Silence the Spire

I won’t try to defend the randomness of Slay the Spire. Honestly, in general, I don’t much care for deck-building games. But this one has me hooked. As frustratingly unpredictable as the card- and artifact-drops can be, I’m finding ways to maximize the potential of individual characters. It’s a deceptively strategic game masquerading as a tactical one. If you let yourself get too caught up in flashy effects along the way, your deck won’t be tuned for the two final battles.

Some weeks ago, I managed it with the Ironclad by focusing on a few hard-hitting, energy-costly attacks, hefty defenses, and health-regenerating cards and artifacts.

Tonight, finally, I managed it with the Silent by focusing on poisons and a couple of poison-tripling cards (upgraded from doubling).

(Yes, Jennifer, by “tonight” I actually mean the wee hours of the morning. You know how little sleep I get when fixated on a game like this, which is why all those years of restricting myself to Vampire: Bloodlines only in January.)

The trouble with this character is that she has virtually no cards available for restoring health, and few defensive cards with any heft to them. It’s also tempting to load her up with Shivs, because they’re so cheap, giving you a virtual whirlwind of blades against lesser foes. But when facing the Heart, you suffer damage for every card played, so lots of little attacks means death by a thousand cuts in return.

In the end, I kept the deck as small as possible, recycling a very few poison cards quickly across the turns, and with an Intangible defense held in reserve until the last minute (which itself requires a card that overrides discards). With enough poison-tripling cards played one after another at the end, I managed to balloon a couple dozen points of poison into several thousand all at once, taking the Heart from about 10 percent damage to 100 percent (and then some) in one fell swoop. It helped that a potion dropped a random effect that let me duplicate my choice of a card, which expanded my two tripling cards into five. There’s a huge difference between 3 times a couple dozen and 243 times a couple dozen, to say the least!

Hence the desire for a screenshot. Seeing almost an entire health track turned green in one turn was satisfyingly dramatic, something worth looking at.  Especially with my nearly dead character onscreen right beside it.

If you’ve never played Slay the Spire, I’m sure this all sounds like jibber jabber. But it’s excited jibber jabber!

Time to turn to the Defect character,  my favorite. I’ve been stubbornly playing the Silent for probably a month now, determined to succeed. I figure the Defect will be a refreshing change of pace. All those orbs!