Translated by KYT.

A year ago, I played my first sanctioned match with my Hulk Rebirth rogue deck and it was then that the Legacy players of Montreal started to learn about it. The day was the 26th of July, 2010 and Spellkeeper was organizing a Legacy 1K. I brought my homebrew that was never played except on the kitchen table of my good friend Jérémie Ross-Latour. I had a bye in the first round, so my first match with the deck was going to be against an opponent who was 1-0. My adversary turned out to be none other than Alexander Hayne. His name did not mean anything to me at the time. Thankfully, because had I known that I was playing the best player in the room, I might not have had the concentration needed to beat him. A few minutes later, I had won the match. A few hours later, I beat Justin Richardson in the finals and won the tournament. My DCI rating jumped over 100 points in one day and I was able to bring home 5 dual lands and 2 [card]Force of Will[/card]s. Hulk Rebirth had just made a big splash in the Legacy scene of Montreal.

When KYT asked me to contribute to Mana Deprived by writing an article on Hulk Rebirth, I was honored but at the same time a bit intimidated due to not knowing what to write about. I had just finished a primer on the deck over at MTG Salvation. The primer was not to be ported over to Mana Deprived : a long and dry breakdown of the deck may help nurture technical discussions, but it seemed inappropriate for this site. I decided to instead write about the history of the deck and why it is definitely a viable option in Legacy.

The Genesis of Protean Hulk

Deckbuilding is an aspect of Magic that has always fascinated me. Games of Magic can at times be both exciting and complex, but the quasi-infinite possibilities that deckbuilding offers will always be the main attraction of the game for me, ever since I started building my first decks during the time of Revised.

Over the years, the constraints of life limited Magic to the kitchen table of my neighbor and friend Jérémie Ross-Latour. We played once a week, once my girls went to bed. Because we shared a love for deckbuilding, we would always have our own creations face each other. It would take too long to make a complete list of all the decks that I have built (some of them, I stubbornly tried to make work), but let’s just say I have played around with [card]Stuffy Doll[/card] (with [card]Guilty Conscience[/card] of course, but also with [card]Earthquake[/card]), [card]Stasis[/card] (with Garruk), [card]Opposition[/card] (in a deck that contained [card]Chord of Calling[/card] and [card]Deranged Hermit[/card]), [card]Winter Orb[/card], [card]Momentary Blink[/card] and others…

Most of these decks ended up being dismal failures. Jérémie, who is clearly a better player than me, has always been without pity towards my bad deck. At the same time, it is thanks to him that I could improve my game over time. I learnt how to distinguish between strategies that could work and those that deserved to be thrown in the garbage.

Building a Flash Deck Without Flash

A few months after [card]Flash[/card] had been banned, I asked myself if there was a way to abuse [card]Protean Hulk[/card] in Legacy. I had already tried to build a deck around [card]Fecundity[/card] that used [card]Carrion Feeder[/card]s, [card]Mogg Fanatic[/card]s, [card]Wild Cantor[/card]s and [card]Tinder Wall[/card]s. It also used [card]Pattern of Rebirth[/card] (with the kill being an obscure card from Coldsnap, [card]Sek’Kuar, Deathkeeper[/card])… In short, the deck did not do much, but it allowed me to rediscover the existence of [card]Pattern of Rebirth[/card]. When I was looking through Gatherer, I had stumbled upon [card]Natural Orde[/card]r, a card that I did not know very well (keep in mind that [card]Progenitus[/card] was still not printed at the time). I was able to get a playset on E-Bay for less than $15. After a few playtest sessions on Magic Workstation, I felt like I was on the right track. And that’s how Hulk Rebirth was born and was able to beat Jérémie’s decks with surprising consistency for about two years.

When I had some free time to play in some real tournaments, I had obviously wanted to test out my creations. Hulk Rebirth was not my first choice initially. I had to first lose with my Aggro Elves list and also with a Metalworker Stax deck. When I signed up for the Spellkeeper tournament on the 26th of June, I was not expecting much out of Hulk Rebirth. I could have easily finished 3-3 and we would have never heard of the deck outside of Jérémie’s kitchen table…

A year later, after experiencing success with deck which still surprises me to this deck, I have continued to play it, tweaking it with new cards, the most important one being [card]Green Sun’s Zenith[/card].

My List

Here is the list that I would currently recommend to anyone looking to try the deck:

[deck title=Hulk Rebirth par Felix Lapan]
[Lands]
2 Wooded Foothills
2 Windswept Heath
2 Misty Rainforest
3 Verdant Catacombs
3 Bayou
1 Savannah
2 Dryad Arbor
1 Forest
3 Ancient Tomb
1 Phyrexian Tower
1 Gaeas Cradle
[/Lands]
[Creatures]
4 Birds of Paradise
2 Tinder Wall
1 Carrion Feeder
1 Viscera Seer
1 Starved Rusalka
1 Wild Cantor
1 Xantid Swarm
1 Mogg Fanatic
1 Fauna Shaman
1 Wall of Roots
1 Academy Rector
1 Body Double
1 Reveillark
2 Protean Hulk
1 Progenitus
[/Creatures]
[Spells]
4 Gitaxian Probe
4 Cabal Therapy
4 Pattern of Rebirth
4 Natural Order
4 Green Suns Zenith
[/Spells]
[Sideboard]
2 Krosan Grip
1 Qasali Pridemage
2 Xantid Swarm
4 Slaughter Pact
4 Carpet of Flowers
2 Sylvan Library
[/Sideboard]
[/deck]

For those of you who are not familiar with the beast, Hulk Rebirth is a deck that tries to abuse [card]Natural Order[/card] or [card]Pattern of Rebirth[/card] in order to get a [card]Protean Hulk[/card] in play and to sacrifice it immediately in order to instantly win the game. The trigger of Hulk allows us to search [card]Body Double[/card] (who comes into play as a copy of [card]Protean Hulk[/card]) and a sac outlet ([card]Carrion Feeder[/card] or [card]Viscera Seer[/card]). The [card]Body Double[/card] is then sacrificed, allowing us to search for [card]Reveillark[/card] and [card]Mogg Fanatic[/card] this time. [card]Mogg Fanatic[/card] deals one damage to our opponent. Afterwards, we sacrifice Reveillark to bring back [card]Mogg Fanatic[/card] and [card]Body Double[/card] (but this time as a copy of [card]Reveillark[/card]). At this point, you have an infinite [card]Mogg Fanatic[/card] loop.

The deck also plays [card]Progenitus[/card] as a Plan B, if a sac outlet is missing.

Why Play Hulk Rebirth?

Hulk Rebirth is a combo deck that is fast, robust and flexible. Against the aggro decks without disruption, Hulk Rebirth can consistently win on turn 3 (sometimes even on turn 2 using [card]Slaughter Pact[/card]s from the sideboard). On top of that, with [card]Cabal Therapy[/card] and [card]Xantid Swarm[/card] (which usually comes into play with the help of [card]Green Sun’s Zenith[/card]), the deck is well prepared to beat [card]Force of Will[/card] decks.

The deck is complex and interesting to play. [card]Green Sun’s Zenith[/card] offers many options and it is not always easy to use it optimally. The deck is also very exciting due to its ability to top-deck for the win out of nowhere. Very often, drawing and resolving [card]Natural Order[/card], [card]Pattern of Rebirth[/card] or [card]Academy Rector[/card] allows for instant wins. With 7 available mana, it is possible to hard-cast [card]Protean Hulk[/card] and with 8 available mana, you can now [card]Green Sun’s Zenith[/card] for a [card]Protean Hulk[/card] which generally wins you the game right there. Inevitably, the control decks will eventually not have an answer for you.

I can understand how people can have doubts about this deck, but here are some results I have compiled:

From the 26th of June, 2010 to the 11th of June, 2011, I have played 245 sanctioned games with the deck (ignoring draws). I have won 176, which is equal to a win percentage of 72%.

From the 31st of October, 2010 to the 15th of March, 2011, I recorded my results against different matchups (over time, I did not have the patience to continue this exercise). Here are the results for the decks I have faced at least 6 times during this time period:

18 matches against Merfolk (always mono blue): 16-2 (89%)

17 matches against Counter-Top (varied lists): 9-8 (53%)

14 matches against Survival of the Fittest: 12-2 (86%)

11 matches against Dredge: 10-1 (91%)

9 matches against Affinity: 6-3 (67%)

7 matches against Storm Combo (ANT + TES + Charbelcher): 1-6 (14%)

6 matches against UWx Control (without [card]Counterbalance[/card]): 4-2 (67%)

6 matches against Painter Combo: 6-0 (100%)

6 matches against Show & Tell Combo: 5-1 (83%)

I understand that these numbers have limited value. They are biased by the quality of my opponents. However, I think they give a good idea as to how powerful the deck is and they also allow us to identify the good and bad matchups.

I just want to come out and say that I am not that great of a Magic player. Even if I am relatively at ease piloting Hulk Rebirth, I am far from playing it perfectly. I remember listening to Alexander Hayne affirming, during an episode of Crazy Talk, that I was playing the deck to perfection, that I was always making the optimal moves… It’s good for my ego to hear all of this (thank you Alex), but I always told myself “if only it were true!”… In reality, I always make mistakes. Sometimes small ones that do not change the end result of the game and sometimes big ones that cost me dearly. I am generally able to identify at least one or two errors for every 2 matches that I play, win or lose (of course, there are also errors that I do not see). In short, my impression is that my results with Hulk Rebirth are due to the power of the deck and not my talents at Magic…

I think the deck is extremely well-placed in today’s metagame, one that is now significantly slower since the coming of [card]Mental Misstep[/card], for many reasons:

– The combo storm decks (ANT, TES, Charbelcher) are no longer viable in a metagame filled with bad matchups for them. This type of deck represents the worst matchup for Hulk Rebirth due them being generally a turn or a turn and a half faster;

– [card]Green Sun’s Zenith[/card] is an excellent card to get [card]Xantid Swarm[/card] into play while by-passing [card]Mental Misstep[/card];

– [card]Mental Misstep[/card]s has allowed a renaissance of slow control decks that do not play [card]Counterbalance[/card]-Top. These present us a better matchup because we are pretty much unaffected by [card]Spell Snare[/card];

– Merfolk, which was the best matchup of Hulk Rebirth, is getting played more than ever before. However, I have to admit that it is no longer as good of a matchup as before as the fish can now protect their [card]Force of Will[/card]s from a [card]Cabal Therapy[/card] using [card]Mental Misstep[/card];

– [card]Stifle[/card], a card that was always really problematic for Hulk Rebirth, is seeing very little play.

– The [card]Show and Tell[/card] decks, which represent an excellent matchup for Hulk Rebirth, are increasing in popularity. A trend that might continue with [card]Hive Mind[/card] taking second place at GP Providence.

In short, I am convinced that Hulk Rebirth is a viable and competitive choice for Legacy and I wish everyone who decides to pick it up good luck.

Félix Lapan