Drax Attax Final Form

After seven attempts at Ronan the Accuser in a 3 player campaign, we finally agreed that we needed to change things or we were never going to finish this dang box. So we broke the rules.

I had been playing a Groot Leadership deck that would allow Yondu to attack repeatedly and while the gimmick did show promise, it took too long to setup. With Venom Protection and Rocket Justice, our problem was doing enough damage to get ahead of Ronan after dealing with his side schemes and surges.

Enter Drax.

I had been tooling around with Drax in Aggression and so the deck was all ready to go. We decided to house rule allowing a changeover in identity decks because we were just plain tired of having our butts handed to us over and over and over. I pulled the market cards I had out of Groot's deck (house rule: market cards are bought by the player, not the hero), shuffled up, and went to work.

Immediate improvement on our progress. We lost again but felt Drax was the right move, so we set up and gave it one more shot.

This time we finally won and can put Galaxy's Most Wanted to bed.

Consensus in my group is Drax is what Hulk should have been. Ronan hits really hard, but Drax could ignore it and dish it straight back, doing multiple big hits in one round but then had a cool down waiting for the deck to cycle his events back around. Also, a stunned Drax is a sad Drax, and once Unshakable came out it saved the game on the final turn.

Now that I'm home after the session, reflecting back on the deck, I made some changes and now feel good about Drax Attax in this Final Form.

Adding Athletic Conditioning can help get rid of the stuns and confused statuses while waiting around for Unshakable.

Moment of Triumph was my big heal combined with Knife Leap to kill a minion, overkill to Ronan, and heal up to full health, so that was a keeper.

I added Quick Strike so there could be something else to do damage while waiting to cycle, or to shake off a stunned before a basic attack.

IPAC comes in via Build Support, which was surprisingly easy to pop early on. Otherwise, IPAC is a resource card.

All three of the "Enhanced" resource upgrades are there to pay for the piddly little 1-cost cards, but I did end up using all three and Helicarrier to get Avengers Mansion into play without discarding a card from hand to pay for it. After playing them, I'm starting to think that the "Enhanced" resource upgrades are maybe a little underrated or overlooked. I get wanting those support resource cards like Ingenuity or Quincarrier since they stick to the play area, but sometimes just having a basic version of Web-Shooter out there can be good for heroes who can't easily play support resource cards or who don't have their own resource generator like our friend Drax here.

Honorary Guardians are for Drax and Mantis, with Mantis getting first pick if she's out. Having one more turn of healing was very helpful in keeping Drax in hero form instead of needing to flip and lose vengeance counters. Usually I would be down to her last heal and then I would draw into the Knife Leap/Moment of Triumph combo to give Drax another round against Ronan's big hits.

"Fight Me, Coward!" was always fun to play, but Parry with Payback was solid in both the hero and villain phase. Following them up with an Intimidation and another basic attack was 'chef's kiss'.

Drax really needs his card draws in hero form in order to be really effective what with his 4 card hand size, so DWI Theet Mastery, Avengers Mansion, and Blood Rage along with his hero response ability and "Fight Me, Coward!" got the job done for me. I also had some campaign market cards that did something then draw a card, so they were helpful also. Big ups for Tried and True fetching out cards to let Drax hit Ronan another two times.

I had a lot of fun playing Drax after several slog sessions through Galaxy's Most Wanted. He fits my preferred play style of building an engine but can still hold his own while the engine is built. This deck should probably be played alongside a more thwart-heavy hero deck, as I don't know how effective it would be in solo against the more difficult scenarios. I could also see minion-heavy scenarios slowing Drax down, especially with guard and patrol. I can really only speak to this deck working in multiplayer, ymmv.

Definitely a fun deck against a difficult opponent, exactly how Drax likes it. :)