Slay the Spire: B&B GOTY 2018, 2020, 2021, and Forum Pariah 2019 - The Bear and Badger

JonB

I played 3 games of this this week. All with defect. All victories. Up from Asc 6 to 9.

All based on a similar philosophy of increasing focus and orb slots, then triggering orbs like crazy.

The last one was particularly good, with the artefact that draws 3 extra cards next turn if you use 3 or fewer this turn. Once I got my set up going against Time Eater, I was able to block almost everything he threw at me and cause good damage using exactly 3 cards per turn.

b0r1s

Minnesänger wrote:

b0r1s wrote:

Wow!

There’s a real easy way to do it:

Spoiler:

Don’t anger the mushrooms.

mistercrayon

Goddamn got to a hair within beating asc 16. Probably not worth a note but I took the boss relic which ended up being the house. In some ways the worst one but possibly not the worst to get at the start of the game.

SpaceGazelle

I finally did a Heart asc11 Silent run earlier. Picked up ceaseless top as a starting relic and made it work.

SpaceGazelle

I love the tongs relic that upgrades a card PER TURN.

Minnesänger

SpaceGazelle wrote:

I finally did a Heart asc11 Silent run earlier. Picked up ceaseless top as a starting relic and made it work.

Tasty.

Minnesänger

Trying Ascension 7 and as my starting gift decide to take a random relic. Got coffee dripper. 4 acts no rests, lol.

In related news, Asc 7 done. On to 8.

equinox_code

That’s some mad progress.

RedDave2

equinox_code wrote:

That’s some mad progress.

He is the one the prophecy foretold of. He... is the chosen one.

Facewon

Ac20 done with defect!

Snecko saved the day. Smashed donut combo and went into chosen one with full health, still 1 turn away from death in the end.

Lots of craziness, but some good decision making and not bloating deck got me there.

mistercrayon

SpaceGazelle wrote:

I love the tongs relic that upgrades a card PER TURN.

Put it with searing blade: yes and upgraded armaments!!!!

equinox_code

mistercrayon wrote:

SpaceGazelle wrote:

I love the tongs relic that upgrades a card PER TURN.

Put it with searing blade: yes and upgraded armaments!!!!

Sent this to a mate the other day. Probably the only time I've successfully made searing blow a central part of my gameplan

Couldn't take it all the way, sadly. Offensive scaling was too slow for Deca and Donu

SpaceGazelle

That's great noxy.

Just finished asc12 Heart run with Silent. Kunai with a shiv deck is silly.

SpaceGazelle

Facewon wrote:

Ac20 done with defect! Snecko saved the day. Smashed donut combo and went into chosen one with full health, still 1 turn away from death in the end. Lots of craziness, but some good decision making and not bloating deck got me there.

Nice. Very nice.

Roujin

Facewon wrote:

Ac20 done with defect! Snecko saved the day. Smashed donut combo and went into chosen one with full health, still 1 turn away from death in the end. Lots of craziness, but some good decision making and not bloating deck got me there.

Ayyy! Congrats!

mistercrayon

equinox_code wrote:

mistercrayon wrote:

SpaceGazelle wrote:

I love the tongs relic that upgrades a card PER TURN.

Put it with searing blade: yes and upgraded armaments!!!!

Sent this to a mate the other day. Probably the only time I've successfully made searing blow a central part of my gameplan

Couldn't take it all the way, sadly. Offensive scaling was too slow for Deca and Donu

The amulet plus the snecko draw is a good combo. I feel like to an extent the better part of the snecko might be the extra draws rather than the chance to use bludgeon for zero.

Minnesänger

Facewon wrote:

Ac20 done with defect!

Snecko saved the day. Smashed donut combo and went into chosen one with full health, still 1 turn away from death in the end.

Lots of craziness, but some good decision making and not bloating deck got me there.

Nice work. Snecko really is a lot of fun, had it as a starting gift for Asc 8 and it had me laughing on multiple occasions - it’s chaos and bullshit and I loved it.

Facewon

It really hadn't come up for me much recently. And I think the other couple of times I'd leant heavy into 0 cost cards, so didn't want it.

I'd missed it. Had a few good 2+ cost cards so it was a no brainer.

Minnesänger

Makes sense - no way I’d take snecko at the end of a run (assuming I haven’t built around high cost cards) but yeah, if you got a good deck for it then, as you say, no brainer.

Gremill

That's Asc9 done with Ironclad. For the first time I got the dead branch/corruption combo and absolutely sailed through - took down the Unawakened in about 8 turns after I got Corruption in the first turn and Denim Form/Spot Weakness on rotation as I exhausted cards.

SpaceGazelle

That's asc13 Heart done with Silent.

b0r1s

Smashed Awakened One with Silent on Asc 14. Nice combined poison (corpse explosion, envenom and the poison skull relic) and shivs (with wrist blades) / bites (got blood vial so didn’t lose hp to gain the bites). Held off on using powers during first round, which was a bit hairy, but smashed his second form.

Minnesänger

Nice work.

equinox_code

b0r1s wrote:

Held off on using powers during first round..

Love how the game forces ever more of these sorts of optimisations and strategies as you progress. At low ascensions you just sort of play from the hand, until suddenly you can't advance any further approaching battles like this, so then you have to get creative.

I think nightmare is arguably my favourite card for this reason. It's so versatile, and has got me out of a number of seemingly unwinnable encounters.

Roujin

I think the difficulty scaling and how it makes you really think about your deck/turn/card usefulness as it ramps up is one of the best implemented and satisfying difficulty climbs I can recall from any game.

mistercrayon

I think the more you play the more forward in time you have to play. The idea that you need to know monster patterns is probably going to be a step to far for me.

Roujin

I agree with that definitely Crayon, I think what tends to happen and perhaps this is to the game's credit, because the enemy selection on each floor is known, and there are only a handful of encounters, the more you play, the more the patterns start to sink in on their own without having to actively go and look up stuff to learn it.

Also the monster patterns are usually very linear, they don't for the most part make branching decisions, or if they do, it's one of two options so you can pick and play around the worst if you aren't sure. The pill bugs are an example of that i think, they attack but then either do a debuff or buff their own strength, in which case you might as well play around trying to kill the bug before it gets to attack again rather than playing around the debuff.

equinox_code

You probably know more of the patterns than you realise. They seep into your knowledge over time. Even if you couldn't give a precise answer about which turn the Automaton or Slime boss is doing his big attack, for example, when the turn before it arrives you probably know it's coming up next.

equinox_code

The game is one giant exercise in probability juggling, with more factors than any human mind could ever hope to track.

voices

Yep - I found out how much I know the patterns when I had a runic dome swap start. Took a bit longer, but turns out I know pretty much exactly what each of the enemies do in each turn. Not sure I got a heart kill on that run, but it went a lot better than I thought it would.

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