Slaying the Spire for Fun and Profit, Part 2: The Ironclad

 

THE IRONCLAD

The Ironclad has, in my opinion, the strongest starting relic in the game. Burning Blood heals the Ironclad for 6 HP after each fight. This means that the Ironclad can make riskier plays and take damage, confident that they will recover some of the lost HP.

The Ironclad has, on average, the best Attack cards in the game. His defenses tend to be weaker, but he makes up for this both by healing, and by simply killing the enemies quickly, before they can injure him too much.  I have found two strategies for the Ironclad that have been successful:

Strength Ramp

This deck type relies on gaining high Strength as quickly as possible. Strength enhances the damage of your attacks.  A Strike, for example, normally deals a mere 6 damage for 1 energy. If the player has 3 Strength, though, that Strike will hit for a much more acceptable 9 damage.

The Ironclad has several options for gaining Strength. Some of my favorites are Flex and Ignite, but you will encounter others as you work through the game. 

For this strategy, try to pick up cards and relics that increase your strength. Additionally, look for cards that reward you for having high strength. The obvious card here is Heavy Blade, as high Strength significantly raps its damage. However, cards that hit multiple times, like Sword Boomerang and Twin Strike, also become much stronger when your Strength increases.

Because your defenses will be pretty weak, cards like Metallicize and relics like Orichalcum will be important for maintaining your HP. You may also want to pick up one or two copies of Reaper, which can hit for high damage (and therefore heal a lot of HP) once your Strength is ramped up.

This archetype can also heavily benefit from cards like Feed, which can permanently raise your current and max HP if you use it to kill an enemy. Wait until the opportune moment, then strike with a big Feed to gain a bigger health pool!

One important interaction to take advantage of: Flex + Limit Break.

Flex allows you to gain 2 Strength, but you lose 2 Strength at the end of the turn. It's a nice boost in Strength for 0 energy, which can make for some strong turns by itself, but it's only a temporary boost.

Limit Break doubles your Strength. If you play Flex and then Limit Break, you will gain 4 Strength, but still only lose 2 Strength at the end of the turn. This essentially makes the Flex boost permanent! 

Upgrade your Flex to give you a temporary 4 Strength, and upgrade your Limit Break so that it doesn't Exhaust, or leave your deck until the end of the fight. That way you can repeatedly combo these cards throughout the fight. It can be very easy to get 20 or more Strength very rapidly!

Because this deck tends to play a lot of 2- or 3-energy Attack cards, Mayhem can be a very strong colorless card to pick up if you have the opportunity. J.A.X. is also great, as it is a 0-energy card that boosts your Strength.

Fire Breathing/Evolve

The Fire Breathing deck can be tricky to assemble, but if you get the cards you need, it can dish out an absurd amount of damage to all enemies each turn.

The key to this deck is the card Fire Breathing, which deals 6 damage to each enemy every time you draw a Status or Curse card. The damage is increased to 10 if you upgrade the card, which you absolutely should, as it will be the primary source of damage in your deck.

Now, some enemies will very obligingly add Status cards to your deck as you fight them, such as Wound, Dazed, Slime, or Burn. You don't want to rely on this, though, so it's up to you to add Status cards to your deck yourself. You can also scoop up some Curse cards as you go along; they're not as bothersome for you as they are for other decks!

Cards like Immolate, Wild Strike, Power Through, and Reckless Charge allow you to add Status cards into your deck. They are also aggressively costed, dealing very high damage or providing very high block for the cost.

This means that you can often clear out smaller creatures or prevent a lot of damage while you get set up. Your deck does need time to draw and play Fire Breathing, and your "setup" cards which make Fire Breathing strong will also help you survive the early turns.

Once you have Fire Breathing in play (or hopefully two or three copies of it!), all you need to do to dish out damage is draw lots of cards. As you draw, Fire Breathing will dish out the damage to all enemies, and you can keep adding more Status cards to your deck for value until Fire Breathing takes care of things.

The best way to draw cards in this deck type?

Evolve!

Evolve draws you an extra cards every time you draw a Status card. Under normal circumstances, all this means is that you don't get punished by enemies who are shuffling Slime and Dazed and so forth into your deck.

In this Fire Breathing deck, though, drawing extra cards means dealing extra damage! An upgraded Evolve means drawing TWO cards each time you draw a Status card. Once you've set up with a couple copies of Fire Breathing and an Evolve, you can draw half of your deck or more each turn and easily dish out 30+ damage to all enemies, before having ever played any cards that turn!

Take note, Evolve does NOT trigger off Curse cards. Fire Breathing will still deal damage from Curse cards, so you can absolutely keep those Curses in your deck; just be aware that Evolve will only draw cards when you draw Wound, Dazed, Burn, Slime, Void, etc.

This strategy can be difficult to set up, as it requires some very specific cards, but is incredibly strong if you are able to acquire the pieces.

Other Ideas

I keep trying to make a Body Slam/Juggernaut deck, but it has yet to come together. It's possible the cards are a trap. While the Ironclad is capable of generating a massive amount of Block with cards like Barricade and Impervious, it's possible that overall the defensive Ironclad cards are just too weak to make a Block deck work.

The Ironclad also has a lot of cards built around Exhaust, which removes cards from your deck until the end of combat. Many of them are strong on their own, such as the aforementioned Reaper, or Exhume, which lets you get back one of your Exhausted cards. I'd really love to build a deck that exhausts a lot of cards, perhaps with Corruption, Fiend Fire, Second Wind, and/or Burning Pact, and just leave myself with a slim couple of cards that are real heavy hitters, like Carnage or Bludgeon.

There are a fair number of cards that reward you for Exhausting your cards, like Dark Embrace and Feel No Pain, but primarily I'd like to see a deck that just clears out almost all the cards in the deck and just continually play and redraw the same really strong cards. If anyone can do it, it would be the Ironclad.