Slay the Spire Ironclad Guide

Ironclad Basic Mechanics

Let’s begin our Slay the Spire Ironclad guide from its mechanics. He is not very difficult to master, but Ironclad still has some features that you need to understand. During the game on this character, you can choose 1 of 4 strong strategies of the game: defensive, increasing strength, exhausting cards, and negative statuses.

At first, you may think that the most effective strategy is increasing the hero’s strength. I personally used mostly this style for a long time before I started figuring out how the others work.

Moreover, you should know some general information and features of the Ironclad.

Starting Relic of Ironclad

In Slay the Spire, Ironclad’s starting relic is Burning Blood, which will heal you for 6 health points at the end of each battle. This makes it much easier to upgrade and strengthen your deck in the future since there is no need to constantly heal your hero in rest areas. What’s more, it allows you to play more risky and opens you up more options in combat.

More Health Points

Another feature of Ironclad is that he also has the highest starting HP among the four characters in the game – 80 HP. Thanks to this, in the initial stages of the game you can not think about the health of the character at all, as there is a lot of it, and it is constantly restored thanks to the relic.

Strength Potential

Every character has the ability to increase their strength, but Ironclad has the most opportunities to do so. There are many cards that maximize this ability and focus on increasing strength many times over. Ironclad also has several class relics to help with this.

Ironclad Build on Strengths

Basic Cards: Spot Weakness, Limit Break, Inflame, Demon Form, Whirlwind, Heavy Blade, Rupture.

One of the most popular and easiest builds on Ironclad is the strength increase. Strength adds extra damage to your attacks, and you can build up so much strength that you will deal colossal damage from attacks (3-5 times higher than normal).

The main principle of this build is to gain strength in a couple of turns and at the same time defend from the enemies. Once you gain enough power you use attack to hit multiple enemies and win in a couple of turns. However, your actions can vary depending on the enemies and available cards.

Best Cards for This Build

There are a few basic cards in Ironclad build to increase your strength:

• Spot Weakness: gives 3/4 of your power if the enemy is going to attack
• Inflame: Costs 1 mana and gives 2/3 strength
• Demon Form: Worth 3 mana and gives 2/3 strength every turn
• Limit Break: Doubles your strength
• Flex: Gain 2/4 strengths. At the end of the turn, loze 2/4 strengths

As for the attacking cards, the best choices are:

• Whirlwind: Deal 5/8 damage to ALL enemies X times
• Heavy Blade: Deal 14 damage. Strength affects Heavy Blade 3/5 times
• Sword Boomerang: Deal 3 damage to a random enemy 3/4 times.
• Twin Strike: Deal 5/7 damage twice.
• Cleave: Deal 8/11 damage to ALL enemies.

Additional cards that may be very useful in this build for Ironclad:

• Reaper: Deal 4/5 damage to ALL enemies. Heal for unblocked damage. Good card for extra healing
• Trip: Apply 2 Vulnerable to all enemies (upgraded version)
• Thunderclap: Deal 4/7 damage and apply 1 Vulnerable to ALL enemies

Best Relics for This Build

The following relics are great for this build:

1. Vajra: Gives you 1 power every battle
2. Red Skull: Gives you 3 powers if you have less than 50% health
3. Mutagenic Strength: Gives you 3 strengths for the first turn of a fight
4. Akabeko: Increases first attack damage in combat by 8. This bonus works great with carats that deal more than one hit at a time (increases the damage of each attack)

Build on High Defense of Ironclad

Basic Cards: Barricade, Entrench, Impervious, Power Through, Body Slam.

One of the popular Ironclad builds focused on high defense and Barricade power, which prevents you from losing defense at the end of your turn. This allows you to build a huge amount of armor with cards like Impervious (gives 30/40 armor) and Power Through (gives 15/20 armor). With these cards you’ll be able to increase your armor up to a few hundred, so you won’t take any damage from enemies at all.

However, you need to defeat your enemies somehow. You can use Body Slam, which deals the same amount of damage as your armor to the enemy. This means that you can focus on getting ready to defend, create hundreds of blocks, and then just play Body Slam, dealing hundreds of damage to end the fight on the spot.

If you can’t find this card, the alternative is the Juggernaut power – it deals 5 damage to a random enemy every time you increase your armor.

Best Cards for This Build

There are several cards you can use to maximize your armor:

• Barricade: Block no longer expires at the start of your turn
• Entrench: Double your current Block
• Impervious: Gain 30/40 Block. Exhaust
• Power Through: Add 2 Wounds to your hand. Gain 15/20 Block
• Shrug It Off:  Gain 8/11 Block. Draw 1 card
• Ghostly Armor: Ethereal. Gain 10/13 Block

To deal damage you can use:

• Body Slam: Deal damage equal to your current Block
• Juggernaut: Whenever you gain Block, deal 5/7 damage to a random enemy
• Immolate: Deal 21/28 damage to ALL enemies. Shuffle a Burn into your discard pile
• Whirlwind: Deal 5/8 damage to ALL enemies X times
• Flame Barrier: Gain 12/16 Block. Whenever you are attacked this turn, deal 4 damage to the attacker.

Ironclad Build on Exhaust Cards

Basic Cards: Fiend Fire, Second Wind, Dark Embrace, Feel No Pain.

This deck is based on card exhaustion in your hand. It doesn’t sound very logical, but if you do it right, the effect is strong. What’s more, this game strategy is more variable than the previous two decks.

This deck is more armor-oriented than attack-oriented. For example, the Feel No Pain power gives you 3 armor every time you exhaust cards, which will happen often. Another defensive card is Second Wind, which exhausts all cards except the attacks in your hand and gives 5/7 armor for each. It’s important to consider that status cards, unplayable or curses will also exhaust and give you armor.

As for the attacking cards, you can use Fiend Fire or Sever Soul to deal damage to your enemies. Actually, other common attacking cards also will be good here.

This build for Ironclad is difficult to master. You need to understand which cards can be exhausted and when, and which ones you should keep. One is more versatile, as it allows you to deal damage and accumulate a lot of armor.

Best Cards for This Build

First of all, you need cards with an Exhaust effect you can use to deal damage, accumulate defense for Ironclad, and draw new cards. It can be any of the following: 

• Fiend Fire: Exhaust your hand. Deal 7/10 damage for each Exhausted card. Exhaust
• Second Wind: Exhaust all non-Attack cards in your hand and gain 5 Block for each
• Dark Embrace: Whenever a card is Exhausted, draw 1 card
• Feel No Pain: Whenever a card is Exhausted, gain 3 Block
• Reaper: Deal 4/5 damage to ALL enemies. Heal for unblocked damage. Exhaust
• Seeing Red: Gain  2 energy points. Exhaust
• True Grit: Gain 7/9 Block. Exhaust a card from your hand

You can also use any of the cards with negative statuses, as you can burn them and get an additional advantage on that.

Best Relics for This Build

There are several relics that reinforce this deck:

• Charon’s Ashes: deals three damage to a random opponent each time a card is exhausted
• Dead Branch: adds a random card to your hand every time you exhaust a card, giving you the opportunity to continually gain and exhaust cards
• Runic Pyramid: At the end of your turn, you no longer Discard your hand. It can help you collect a large number of cards in your hand

Deck on Status Cards

Basic Cards: Fire Breathing, Evolve, Power Through, Wild Strike, Reckless Charge, Immolate.

This build is based on adding status cards to your deck to damage enemies in the future, using the Fire Breathing power – dealing 6/10 damage to all enemies for every status card you draw. One of the perks of this deck is that many monsters and elite enemies shuffle negative statuses into your deck, which will only make you stronger with this strategy.

The main point of the deck is to get a lot of status cards, and then deal more damage to all enemies through the Fire Breathing power. It would be nice if you could get a few Fire Breathing cards in your dack. Then you can passively deal 50-70 damage to all enemies every turn without too much trouble.

Moreover, it is very important to upgrade all the Fire Breath powers you find, as they have top priority in this deck.

Best Cards for This Build

You can combine this build with many Ironclad cards:

• Fire Breathing: Whenever you draw a Status or Curse card, deal 6/10 damage to ALL enemies
• Power Through: Gives you 15/20 protection and adds 2 wounds to your hand
• Wild Strike: Deals 12/17 damage and adds a wound to your deck
• Reckless Charge: Deals 7/10 damage for 0 mana and adds a status card to your deck
• Immolate: Deals 21/28 damage to all enemies and shuffles a status card into the deck
• Evolve: Power that grants 1/2 additional card every time you draw a status card

Best Relics for This Build

There are a few relics that will help you avoid problems with this deck and boost it:

• Medical Kit: allows you to cast status cards, which can save you from overloading your deck with status cards
• Mark of Pain: Gives extra energy every turn, but shuffles two Wounds into your deck

Tips to Build a Strong Deck on Ironclad

The basic principle when building a deck on Ironclad is not to get hung up on certain cards. This approach will be correct for all Slay the Spire characters: Defect, Silent, and Watcher. However, it will not be superfluous to know the basic builds for Ironclad in advance, so that in time to orientate in what direction to build the deck.

Choose the Preferred Strategy

If you’ve found some of the key cards in one of the strategies, it makes sense to skip any other cards that don’t fit your deck, as they can greatly hinder you later on.

However, it’s important to understand that if you choose a particular strategy before the race and start skipping other cards, you might miss strong cards from other builds. Moreover, there’s no guarantee that the game will even give you the cards you originally planned to find, and this can lead to the failure of the race.

The most relevant way is to take the first good cards and suitable relics that you can find, and then, as you progress, choose cards for synergy and adapt that to one of the strategies of playing for Ironclad in Slay the Spire.

Remove Unnecessary Cards

An important thing is to remove unnecessary cards that don’t fit your synergy and only get in the way. During combat they can come into your hand at the most important moment instead of the ones you really need, so you should not leave such cards in your deck.

Best Starting Cards to Look For

Compared to the other characters, Ironclad is a universal character because he has many cards that are used in several strategies at once.

The best way to get to the end of the spire is to adapt as you go along, find strong cards, and build your deck around them while removing unnecessary cards. Because of that, I’ve decided to highlight a few basic cards for Ironclad in Slay the Spire that beginners should look for, and which will help you to play a specific build.

• Demon Form: This is one of the strongest cards for Ironclad that will come in handy in any deck. The card will allow you to constantly increase your damage over the course of the battle, which gives maximum effect in long battles. However, you shouldn’t always use it, because it costs 3 mana.
• Barricade: If you encounter it in the early game, you should take it in almost all cases. This card will be especially useful at high levels of Ascension, where bosses do a lot of damage with their attacks, and you need something to defend against that.

Ranked List of All Ironclad Relics

Here is the list of all the relics of Ironclad, ranked from the strongest to the weakest:

1. Black Blood: Replaces Burning Blood. At the end of combat, heal 12 HP
2. Burning Blood: At the end of combat, heal 6 HP
3. Paper Phrog: Enemies with Vulnerable take 75% more damage rather than 50%
4. Mark of Pain: Gain 1 Energy at the start of each turn. Start combats with 2 Wounds in your draw pile
5. Champion Belt: Whenever you apply Vulnerable, also apply 1 Weak
6. Runic Cube: Whenever you lose HP, draw 1 card
7. Charon's Ashes: Whenever you Exhaust a card, deal 3 damage to ALL enemies
8. Red Skull: While your HP is at or below 50%, you have 3 additional Strength
9. Magic Flower: Healing is 50% more effective during combat
10. Brimstone: At the start of your turn, gain 2 Strength and ALL enemies gain 1 Strength
11. Self-Forming Clay: Whenever you lose HP in combat, gain 3 Block next turn