Drax and Mantis when someone thinks your protection deck might not do enough damage for the table.

A Preface (Trigger Warning: Loss)

My wife and I had been trying for almost as long as we've been married to have children, and finally through the miracles of science, were finally pregnant. We had implanted fertilized embryos before, giving them 'stage names' with the intention of referring to them in vitro as those names until we learned the sex of the fetus. We were so elated to see our first ultrasound with a heartbeat, in 8 years of trying. What's more, is that there were TWO sacs. TWINS! We named them 'Drax' and 'Mantis,' as my wife and I are both huge fans of Guardians of the Galaxy.

Excitement quickly filled our lives; my wife had been sharing our entire IVF journey by way of a pseudo-blog on her Facebook account she called 'baby steps.' Normally, people wait until after (or close to) the end of the first trimester to announce, but we felt compelled to share because of the public nature of our journey.

Our elation would be short-lived, as the next ultrasound showed the heartbeats had stopped. We were devastated, and the next few weeks of sharing our bad news with the world, essentially, was nigh-unbearable.

I had, prior to all this, bought a ticket to Con of Heroes, and considered cancelling. My wife encouraged me to still attend, despite how I was feeling. Knowing Drax's tragic story from the MCU, she challenged me to make a deck to take to the con in honor of our in vitro babies.

So I set out to make a Drax deck with his signature ally, Mantis, as the only ally. This deck is the fruits of that labor. The idea was an exercise in theme, Drax and Mantis, trolling around the galaxy, beating up bad guys along the way.

Gameplay

Just do this a bunch of times!

This deck absolutely slaps at a 4 player table where someone's taking on the lion's share of the thwarting. I'm not a maestro of deck write-ups like some of my fellow community members, so in lieu of a complete analysis of the deck, I'll just provide some general gameplay tips:

-Hard mulligan for DWI Theet Mastery and Symbiote Suit. Casting Symbiote Suit always costs you a whole turn anytime past turn 1, and hitting DWI Theet on turn 1 drastically speeds up the small amount of build-out required for Drax.

-Drax's Other Knife, other than casting it super early, is often just a wild resource. I'll only play it if it's in my opening hand and the turn is already super-clunky.

-"Come Get Me, Bub!" is often better than Shake it Off, but the latter having a physical resource (allowing us to play What Doesn't Kill Me) is a nod in its favor.

-Weirdly, What Doesn't Kill Me is consistently the card I least like seeing in my hand. If we ever receive a more efficient ready in protection, It will be swapped out.

-Specialized Training is 100% necessary in solo, as Drax can clear it with a single intimidation once built. Feel free to cut it for an extra Shake it Off/"Come Get Me, Bub!" in multiplayer, but if you keep it in, I like taking the extra +1 ATK in multiplayer, and the extra HP in solo.

-Generally speaking, you need to sequence your cards to just go for it every single turn. I've managed to cycle through my entire deck twice in a turn, with Drax's top damage reaching 108 in a single lucky turn.

-When possible, use Med Team to heal Mantis, and use Mantis to heal Drax.

-If you're going to play Too Stubborn to Die, do it during your second pass, and only in multiplayer.

-Play to your outs. If you're gonna die if you don't draw a Parry, you might as well Taunt the Villain!

-This deck can do so much damage, that it can completely trivialize some encounters, so make sure you're at a table where if that happens, the table's OK with it whether that means scaling up the difficulty, or just letting the deck have a bit of main character syndrome.

Conclusion

I love to play this deck.

I know this deck is derivative of others' builds.

I know that this deck isn't innovating in any meaningful way.

I published this to tell you that life is going to throw punches your way, and some of them are going to connect.

I published this to tell you that how you cope, grieve, or simply make it through to the next day is OK as long as you're not hurting yourself or anyone else.

Building, testing, and playing this deck was one way for me, and for one glorious weekend in Minnesota, I got to throw some punches of my own. To everyone who played with me at the con: Thank you. You may have had no clue, but the catharsis was real; both from slaying bad guys and the absolute sense of community provided (Con of Heroes is just like a big ol' group hug all weekend), and I will continue to make this community as a priority in my life, as you all were here for me when I needed you most.

Now go punch a bad guy in the face.