All factions
Smash Up: Marvel
HYDRA
Medium-High
Destroy your characters to play a bunch of low-power characters and gain various other benefits.
Description
Hydra is one of the 8 factions from the Smash Up: Marvel set.
They specialize on destroying your own characters for benefits, especially playing multiple low-powered characters in one turn.
Their complexity rating is: Medium-High.
Other factions from the same set: Avengers, Kree, Masters of Evil, S.H.I.E.L.D., Sinister Six, Spider-Verse, Ultimates.
Cards Overview
Hydra has 12 characters and 8 actions compared to the usual 10 and 10. The total character base power (not counting any abilities) is 31 or an average of 2.58 per character compared to the usual 30 and 3.
Among their actions, there are:
* 0 character modifiers,
* 1 base modifier: Fanatical Devotion,
* 7 standard actions (3 that affect one or more characters, in bold): Hail Hydra!, Hour of Destiny (2x), Reactivate Agents, Secret Reserves, Two More Shall Take Its Place (2x),
* 1 action that directly increases a character's power: Fanatical Devotion.
1x Fanatical Devotion - Base modifier. Ongoing: Your characters here each have +2 power if one or more of your characters have been destroyed here this turn.
1x Hail Hydra! - Destroy one of your characters to draw cards equal to its power.
2x Hour of Destiny - Search your deck for up to two characters of power 2 or less, reveal them, and draw them. Then shuffle your deck.
1x Reactivate Agents - Place up to two characters of 2 power or less from your discard pile into your hand.
1x Secret Reserves - Shuffle any number of characters of power 2 or less from your discard pile into your deck.
2x Two More Shall Take Its Place - Destroy one of your characters. After it is destroyed, play up to two characters of power 2 or less as extra characters onto that base.
Actions
1x Fanatical Devotion - Base modifier. Ongoing: Your characters here each have +2 power if one or more of your characters have been destroyed here this turn.
1x Hail Hydra! - Destroy one of your characters to draw cards equal to its power.
2x Hour of Destiny - Search your deck for up to two characters of power 2 or less, reveal them, and draw them. Then shuffle your deck.
1x Reactivate Agents - Place up to two characters of 2 power or less from your discard pile into your hand.
1x Secret Reserves - Shuffle any number of characters of power 2 or less from your discard pile into your deck.
2x Two More Shall Take Its Place - Destroy one of your characters. After it is destroyed, play up to two characters of power 2 or less as extra characters onto that base.
Characters
1x Red Skull - power 5 - Ongoing: After one of your characters is destroyed, draw a card. Talent: Destroy one of your characters to draw a card.
1x Baron Strucker - power 4 - Talent: Destroy one of your characters. After it is destroyed, move up to two of your characters from other bases to here.
1x Madame Hydra - power 4 - Talent: Destroy one of your characters to give this character +2 power until the end of the turn.
3x Arnim Zola - power 2 - Ongoing: This character has +1 power for each of your other characters here with a printed power of 2 or less.
6x Hydra Agent - power 2 - Ongoing: After this character is destroyed, play up to two extra characters of power 2 or less here.
Mechanics
Destroy your characters to play a bunch of low-power characters and gain various other benefits.