Drax - Vigster Cardomatic Universe (VCU)

Note: I build all of my heroes so my decks are optimized only in the sense of the collection - hence the VCU tag. Welcome to the Vigster Cardomatic Universe!

Drax is a cheap son of a gun.... Normally - Mantis, who is his ONLY ally - should be his most expensive card to play at 2 cost. Everything else costs 0 or 1 with Knife Leap generally reduced due to the vengeance counters... the building of which this deck is trying to achieve. Mantis’ role is to heal Drax so he can remain in hero form. Drax can also use First Aid, Warning and Parry to reduce damage to avoid having to defend when Indomitable is not in play.

In order to maximize vengeance without getting the lights knocked out, we have to increase attacks to Drax then reduce the damage and if Drax defended - find a way to ready him so he can also attack on his turn...

So:

• extra attacks come by way of Bait and Switch, "Fight Me, Coward!" or standing in the way of other hero attacks by the villain
• defence comes in multiple forms - Perseverance and Shake it Off look to add Tough markers to prevent damage from an attack; Subdue, Warning, Booster Boots and Preemptive Strike reduce the damage from an undefended attack; Expert Defense + Indomitable or Desperate Defense look to defend against an attack and give Drax a chance to ready again so he can attack again and again. Once attacked - Payback is the ideal counter if in hand.

Above all - getting Drax's Knife and Drax's Other Knife knife out as well as DWI Theet Mastery are critical plays as soon as they come out. Too Stubborn to Die is useful - but I have not yet found a good place to play it as it would exhaust the hand and Drax is usually too busy with his knives.

Drax wants to attack and his "protection" deck is a thinly veiled mechanism to get him mad at the villain so he can just pour it on with his attacks - his ONLY thwart capabilities are via Intimidation and Bait and Switch and those 5 cards will barely keep up to the advancing schemes so he will need to be paired up with a good thwart hero (such as Nebula or Gamora).

Without any resource cards - every card play is a choice and there are times that most of the cards will be used in defence just to keep a 3 vengeance hero active so he can fight in his turn.

In short - you don't bring a knife to a Drax fight but this Drax desperately needs a scheme defence partner to be successful.