How to play : Draven Glorious Executioner

The legend pays out only for a combat you win, so count the might before every fight. Defending counts too: if one of your defenders is still standing once the damage is dealt, their surviving attackers go back to base and the combat is yours. The list has plenty of ways to tip the total: Cleave gives Assault 3 for one energy, Gust Monk gives Assault 2 when you pay one extra energy as you play it and banish a card from any trash, and Perfect Execution readies a unit and gives it Assault 3. Assault only counts while the unit attacks, but each Spinning Axe gives +3 might to the unit carrying it, on defence as well.

Spinning Axe is the card the plan leans on. Quick-Draw gives it Reaction and attaches it as you play it, so it can land in the middle of a fight, and as gear it resolves the moment it is played: a counterspell has nothing to answer. It is Temporary, though: an Axe left without a unit at the start of your turn is killed, so if its unit dies on your turn, use Equip (one power of any domain) to hand it to another unit before your turn ends. Every card the legend draws feeds the next fight, and Draven, Showboat turns the points those fights score into might: 3 plus your score, so at five points he has 8 might.

You draw four and may replace up to two. Keep the two-energy units: Tideturner, Overzealous Fan, Evelynn, Entrancing and Gust Monk, eight cards in all, are what take a battlefield in the first turns, and you can only hide a card at a battlefield you control. One of them next to a Spinning Axe or a Cleave is the opener we want: the first fight comes early, and you walk into it with the bigger number.

Send back the top of the curve: Brynhir Thundersong and Ferrous Forerunner cost six energy each, and two four-cost units are already a lot in a four-card hand. Noxus Hopeful is cheaper than it looks: Legion takes 2 energy off once you have played another card that turn. And never mulligan to find Draven: Draven, Showboat waits in your Champion Zone from the very first turn.

In a best of three you pick your battlefield, and once a game has a winner, the battlefields used in it are out for the rest of the match, so plan which one comes first. Forge of the Fluft fits the deck best: while you control it, your legend can be exhausted to attach an Equipment you control to a unit you control, and Draven’s legend has nothing else to exhaust for, so a Spinning Axe or an Edge of Night moves to another unit for free on each of your turns. Treasure Hoard turns each conquer there into a Gold token for one energy: one more power on a later turn. Amateur Recital, each time you hold it, lets you send a unit at a battlefield back to its base: usually the one guarding the battlefield you want next.

Spend the first turns taking a battlefield and putting a Hidden card on it. Hiding costs one power of any domain, and on a later turn the card can be played from there as a Reaction for no energy. Edge of Night is the best deal: from your hand it costs three energy, but played from face down it costs nothing more and attaches itself to one of your units there, +2 might in the middle of a fight. Evelynn, Entrancing, played from face down on your turn, can pull an enemy unit from another location to her battlefield, which often leaves the other battlefield empty for you to walk into.

Removal first, then the move. Falling Star is not an Action, so it can only be played on your turn outside a fight: fire its two hits of 3 at the defenders before you walk in, and the fight that follows is tilted your way from the start. Perfect Execution has the same timing, and because it readies a unit as it gives Assault 3, a unit you played this turn can attack at once. Once it is in your trash, Flow lets you play it one more time for 3 energy and a Fury power, and then it is banished.

The big turn has an order too. Once you play Brynhir Thundersong, opponents cannot play cards for the rest of the turn: no Reaction, no Ambush, no card played from face down. Play it first, then move in with the units already on the board: their tricks are locked and yours are not, so your Cleave and Spinning Axe are the only surprises left in that fight.

Vex, Apathetic is the card to keep alive. While she stands at a battlefield, every unit an opponent plays is stunned and cannot move that turn, Ambush arrivals included, and a stunned unit deals no combat damage that turn. Deflect taxes their answers: any spell or ability that chooses her costs them one more power. Kha’Zix, Mutating Horror is your own Ambush: you can play it as a Reaction to a battlefield where you have units, and whenever it attacks or defends while an enemy unit is alone there, it gets +2 might.

Numbers worth holding: Switcheroo swaps the might of two units at the same battlefield for the turn, so pair their biggest with your smallest. Rebuke (2 energy and 2 Chaos power) is an Action that sends a unit at a battlefield back to its owner’s hand in the middle of a fight. Star-Crossed (3 energy and a Chaos power) returns one of their units and one of yours to hand: pick a cheap unit you are glad to play again. Hard Bargain (2 energy) counters a spell unless its controller pays 2 more energy: hold it for the turn they spend everything.