Drax Protection - Solo - 100+ potential damage OTK [LMDT]

Card draw simulator

Odds: 0% – 0% – 0% more
Derived from
Too Stubborn to Flip - Drax 146 125 30 1.0
Inspiration for
Drax - Do it, Quill! I can take it. 2 2 0 1.0
Drax Protection - Big Damage 0 0 0 1.0

Carquinyoli · 280

The title may sound "Click-bait" but it's not. I've done the math (see below), and potentially the deck could deliver 110+ damage in a turn. However, the main objective is to One Turn Kill the villain, and that is achievable if we deliver 30-40 damage, which won't be hard once we have built on our side. For now I've managed to reach 71 damage in a turn

First things first: This deck is inspired in "Too Stuborn to Flip" from TrashPanda: https://es.marvelcdb.com/decklist/view/10595/too-stubborn-to-flip-drax-1.0 I liked the idea of using The Power in All of Us to pay for basic Guardians allies and to provide cash to buy Avengers Mansion to improve Drax's hand. However that deck didn't pretend to OTK, and this one does.

The main goal is to kill the villain in one turn, and "ignore" him before that (just deliver him some damage to avoid those surges). We need to bring some upgrades/supports to the table. We need to boost Drax's attack (easy part) and make him attack several times (hardest part). So the very core cards for this combo are:

  • 3 vengeance tokens on Drax = 4 ATK
  • Drax's Knife = 5 ATK
  • 3x Adrenaline Rush = 8 ATK
  • C.I.T.T. to ready Drax Then, we would appreciate if we also had:
  • DWI Theet Mastery to draw a card when we do a basic attack.
  • The Night Nurse to remove Stuns.
  • Finish our penultimate turn with enough health to resist a villain's attack without defending to be ready (and draw a card).
  • Avengers Mansion to improve hand.
  • Some allies on the table (to defend and/or remove toughs)
  • As many cards on the table so our deck contains mainly the events of interest.

When we reach this point, we would be able to base attack 2 times: one from our basic action + 1 from CITT. That also means we will draw 2 cards (with Dwi Theet). So we should wait until we have a hand with at least 1x Leading Blow or 1x "Fight Me, Coward!" + 1x Payback. Leading Blow will do damage, will draw us a card and will leave us prepared for another base attack (that will draw us another card). Fight Me, Coward! will prepare Drax and draw us a card and the villain will attack us drawing us another card (we also can Payback him or play #parry to defend without exhausting Drax and play Counter-Punch). You may have already noticed that each time we attack we draw, so we can keep drawing the remaining Leading Blow, "Fight Me, Coward!" Payback or Counter-Punch, and keep punching in a devastating killing spree either when attacking or making the villain attack us.

EDIT: if we draw either 1 Leading Blow or 1 "Fight Me, Coward!" + 1 Payback that would be enough for most cases to OTK, because they leave us prepared for another base attack. That would make for 4 attacks (or 3 attacks for 8 damage each + a counterattack of 8 damage). 8x4 = 32. The first attack would finish the current villain stage, and the remaining 24 damage would be enough to kill most stage III villains.

When we have the required hand at the end of our penultimate hero phase, we do not defend (if possible) to draw an additional card to improve hand: we will start our next turn with 4 cards +1 from the villain's attack + 1 from Avengers Mansion. Having 3/4/5 of the above-mentioned cards, which cost 0 and pay themselves. So first we discard the 3x Adrenaline Rush for +3 ATK (8 ATK).

Ideal turn would consist on:

  • We start with the Leading Blow for 5-8 damage each (8x3=24 potential damage), drawing 3 cards. We have 6 cards.
  • Then our base attack for 8 damage. We have 7 cards.
  • We get ready spending 1 double resource (or The Power in All of Us - WRONG - or two cards) on C.I.T.T. and attack again for 8 damage and draw a card. We have 6-7 cards.
  • We play "Fight Me, Coward!" to get ready and draw a card (we have 6-7 cards) and the villain attacks us. If we do not defend with an ally, we will draw a card (6-8 cards) and we could play 2x Payback for 16 damage (Adrenaline Rush works in OUR hero phase) and then base attack for 8 more damage and draw a card (we have 5-7 cards).
  • We play another "Fight Me, Coward!" to get ready and draw a card (we have 5-7 cards) and the villain attacks us. If we defend with Drax, we will draw a card (6-8 cards) and we could then play 3x Counter-Punch to deliver him 8x3=24 more damage.
  • We are now exhausted with (3-5) cards in hand. One or two of them could be Knife Leap that we could be have been added to some previous base attack for 5-10 additional damage (and would work to remove Guards/Toughs).
  • And if we also had Drax's Other Knife, we would deliver the villain 2 damage if we don't use allies to defend from "Fight Me, Coward!".

Doing the math, that's 100+ potential damage (108 if I'm not mistaken, with damage from Drax alone, then you can also add some damage from allies in play to go to 110+ damage). in PRO-TEC-TION xD

Of course we will not be that lucky. Managing to get any fraction of the above will still deal massive damage and provide a OTK, which is the main goal. And it may happen to cycle our deck within our turn so with some luck we could draw and play again another Leading Blow... ;)

Ok, so how do you manage to reach that point? you need to thwart and heal, right?

HEAL

Mantis will keep Drax's health high enough, and the 3x Med Team will keep Mantis on play to keep healing Drax. Remember, a Med Team would heal Drax for 6. But if it heals Mantis for 6 instead, she could heal Drax for 18 ;) C.I.T.T. can also ready Mantis to heal Drax again, twice in a turn. And Night Nurse will get rid of stuns and provide some healing too. However, since we are not usually attacking with Drax while we build, we can go to AE to heal (if we don't have medic teams to heal Mantis) and also draw 6 cards to build quicker, and we will get the revenge tokens again.

THREAT

Allies, Intimidation and Drax's 1 thwart will have to do the work. If we don't go to AE (that's the idea), threat will increase slowly.

ALLIES

All Guardian allies for 3 reasons:

  1. Theme xD
  2. They are basic cards (grey). And I'm using The Power in All of Us to play them cheap. Besides, TPIAOU will work for CITT to ready Drax (or Mantis for a double healing turn) and with the two of them or with a double resource we can bring Avengers Mansion to the table.
  3. I'm using Knowhere to draw a card after playing a Guardian ally, so they become cheaper. Besides, there's this nice combo with Starhawk: once he's in play, I activate him to get him to hand, I play him, draw a card and activate him again. He will cost 1 and we can activate him twice every turn.

MY EXPERIENCE WITH THIS DECK

All in Expert Mode (II/III + Expert set) against these villains:

  • RHINO. 3 plays, 3 victories. 27 OTK damage on first play. 71 OTK damage on second play. No OTK on third play, but quicker game.
  • KLAW. 1 play, 1 victory. I OTK the villain with 48 damage.
  • ULTRON. 1 play, 1 victory. Almost OTK with 36 damage turn.
  • GREEN GOBLIN: RISKY BUSINESS. 3 plays, 3 loses. This deck cannot deal with this scenario.
  • GREEN GOBLIN: MUTAGEN FORMULA. 3 plays, 3 loses. Don't think the deck works here.

POSSIBLE CHANGES I'm thinking of adding a couple of cards:

It seems The Power in All of Us cannot be used to activate C.I.T.T. to ready a Guardian Character: https://boardgamegeek.com/thread/2700347/power-all-us-pay-citts-action So I'm considering whether keeping the copies of TPiAoU or not. They still pay for the basic Guardians allies, they help bring down the Mansion, Helicarrier, Knowhere and C.I.T.T...

9 comments

Jul 22, 2021 Mammonite · 1

TPIAOU can't be used to trigger CITT's action. Play is a defined term that doesn't include triggering actions on cards already in play. Here is a link to the rules reference: marvelcdb.com

How would this deck feel without the TPIAOU and CITT interaction? Would you make any changes?

Jul 23, 2021 Carquinyoli · 280

Hi Mammonite! Yes, TPIAOU can be used to trigger CITT's action. I read it here for the first time and it blew my mind: es.marvelcdb.com If you go to the comments section, they explain it with the analogy to "Spiderwoman's Finesse to pay for Jarnborn" , and it's exactly the same here. In Hall of Heroes you have the official ruling to this (have a look under Spiderwoman's section in the ruling). hallofheroeslcg.com

AS for the last question, TPIAOU not only pays for CITT's action but also to bring basic Guardians allies to table, to play Avengers Mansion and Knowhere... but since the only "recurrent" ally (starhawk) can't use it because it's a protection ally, hmmm .... I think I still would use CITT to ready Drax. Spending 2 resources to ready him and deal 5+ damage is still worth, imo. This deck is focused on the combo with adrenaline rush and several preparations, so being able to ready Drax is of paramount importance.

Jul 23, 2021 Mammonite · 1

I misread TPIAOF as "playing a Basic" instead of "paying for a Basic". Since plays are when you put a card into play it would have been more restricted. I'm glad I double checked the wording after you disagreed!

Jul 28, 2021 MiguelN4 · 1052

Después de jugar este mazo, he deshecho por completo el mío de Drax para buscar otro enfoque distinto al que me había obcecado en conseguir.

¡Muy instructivo!

Jul 29, 2021 Carquinyoli · 280

@MiguelN4qué tal te ha ido y contra qué villano has jugado? Contra los 3 villanos del core me ha funcionado relativamente bien, pero contra los dos escenarios del Duende (siempre en Experto) no hay manera. Creo que no es un "buen" mazo, versátil, es un mazo para buscar un combo burro de fin de partida como cosa curiosa :)

Jul 30, 2021 MiguelN4 · 1052

@Carquinyoli me ha ido razonablemente bien. Cuando las cartas no te vienen de cara es complicado llegar al combo. La verdad es que no juego apenas en Experto, prefiero ir metiendo nuevos conjuntos de encuentros modulares que le den otro sabor a los villanos. He probado con el clásico Rino, Klaw, Supervisor, Drang y Nébula. A medida que el escenario se vuelve más complejo, si no eres capaz de ganar en la "carrera" al villano, pierdes. Pero creo que eso es intrínseco a todo Drax/Protección.

El mío es muy básico, no sé si habrá alguno ya en la web, pero estoy viendo si merece la pena subirlo porque aún no lo tengo bien probado.

Aug 02, 2021 Carquinyoli · 280

Hola @MiguelN4. Gracias por el feedback :) Sí, por ahora Protección es un aspecto que, salvo con unos pocos héroes, no acaba de funcionar bien en Solitario, ya que ni pega mucho (forma de ganar) ni quita mucha intervención (una forma de no perder). A mi también suelen venirme las Parada y Intimidación cuando no tengo contadores de venganza y eso me irrita xD. Y las veces que he podido hacer el combo-burro, estaría al final de la segunda vuelta del mazo o inicio tercera... y aguantar tanto no es fácil, sobretodo en escenarios con mucha planificación. En fin, más adelante recuperaré a Drax pero en Agresividad a ver qué tal.

Jan 25, 2022 Amicinoctis · 1

Me parece un mazo espectacular, por ahora sólo he llegado hasta Ultrón, y lo voy a probar con él lo antes que pueda. ¡Gracias por el aporte! Para Drax, me estaba costando mucho hacer un buen mazo. Había llegado al punto de ponerle muchas cartas que se quedan en mesa, para aprovechar mejor sus fabulosos eventos, pero este mazo me ha sacado a la luz cartas cuyo potencial no habia visto :D

Jan 25, 2022 Carquinyoli · 280

Gracias @Amicinoctis!! me alegro que te haya gustado, y sobretodo funcionado bien. ¿Lo estás jugando en Normal o en Experto?. A ver como te va con Ultrón, contra éste villano es básico bajar rápido el otro puñal, el que da represalia, para lidiar con los drones. Y con los golpes de tanteo tambíen los vas liquidando. Si pruebas contra otros escenarios y quieres comentar aquí, me interesa el feedback :)

La siguiente vez que lo juegue, creo que voy a sacrificar alguna descarga de adrenalina y un contragolpe para meter 2 o 3x Una dura lección o Ignorar las heridas. Que Drax se pueda poner Duro es vital porque le permite recibir ataques (y por tant poner contadores o robar cartas) sin recibir daño.