In this section I am going to explain the basic ballista pile so you are familiar with it.

Hulk: Dies.

Pile #1: Body Snatcher, Viscera Seer, Sylvan Safekeeper.

When Body Snatcher comes in, sacrifice it in response to its trigger and reanimate hulk. Sac hulk to Seer for the next pile.

Pile #2: Mikaeus, the Unhallowed, Walking Ballista.

Now sac Walking Ballista. It will come back to life with undying from Mikaeus. Remove a counter to ping someone for 1 damage, then sac Ballista again and repeat.

This pile maintains a complete immunity to counterspells as no spells are cast. Most importantly, it is protected against as many targeted removal spells as you have lands at no additional mana cost.

In this section I will outline the exact 1 for 1 swaps I am making from the Shuffle Hulk primer and showcase how they are much higher quality cards. Remember I am keeping these changes to be as minimal as possible to recreate the same functionality as shuffle hulk. We end up with this deck: Ballista Hulk

Swaps from shuffle hulk list:

Kozilek, Butcher of Truth --> Mikaeus, the Unhallowed

Memory's Journey --> Sylvan Safekeeper

Blood Artist --> Walking Ballista

Narcomoeba --> Reanimate

Cephalid Illusionist --> Saffi Eriksdotter

Nomads en-Kor --> Grand Abolisher

Anything --> Noxious Revival

(Optional) Anything- --> Snapcaster Mage

As you can see, I have only changed the cards directly required for the primary shuffle combo and added noxious revival. Revival can hardly be counted as a swap since it is such a good card on its own. While the other cards being added may not be amazing, they are all leaps and bounds more useful on their own than their counterparts.

Snapcaster Mage is totally optional, but I feel it is a wise include. Snap is a very solid card on its own as it allows you to recast a failed flash attempt at instant speed in addition to shoring up a lot of real world situations for hulk piles. A lot of our backup piles require spellseeker, which only works if the spells are in the deck. Snap allows us to use them even if we had drawn them this game and cast them. Additionally it can act as a somewhat replacement to Saffi when used correctly.

This is where things really heat up. In this section I will be doing side-by-side comparisons of how Ballista Hulk stands up to Shuffle Hulk when faced with pesky opponents trying to stop our hulk way of life.

Obviously both piles are stopped by things like Rest in Peace, Grafediggers cage, or just countering flash that stop hulk in general. Here we are focusing on interaction that specifically hits these piles.

The Abolisher Pile:

This is our full shields up protection pile and should be used anytime you have the luxury to do so. This pile completely protects us from basically all interaction once the hulk trigger resolves and only costs 1 extra black mana and 7 life. Recall that Shuffle Hulk always requires an extra green mana to use its 1 piece of protection where as this is mostly just an insurance policy for us. The catch of this pile is that it only works at sorcery speed since reanimate is a sorcery. Note that Shuffle Hulk could add this pile if they wanted to, but it would require extra deck slots. Technically we don't even need to have it ourselves as our main pile is extremely resilient on its own.

The primary reason this is included is that it is our primary defense against 1 shot grave hate such as Deathrite Shaman and Noxious Revival. Without this pile in the deck it is extremely difficult to fight through these.

Hulk: Dies.

Pile #1: Spellseeker(reanimate), Grand Abolisher, Viscera Seer. Reanimate hulk and sac it to Seer.

Pile #2: Mikaeus, the Unhallowed, Walking Ballista. Win as normal

Reactive Interaction

Targeted removal: Starting with the big one, Ballista Hulk is protected against as many targeted removal spells as you have lands without having to have any extra mana open. If at any point they try to kill any of your creatures, Sylvan Safekeeper will protect them. This is a MASSIVE improvement over Shuffle Hulk and is the core reason why Ballista Hulk is better despite any cons it may have. With a deck that plays as low to the ground as this, 1 extra green mana is beyond relevant.

Counterspells: Ballista Hulk is completely immune to counterspells as no spells are ever cast. Shuffle Hulk is immune to counterspells at first, but if someone has a targeted interaction Shuffle Hulk suddenly gets soft to a counter since countering Memories Journey will prevent protection from the targeted removal and will stop the combo. Full immunity is obviously much better than partial immunity... This one is very relevant when you get hulk to die in methods other than flash. Suddenly a dispel can help stop you where as in Ballista Hulk it does jack-all.

One-off grave hate: In my current iteration Ballista Hulk is able to get around a single piece of 1 shot grave hate, though it must do so at a hefty UGB extra cost and only at sorcery speed. This is one of the very few ways that Shuffle Hulk beats out Ballista Hulk and is the most important area of improvement I am looking for the pile. An instant speed way to prevent grave hate like this stopping us would be wonderful.

Remember that this whole section refers only to comboing at sorcery speed sadly. Also we need at least B to have any protection as all of our 0 mana piles are completely open to grave hate. Remember, so is Shuffle Hulk. First of all, because we have access to the abolisher pile, the only time an opponent can actually use their hate is before the first hulk trigger resolves. If they try to wait until after we grab the abolisher pile and they can't do anything after that. I would say in the majority of cases in a blind meta this will actually happen as people will think you are on normal Shuffle Hulk where using grave hate at this time would be pointless. However, we cannot assume misplays by our opponents so we have to assume they exile our hulk in response to its first trigger. In my personal list I have added the lab man + tainted pact combo to bypass gravehate, but that requires extra deck slots that I don't want to add here.

Winning without multihulking:

Hulk: Dies. Then gets exiled.

Pile #1: SpellSeeker (Neoform), Saffi Eriksdotter, Viscera Seer, Walking Ballista

Walking Ballista instantly dies because it is a 0/0

Sac Saffi to prep Spellseeker to come back to life.

Neoform SpellSeeker into Academy Rector.

Spellseeker comes back to life, grab reanimate with it.

Sac Academy Rector for Pattern of Rebirth.

Attach Pattern of Rebirth to the new Spellseeker and sac it to Seer.

Grab Mikaeus, the Unhallowed from your deck.

Use the Reanimate to bring back Ballista and combo off from there.

Getting around Noxious Revival: Noxious Revival is one of the most common cards we could face that acts as a single use grave hate. Luckily since revival does not actually exile the card but instead puts it into our library we can get around it much more easily.

If an opponent uses Noxious Revival on our hulk in response to the first hulk trigger use the following line to get around it.

Hulk: Dies. Then put on top of our library

Pile #1 Academy Rector, Viscera Seer, Sylvan Safekeeper. Sac Academy Rector for pattern of Rebirth onto Sylvan Safekeeper. Sac Sylvan Safekeeper to trigger pattern, grab hulk from the deck.

Optionally, grab a Grand Abolisher pile here with Body Snatcher/Spellseeker in case someone is holding interaction they had not used yet.

Pile #2: Mikaeus, the Unhallowed, Walking Ballista.

Note that this pile is NOT immune to on board interaction as giving your guy shroud will prevent Pattern of Rebirth from sticking. All they have to do is attempt to kill the creature while it is still coming into play and you can't protect it with shroud.

On-Board Hate

Null Rod: Null Rod does stop our primary combo (Walking Ballista can't remove the counter) and it does not do anything to Shuffle Hulk. Luckily we can very easily maneuver around this issue without breaking a sweat.

To combo through an on board null rod use the following line:

Hulk: Dies.

Pile #1: Body Snatcher, Viscera Seer, Sylvan Safekeeper - Reanimate hulk

Pile #2: Academy Rector, Leonin Relic-Warder -Exile null rod, reanimate hulk

Pile #3: Mikeaus, the Unhallowed, Walking Ballista.

Remember that spellseeker + reanimate can always be subbed in at the cost of sorcery speed and an extra B to provide extra protection to the pile. This slight weakness is more than made up for by other strengths I am going over.

Cursed Totem: This is one of the most powerful hate pieces in the format and is commonly used to try and slow down hulk variants. Ballista Hulk has the ability to use all the same methods to get around it as Shuffle Hulk, with one even better. Note that Shuffle hulk could easily add reanimate to their deck to get this, but it would cost yet another deck slot.

Hulk:Dies.

Pile #1: Leonin-Relic Warder, Viscera Seer, Spellseeker (Reanimate). Exile cursed totem, reanimate hulk, sac to Seer and win as normal.

These are the main interaction pieces I considered. Obviously there are more ways an opponent could interact, but these were the most common ones I primarily considered. If you have other hate cards common in your meta that specifically do better vs Ballista Hulk than Shuffle Hulk we can try to figure out a way around them.

An inherent part of hulk decks are their weakness to having their combo pieces stuck in your hand where they cannot be brought into play with hulk. An important consideration for evaluating a hulk deck is how effectively it can maneuver those situations.

Ballista Hulk has 4 cards in the main pile, here is how each can be managed if they end up in your hand. Having Safekeeper in hand does not stop the win, and the abolisher pile can be subbed in if possible.

Viscera Seer --> Grab Carrion Feeder instead and go as normal. This works if Visera Seer is in your graveyard as well.

Body Snatcher --> Use Academy Rector instead. Could also use Spellseeker + Reanimate. Also can grab spellseeker for dark ritual to hard cast Snatcher for =1B. Also has the advantage of being able to grab abolisher in this pile. This also works if Body Snatcher is in your graveyard as well.

Walking Ballista --> Wait until the end of your combo and just cast him once Mikaeus is in play. Limits you to sorcery speed but does not cost extra mana. You can also use the same line as for Mikaeus below to win at instant speed with him in your hand. Alternatively play him for 2 and let him sit to set up for an instant speed win later.

Mikaeus, the Unhallowed --> This one is more involved. Use the following hulk line.

Hulk: Dies.

Pile # 1: Body Snatcher, Viscera Seer, Sylvan Safekeeper

Discard Mikaeus to the body snatcher trigger and reanimate hulk and sac it.

Pile # 2: Academy Rector, Saffi eriksdotter. Necromancy in hulk. Sac Saffi to make hulk come back to life. Sac hulk to Seer.

Pile#3: Spellseeker(Noxious Revival), 3cmc of anything. Use Noxious Revival to put Mikaeus on top of your library. Hulk will come back from Saffi so we can get another hulk trigger by sacing it

Pile # 4: Mikaeus +Walking Ballista.

This is the instant speed pile that requires no extra mana. This pile is open to on board interaction. You can still use the abolisher pile on your turn to bypass this issue completely. Also this pile can be used to deal with Mikaeus or Walking Ballista being in your graveyard just as easily as if they are in your hand.

Hulk: Dies.

Pile # 1: Spellseeker(Reanimate), Grand Abolisher, Viscera Seer.

Pile #2: Body Snatcher, Saffi Eriksdotter. Discard Mike to body snatcher. Sac Saffy targeting spellseeker. Sac Spellseeker to Seer and grab Noxious Revival. Revival Mikaeus to your deck. Reanimate hulk with Body Snatcher

Pile # 3: Mikaeus, the Unhallowed, Walking Ballista.

Overall we see that we have the ability to win at instant speed with any of our combo pieces in our hand or graveyard for no additional mana, though sometimes at the cost of protections. When comboing at sorcery speed we can maintain complete protection using the abolisher pile for only an additional B.

This beats out Shuffle Hulk, which cannot combo at instant speed with Nomads En-Cor in its hand as far as I know and often loses its own protection in a similar way.

Overall, I have proven through in depth analysis that overall Ballista Hulk far surpasses Shuffle Hulk in overall power and resiliency. There are still countless potential piles I have left out to answer very specific situations (mostly options if you have a sac outlet already and snapcaster mage lines), but at some point it is up to the pilot to figure these out. The only significant weakness Ballista Hulk faces when compared to Shuffle Hulk is it is more soft to single use grave hate, but it does have a way around that as I have described. Also single use grave hate is not very common outside of Deathrite Shaman and Noxious RevivaI since more permanent effects like Grafdiggers cage and Rest in Peace are usually utilized instead. I am confident that with additional theory crafting a more effective answer to grave hate can be found. For example my personal list includes Lab Man+Tainted pack to completely bypass gravehate. Remember that many of these cards are optional based on how much protection you want your pile to have. On its own the basic pile is extremely slot efficient and very resilient to interaction. I am excited for the continued development of this pile, but in the end I believe that Shuffle Hulk is outdated and Ballista Hulk is the new king of instant speed hulk piles.