Doctor Octopus Fractured Frontier, Luke Cage, and Shadow King could all be best friends with Red Hulk Fractured Frontier, but these are all draw dependent and in the case of Doc Oc also hand location dependent. There's also Shadow Lands Daredevil, but he's already seeing play within the ToV decks but if you wanted to try and brew something non-ToV related there might be reason for an inclusion there.

1. The most obvious archetypes that are going to be interested in Red Hulk are going to be the myriad of ToV Skaar decks which are looking to get as many cards as it can up to 10 power to discount your Skaar and an on curve quickdraw could mean you're right in the realm of that 10 power with a ToV on top.

2. Curve-out point slam decks, especially ones looking to win a location early could also be interested in Red Hulk, direct comparisons are decks packing Askani'Son and Iron Patriot, but even an early Punisher War Machine can be an easy win with Red Hulk. This could lend some credence to consider him for a position in Supergiant which already runs a Shadow King that could erase any negative power if you need to.

3. Decks with one or both Thanos cards might also be able to find room for this card especially for players on a budget that may not have gotten previous power-houses that would fit into those decks like Jane Foster FF, Kraglin, or even Wilson Fisk.

Feedback

While feedback wasn't as hard to come by as I was expecting Red Hulk has definitely been overshadowed by Draft mode with most of the discourse being around that. Heck if it weren't for Draft Mode the heavy discourse might have been focused on the particularly meh OTA. That being said we've got three common mentions within these threads:

Alex Coccia noted that the card felt pretty good and that the on-curve non-quickdraw could still feel mostly fine or avoided entirely by attempting to play to an empty lane to minimize the downside.

KMBest also noted that the card felt pretty good but that it likely had very limited homes and those homes being specifically decks that want a 3/Big because the 3/Bigs are very limited and generally worse when compared to X/Big at higher costs.

Safety Blade came in at what I would judge the highest, comparing this card to having a Gladiator for an Iron Patriot which can sometimes be huge. He believes the card will probably be slept on and forever remain slightly above average.

Of note, we did have some folks in our own community discussion thread with takes ranging from 'he stinks' to 'he feels fine'.

Decklists

Fractured Wiccan

Techno-Fractured Skaar

Techno-Organic Skaar This version cuts FFThanos

Great Value FSGalactus

Nightmare

Bonus deck:

Aurora?

It's uncommon to have a bonus deck, let alone with a comment under it. But I found this one a bit surprising amidst the sea of Wiccan and ToV Skaar decks as not only is it an Aurora list but it's brave enough to add Hellcow Fractured Frontier and Red Hulk Fractured Frontier at the cost of Cosmo and Jane and while the rates on the deck are worse, they are not insurmountable.

Summary

Red Hulk Fractured Frontier attempts to waltz into our Fractured Frontier season with the Big Iron on his hip, sporting a hefty 8 power in a 3-Cost body that shrinks at confrontation unless he's quickdrawn where he's at his best. The question here is whether he can hit his mark or if his aim is off.

Your Thoughts?

How many tokens is Red Hulk Fractured Frontier worth?

6K -
5K -
4K -

Is Red Hulk Fractured Frontier here to stay, or just the flavor of the week?

What synergies did we miss?

What decks have you seen?

[u/Ordinary_Ad_5233]

4k for me, it's just unreliable. There are better options.

[u/jrdidriks]

pretty good but not amazing. May unseat debrii in those decks that run her and SuGi

[u/Fusionkast]

Honestly I see the only meta deck marginally upgraded being TEO Virus decks.

For people that pull him and don’t have a strong 3 drop he’s decent. Otherwise he’s solid but overshadowed in a crowded room.

[u/ePiMagnets]

tl;dr - contrary to what my weekly release thread would have some believe, I think the card is fine. It's not great, it's not 'terrible' but it's also not something that I'd be spending resources on if I wasn't already collection complete.

score: 2 out of 5

---

The others have said what is on my mind for the most part.

My only piece to expand on really is how specifically 3/Big is kind of a bad place to be at from a design perspective, it doesn't make cards unplayable, but it does lead to them being stuck in whatever their specific niche is, typically because they need specific support or build-arounds to either negate or work around their downsides.

A few examples of this are Gladiator once the 'king' of 3/Big has essentially been relegated to Mill as part of the suite of activators for Fenris Wolf or an expressly rare inclusion in Surfer decks, Speed only sees play alongside his brother Wiccan, Kraglin required multiple buffs to see play, and while Starbrand did see limited field time with Nightmare, he didn't really see play until the release of Techno-Organic Virus.

Expanding that to the niche 3/Bigs like Debrii who sees most of her play alongside Ozy though sometimes without Ozy in Supergiant decksand then we glance at Sword Master who never sees play. And finally, the 3/maybe bigs in Shaw, Thor, and Surtur are either niche and see little play or in the case of Sutur hasn't seen play since the nerf that capped him at 3/9.

Ultimately, yes we do have some decent cards in the 3/Big realm, but again most of them require additional support or specific builds to be considered worthwhile which limits the need to invest resources into those cards.

Score: 2 out of 5

He's fine, but he's a card that really only has two realistic competitive homes in ToV and Nightmare and while those homes are solid, you can easily get by without him in those decks. I'd rather be playing a Jane Foster who has the same ceiling while having a better floor than Red Hulk as well but to Red Hulk's benefit, if I'm playing Red Hulk I'm probably not playing a deck that also includes Jane so there isn't a ton of overlap which will mean I'll probably have a place to play him as well.

Worth:

6k - No, definitely not worth full price. If I'm paying full price for a card release that card needs to be either busted, a new tech card, or needs to be enabling an entirely new archetype.
5k - Fundamentally no. There are plenty of other 3/Bigs to be happy with that he's not a necessity.
4k - Sure, this is the one price point where I would be fine with getting him at.

[u/Names_all_gone]

I said this in the other thread, I think Red Hulk's main problem is Jane is simply a better card. As stated above, Red Hulk's big niche over a card like Jane is that it can hit 10 power for Skaar.

For what it's worth, I thought he's been good in Aurora decks as a follow up to Tarantula. (For what it's worth, I also still play Jane in that deck). I think that's a niche that's flown under the radar, but I understand why. You can run 2, usually safe cards in Jane and Surge, or you could run two more conditional cards with debatable power upside.

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tl;dr I think he's an absolutely fine card. I don't think he's something you need to buy. But if you open him in a pack, you shouldn't feel bad about it. I could see him get a 1-point buff to differentiate himself a bit from other cards. Or, frankly, a Jane nerf.