New Magic: The Gathering infinite combo is just making The Hulk step on caltrops over and over until he's mad enough to win

The Incredible Hulk lets out a bellowing roar in the official card art for Magic: The Gathering's marvel crossover.
(Image credit: Marvel, Wizards of the Coast - Art by Tommy Arnold)

If there's one thing I love about card games, it's the absolutely obscene sentences that come out of explaining play-by-plays to the uninitiated, especially when you're playing a game with licensed characters. For example: Disney's Lorcana once had a combo with minor character Hiram Flaversham that elevated him to godhood via banishing and re-summoning a popsicle.

Now a new sentence has emerged: Magic: The Gathering's new Marvel set has a combo where you make the Incredible Hulk so, so very angry by forcing the poor guy to step on spiky caltrops over and over and over again, hurting his poor feetsies.

As spotted by Wargamer, you do need to put in a little work here—the card starts off as an un-crashed out Bruce Banner that has to be transformed with six mana. Once he's all green'd up, though, there's a crucial bit of rules text: "Enrage—Whenever The Incredible Hulk is dealt damage, put a +1/+1 counter on him. If he's attacking, untap him and there is an additional combat phase after this phase."

Combine this with Caltrops, which deals one damage when a creature attacks, and you start to see the vision: The Hulk crashes into an enemy, roaring, frothing at the mouth. He takes a step back and steps on a little itty-bitty piece of metal. He loses his gourd. He attacks them again. He steps back, and—god damnit, those Caltrops are still there.

However, as Wargamer notes, there are cards that can get around this—like Moonmist, which transforms Bruce Banner into the Hulk immediately, though with the caveat that combat damage is completely prevented for the turn, unless they're a Werewolf or a Wolf.

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Harvey Randall
Staff Writer

Harvey's history with games started when he first begged his parents for a World of Warcraft subscription aged 12, though he's since been cursed with Final Fantasy 14-brain and a huge crush on G'raha Tia. He made his start as a freelancer, writing for websites like Techradar, The Escapist, Dicebreaker, The Gamer, Into the Spine—and of course, PC Gamer. He'll sink his teeth into anything that looks interesting, though he has a soft spot for RPGs, soulslikes, roguelikes, deckbuilders, MMOs, and weird indie titles. He also plays a shelf load of TTRPGs in his offline time. Don't ask him what his favourite system is, he has too many.

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