Know Your Enemy/Commander's Corner: Davits Draven

Hey, a new Rebel commander! That guy from that thing and some comic books, let's learn about Davits Draven!

He's definitely gonna appear in some other properties, right, and not die in a comic offscreen?

The Card!

Rebel players when they try to figure out how he actually worked had this face

Our second THIRD card to be promoted from officer to commander (Kyrsta Agate, albeit in the same box, and Leia as well), Draven is here to apparently help act as the intelligence officer that'll win you the game. At each Command phase, you can look at everything ANY ship your opponent still has on the board, then grab 2 command tokens. They don't even need to be commands you saw! You can then discard a command token from the Draven card to give a raid token to your opponent AFTER they resolve a command.  Which means they have to spend a dial/token/dial and token.  When your opponent takes a nav token round 1, congrats, you can't raid anything. They have to do a command first to get raided.

When they DO resolve the command as dial, token, or dial and token, you can then take a token off your card (and you can seemingly hold multiple tokens of identical types on Draven itself) and give them a raid token! Hooray! And you can do it every round they do a command! So long as you plan the tokens you take (only 2 per round!) you can Raid with impunity!

I'm getting to the reason for these jokes, I promise

Why Play Him!

You really like Blue Deck Magic.  He can shut down giant squadron activations your opponent was planning on activating twice in a row, he can stop a repair spam list in its tracks, and he can make it much harder for CR90 spam lists to be where they want to when they can't turn as well. He's a blue control deck in commander form, where you basically get to hinder your opponent's ability to REDO things they just did.  If that appeals to you, go for it. 

I'll allow these jokes now

Or rather, he limits what your opponent can do THE NEXT TURN. Many of the above examples are useable but only somewhat seen, and a good token passing system negates him entirely.  He's really good at stopping your opponent from doing a massive squadron launch next turn..... unless they passed a token I suppose. Why would anyone have Comms Net in a list these days? Raid from Dooku prevents you from using the command, unless you have a token and a dial to do one of the associated dial or token options. But Dooku hits EVERYONE, meaning that if one ship Comms Net's something over, it's not clearing its own. Dooku prevents using Gunnery Team unless they've already passed a token previously, while Draven prevents it next turn..... unless they passed a token at some point. They're still going to be able to resolve the command at least once before Draven can do his thing, your mileage may vary as to what's important to you.

It's a bit, now

The issue of Draven is that you have no way of either taking advantage of the Raid (TF-1726) or a way of keeping the pressure up when needed (Dooku).  Sure, you can raid them AFTER they do a command, but your ship getting nav raided turn 2 doesnt stop them from discarding a token they took turn 1. Oh, that turn 4 POST engineering raid sure does cause issues, but they either get a token passed or they had already planned it from jump. If your large base needed 2 turns of engineering to stay alive, it was already in a very bad spot and all Draven did was slightly give them a push towards losing.

If you can be sure that a ship of your opponent's is going to do a command three times, then sure I guess Draven is worth it? But man that's a big assumption I don't like making, as a token turn 1 can stop a lot of issues your opponent has when he's Raided initially, and the best you can do is give your opponent's ships one Raid a round.

Common Ships!

The issue with Draven is that he doesn't really lend himself towards anything specific. "Agate doesn't really either!" No, she makes ONE ship in your fleet extra tanky and is cheap, allowing you to get better benefit/use on that ship for longer as the game goes on. That's a specific something, but it is something. Draven..... doesn't. The power of his ability is dependent on both what your opponent brought and your ability to guess/prevent that from happening again.

A blue deck joke article? You knew this was gonna pop up

The standard Prodigal Sorceror CR90 is always worth including, but it doesn't do anything specific for him over any other non-Cracken commander. I've seen a Liberty-title Liberty build or 2 floating around; as combining him with Fenn Rau and the Liberty title can mean 4 squads from one token, or even 6 if you can spare the one dial (don't make it a habit).  Considering your opponent won't be commanding squads in bulk form the next turn, it allows you as a Rebel commander to get a good reaction strike with your squads. Making a true Liberty battlecarrier in the Imperial fashion is fun but I honestly don't know if it's a great build or just really fun now that it finally works, kinda.

In the realm of no-specific synergy, the standard Rebel good stuff of MC30s, GR75s, and CR90s have been dominating Rebel list building for a while, no reason for them to change now.

A man with stronger conviction wouldn't make this joke. I am not him.

Fleet Building!

Since he's Raiding your opponent's dials, he's a good partner with Raid mechanics (Rex, Fenn Rau, maybe even Jyn if you can figure out a trick for her) and Slicer Tools inclusions to mess with next turn as well.  Your shutting down of their squadrons means he's pretty good with an MFC hitting their squads with an alpha strike.

His commander ability, though, stops your opponent from doing what they want to do next turn; it does not buff your fleet/dials/commands/etc.  The fleet you bring is entirely going to be based on what it does normally and how you can then use that to win when your opponent can't do what they want, if they haven't planned for that.  Hence: blue deck magic.  Good luck, and stop counterspelling my Giant Growths and Overruns, dangit.

I just like this one, no other reason for inclusion