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Ironclad The Ironclad pays for everything in HP and card slots, and gets the biggest numbers in the game back. Exhaust is the strongest build: Feel No Pain and Dark Embrace turn Second Wind, Fiend Fire and every Wound the game shoves at you into Block and cards, and Corruption makes every Skill free. Strength scaling off Inflame and Limit Break is the other half of the class, though it wants a much thinner deck than most players end up with.
Always take 7
Offering : Lose 6 HP, gain 2 Energy, draw 3, all for zero cost. Nothing else in the class turns one slot into an entire extra turn, and the Ironclad has the HP pool to pay for it twice in a boss fight. Corruption : Skills cost 0 and Exhaust themselves. Free Impervious, free Shrug It Off, and with Feel No Pain in play every Skill you burn hands you 3 Block on the way out. Feel No Pain : 3 Block per Exhaust for 1 Energy, on the class that Exhausts most. It quietly solves the Ironclad's blocking problem and turns every Wound and Burn the game gives you into defense. Impervious : 30 Block for 2 Energy, no strings. It eats a Time Eater slam or an Awakened One opener whole, and one copy plus a Shrug It Off usually covers Act 3. Limit Break : Doubles your Strength for 1 Energy, and the upgrade drops the Exhaust. Two Inflames plus this is 8 Strength by turn three, the fastest honest kill the class has. Immolate : 21 damage to everything for 2 Energy. The Burn it adds is a cost you barely feel, and it is the best answer in the class to Act 3 hallway packs and the Reptomancer's daggers. Reaper : 4 damage to all enemies and you heal every point that lands. On A20, where resting is almost always the wrong campfire choice, a card that refills 30 HP off a Slime pack changes the shape of the whole act. Near-automatic picks 14
Demon Form : 2 Strength every turn for 3 Energy. The most famous Ironclad card and slightly overrated for it: you spend a full turn doing nothing, and against a fight that ends in four turns Limit Break already got there. Barricade : Block stops expiring, which does nothing alone and wins runs next to Entrench or Body Slam. Three Energy is a real tax, so grade it by whether your deck already blocks well. Bludgeon : 32 damage on one card. Boring, expensive, and the most reliable way a deck with no scaling Power still kills the Awakened One. Dark Embrace : Draw a card on every Exhaust. Next to Feel No Pain your deck stops caring about Wounds, Burns and the Ironclad's card-quality problem all at once. Disarm : The enemy loses 2 Strength permanently and the card Exhausts itself. Against Gremlin Nob, the Champ or anything that hits five times, that is worth more than 20 damage. Shockwave : 3 Weak and 3 Vulnerable to everything for 2 Energy, then it Exhausts. A full turn of defense and a 50 percent damage boost in one card that never clogs later. Uppercut : 13 damage plus Weak plus Vulnerable for 2. No setup, no archetype, just the best generic two-cost attack the class prints. Inflame : 2 permanent Strength for 1 Energy. The cheapest scaling in the game, and it is what makes Heavy Blade, Whirlwind and Sword Boomerang look playable. Entrench : Doubles your Block for 2 Energy. With Barricade it is the turn you go from a wall to lethal off Body Slam; without it, still a fine follow-up to Impervious. Feed : 10 damage, and a kill raises your Max HP by 3 forever. Farming Act 1 Cultists and Jaw Worms with this is how Ironclad decks arrive at the Heart 30 HP up on everyone else. Shrug It Off : 8 Block and a card for 1 Energy, at Common. The best defensive common in the game, and the reason you can run two and still cycle. Pommel Strike : 9 damage and a draw. The upgrade draws 2, which makes it an attack that costs you nothing in hand size. Spot Weakness : 3 Strength for 1 Energy any time the enemy is winding up to attack, which on A20 is most turns. Permanent scaling with a condition you read straight off the intent. Second Wind : Dumps every non-Attack in hand for 5 Block each. With Feel No Pain and Dark Embrace running it is 30-plus Block and three cards drawn for a single Energy. Solid deck filler 23
Armaments Thunderclap Cleave Iron Wave Clothesline Twin Strike Anger Battle Trance Bloodletting Burning Pact Carnage Dropkick Flame Barrier Ghostly Armor Hemokinesis Metallicize Power Through : 15 Block for 1 Energy is the best rate in the class, and the two Wounds are only a problem in a deck with no Exhaust. In an Exhaust deck they are fuel. Seeing Red Sentinel Whirlwind : X-cost area damage that scales with every point of Strength. The cleanest payoff for Inflame and Limit Break, and a blank card if you skipped both. Fiend Fire : 7 damage per card Exhausted, so it is enormous on a full hand and nothing on an empty one. A finisher in an Exhaust deck, a dead slot in every other Ironclad build. Double Tap Juggernaut : 5 damage per Block gain, which sounds like a win condition and mostly is not. It needs Barricade or a pile of cheap Block cards just to match what Demon Form does from the same slot. Only with support 21
Blood for Blood Body Slam : Damage equal to your Block. Without Barricade it is a 1-cost attack that does maybe 14 once and then nothing, and players overrate it because the Barricade version is so memorable. Combust Dual Wield Evolve Exhume Fire Breathing Flex Havoc Headbutt Heavy Blade : 14 damage with triple Strength scaling, which reads like a bomb and plays like a worse Bash. Only take it once Inflame or Limit Break is already in the deck. Infernal Blade Intimidate Pummel Rage Rampage Reckless Charge Rupture : 1 Strength every time a card costs you HP. It wants Hemokinesis, Offering and Brutality together, and a deck built that specifically usually dies in Act 2 before the Strength matters. Sever Soul True Grit : 7 Block and a random Exhaust, which is a liability until the upgrade lets you choose. Upgraded, it is the cleanest way to feed Feel No Pain on demand. Berserk : Free Energy every turn, bought with 2 permanent Vulnerable. On A20 that is 50 percent more damage taken all fight, and the class is not fast enough to outrun it as often as the card's reputation claims. Traps and dead weight 7
Searing Blow : 12 damage that grows with every upgrade, which sounds like scaling and plays like a campfire tax. You need four upgrades before it beats Uppercut, and every one of those is a rest you did not take. Clash : 14 damage for 0, playable only if every card in hand is an Attack. Any Power, any Block card, any Wound the game hands you, and it sits there doing nothing. Perfected Strike : 6 damage plus 2 per Strike card you own. Building around it means keeping bad commons on purpose, and the reward is a 2-cost attack that folds to Time Eater. Wild Strike : 12 damage and a Wound in your draw pile. That Wound costs you a card every cycle for the rest of the fight, which is a worse deal than just taking Twin Strike. Brutality : Lose 1 HP, draw 1 card, every turn. Unupgraded it costs Energy on top, and on A20 the bleed takes you out of the run long before the extra cards win a fight. Sword Boomerang : 9 damage split into three random hits, fine against one enemy and a coin flip against three. Playable in a Strength deck, skippable everywhere else. Warcry : Draw a card, put one back on top, Exhaust. Useful exactly once for setting up turn one, then it is a slot you wish you had spent elsewhere. The Silent The Silent drafts around one of three engines: Poison, Shivs, or discard. Poison is the strongest on A20 by a wide margin, mostly because Noxious Fumes and Catalyst scale without asking for your Energy while you spend every turn blocking. Card draw is the class's real edge, so Acrobatics, Backflip and Adrenaline hold value in builds that have nothing else in common.
Run-defining picks 7
Wraith Form : 2 Intangible for 3 Energy, meaning two turns where everything hits you for exactly 1. The Dexterity drain is real and irrelevant: you use this to walk through a Heart opener or a Time Eater phase flip. Catalyst : Doubles the enemy's Poison, or triples it upgraded. Twelve Poison becomes 36 becomes a dead boss, and it asks for 1 Energy to do it. Alchemize : A free potion every fight for 1 Energy. Potions are the most undervalued resource on A20, and a deck that prints one per combat stops losing to bad Act 3 draws. Nightmare : Three copies of any card in hand next turn. Point it at Die Die Die or Catalyst and the fight ends; point it at Bouncing Flask and it is still the best turn of the combat. Noxious Fumes : 2 Poison to every enemy, every turn, for 1 Energy. It kills Act 1 and Act 2 hallways on its own while your actual Energy goes into Block, which is the whole Silent A20 gameplan. Adrenaline : Gain 1 Energy, draw 2, Exhaust, at zero cost. Pure profit, it never clogs the deck, and it is what makes Silent's thin draw engine actually spin. Terror : 99 Vulnerable for 1 Energy, or 0 upgraded. Every attack you make for the rest of that fight lands 50 percent harder, permanently, off one card. Take them happily 15
Corpse Explosion : 6 Poison, and when that enemy dies the whole room takes its Max HP as damage. Against Gremlin packs, Byrds and the Reptomancer it is a one-card wipe. Burst : Your next Skill plays twice. Aimed at Catalyst, Corpse Explosion or Bouncing Flask it is the highest-value 1-cost in the class. After Image : 1 Block for every card you play. In a deck full of 0-cost Shivs and cheap Skills that is 8 to 12 free Block a turn, and it never falls off in a long fight. Footwork : 2 Dexterity for 1 Energy. Silent blocks in small numbers, so a flat buff to every one of them beats almost any single Block card you could take instead. Well-Laid Plans : Retain a card each turn. It fixes the class's worst habit, which is drawing Catalyst or Terror on the one turn you cannot afford to play it. Envenom : Every unblocked attack applies 1 Poison. With Shivs or any multi-hit attack it stacks Poison faster than the Poison cards do. Malaise : X Strength down and X Weak on one card. Against the Champ, Gremlin Nob or the Heart that is the difference between blocking the turn and not. Piercing Wail : Everything loses 6 Strength for a turn, for 1 Energy, then it Exhausts. The best common answer in the game to a Gremlin Nob turn you walked into unprepared. Leg Sweep : 2 Weak and 11 Block for 2 Energy. Defense and damage reduction on the same card, which is exactly the trade Silent wants on A20. Caltrops : 3 damage back every time you are attacked. Against multi-hit enemies it out-damages most of your attacks, and it does it while you spend your turns on Poison. Crippling Cloud : 4 Poison and 2 Weak to everything, then it Exhausts. One of the strongest cards in the game against an Act 2 hallway, and it never clogs the deck afterwards. Backflip : 5 Block and 2 cards for 1 Energy, at Common. Silent decks that cycle live and Silent decks that stall die, and this is the cheapest way to cycle. Escape Plan : Zero cost, draw 1, plus 3 Block if it hits a Skill. Free cycling that sometimes blocks is worth more than the numbers on the card suggest. Die Die Die : 13 damage to every enemy for 1 Energy. It Exhausts, so you get the room clear without the deck getting worse. Blur : 5 Block that carries into next turn. Cheap, and the moment you draw two in a cycle it turns into a wall you did not pay for. Leave them behind 7
Grand Finale : 50 damage to everything, playable only on an empty draw pile. Building a deck that empties reliably means a tiny deck with no defense, and the card is dead in every hand but the last one. Doppelganger : X cards and X Energy next turn, for X Energy now. You give up a whole turn to have a better one later, which is the wrong trade when the enemy intent says 30. Masterful Stab : 12 damage for 0, unless you have lost HP this combat, which on A20 is always. In practice it is a 2 or 3 cost card hitting for 12. Riddle with Holes : 15 damage split into five hits of 3, which Block and Thorns eat alive. It wants Strength, and Silent has none to give it. Flechettes : 4 damage per Skill in hand. You are rarely holding four Skills on the turn you want to attack, so it usually hits for 8 at full price. All-Out Attack : 10 to everything, then a random discard. Throwing away Catalyst or Wraith Form happens often enough to sink the card. Slice : 6 damage for 0. Not a trap, just filler, and filler is what kills A20 decks that would otherwise be drawing their good cards. Defect Orbs make the Defect the slowest class to come online and the hardest to kill once it has. Focus is the scaling stat, so Defragment, Consume and Biased Cognition raise the floor on every Lightning and Frost card in the deck at the same time. Frost block plus a Focus engine is the default A20 shell, and Lightning does not compete until Electrodynamics shows up.
Always take 7
Echo Form : The first card you play each turn plays twice. Ethereal is a genuine cost and the payoff is doubling Glacier, Hyperbeam or Multi-Cast every turn for the rest of the fight. Electrodynamics : Lightning hits every enemy, and you channel 2 on the spot. It converts a pile of mediocre orb cards into a hallway-clearing engine, and the whole Lightning build is waiting on it. Biased Cognition : 4 Focus immediately for 1 Energy. The 1 Focus per turn decay is a real clock and it is still the biggest single tempo swing the class gets. Creative AI : A random Defect Power in hand every turn. Three Energy is steep, then it prints Defragments, Loops and Storms while you spend your actual turns blocking. Seek : Pull any card out of your draw pile for 0, or two of them upgraded. Defect decks are built around finding one specific engine piece, and this is how you find it. Core Surge : 11 damage and an Artifact for 1 Energy, then it Exhausts. That Artifact eats a Time Eater slow or a Writhing Mass debuff, and the damage is a bonus. Defragment : 1 permanent Focus for 1 Energy. Every Frost blocks more, every Lightning hits harder, and it compounds with every other Focus card you draft after it. First-pick material 15
Glacier : 7 Block and 2 Frost for 2 Energy. The best Block card in the class, and it builds the passive block engine while it does it. Coolheaded : 1 Frost and a card for 1 Energy, at Common. Take every copy you see: the Frost compounds and the draw keeps a clunky deck moving. Leap : 9 Block for 1 Energy with no conditions attached. Unexciting, and it is the reason your Act 1 works at all. Loop : Triggers your next orb's passive an extra time every turn. With Frost and a little Focus that is 8 to 12 free Block a turn, and the upgrade doubles it again. Capacitor : Two more orb slots. It does nothing the turn you play it and roughly doubles everything your orbs do for the rest of the fight. Multi-Cast : Evoke your next orb X times. With Lightning and Focus it is a nuke, and with a stacked Dark orb it is a nuke that grew while you were blocking. Buffer : Prevent the next time you would lose HP. Two Energy for a full negation beats any amount of Block against a Heart beam or an Awakened One opener. Machine Learning : One extra card drawn every turn, forever, for 1 Energy. Defect hands clog badly and this is the cleanest fix the class has. Melter : Strips all the enemy's Block, then hits for 10. The answer to Spire Shield, to a blocking Gremlin Leader, and to every Act 3 enemy that makes your orbs feel useless. Bullseye : 8 damage plus 2 Lock-On, which makes orbs hitting that target deal 50 percent more. Cheap, and it turns a mediocre orb turn into a real one. Hyperbeam : 26 damage to everything for 2 Energy. Losing 3 Focus wrecks a Frost engine, so treat it as a finisher rather than a hallway card. Storm : A Lightning orb every time you play a Power. In a deck with four or five Powers it channels more orbs than your actual orb cards do. Skim : Three cards for 1 Energy. No condition, no drawback, and it fixes the hand-size problem every orb deck runs into. Darkness : 1 Dark orb for 1 Energy. The upgrade triggers every Dark you already have, and stacked Dark with Focus behind it is the best damage per Energy in the class. Consume : 2 Focus for the price of an orb slot. Losing the slot stings, and 2 Focus with three slots still beats 0 Focus with four. Watcher Stances are the whole class, and every card is graded on how cleanly it moves you in and out of them. Wrath doubles your damage and doubles what you take, so good Watcher decks pair it with an exit: Empty Fist, a Tantrum loop, Rushdown draw. Watcher has the highest ceiling in the game and the most ways to kill yourself by accident.
Run-defining picks 7
Talk to the Hand : 5 damage, and 2 Block every single time you hit that enemy afterwards. On a Watcher throwing four or five attacks a turn that is 10 Block a turn off one card, which makes it the best uncommon in the game. Blasphemy : Enter Divinity, which triples your damage, and die at the start of your next turn. With Tranquility or any Retain effect you replay it before the bill arrives. It wins runs and it ends the ones where you stopped paying attention. Rushdown : Draw 2 every time you enter Wrath. Watcher enters Wrath constantly, so this is a draw engine that costs 1 Energy and never switches off. Mental Fortress : 4 Block on every stance change. Two changes a turn is normal, so it is 8-plus Block a turn for 1 Energy and the reason Blasphemy decks survive their own plan. Foresight : Scry 3 at the start of every turn. It fixes draws, feeds Nirvana and Weave, and turns a deck with two great cards into a deck that reliably draws them. Tantrum : 3 damage three times, enter Wrath, shuffle itself back in. Infinite Wrath access for 1 Energy, and with Rushdown it draws you two cards every time it comes back around. Wreath of Flame : Your next attack deals 5 more, or 8 upgraded, and Wrath doubles that bonus too. A 1-cost buff that out-damages most of the class's actual attacks. Take them happily 15
Inner Peace : Draw 3 if you are in Calm, otherwise enter Calm. Never a dead card, and the Calm exit refunds 2 Energy on the way out. Scrawl : Fills your hand for 1 Energy, or 0 upgraded, and then Exhausts. Watcher has more cheap cards than Energy, so a full hand is a genuinely huge turn. Deva Form : Energy every turn, climbing by 1 each time. Ethereal means you get one shot at playing it, and if you land it, long fights stop being a problem. Devotion : 2 Mantra a turn for 1 Energy, which is free Divinity every fifth turn. Divinity triples your damage, so this is the safe way to get there. Establishment : Retained cards get 1 cheaper every turn they sit in hand. Next to Protect, Perseverance or Sands of Time it turns your expensive cards into free ones. Vault : Take an extra turn. Three Energy and it ends the current turn, which is a real price, and an extra turn against the Heart is still an extra turn. Judgment : Sets an enemy to 0 HP under the threshold, 30 unupgraded and 40 upgraded. It deletes Act 3 elites, Spire Growths and half the Heart fight's adds. Lesson Learned : 10 damage, and a kill permanently upgrades a random card in your deck. Aim it at the weakest enemy in every hallway and the deck upgrades itself for the rest of the run. Empty Fist : 9 damage and exit your Stance for 1 Energy. In Wrath that is 18, plus the 2 Energy if you came in from Calm. Empty Body : 7 Block and exit your Stance. Leaving Wrath before the enemy swings is the single skill that separates careless Watchers from winning ones. Tranquility : Retain, enter Calm, Exhaust, and the upgrade makes it free. Calm on demand is the Watcher's Energy engine. Crescendo : Retain, enter Wrath, Exhaust, free when upgraded. You hold it until the turn you want your damage doubled, which is exactly how the class wants to be played. Flurry of Blows : 4 damage for 0 that comes back from the discard pile on every stance change. In a stance-dancing deck a single copy attacks three or four times a turn. Nirvana : 3 Block every time you Scry. With Foresight, Third Eye or Cut Through Fate in the deck it out-blocks most of the class's dedicated Block cards. Alpha : Shuffles in Beta, which shuffles in Omega, which deals 50 damage to everything at the end of every turn. Slow, and against the Heart it is the cleanest win the class has. Deck filler that works 23
Bowling Bash Consecrate Cut Through Fate Flying Sleeves Follow-Up Just Lucky Prostrate Protect Sash Whip Third Eye Master Reality : Upgrades every card created during combat. Nothing on its own, and next to Battle Hymn, Carve Reality, Deus Ex Machina or Alpha it doubles what those cards give you. Battle Hymn : A free Smite every turn, which is a Retained 1-cost that hits for 12. The closest thing Watcher has to a damage engine that asks nothing of you. Carve Reality Like Water Perseverance Pray Sanctity Sands of Time : 20 damage, Retained, and its cost falls by 1 every turn you hold it. Free damage on turn four and dead weight on turn one. Swivel Wallop Wheel Kick Windmill Strike : Retained, gaining 4 damage per turn you hold it, or 5 upgraded. Patient, and it climbs to the biggest single hit in the class. Worship : 5 Mantra for 2 Energy, half of Divinity on one card. Slow, and Divinity is worth being slow for. Conditional at best 20
Evaluate Halt Pressure Points : 8 Mark, and every enemy loses HP equal to its Mark. It ignores Block, which is a real trick, and it needs multiple copies stacking before it beats just attacking. Brilliance : 12 damage plus all Mantra gained this combat. A finisher in a Devotion or Worship deck, and a 1-cost hitting for 12 in the other four out of five Watcher decks. Omniscience : Play any card from your draw pile twice for 4 Energy. The turns you can afford it are rare and the payoff on Judgment or Blasphemy is enormous. Spirit Shield Wish : Choose 6 Plated Armor, 3 Strength, or 25 Gold, for 3 Energy. Every option is fine and none of them is worth a third of a turn in a class built on tempo. Collect Conclude Deceive Reality Empty Mind Fear No Evil Foreign Influence Indignation Meditate : Retrieve a card, enter Calm, and end your turn. Ending your turn on A20 usually means eating a full attack, so what you retrieve has to be worth a whole turn. Reach Heaven Signature Move : 30 damage, playable only when it is the only Attack in your hand. Watcher decks are full of attacks, so the card spends most fights arguing with itself. Study Simmering Fury : Enter Wrath and draw 2 at the start of next turn. Safe Wrath access is genuinely useful on a card that does nothing the turn you spend Energy on it. Weave Traps and dead weight 6
Fasting : 3 Strength and 3 Dexterity for 2 Energy, and 1 less Energy every turn after. Watcher plays four or five cheap cards a turn, so that lost Energy costs more than the stats return. Conjure Blade : Shuffles an Expunger into your draw pile. You pay X now, put the payoff somewhere you cannot reach, and hope to draw it. Three steps too many. Deus Ex Machina : Two Miracles when you draw it, then it Exhausts. Two Energy across an entire combat, once, on a card you cannot choose to play. Ragnarok : 25 damage split into five random hits of 5, for 3 Energy. Block, Thorns and extra enemies all eat it, and 3 Energy is the Watcher's whole turn. Wave of the Hand : 1 Weak to everything each time you gain Block this turn. Weak caps out fast, so the ceiling is a couple of stacks on a turn you were blocking anyway. Crush Joints : 8 damage, with 1 Vulnerable only if your last card was a Skill. The condition is easy and one stack of Vulnerable is not worth a permanent deck slot on A20. Colorless Colorless cards come from Neow, the Prismatic Shard, card-removal events and a handful of relics, so you almost never choose one from a normal combat reward. That scarcity is why the good ones feel absurd: Apotheosis upgrades your whole deck for a fight, Master of Strategy is an Adrenaline any class can run. The Statuses at the bottom are ranked because the game files file them as Common cards, and you never take one on purpose.
Strong on any class 9
Secret Technique : Secret Weapon for Skills, which means it digs out Impervious, Catalyst or Wraith Form exactly when the fight turns. Mayhem : Plays the top card of your draw pile at the start of every turn. In a deck with real Powers and big attacks it is a free card a turn, and it does not care which class you are. The Bomb : 40 damage to everything, three turns later. Slow and telegraphed, and it wipes an Act 3 hallway while you spend those three turns doing nothing but blocking. Dark Shackles : The enemy loses 9 Strength for a turn, for 0, then it Exhausts. The Colorless answer to Gremlin Nob, and the deck never notices it is there. Enlightenment : Every card in hand costs 1 this turn. With Bludgeon, Impervious or a 3-cost Power stuck in hand it is the biggest 0-cost swing in the game. Madness : A random card in hand costs 0 for the rest of the combat. The randomness is a real cost, and a permanently free Impervious or Demon Form is worth the roll. Blind : 2 Weak for 0, and the upgrade hits everything. Cheap damage reduction that every class is happy to run. Discovery : Choose 1 of 3 random cards and play it free this turn. You get to pick, which is what separates it from every other random-card effect on this board. Panacea : 1 Artifact for 0, then it Exhausts. It blocks the debuff that would have cost you the fight, which on A20 means the Time Eater slow or a Writhing Mass Strength drain. Never on purpose 8
Chrysalis : Three random Skills that cost 0 for this combat only, shuffled into your draw pile permanently. You buy one good turn with three dead cards for the rest of the run. Metamorphosis : Chrysalis with Attacks. Same deal, same permanent bloat, same one strong combat that is nowhere near worth it. Hand of Greed : 20 damage and 20 Gold on a kill, for 2 Energy. Gold is not what loses A20 runs, and 20 damage for 2 Energy is a bad rate in any class. Burn : A Status you get from Immolate, Overclock and the Hexaghost. Unplayable, and it hits you for 2 at the end of every turn it sits in your hand. Dazed : Unplayable and Ethereal, so it eats the one draw you needed and then disappears. You never pick it, you just get handed it. Slimed : Costs 1 Energy to Exhaust itself. The Slime Boss shoves a dozen into your deck and the whole fight becomes a question of whether you can afford to clear them. Void : Unplayable, Ethereal, and drawing it costs you an Energy. The nastiest Status in the game, and the reason TURBO is rated where it is. Wound : Unplayable filler from Wild Strike, Power Through and half of Act 1. The one good thing about it is that an Exhaust deck turns it into Block.