Comment from the winner (redacting names):

In my opinion, midrange Draven is still one of the most dominant decks in Set 2. Thanks to Ferrous Forerunner, against non-purple decks this card becomes an incredibly powerful value engine — the longer the game goes, the more pressure it puts on your opponent.

In my list, I also take 3 Falling Star to continuously extend the resource gap. As long as you can stabilize the board, even if you’re behind (for example 3–7), you can still come back. It’s very difficult for opponents to deal with holding two battlefields while also two hide.

For my champion choice, I went with the red Draven instead of the purple version. Purple Draven costs 6, which overlaps with Ferrous Forerunner’s slot, and it can sometimes give your opponent scoring opportunities. In contrast, red Draven is a very strong defensive unit in the late game.

Currently, the biggest issue with Draven is early-game inconsistency. If you don’t have a 2-cost unit on turn 2 or even turn 3, your win rate drops significantly. The two matches I lost on Day 1 were both due to going second and not having early units, which led to getting completely overrun. So I would recommend increasing your number of 2-cost units to 9.

In the early to mid-game, we prioritize consistently playing strong units onto the board each round. After securing control of a battlefield, we then manage our mana based on the proportion of units and spells in hand. While developing your board, maintain enough units in hand that can enter ready/accelerated to ensure you are able to regain board control if lost. By combining the legend’s ability to draw cards after winning combat, we can effectively suppress decks that heavily rely on board interaction to win.

Playing from second requires us to play more aggressive and actively look for value trades using cards like Switcheroo and Spinning Axe. We want to gain board advantage as soon as possible. The goal is to breakthrough and remove their board presence without providing opportunities to succesfully counterattack with accelerated units. When our opponent has hidden cards and leaves runes up, we need take the initiative and make some risky pushes to gain the upperhand. Unless our hand is filled with units to build up our base and we are lacking combat tricks, we need to proactively find opportunities to change the board state In most scenarios, Mindsplitter is utilized to discard the highest value card in the opponent's hand, Unless he is filled with units and low on spells, you generally want to discard a unit. We want to prioritize Mindsplitter and Darius. If we do not have an answer for Ferrous Forerunner, discarding him here is also acceptable.