XS Stands for Excess!!! [Not Xtra-Smol]

XS stands for excess damage. Not for xtra-small.

Trash Panda is here to showcase Rocket Raccoon's aggressive techniques. Rocket is a powerhouse when you strategize in doing excess damage!! The main strategy of this build is to upgrade into Honed Technique which adds extra damage to all of your Aggression attack events. Utilizing the extra damage on No Quarter, we want to deal EXCESS damage to minions to get card draw with Rocket's passive ability and the No Quarter trigger. I used this build to complete Galaxy's Most Wanted Campaign on Expert 2 in a 3 Player Co-op Run with a leadership deck and a justice deck as other members of the play group.

I've got a Rocket full of sunshine.

Pros of this build:

• Physical resources are required to pay for No Quarter's requirement and Mental resources for Honed Technique's requirement therefore Rocket's starting deck Salvage is PERFECT as it provides both!
• Rocket is one of the only heroes able to utilize the Ingenuity upgrade since he is a "Genius" on his alter-ego side! And guess what --- Ingenuity provides Mental resources for Honed Technique. I try to hard mulligan for either the Honed (1st Priority) or Ingenuity upgrade.
• His "Murdered You!" passive allows you to draw cards upon doing excess damage which is what you are aiming to do with no quarter anyway.
• Thruster Boots gives rocket the "Aerial" trait which allows him to utilize Dive Bomb for 11 DMG to one enemy and 5 DMG to all others!
• Running Audacity instead of Energy gives us the Physical or Mental resource we need and allows us to draw it off of No Quarter since it is a Red Aggression [Resource] card.

"That’s for when things get really hardcore. Or if you wanna blow up moons."

For faster/harder games, I do try to keep the deck size at the minimum of 40 cards but there are many options for modularity of the deck depending on your playstyle:

• My group plays difficulty Standard 2/ Expert 2 so we need to be up and running from the get-go. If you know the villain is generally easy and allows for a slow set-up you can also swap in Side Holster to keep more restricted weapons on the field and get more value out of No Quarter draws. And Follow Through can be used to set-up for more excess damage to give you more draw power as well.

• Chase Them Down and Moment of Triumph can be broken up into a 2/2 split instead of a 1/3 split but I found having more healing helped me against the hard villains in the Galaxy's Most Wanted Campaign.

• If you're having trouble getting minions into play to defeat, you can add in minion search cards such as Looking for Trouble.

• Some other fun cards that work with Honed Technique are One by One and Melee which provide spread damage depending on the power level of minions and difficulty of the villain.

Overall, I just wanted to immortalize my favorite hero so far and my favorite (and dare-I-say thematic) build for him.

And don't forget, never call Rocket smol - he's fun sized!!!