Drax Hero Review and Aspect Pairings – Marvel Champions

“I’ve mastered the ability of standing so incredibly still, that I become invisible to the eye. Watch.”

Drax is finally here and he’s already probably one of my favourite characters that’s been released for Marvel Champions to date. With a wild, aggressive playstyle that rewards risk-taking and vengeance-seeking, Drax is a powerhouse that should not be underestimated. In this article we’ll take a very quick look at what makes him tick, how he works, and the deck we’ve quickly built to play him in 2-player expert difficulty.

Strengths

• A hefty amount of health and survivability
• Massive villain-killing potential
• Great card drawing abilities
• Minimal setup

It’s immediately obvious from the moment you open him that Drax is built around two things – getting hit, and taking revenge. His entire gimmick is that when he’s hit, Drax gains vengeance counters, each of which gives him extra attack. His other hero cards use this increased attack to do things like remove threat equal to his attack, negate incoming damage equal to his attack, and, perhaps most importantly, use that attack to beat the villain in the face.

Drax has high health, massive recovery potential by consuming his vengeance counters, and generally is perfect for either 2-handed or 2-player games, which gets him a lot of points in my book given that’s how we typically play the game. Drax’s hideous ally Mantis is also one of the best signature allies we’ve seen to date, with the ability to heal identities for a huge amount, keeping them in the fight.

Weaknesses

• The harder the villain hits, the worse Drax gets
• No reliable way to clear threat and minions
• Low base hand size in hero form
• Low basic stats

Unfortunately, Drax’s wild, haymaker-exchanging playstyle is not without its downsides. His entire kit revolves around the villain attacking him, sometimes multiple times per turn, and for some villains that’s just not wise. Ronan in particular from the Galaxy’s Most Wanted campaign is a particularly bad matchup, and I’d honestly go as far as to say Drax cannot reliably be used in the expert campaign because of this. Without taking those hits, Drax’s attack doesn’t go up fast enough for his payoff cards to be worth it, and he’s just stuck not doing much. That being said, this bar is incredibly high, and we were able to beat Drang on Expert with him fairly reliably. Drang’s a pretty heavy-hitter, so I feel safe in saying that Ronan’s probably just an outlier as usual.

Aspect Pairings

1. The obvious aspect pairing for Drax is protection. He relies on taking a licking and keeping on kicking, and protection has the tools for him to do just that.
2. Aggression would likely be my next pick for Drax after protection. His Knife Leap can overkill enemies for a huge chunk of damage, similarly to Rocket, which means his synergy with cards that trigger from overkill damage is not bad at all. Aggression cards would also let him shore up his weakness of getting overrun by minions while trying to punch the villain in the face, so it’d likely work out pretty well. The downside to this would be he simply cannot keep vengeance counters as stacked up as he can with Protection, so it’s definitely a secondary choice.
3. Leadership is always a weird aspect, and I suspect any character could work to some extent with Leadership, but there’s nothing that particularly suggests to me that Leadership Drax would be good. Most strong Leadership allies are expensive, and with his hand-size of 4, Drax can’t pay the price easily, nor does he need the blockers, because he doesn’t get vengeance counters unless he’s the one who gets hit.
4. I just don’t see Drax Justice working. There’s no reason for him to be justice, and he doesn’t lend himself well to it. Of all the aspects, this feels the least viable, though I can always be wrong.

Our Deck

For our deck, I chose to go with the obvious – protection. As we play 2-player, Drax’s ability to repeatedly jump in the way of attacks for both players and grow stronger because of it was immediately appealing. Check out our list over on MarvelCDB.

The deck’s basic strategy is simple – get hit, take less damage, gain vengeance counters, and go to town. Between Side Step and Parry, this Drax deck is fantastic at just not taking damage, even if he doesn’t defend, and that potential is increased even further by Subdue and Energy Barrier. Not exhausting Drax to defend is always great in general, because it means he’ll start his next turn ready to put those vengeance counters to work with a basic attack, but if he has to defend, Desperate Defense will ensure that he can get right back up again and keep on stabbing, and cards like Counter-Punch, Unflappable and Hard to Ignore make those defend actions all the more profitable. Don’t forget – Side Step and Parry both count as defending!

Get Behind Me! is a surprising all-star in this deck, as if there’s one thing Drax wants, it’s the villain attacking him. We’ve only gone with two copies as honestly you’re not going to get to play it every time it’s in your hand, but when you’ve got one of those turns where you can negate an awful treachery, take no damage from the attack and get benefits from doing so thanks to your upgrades and vengeance counters? It’s borderline addictive.

You’ll notice this deck is a lot lighter on allies than I typically recommend, and in this case it’s deliberate. Most other heroes rely on using allies to soak up hits, but if that’s needed for Drax, then something has gone badly wrong. Instead, Cosmo is here as pretty much the only ally besides Mantis, to allow you to reliably keep plugging away at threat and minions Drax has no time for. With the deck made up almost entirely of Events and Upgrades, so long as you pay attention to what’s left in your deck you’ve got great odds of keeping Cosmo on the board for far longer than you’d normally think possible for those few resources that he costs. Don’t throw the dog under the bus unless you absolutely have to.

All in all, Drax doesn’t make for the most versatile deck-building – he does a few things extremely well, and not building around them just feels wrong. But he is an absolute blast to play, and I intend to keep playing him in the future. Just… not against Ronan…