Drax the Director (of S.H.I.E.L.D.)

Drax is tricky. You have to take a few attacks from the villain without blocking to build up his vengeance counters to the point that his kit becomes effective, and you often won't hit this point until your third or fourth turn. Protection offers a path to doing this while minimizing the damage you take in building up your vengeance counters, but SHIELD Justice offers another path. Here we take more of a control approach, using Global Logistics to set Drax up to take the most feeble attacks from the villain while also providing some much needed additional thwarting support.

Because Drax's vengeance counter economy takes at least a couple of turns to build up, and so do the SHIELD pieces, this deck can struggle with scenarios that apply immediate and ongoing pressure. I defeated some moderately challenging scenarios on Expert such as Master Mold + Mystique, Taskmaster with State of Emergency replacing the four copies of Captured by Hydra, and Klaw + Iron Spider's Sinister Six. But I struggled against the MCM challenge of Zola + Captain America's nemesis set which provides minion pressure right out of the gate as well as ongoing minion pressure. When playing multiplayer, Drax really benefits from being partnered with high tempo heroes that can impact the board immediately instead of needing to also set up themselves.

Strategy:

• This deck is best for solo or two-player. At higher player counts, the encounter deck manipulation gets washed out and the SHIELD threat control just isn't enough.
• It's a Drax deck so you are always wanting to mulligan for DWI Theet Mastery and dig for it with your card draw (Nick Fury and optional One Way or Another).
• Mantis also tends to be a critical component, providing that much needed healing while you recover from building up those vengeance counters. First Aid on Mantis provides 6 hit points of healing to Drax for 2 effective resources or in a pinch can be used on Drax himself for 2 hp of healing.
• Once DWI Theet Mastery is out, Limitless Stamina has an effective resource cost of one and can be an attack for 5 which is way above curve for damage efficiency.
• Gamora should be a last resort play until you have DWI Theet Mastery down or unless you are engaging in some Global Logistics shenanigans on your own deck.
• Global Logistics sets you up to take villain attacks to the face so you can build up Vengeance counters while taking as little damage as possible.
• Homeland Intervention and Intimidation provide five instances of burst thwart on top of Surveillance Team being able to keep the constant trickle of thwart under control.

Flex cards (the first ones to look at removing for tech cards):

• Rocket Raccoon is great for minion control and a little extra thwarting.
• First Aid: Sometimes the scenario dictates higher priority cards than this.
• Skilled Investigator is always good fodder for something to ditch to Caught Off Guard or similar and pays for itself when you clear your first side scheme. Not especially useful if the encounter deck has minimal side schemes.
• Because of the huge burst thwart potential of Homeland Intervention, Under Surveillance can buy you some important breathing room. It is less valuable when the main scheme has a very high threat threshold or in 2-player games. Of no real use in 3- and 4-player games.

Tech cards:

• 2x One Way or Another: for solo if there are 2+ side schemes that will come in with 4 or fewer threat and minimal negative effects. These cards help you dig for DWI Theet Mastery and other high-impact cards. Not great for 2-player and terrible for 3+ player games.
• Chance Encounter has many great targets (Mantis usually being the highest priority and the rest depend more on the situation), but is conditional in that it requires having a side scheme in play. Worth playing in scenarios with lots of side schemes or at higher player counts where the additional encounter cards means many more side schemes will show up in play.
• Agent Coulson and Counterintelligence: Playing this combo costs 6 effective resources which requires the hand size of 4 plus two of Government Liaison, a double resource or card draw (from DWI Theet Mastery or getting attacked when at full vengeance counters), which are all very reasonable once you are set up. The problem is that once you are set up, Drax no longer really needs this help so probably not actually worth it.
• Unshakable can be nice protection against your obligation or scenarios with status effect in general. Drax does not like losing an activation to being stunned.

Get out there and let Drax's take on intelligence agency leadership win your over.