Draven, Glorious Executioner Guide - Best Decks & Cards

Table of Contents

1 Play Style
2 Key Cards
3 Competitive Status
4 Performance in Unleashed
5 Draven Decks

In Noxus, warriors known as Reckoners face one another in arenas where blood is spilled and strength tested—but none has ever been as celebrated as Draven. A former soldier, he found that the crowds uniquely appreciated his flair for the dramatic, and his unparalleled skill with his spinning axes. Addicted to the spectacle of his own brash perfection, Draven has sworn to defeat whomever he must to ensure that his name is chanted throughout the empire forever more.

Play Style

In Unleashed, Draven stayed true to its midrange play style, only adding strong standalone cards to its already existing deck.
In this third set, most of the best cards were disruptive, which helped Draven interact with its opponent, but failed to improve its ability to win through brute force like it did for the first half of the Spiritforged expansion.

Now, the Glorious Executioner looks like a solid deck for anyone expecting a control, reactive environment with a few large units to deal with eventually. However, fast-paced decks, or those able to quickly remove a 4-might unit anywhere on the board will be a problem Draven as the legend doesn't fare well when forced to play from behind.

Key Cards

Draven looks to build around any card able to snowball into a favourable position, or force the opponent into a corner. Most of those cards will be 4-cost, with UNL-150, UNL-022 and OGN-039 all able to carry a match if left unchecked.
These three act as constant threats the opponent has to keep in mind. If they fall behind early, they open themselves to a 4-cost being playing in a dominant position. However, if they commit too many resources in order to grab the lead, they might not be able to remove those properly.
Plus, each card in the trio complements the other pretty well. UNL-150 is fantastic when playing to hold, OGN-039 wants to conquer every turn and UNL-022 is the generic good card increasing our available resources.

There are other important cards in the deck. OGN-199 can move a key 4-cost back to base, same for UNL-215. SFD-186 represents a buff the opponent is forced to respect as long as Draven has 2 runes open.
Yet, the key for Draven is to find a way to stick one of those 4-cost card to the board, and snowball the game from there.

Competitive Status

Top 64 is an important threshold as it grants the player an invite for the continental tournament. Typically, getting to that threshold consistently is the first step for a legend to be in the competitive discussion.
Draven fits that description perfectly, being the legend with the most top 64 finishes in Unleashed. Unfortunately, even if he also recorded a pair of Top 16 while Fury legends were on the rise in the second half of Unleashed, Draven failed to keep up with Annie, Pyke, Rek'Sai or Darius, who all managed to get a top 8 eventually.