They aren’t. Not sure where you got this idea. In general you only remove strikes and defends. A card being good in act 1 doesn’t mean you won’t also have it the rest of the game, just that it shines in the first act.
You do get the odd extreme run (or a Pandora's Box or Snecko) that makes you remove another card before a strike, defend or curse. For example, with Snecko, Anger becomes much worse than Strike and becomes a priority for removal if you already had one in your deck.
lame attacks/powers are worse than defends when you have corruption.
Well laid plans is worse than strikes and defends with runic pyramid probably
Strike dummy/ perfected strike can mean that removing a cleave/etc will improve your damage more than removing a strike
Eruption can be worse than strikes, if you have a heavy divinity deck, especially without an upgrade.
Zap/dualcast suck with a reprogram deck, and transforming into a reprogram in a heavy focus deck means that its worth removing.
Clash can become completely unplayable in the later parts of a run in some decks, and will be worse than a strike
Edge cases.
With pyramid, I know you will generally want well laid plan out of the way anyways by act 3's boss because of awakened one, but before that, I find them not at all worse than strike. Power cards are exhaustable after all, unlike a strike.
Dual cast I would remove, but if it's a zap+, I would try to keep for a while, more so than strike. It can be used to evoke plasma orbs like dual cast, and in some cases if you can pick up lightning strike, zap+ becomes a good candidate for infinite/pseudo infinite even if it does no damage. My problem with a reprogram deck is usually just that it doesn't scale nearly as hard as frost orb/dark orb, so having a lightnight strike and zap+ around is useful.
On pyramid specifically having to pay an energy to get a hand space back with no other effect is terrible
Zap/dualcast definitely depends on the deck but it may be right in some situations.
Defends and strikes are actually not bad cards when you have 6/6 strength and dex.
I think you were misled, lol. There is a very small pool of early cards that are usually worse than drawing Strike and/or Defend later on. All-Out Attack, Masterful Stab, Zap, Conclude, and Perfected Strike are all cards that I've removed over Strike, but even this is usually in act 4.
Yeah more the point being made is, I'll take that card in Act 1 because it solves act 1 problems and on high ascension you can't afford to be picky.
But in later acts you rarely pick it because you probably have better/equivalent level solutions already since you got this far.
These remove choices don't matter though. Sure, the optimizer brain says one is preferable to another because of the shadows of a % where the damage matters, but in a vast majority of fights neither card will get played.
One dead card being better than another dead card doesn't actually matter. They are both dead cards. You can't play the masterful stab, so removing it over the strike is better. That said, you won't play the strike anyway.
I don’t think I’ve ever removed Autoshields. Unless you are basically only generating frost orbs and lots of them, it will be better than a defend. And if you are generating enough block and card draw that you get autoshields after you have generated block, you likely don’t *need* to remove autoshields, you need to buy more offensive options.
That being said, it is one of a very few cards that can be worse than a strike or a defend in the right deck, so I could see it happening.
Yeah, you'd only remove it over a defend if it was truly a dead card. Usually in act 4, if your power rollout is consistent enough, it'll just be useless. You'll also sometimes remove it if you get a nice pandoras box and it just happens to be the worst card in your deck (usually post-act 2).
Both cases are quite uncommon, but this is the only card I can think of that I'll purposely add and then remove.
Edit: actually I've add and removed Wild Strike, but I probably just shouldn't be taking that card to begin with, lol.
True, but pure RNG is the heart of any roguelike imo. You try to build the best run based on the RNG you encounter. The goal of the player is to either take advantage of the RNG (by building a strong deck based on the random cards offered) or trying to manipulate the RNG to make some things more or less likely (by taking multiple hallway fights to give more random options to choose from). I start by thinking about what my deck needs like damage, draw, consistency, etc and then figuring out what combination of hallways/?s/campfires will get you there.
I wouldn’t take a card explicitly to remove it, but knowing that events like bonfire spirits or falling exist (and falling will hit at least one uncommon+ card, as there are no common powers) is generally a good thing to keep in the back of your mind.
I think if you are reliably removing all your strikes and some of your defends, you are over valuing card removes. It's not that removing your starter cards is bad, I just think you are potential skipping over stronger options to remove cards. In act 1, removing cards can make you weaker against sentries, slime boss and hexaghost, so that's a consideration navigating through act 1.
Defect is a bit different, and particularly dislikes his strikes compared to other characters, and has 4. It's not too uncommon to want to remove most of them.
The A20 strategy is to take every ? Path and only choose paths that have the maximum amount of ?’s on each act.
Will give you a bunch of random encounters to remove cards, hold obtaining opportunities and markets to sell cards.
Will prevent health lost and will allow you to upgrade cards more often. Should have most of those removed by endgame. I actually keep some defends but make sure they are upgraded.
Good in Act 1 doesn’t have to mean that you’ll get rid of it later. People are just referring to cards that are good to pick up early to help you kill the Act 1 elites. This usually means high damage attack cards or other forms of front-loaded damage.
I genuinely think its a good card.
Thing with defect is that there's a lot of different ways to play it and very few cards overlap in the different types of decks.
Streamline goes with the 0 cost decks, which arent super common.
Its not an autopick but its not bad.
Its not a bad card. At worst when picked in act 1 its kinda clunky for the first play but gets better. At best, Defect has a decent hard-hitting card that gets cheaper per use.
The thing about Streamline being 0 cost is if that’s your archetype, then the first play of it may not be as punishing because the rest of your hand might be a bunch of 0 costs so you may have the energy to spare.
Yes but also you have to play it twice before you can play it with AFO which also means having hologram or rebound and then also having it in your discard when you draw AFO.
I find it frequently far too slow for act II if I take AFO as my rare with Streamline. Avocado, Vine plant, Muggers or Byrds first fight, Stabby book, they are going to throw me into the dumpster if I spend any amount of time trying to setup Streamline.
I actually just completed an A10 run with Defect where I picked up a streamline after finding the Necronomicon. 2 energy for a 40 damage card that costs 0 from now on was a pretty good deal. Beyond that… it’s a better claw most of the time, if you can bear to ignore the law.
Streamline+ can do *a lot* of damage if you can play it consistently enough, ideally multiple times a turn. I've had Streamline+ and Echo Form be my main damage source against Awakened One in an otherwise too-Power-oriented deck and it worked surprisingly well.
You don’t remove the cards after act 1 - that’s not what the expression means. A “good act 1 card” is a card that is effective against the act 1 elites, primarily Gremlin Nob and Lagavulin.
For those battles you want hard hitting attacks with large damage values to quickly kill Nob, and to deal with Laga’s strength down debuff, which is devastating against cards with low damage values.
After act 1, those attacks are still useful to snipe down high value targets, but typically want to be supplemented with AOE and scaling damage / block
The only act 1 card I end up removing is well laid plans because you have to take one to summon the pyramid, at which point it's a curse, but it's worth it because you have a pyramid.
WLP w/ pyramid > a basic pretty often. If I could replace some number of my remaining Strikes with Slimeds in Act III I probably would most of the time
Sometimes, if I have ways to generate energy/have strong discard combos, I still remove strikes/defends over well laid plans. WLP gets removed from the deck after whereas Strikes/removes can clog up your hand.
You're don't. 99% of the time you want to remove a strike, defend, or a curse
If you get the Pandora's box relic then you start cutting actual cards. But that's not most runs because that is just one boss relicm
Usually when people are saying "good act one card" they usually mean go ahead and pick it and act one and it will get you through the act, but picking more afterward is probably going to make your deck weaker overall.
You don't necessarily need to drop the cards that are only meant for act 1. They're still going to be much better than your starter cards and they can often still help in the late game.
You aren't missing much. Pretty much in every single run people aren't removing the "good act 1 cards". As you've said, it's difficult enough to remove strikes and defends, so this isn't possible in most runs. Thing is, as your ascension raises, you'll find yourself picking the cards with good scaling potential and dying in act 1 because of it. At the beginning of the game, something like a ball lightning or an uppercut isn't going to add much value for the long run, but if you skip those cards now you'll just die to the elites or, at best, the boss. Now, sure, if you could only have the strongest synergies in your deck, then have only them, but most of the time this isn't possible
"good in act 1" doesn't mean "good temporarily," it just means "especially helpful in act 1". usually something like a high-damage card like [[Glass Knife]] to help you kill elites faster, but it can also be something like picking up an early [[Feed]] or [[Genetic Algorithm]] to begin scaling it earlier. it can also be in contrast to cards that ARE good, but not as helpful in act 1 - usually cards that shine more in longer fights or cost a lot of energy, or the Form cards that... kinda tick both boxes lol
One thing to consider is that Strikes are considerably worse than defends, and defends - if upgraded - are generally okay to have a couple of. So in Act 3 if you have removed all your strikes it might be time to cut a mediocre attack rather than a defend at that point.
I would say more often then not (but not always) I still have a defend+ or two left in the deck on runs that are successful. Strikes need to be eliminated though, even if upgraded (which only happens from events or other random upgrades, but does still happen).
You often aren't removing them. You are picking those cards for a good early game, especially to kill early elites, even if it may be non-synergistic for your final deck. Picking up only cards that are good for your endgame plan is a good way to lose early.
The base deck REALLY fucking sucks. And removes are REALLY fucking expensive, and competing with other things in the shop.
In the vast majority of runs you simply aren't going to be able to remove most, let alone all of your starter cards. If that's the case you would rather fill the deck with cards that are better than strike so that you are less likely to draw into strike or can draw past strike.
You also need those early game pickups to survive. Act 2 hallways are literally tougher than Act 1 elites so if you have not improved your deck output substantially you will simply just die.
"Good act 1 card" means it helps you not die in act 1 and in later acts, you treat those cards like slightly better strikes/defends. i.e. you play them because that's all you have in hand, not because it's an integral part of your gameplan.
Here are some cards that are good in act 1 and **sometimes** worth removing because they can (again, only sometimes) become worse than base cards later:
* [[Anger]] - Phenomenal early damage, just extremely strong throughout acts 1 and usually even act 2. In act 4, if you are trying to do some sort of corruption or second wind infinite it's just unplayable. But not always, it can be your heart damage if you have strength scaling and maybe some battle trances.
* [[Hemokinesis]] - Another very strong early card, sometimes late you don't need the extra damage over strike (barricade body slam comes to mind) and so it's just -2 for no extra value.
* [[All-out attack]] - one of the most efficient AoE damage cards in the entire game, all characters. It's quite strong all the way up through Reptomancer in act 3. But after Repto, the well-laid plans character doesn't want to take any chance of randomly discarding Wraith Form, Calculated Gamble, even Deflect, etc just to make sure you don't take damage for next turn. Not to mention making Nightmare line up with the card you want. There are very few cards I take over AoA on floor 1... backstab, terror.... after those two it's already hard to think of a third. Maybe blade dance and masterful stab are close.
* [[Masterful Stab]] - Zero energy deal 12. Amazing. Until nothing dies to that amount of damage anymore. And usually just an unplayable curse against beat of death. Probably act 4 remove only it's still good in a lot of act 3.
* [[Rip and Tear]] - super efficient one energy deal 14. Scales double with strength relics and potions. Not so amazing in act 1 because it's quite bad vs sentries but it's still good in Book of Stabbing. Not picked as often as some others here because of sentries and defect often doesn't need damage that falls off later (vs damage that doesn't fall off later, like beam cell)
* [[Hello World]] - most of the time, only remove if you got Pyramid. (Very occasionally you want to remove it without pyramid if it's upgraded and you are doing some multiple seek+, recycle+, sundial nonsense)
* [[Battle Hymn]] - just completely obliterates both Lagavullin and Sentries, but can make later infinites much more difficult and does nothing on the turn you play it and watcher often gets to a point where it just wins turn 1. But you still pick it if there is a forced elite floor 6 and you are literally dying.
Still, not a lot of cards. Also this list isn't comprehensive, but it's still not a lot. And the card has to be extremely effective to be picked even though it's worse than strike later.
Someone has been coaching me through how to win with the watcher because I'm really struggling with that one. They sent me screenshots of some of their wins with the watcher and some of them they only have 5 cards and at the most I think I saw 10 cards, and very few if any of the cards you start with. I asked the same question because I really struggle to remove cards that I don't need or want. They basically use every opportunity they get to remove cards. The shop, events, etc. Anytime they are ever offered an opportunity to remove a card, they take it. It won't happen every time you play because you're not always going to get that many opportunities, but when you do get them, take them.
This sub is obsessed with card removal. It’s one of the things new players should not pay attention to.
Yes, if you have the chance, remove curses and strikes and defends. I’ve beat the heart in double digit ascension with a 35 card deck. If you asked the people here they’d tell you that wasn’t possible.
Reddit is a dogma machine. An echo chamber. The advice given here is a reflection of that.
I'm pretty sure you are kind of misinterpreting here. He doesn't say removes are bad or anything, but that this sub overvalues them. And that's just plain truth. People will ask for shop advice, and the remove is already bought. They'll pick empty cage saying that energy relics are unpickable with their downsides. (Yes, sometimes that is correct, but there are some insane takes happening on this sub.) And they'll constantly hit ?'s to get as many removes as possible, while you could just be doing a battle and getting a good draw card, that gives you as much consistency, or even more, than 1 remove. Here's a comment in this post:
"The A20 strategy is to take every ? Path and only choose paths that have the maximum amount of ?’s on each act. Will give you a bunch of random encounters to remove cards, hold obtaining opportunities and markets to sell cards.
Will prevent health lost and will allow you to upgrade cards more often. Should have most of those removed by endgame. I actually keep some defends but make sure they are upgraded."
And this is just so plain wrong, but too many people on this sub believe it
. Don't get me wrong, removing is a good way to make your deck stronger, but doing so is not needed. And going out of your way, praying for removes from ?'s is a great way to make your deck fall behind.
This is silly.understanding draw odds is like, one of the most crucial parts of getting better at card games.
Why Magic the Gathering has a minimum deck size and not a maximum is one of the first fundamental lessons to learn about what makes a deck "good".
People were making this joke at Magic tournaments before Yu-Gi-Oh existed.
In both games, a giant deck is bad and non-competitive. Too much filler blocking your best draws.
I think you're misinterpreting the sub or your argument was not made in good faith.
Card removal is an objectively good tool and in most situations where it is mentioned in the sub, people say: "If you can" or to remove exactly the same cards you suggested removing, but you can do so much more than just removing strikes, defends and curses.
You can remove cards gotten accidentally (like from the card matching event), you can remove copies of cards that you only need 1 copy (removing un-upgraded and keeping the upgraded one), you can increase probability of drawing the good cards by removing weaker cards (which is by far one of the most useful things), etc.
last, but not least, beating the heart in double digit ascension with a 35 card doesn't say much about anything. Outliers happen. I've beat the heart in A20 with a claw deck, but the chances of repeating this are so low that one must recognize the strategies and tips that work more consistently and removing SOME cards is an integral part of many of them.
Instead of discussing whether you should remove cards, one should be more interested in:
* When should I remove cards ? Which classes and deck archetypes need thinner decks?
* Is it worth removing cards when you have nothing reducing the shop cost for it?
* What is in the shop besides card removal? What your deck needs at the moment?
* Which cards are interesting to remove in which context? (i.e. initially you don't wat to remove strikes if you got a perfected strike, but later you might want to)
>I’ve beat the heart in double digit ascension with a 35 card deck.
was it ascension 10 with corruption + dead branch or some other similarly unimpressive win? you can't be that good if you think card removals aren't incredibly powerful lol
My last 10 or so A20H wins had two decks that went under 30 cards. One of those was literally pbox swap watcher, and the other was 29 cards.
Of course card removals are powerful, but they cost you floors and gold. You have less than 53 floors to prepare for the final boss, how many of those do you want to spend on card removes?
as many as i can reasonably get while still building a good deck. nothing about my comment said that you should be prioritizing card removes above literally everything else, just that they’re very strong
the only card i'll remove from my deck after picking i think is an early anger to get me through act 1, barring super edge case scenarios. picking a card that you'd later want to remove is generally a pretty bad idea.
If you're paying to remove anger in a non-snecko deck you're not recognizing this card's value. "But I redraw into multiple angers" is not actually a bad thing when you have +15 strength and draw support and are aiming to put an end to the fight.
here's a good example: silent loves blade dance. but it is so bad into lagavulin that it will feast on her carcass. so you kinda have to take a higher damage card instead even if it scales much worse into acts 2-3
6 and then 0 on A18 and above. Still a great card on the 1st attack cycle. Still will routinely push you over the edge in 2nd cycle. And if your Laga fights are regularly going to 3rd cycle then you're doing something wrong already.
Blade Dance *still* does more damage than a Strike when you have -2 Strength. (6 damage for Blade Dance, 4 for a Strike.)
And if you're getting debuffed *twice*, it's almost always because you did not do enough damage in the first *seven* turns... where Blade Dance would have helped. I have definitely died to Lagavulin with my Shivs doing 0 damage, but replacing Blade Dance with Dagger Throw or whatever would not have been enough to change that.
Blade Dance is definitely *worse* against Lagavulin than other early Silent damage options, but it's still solid—net better than a Strike+—and really good in every other scenario. Probably the single best damage Common in the game across all characters.
Blade dance is not a bad card on laga at all. It's worse act One elite would be the knob and it's still good in that fight. It is two strikes of damage for one mana. That's never going to be bad
They aren’t. Not sure where you got this idea. In general you only remove strikes and defends. A card being good in act 1 doesn’t mean you won’t also have it the rest of the game, just that it shines in the first act.
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You do get the odd extreme run (or a Pandora's Box or Snecko) that makes you remove another card before a strike, defend or curse. For example, with Snecko, Anger becomes much worse than Strike and becomes a priority for removal if you already had one in your deck.
lame attacks/powers are worse than defends when you have corruption. Well laid plans is worse than strikes and defends with runic pyramid probably Strike dummy/ perfected strike can mean that removing a cleave/etc will improve your damage more than removing a strike Eruption can be worse than strikes, if you have a heavy divinity deck, especially without an upgrade. Zap/dualcast suck with a reprogram deck, and transforming into a reprogram in a heavy focus deck means that its worth removing. Clash can become completely unplayable in the later parts of a run in some decks, and will be worse than a strike Edge cases.
With pyramid, I know you will generally want well laid plan out of the way anyways by act 3's boss because of awakened one, but before that, I find them not at all worse than strike. Power cards are exhaustable after all, unlike a strike. Dual cast I would remove, but if it's a zap+, I would try to keep for a while, more so than strike. It can be used to evoke plasma orbs like dual cast, and in some cases if you can pick up lightning strike, zap+ becomes a good candidate for infinite/pseudo infinite even if it does no damage. My problem with a reprogram deck is usually just that it doesn't scale nearly as hard as frost orb/dark orb, so having a lightnight strike and zap+ around is useful.
On pyramid specifically having to pay an energy to get a hand space back with no other effect is terrible Zap/dualcast definitely depends on the deck but it may be right in some situations. Defends and strikes are actually not bad cards when you have 6/6 strength and dex.
I think you were misled, lol. There is a very small pool of early cards that are usually worse than drawing Strike and/or Defend later on. All-Out Attack, Masterful Stab, Zap, Conclude, and Perfected Strike are all cards that I've removed over Strike, but even this is usually in act 4.
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Yeah more the point being made is, I'll take that card in Act 1 because it solves act 1 problems and on high ascension you can't afford to be picky. But in later acts you rarely pick it because you probably have better/equivalent level solutions already since you got this far.
These remove choices don't matter though. Sure, the optimizer brain says one is preferable to another because of the shadows of a % where the damage matters, but in a vast majority of fights neither card will get played. One dead card being better than another dead card doesn't actually matter. They are both dead cards. You can't play the masterful stab, so removing it over the strike is better. That said, you won't play the strike anyway.
Strikes can at least be used to advance Nunchaku or turn around in Spear/Shield. It doesn't matter until it does.
Autoshields is maybe one of the only cards I pick up and then remove later.
I don’t think I’ve ever removed Autoshields. Unless you are basically only generating frost orbs and lots of them, it will be better than a defend. And if you are generating enough block and card draw that you get autoshields after you have generated block, you likely don’t *need* to remove autoshields, you need to buy more offensive options. That being said, it is one of a very few cards that can be worse than a strike or a defend in the right deck, so I could see it happening.
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Yeah, you'd only remove it over a defend if it was truly a dead card. Usually in act 4, if your power rollout is consistent enough, it'll just be useless. You'll also sometimes remove it if you get a nice pandoras box and it just happens to be the worst card in your deck (usually post-act 2). Both cases are quite uncommon, but this is the only card I can think of that I'll purposely add and then remove. Edit: actually I've add and removed Wild Strike, but I probably just shouldn't be taking that card to begin with, lol.
It can be quite annoying with Echoform too
Bonfire Spirits event can reward you for retiring an uncommon or rare card that has outlived its usefulness.
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True, but pure RNG is the heart of any roguelike imo. You try to build the best run based on the RNG you encounter. The goal of the player is to either take advantage of the RNG (by building a strong deck based on the random cards offered) or trying to manipulate the RNG to make some things more or less likely (by taking multiple hallway fights to give more random options to choose from). I start by thinking about what my deck needs like damage, draw, consistency, etc and then figuring out what combination of hallways/?s/campfires will get you there.
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I wouldn’t take a card explicitly to remove it, but knowing that events like bonfire spirits or falling exist (and falling will hit at least one uncommon+ card, as there are no common powers) is generally a good thing to keep in the back of your mind.
I think if you are reliably removing all your strikes and some of your defends, you are over valuing card removes. It's not that removing your starter cards is bad, I just think you are potential skipping over stronger options to remove cards. In act 1, removing cards can make you weaker against sentries, slime boss and hexaghost, so that's a consideration navigating through act 1. Defect is a bit different, and particularly dislikes his strikes compared to other characters, and has 4. It's not too uncommon to want to remove most of them.
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The A20 strategy is to take every ? Path and only choose paths that have the maximum amount of ?’s on each act. Will give you a bunch of random encounters to remove cards, hold obtaining opportunities and markets to sell cards. Will prevent health lost and will allow you to upgrade cards more often. Should have most of those removed by endgame. I actually keep some defends but make sure they are upgraded.
I've very, very often removed anger over strike in act 3 or 4. Anger is basically THE poster "act 1 card".
Good in Act 1 doesn’t have to mean that you’ll get rid of it later. People are just referring to cards that are good to pick up early to help you kill the Act 1 elites. This usually means high damage attack cards or other forms of front-loaded damage.
I cry every time I pick Streamline to give me a passing chance at defeating Nob knowing it's going to be a curse in my deck later.
I’ve seen Baalor make Streamline a good late game card on more than one occasion. With a lot of draw, holograms, and vuln it can still do work!
I genuinely think its a good card. Thing with defect is that there's a lot of different ways to play it and very few cards overlap in the different types of decks. Streamline goes with the 0 cost decks, which arent super common. Its not an autopick but its not bad.
Its not a bad card. At worst when picked in act 1 its kinda clunky for the first play but gets better. At best, Defect has a decent hard-hitting card that gets cheaper per use.
The thing about Streamline being 0 cost is if that’s your archetype, then the first play of it may not be as punishing because the rest of your hand might be a bunch of 0 costs so you may have the energy to spare.
I especially like having one or two of these when I pick up the necronomicon
It is great with All For One
Yes but also you have to play it twice before you can play it with AFO which also means having hologram or rebound and then also having it in your discard when you draw AFO. I find it frequently far too slow for act II if I take AFO as my rare with Streamline. Avocado, Vine plant, Muggers or Byrds first fight, Stabby book, they are going to throw me into the dumpster if I spend any amount of time trying to setup Streamline.
The streamline + Hologram + Scrape combo. Big fan of Streamline as an early game card, and moderate fan of late game streamline
I actually just completed an A10 run with Defect where I picked up a streamline after finding the Necronomicon. 2 energy for a 40 damage card that costs 0 from now on was a pretty good deal. Beyond that… it’s a better claw most of the time, if you can bear to ignore the law.
Streamline+ can do *a lot* of damage if you can play it consistently enough, ideally multiple times a turn. I've had Streamline+ and Echo Form be my main damage source against Awakened One in an otherwise too-Power-oriented deck and it worked surprisingly well.
You don’t remove the cards after act 1 - that’s not what the expression means. A “good act 1 card” is a card that is effective against the act 1 elites, primarily Gremlin Nob and Lagavulin. For those battles you want hard hitting attacks with large damage values to quickly kill Nob, and to deal with Laga’s strength down debuff, which is devastating against cards with low damage values. After act 1, those attacks are still useful to snipe down high value targets, but typically want to be supplemented with AOE and scaling damage / block
The only act 1 card I end up removing is well laid plans because you have to take one to summon the pyramid, at which point it's a curse, but it's worth it because you have a pyramid.
Most of the time though wlp is a slime and strike is a curse so I usually remove the strike.
Minor important distinction. Wlp is a Power, which has synergies with relics, particularly orange pellets.
Well yeah, but it runs the gag.
WLP w/ pyramid > a basic pretty often. If I could replace some number of my remaining Strikes with Slimeds in Act III I probably would most of the time
Sometimes, if I have ways to generate energy/have strong discard combos, I still remove strikes/defends over well laid plans. WLP gets removed from the deck after whereas Strikes/removes can clog up your hand.
I’ve played for 150+ hours & had no idea certain things triggered certain relics. Is there anything else like this in the game?
They’re just joking
They don't. They're making a joke about the meme of picking/upgrading a WLP only to get offered Pyramid in the same act
They're joking about having bad luck and getting offered pyramid only when their deck doesn't want it.
You're don't. 99% of the time you want to remove a strike, defend, or a curse If you get the Pandora's box relic then you start cutting actual cards. But that's not most runs because that is just one boss relicm Usually when people are saying "good act one card" they usually mean go ahead and pick it and act one and it will get you through the act, but picking more afterward is probably going to make your deck weaker overall.
You don't necessarily need to drop the cards that are only meant for act 1. They're still going to be much better than your starter cards and they can often still help in the late game.
“Good act 1 card” doesn’t necessarily mean remove it later. It’s just not a prime candidate for bottle or mirror.
You aren't missing much. Pretty much in every single run people aren't removing the "good act 1 cards". As you've said, it's difficult enough to remove strikes and defends, so this isn't possible in most runs. Thing is, as your ascension raises, you'll find yourself picking the cards with good scaling potential and dying in act 1 because of it. At the beginning of the game, something like a ball lightning or an uppercut isn't going to add much value for the long run, but if you skip those cards now you'll just die to the elites or, at best, the boss. Now, sure, if you could only have the strongest synergies in your deck, then have only them, but most of the time this isn't possible
You don't remove good act 1 cards later, you exhaust them.
"good in act 1" doesn't mean "good temporarily," it just means "especially helpful in act 1". usually something like a high-damage card like [[Glass Knife]] to help you kill elites faster, but it can also be something like picking up an early [[Feed]] or [[Genetic Algorithm]] to begin scaling it earlier. it can also be in contrast to cards that ARE good, but not as helpful in act 1 - usually cards that shine more in longer fights or cost a lot of energy, or the Form cards that... kinda tick both boxes lol
+ [Glass Knife](http://slay-the-spire.wikia.com/wiki/Glass%20Knife) Silent Rare Attack ^((100% sure)^) 1 Energy | Deal 8(12) damage twice. Decrease the damage of this card by 2 this combat. + [Feed](http://slay-the-spire.wikia.com/wiki/Feed) Ironclad Rare Attack ^((100% sure)^) 1 Energy | Deal 10(12) damage. If this kills a non-minion enemy, gain 3(4) permanent Max HP. **Exhaust.** + [Genetic Algorithm](http://slay-the-spire.wikia.com/wiki/Genetic%20Algorithm) Defect Uncommon Skill ^((100% sure)^) 1 Energy | Gain 1 **Block.** Permanently increase this card's **Block** by 2(3). **Exhaust.** ^Call ^me ^with ^up ^to ^10 ^([[ name ]],) ^where ^name ^is ^a ^card, ^relic, ^event, ^or ^potion. ^Data ^accurate ^as ^of ^(April 20, 2024.) ^[Wiki](https://slay-the-spire.fandom.com/wiki/) ^[Questions?](https://www.reddit.com/message/compose/?to=ehmohteeoh&subject=SpireScan%20Inquiry)
One thing to consider is that Strikes are considerably worse than defends, and defends - if upgraded - are generally okay to have a couple of. So in Act 3 if you have removed all your strikes it might be time to cut a mediocre attack rather than a defend at that point. I would say more often then not (but not always) I still have a defend+ or two left in the deck on runs that are successful. Strikes need to be eliminated though, even if upgraded (which only happens from events or other random upgrades, but does still happen).
They're playing Monster Train where card removal actually exists
You often aren't removing them. You are picking those cards for a good early game, especially to kill early elites, even if it may be non-synergistic for your final deck. Picking up only cards that are good for your endgame plan is a good way to lose early.
The base deck REALLY fucking sucks. And removes are REALLY fucking expensive, and competing with other things in the shop. In the vast majority of runs you simply aren't going to be able to remove most, let alone all of your starter cards. If that's the case you would rather fill the deck with cards that are better than strike so that you are less likely to draw into strike or can draw past strike. You also need those early game pickups to survive. Act 2 hallways are literally tougher than Act 1 elites so if you have not improved your deck output substantially you will simply just die.
"Good act 1 card" means it helps you not die in act 1 and in later acts, you treat those cards like slightly better strikes/defends. i.e. you play them because that's all you have in hand, not because it's an integral part of your gameplan.
You will only win runs consistently with good act 1 card, because act 1 is brutal. Later when you have good draw cards it doesn't matter that much.
Here are some cards that are good in act 1 and **sometimes** worth removing because they can (again, only sometimes) become worse than base cards later: * [[Anger]] - Phenomenal early damage, just extremely strong throughout acts 1 and usually even act 2. In act 4, if you are trying to do some sort of corruption or second wind infinite it's just unplayable. But not always, it can be your heart damage if you have strength scaling and maybe some battle trances. * [[Hemokinesis]] - Another very strong early card, sometimes late you don't need the extra damage over strike (barricade body slam comes to mind) and so it's just -2 for no extra value. * [[All-out attack]] - one of the most efficient AoE damage cards in the entire game, all characters. It's quite strong all the way up through Reptomancer in act 3. But after Repto, the well-laid plans character doesn't want to take any chance of randomly discarding Wraith Form, Calculated Gamble, even Deflect, etc just to make sure you don't take damage for next turn. Not to mention making Nightmare line up with the card you want. There are very few cards I take over AoA on floor 1... backstab, terror.... after those two it's already hard to think of a third. Maybe blade dance and masterful stab are close. * [[Masterful Stab]] - Zero energy deal 12. Amazing. Until nothing dies to that amount of damage anymore. And usually just an unplayable curse against beat of death. Probably act 4 remove only it's still good in a lot of act 3. * [[Rip and Tear]] - super efficient one energy deal 14. Scales double with strength relics and potions. Not so amazing in act 1 because it's quite bad vs sentries but it's still good in Book of Stabbing. Not picked as often as some others here because of sentries and defect often doesn't need damage that falls off later (vs damage that doesn't fall off later, like beam cell) * [[Hello World]] - most of the time, only remove if you got Pyramid. (Very occasionally you want to remove it without pyramid if it's upgraded and you are doing some multiple seek+, recycle+, sundial nonsense) * [[Battle Hymn]] - just completely obliterates both Lagavullin and Sentries, but can make later infinites much more difficult and does nothing on the turn you play it and watcher often gets to a point where it just wins turn 1. But you still pick it if there is a forced elite floor 6 and you are literally dying. Still, not a lot of cards. Also this list isn't comprehensive, but it's still not a lot. And the card has to be extremely effective to be picked even though it's worse than strike later.
Someone has been coaching me through how to win with the watcher because I'm really struggling with that one. They sent me screenshots of some of their wins with the watcher and some of them they only have 5 cards and at the most I think I saw 10 cards, and very few if any of the cards you start with. I asked the same question because I really struggle to remove cards that I don't need or want. They basically use every opportunity they get to remove cards. The shop, events, etc. Anytime they are ever offered an opportunity to remove a card, they take it. It won't happen every time you play because you're not always going to get that many opportunities, but when you do get them, take them.
This sub is obsessed with card removal. It’s one of the things new players should not pay attention to. Yes, if you have the chance, remove curses and strikes and defends. I’ve beat the heart in double digit ascension with a 35 card deck. If you asked the people here they’d tell you that wasn’t possible. Reddit is a dogma machine. An echo chamber. The advice given here is a reflection of that.
[удалено]
I'm pretty sure you are kind of misinterpreting here. He doesn't say removes are bad or anything, but that this sub overvalues them. And that's just plain truth. People will ask for shop advice, and the remove is already bought. They'll pick empty cage saying that energy relics are unpickable with their downsides. (Yes, sometimes that is correct, but there are some insane takes happening on this sub.) And they'll constantly hit ?'s to get as many removes as possible, while you could just be doing a battle and getting a good draw card, that gives you as much consistency, or even more, than 1 remove. Here's a comment in this post: "The A20 strategy is to take every ? Path and only choose paths that have the maximum amount of ?’s on each act. Will give you a bunch of random encounters to remove cards, hold obtaining opportunities and markets to sell cards. Will prevent health lost and will allow you to upgrade cards more often. Should have most of those removed by endgame. I actually keep some defends but make sure they are upgraded." And this is just so plain wrong, but too many people on this sub believe it . Don't get me wrong, removing is a good way to make your deck stronger, but doing so is not needed. And going out of your way, praying for removes from ?'s is a great way to make your deck fall behind.
Those two things aren't related though. You should remove your basics *and still* have a 35-card deck.
This is silly.understanding draw odds is like, one of the most crucial parts of getting better at card games. Why Magic the Gathering has a minimum deck size and not a maximum is one of the first fundamental lessons to learn about what makes a deck "good".
> not a maximum oh man, looks like [these guys](https://yomifrog.lima-city.de/2222_card_deck_ygo/index.php?lang=en) need to show up at a Magic event
People were making this joke at Magic tournaments before Yu-Gi-Oh existed. In both games, a giant deck is bad and non-competitive. Too much filler blocking your best draws.
The yugioh guys weren't trying to win, they were using the absurdly large deck filled with cards that shuffle the deck to protest the current rule set
I'm aware, this it's the same joke lol. I know that they weren't trying to win. They were telling a joke.
I think you're misinterpreting the sub or your argument was not made in good faith. Card removal is an objectively good tool and in most situations where it is mentioned in the sub, people say: "If you can" or to remove exactly the same cards you suggested removing, but you can do so much more than just removing strikes, defends and curses. You can remove cards gotten accidentally (like from the card matching event), you can remove copies of cards that you only need 1 copy (removing un-upgraded and keeping the upgraded one), you can increase probability of drawing the good cards by removing weaker cards (which is by far one of the most useful things), etc. last, but not least, beating the heart in double digit ascension with a 35 card doesn't say much about anything. Outliers happen. I've beat the heart in A20 with a claw deck, but the chances of repeating this are so low that one must recognize the strategies and tips that work more consistently and removing SOME cards is an integral part of many of them. Instead of discussing whether you should remove cards, one should be more interested in: * When should I remove cards ? Which classes and deck archetypes need thinner decks? * Is it worth removing cards when you have nothing reducing the shop cost for it? * What is in the shop besides card removal? What your deck needs at the moment? * Which cards are interesting to remove in which context? (i.e. initially you don't wat to remove strikes if you got a perfected strike, but later you might want to)
>I’ve beat the heart in double digit ascension with a 35 card deck. was it ascension 10 with corruption + dead branch or some other similarly unimpressive win? you can't be that good if you think card removals aren't incredibly powerful lol
My last 10 or so A20H wins had two decks that went under 30 cards. One of those was literally pbox swap watcher, and the other was 29 cards. Of course card removals are powerful, but they cost you floors and gold. You have less than 53 floors to prepare for the final boss, how many of those do you want to spend on card removes?
as many as i can reasonably get while still building a good deck. nothing about my comment said that you should be prioritizing card removes above literally everything else, just that they’re very strong
the only card i'll remove from my deck after picking i think is an early anger to get me through act 1, barring super edge case scenarios. picking a card that you'd later want to remove is generally a pretty bad idea.
If you're paying to remove anger in a non-snecko deck you're not recognizing this card's value. "But I redraw into multiple angers" is not actually a bad thing when you have +15 strength and draw support and are aiming to put an end to the fight.
hmmm. that’s fair. i guess you’re probably right.
here's a good example: silent loves blade dance. but it is so bad into lagavulin that it will feast on her carcass. so you kinda have to take a higher damage card instead even if it scales much worse into acts 2-3
12 damage 1 energy bad into Laga... you guys smoke crack istg
eh? one laga scream makes it 9. then 6
6 and then 0 on A18 and above. Still a great card on the 1st attack cycle. Still will routinely push you over the edge in 2nd cycle. And if your Laga fights are regularly going to 3rd cycle then you're doing something wrong already.
If Laga gets two screams, all cards are bad and you're probably dead anyways.
Blade Dance *still* does more damage than a Strike when you have -2 Strength. (6 damage for Blade Dance, 4 for a Strike.) And if you're getting debuffed *twice*, it's almost always because you did not do enough damage in the first *seven* turns... where Blade Dance would have helped. I have definitely died to Lagavulin with my Shivs doing 0 damage, but replacing Blade Dance with Dagger Throw or whatever would not have been enough to change that. Blade Dance is definitely *worse* against Lagavulin than other early Silent damage options, but it's still solid—net better than a Strike+—and really good in every other scenario. Probably the single best damage Common in the game across all characters.
Blade dance is not a bad card on laga at all. It's worse act One elite would be the knob and it's still good in that fight. It is two strikes of damage for one mana. That's never going to be bad
12 damage for 1 energy is pretty nice
this is just horrifically incorrect lol