Draven Viktor Deck Guide

Now, you might be thinking: “Wait, why isn’t he running Ambush or Might.” To explain why I don’t run those cards I’m going to give you a bit of context.

I was playing the standard version of the deck but I noticed that against more aggressive decks it was impossible to get either Ballistic Bot or Viktor big enough to grant them overwhelm or elusive with either Might or Ambush. This meant that I had six dead draws in those matchups.

I started cutting cards here and there until eventually I cut Might and Ambush completely and I began performing much 

better on the ladder.

With that out of the way, let me explain how my version works. Instead of being a sort of combo-oriented aggro deck like before my version is pretty much an updated version of Discard Aggro.

With the addition of cards such as Lost Soul and Fallen Rider, Jinx doesn’t make sense anymore in discard aggro as you rarely have an empty hand nowadays. Now, Viktor on the other hand can be played in this deck as an alternate win condition because of the huge tempo swings in the early game. He also synergizes with the deck because we have a lot of created cards.

I also run Ballistic Bot mainly for the burn as well as the discard fodder, he helps a lot in slow matchups where my opponent can shut down my early aggression.

The game plan of this deck is to run down your opponent in the early game with units, especially fearsome ones, and remove blockers when possible with cards like Timewinder and Flame Chompers! to get the most amount of damage on his nexus and then closing out the game with burn.

CARD CHOICES

3x Draven: The best champion for this deck as he generates Spinning Axe which serves both as a discard activator and discard fodder. He also tends to get damage for free as he is very hard to block. Draven can level often in this deck if not dealt with by your opponent so level him if you can to get the overwhelm keyword and secure more nexus damage.

3x Viktor: He is mostly an alternate win condition and he usually shines in matchups where your opponent can shut down your aggression. There are twelve keywords Viktor can get of which three are the ones we’re most of the time looking for which are: Overwhelm, Elusive and Fearsome. This means the first time we give Viktor a keyword we have a 25% chance to hit one of those and a slightly better chance each consecutive time.

2x Reborn Grenadier: Unlike Draven Sion in this deck Reborn Grenadier unlocks his full potential. Because we are an aggro deck, he can either be used as an extra burst attacker or a burst blocker. This can prove very useful either to remove your opponent’s units or get in more damage once you have the board advantage.

3x Zaunite Urchin: One of the best cards in the deck as she is usually played on turn one to get card advantage while discarding Fallen Rider to set up a very strong turn two or turn three attacks.

3x Ballistic Bot: Very strong two-drop, he has a double purpose in this deck. He creates discard fodder and burn damage. Every point of damage matters in this deck and trust me when I tell you that those Ignitions add up in the long run. You usually want to play him against less aggressive decks as he tends to be a tempo loss when played.

3x Boom Baboon: Great two drop as he generates Flame Chompers! and it can be discarded to pull a blocker usually at burst speed allowing more of our units to get in for more nexus damage. You usually want to pull fearsome blockers so cards like Risen Rider or Twinblade Revenant can strike the enemy nexus directly.

3x Fallen Rider: I think this is by far the best card in the deck as it usually allows us to hit the enemy nexus for four damage on turn two. If your opponent doesn’t run fearsome blockers or can’t remove him, he is probably taking damage every other turn.

2x Lost Soul: No surprise here as this is an infinite value card. We only run two copies because our hand can often brick with three. Usually, you want to play Twinblade Revenant on turn four once you’ve discarded Lost Soul to attack the enemy nexus directly because of its fearsome keyword.

3x Poro Cannon: Amazing card and serves basically as a second one drop in the deck. Because the Daring Poro has the elusive keyword it often means one guaranteed damage every other turn. Don’t underestimate the damage this poros can put on the enemy nexus in the long run.

3x Mystic Shot: Basically, a burn spell in this deck but can be used to remove problematic units.

2x Rummage: Helps to refuel once you’re running out of gas and can unbrick certain hands.

3x Timewinder: This is a very interesting card as you often don’t see it played. I put this card on the deck because I was running into many people playing cards like Marai Warden or House Spider and they had too many blockers for me to deal with. Timewinder fixes this problem and it can also hit the enemy nexus for one when needed. Sometimes you can remove two blockers with one action so keep this in mind when setting up attacks.

2x Get Excited!: Another burn spell that helps with the discard synergy but I only run two because I used to run into a lot of dead hands with three Get Excited! and three Mystic Shot or Decimate so I decided to cut one for consistency. It can also be used to remove important units like Poppy.

3x Decimate: Burn spell and one of the main finishers of the deck.

2x Survival Skills: Amazing card in this deck as it usually saves your fearsome units from removal since all of them have four power. It can be used either to save a card from removal or remove a blocker for free when your opponent attacks. It is also a great way to level up Draven as you can ax him to discard Survival Skills ensuring at least one level up proc.

GENERAL MULLIGAN

Since this deck is an aggro deck you usually mulligan the same way most matches. You want early unit aggression to start damaging the enemy nexus. You might want to keep some specific cards in some matchups but most of the time you should mulligan something like this:

Mulligan: Draven, Ballistic Bot, Zaunite Urchin, Boom Baboon, Fallen Rider, Lost Soul, Poro Cannon and Mystic Shot.

MATCHUPS

Pyke Rek’Sai Lurk (Favored):

Mulligan: Draven, Ballistic Bot, Zaunite Urchin, Boom Baboon, Fallen Rider, Lost Soul, Poro Cannon, Timewinder, Get Excited! or Survival Skills (if you already have a good hand) and Mystic Shot.

This is by far the best matchup for this deck, I’m currently 8-0 against Lurk. The reason why is because Lurk usually only plays one unit per turn and you can remove blockers to get damage in while going wide. As a general rule of thumb, you want to deny as many lurk procs as possible while dealing the most amount of damage in this matchup.

Timewinder is an amazing card in this matchup because they run a lot of one drops, you can remove two of them for one action to surprise your opponent and get some damage in. 

Mystic Shot is also a good card to remove their two health lurkers to prevent lurk procs. 

Get Excited! should only be used for burn damage and to remove Pyke when he hits the board. Pyke is the only way a Lurk player can beat you so be sure to remove it. 

Lurk decks are forced to attack every turn they can so Survival Skills is a great card to discard to block lurk attackers and keep your blocker alive. Reborn Grenadier can also be discarded to block and remove a unit at burst speed when they attack.

Zed Poppy (Favored):

Mulligan: Draven, Ballistic Bot, Zaunite Urchin, Boom Baboon, Fallen Rider, Lost Soul, Poro Cannon, Survival Skills (if you have a good hand) and Mystic Shot.

This is also a favored matchup because Zed Poppy is a rally deck and rally decks don’t want to be blocking. This deck forces them to either block or take enormous amounts of damage. In this matchup, you just follow your normal game plan and your opponent should have trouble keeping up. You might want to use some burn spells for removal if you’re taking too much damage.

Mystic Shot can be used to force protection on Zed and other low-health units in the deck. You can try to remove Poppy with Get Excited! but most of the time they will be able to protect it. Timewinder can be used to remove Fleetfeather Tracker and Greenglade Duo or at least threaten them. Don’t focus too much on removing units, it should be seen as a last resort as we want our opponent to be reacting to our aggression, not the other way around. 

Survival Skills is great in this matchup because it counters quick attack units like Zed and Young Witch targets. Use it as a discard to block and trade against your opponent, alternatively, you can just cast it if your opponent rallies. This will kill his attack because you will be able to block all of his units for free.

Dragons Demacia (Favored):

Mulligan: Draven, Ballistic Bot, Zaunite Urchin, Boom Baboon, Fallen Rider, Lost Soul, Poro Cannon and Mystic Shot.

This is a very favored matchup because our game plan exploits Dragons' main weakness: going wide. Dragons usually play one unit per turn if they are lucky, they do have fearsome blockers so we should focus more on going as wide as possible than putting fearsomes on the board.

You should always keep a Mystic Shot to kill Herald of Dragons if they play it on turn two so we can avoid a Shyvana on turn three.

Boom Baboon is amazing in this matchup because of the Flame Chompers! he generates. Our opponent has a hard time keeping up with our wide board so dropping a burst speed challenger to remove blockers is huge and can blow out our opponent.

Poro Cannon is also a great card because they have to waste a Sharpsight to block a 1/1 Daring Poro. Going wide with multiple Daring Poros can guarantee a lot of damage to the enemy nexus.

You should only be worried about your opponent dropping Radiant Guardian or Solari Sunforger so be mindful of your opponent’s mana when killing units.

Bandletree (Favored): 

Mulligan: Draven, Ballistic Bot, Zaunite Urchin, Boom Baboon, Fallen Rider, Lost Soul, Poro Cannon, Get Excited! or Survival Skills (if you have a good hand) and Mystic Shot.

Favored matchup but you need to know how to pilot the deck and know what to do or else it can be difficult. The key to this matchup is your fearsome and elusive units. Bandletree can go super wide on the board but has limited fearsome and elusive blockers. Prioritize Poro Cannon, Fallen Rider and Lost Soul in the mulligan. If you have these cards and play correctly you should kill your opponent before they can summon ten units from different regions and win with The Bandle Tree.

Survival Skills is also a very good card in this matchup to save your fearsome units from removal such as Buster Shot and Ravenous Flock.

Timewinder can remove two of your opponent’s units when they cast Group Shot for two damage, so keep this in mind to save your Risen Rider.

Ballistic Bot is a good unit to play when your opponent has already gone too wide for non-fearsome units to attack as he guarantees one damage to the nexus each turn.

Get Excited! should only be used for burn or removing Poppy.

Mystic Shot is a good keep to remove Bandle City Mayor on turn three.

Draven is hard for your opponent to remove efficiently and usually generates a lot of axes. If you can level him, go for it, the overwhelm keyword he gets on level up can swing games in your favor.

Draven Sion (50/50):

Mulligan: Draven, Ballistic Bot, Zaunite Urchin, Boom Baboon, Fallen Rider, Lost Soul, Poro Cannon, Timewinder and Mystic Shot.

Draven Sion is a fun matchup to play because both decks play sort of similar but in my opinion, we have the advantage. The reason why I say that is because our deck is much faster than theirs, meaning we can probably get more damage on them before they can damage us and finish with Sion. We also have a lot of tools that they don’t run that give us the edge.

One of those tools is Timewinder, this card can remove Daring Poro, Boom Baboon and Zaunite Urchin. Removing their turn one and turn two plays with just one card can guarantee a lot of damage on them.

An important thing to keep in mind in this matchup is that the player that wins the board advantage probably wins the game. Reborn Grenadier helps to win the board as you can burst block one of their attacking units. Survival Skills does a similar job as it can get discarded so you can kill one of his attackers while preserving your unit.

Mystic Shot is a great keep in the mulligan to remove Draven on turn three.

Ballistic Bot can be good if you are already ahead on board to get a couple of Ignitions off for more nexus damage.

Veigar Senna (Unfavored): 

Mulligan: Draven, Ballistic Bot, Zaunite Urchin, Boom Baboon, Fallen Rider, Lost Soul, Poro Cannon and Mystic Shot.

Because we are an aggro deck and Veigar Senna is a shadow isles control deck with a lot of drain we are naturally unfavored into it. We do have ways to win though. Veigar Senna has limited fearsome blockers so fearsome units like Risen Rider and Twinblade Revenant are a priority. 

Poro Cannon can be good in the early game to get some damage in but Withering Wail can blow you out if you develop too many poros.

Mystic Shot is a must keep avoiding Twisted Catalyzer striking, the difference between a two and three damage Darkness is huge in this matchup. Cards like Ballistic Bot and Twinblade Revenant can be removed by a single Darkness if they buff it to three damage.

Viktor can be a great card to play in the midgame as they will have a hard time removing him, especially if he rolls the spell shield keyword.

Survival Skills can protect your fearsome units from removal so save it for when your opponent commits removal.

Poppy Ziggs NX BC (Favored):

Mulligan: Draven, Zaunite Urchin, Reborn Grenadier, Boom Baboon, Fallen Rider, Lost Soul, Poro Cannon, Timewinder, Get Excited! or Survival Skills (if you already have a good hand) and Mystic Shot.

Even though Poppy Ziggs is a very fast aggro deck we are favored in this matchup because we have ways of stopping their early game aggression and we have a better late game. The key to winning this matchup is removing their units and making value trades on the board. They will eventually run out of gas and we can burn them down eventually.

Cards that help you win back the board like Reborn Grenadier, Timewinder, and Survival Skills are very important in this match-up. Use them to trade up with your opponent on the board when given the chance.

Get Excited! can be used to remove Poppy when she gets played as they run no combat tricks to save her.

Zaunite Urchin has priority as a one drop because she can block Legion Rearguard. If you get the choice between her or a Daring Poro play her.

Ballistic Bot is too slow for this matchup so you usually want to mulligan him away. You want either Boom Baboon or Risen Rider instead of as a two-drop.

Gangplank Sejuani (Unfavored):

Mulligan: Draven, Ballistic Bot, Zaunite Urchin, Boom Baboon, Fallen Rider, Lost Soul, Poro Cannon, Timewinder and Mystic Shot.

Gangplank Sejuani is a very tough matchup, they have many ways to stop our aggression with cards like Parrrley, Make it Rain, Monster Harpoon, etc… Our deck is very bad at blocking overwhelm units so we need to win or at least be able to burn them before they attack turn five or six with their leveled Sejuani or Gangplank. 

They also have a lot of early game units and blockers but you can get fearsome damage before turn four as their only fearsome blockers are either a plundered Jagged Butcher and Yordle Grifter. The way to win this matchup is to execute our normal game plan and hope our opponent can’t kill us before we burn him.

The key cards in this matchup are Fallen Rider and Lost Soul. We want to play fearsome units and units with more than one health to dodge a Make it Rain board swipe, both of these cards help with that.

Again, this is another matchup where Reborn Grenadier and Survival Skills can come in clutch. Especially when your opponent casts Monster Harpoon on an important unit and you discard Survival Skills this is a huge tempo swing and can help you come back into the game.

Twisted Fate Gangplank (Unfavored):

Mulligan: Draven, Ballistic Bot, Zaunite Urchin, Boom Baboon, Fallen Rider, Lost Soul, Poro Cannon, Timewinder and Mystic Shot.

Just as Gangplank Sejuani this deck has a big overwhelm finisher with Gangplank. Our deck has a hard time blocking overwhelm units and one damage AoEs and this deck has LOTS of them in the form of Make it Rain and Twisted Fate. 

We can still beat them if we manage to get a couple of fearsome attacks in the early game and hold the fort, we can burn them before they kill us. Denying plunder triggers can help us delay Gangplank’s level up and this buys us more time to burn them so do it when you have the chance.

Try to keep your health as high as possible because we can’t play around Double Up. The only way to survive a Double Up cast is to discard Survival Skills making your opponent waste five mana.

Timewinder can be good to remove chump blockers like Marai Warden and Inventive Chemist.

Once your opponent plays Twisted Fate try not to remove him immediately so your opponent doesn’t have the chance to replay him and wipe your board.

Akshan Sivir (Slightly Favored):

Mulligan: Draven, Ballistic Bot, Zaunite Urchin, Boom Baboon, Fallen Rider, Lost Soul, Poro Cannon and Mystic Shot.

Sivir Akshan usually plays only one unit per turn so we are favored in the sense that we can swarm them and deal damage to their nexus in the early game. If we execute our game plan of dealing damage early and burning them later we should win most of our games against them. We do have to watch out for their combat tricks and removal.

Poro Cannon is a great card in this matchup because their only way of dealing with elusives is with Sharpsight this is inefficient and sets them behind in tempo which is good for us.

Open attacking with Flame Chompers! pulling a blocker is preferred over developing as they run Brightsteel Protector and they can kill our attack.

Like other rally decks, we can hard cast Survival Skills when our opponent rallies to block all their attackers for free. It can also be discarded to block Sivir and force your opponent to cast a combat trick.

In this type of matchup, we shouldn’t be casting Mystic Shot and Get Excited! to remove units because these can be easily countered by combat tricks like Sharpsight, Riposte, Shaped Stone, etc...

Timewinder can remove a double one drop opener in case our opponent is looking to pressure our nexus health in the early game.

Like the Dragons, in this matchup always remember that they play Radiant Guardian because this card can blow us out if she gets dropped.

CLOSING THOUGHTS

As you can tell by the matchups this deck is very good in the current metagame. It beats most of the aggro and rally decks currently on the ladder and also some midrange decks. Because this deck is like Discard Aggro it can be complicated to play at times, so I do not recommend this deck for newer players. If you want an easier aggro deck to play you can read our guide on Poppy Ziggs.

If you are a more advanced player or you used to play Discard Aggro back in the day, I heavily recommend this deck for climbing as it is way more consistent than Discard Aggro but plays essentially the same.

For competitive play, this deck has a spot if you are either building a triple aggro lineup or if you want a deck that’s good against most of the meta. It can also be a great deck in lineups that plan on banning Gangplank because two of its worse matchups are Gangplank decks.

About Wamuu

Top 200 Master LoR player. I have a lot of passion for this game and love sharing my thoughts and game knowledge through deck guides and articles for competitive play.

If you would like coaching from me, you can dm me in Discord at: 

Wamuu#7531