I would absolutely love to see that. If for no other reason than seeing like, your initial first reactions to the game. That being said, its really really fun.
That would be awesome, and playing the game itself would almost be a little version of your videos where you are forced to evaluate cards on the spot to see how/if they fit in your deck. It has the perfect amount of depth to be endlessly replayable and yet approachable too; highly recommend.
It is genuinely impressive that he managed to go through an entire explainer of the Silent without ever showing a poison card, given that Poison is one of the Silent's major mechanics.
@@DjilaliAlaouia You make it sound like an either/or proposition, rather than it being a case of knowing how to best make use of mechanics. If you only know how to use shivs, you understand maybe a 1/3 of how the Silent works.
@@Mrinsecure the thing about shivs is that there like the main source of damge in early game you'll always take a knife dance and can synergize with discard builds and shiv builds while poison is just too slow in early game and dosnt synergize with shiz and enemies with artifacts will only make your run harder
@@DjilaliAlaouia The real issue is that you can never truly control what cards you're going to get. If you don't get decent shiv synergy early, do you just restart the run? Or do you try to build off the Silent's other mechanics like discard/draw and poison? I mean, yes, you *could* just keep restarting until you get blade dance after your first battle, but then you haven't really learned how to play the game, have you?
@@Mrinsecure brother blade dance is a common card its like 90% of the time you'll find it and i understand your that you need to make a deck from what ever the game gives you after all thats what rogue lite are about . but sometimes you dont like the way some cards play sometimes you dont understand the cards sometimes you're simply not good enough the point that i want to make is that you dont need to learn 100% of the game you just need to learn about 80% of the game
I loved it so much I’ve played like a dozen mods for adding more characters, they’re not always balanced, but it is interesting to see what sort of things you can do with the game engine…
The mechanic of building your deck from a starter deck as you play (as opposed to up front as in MtG or in a separate drafting phase), and discaring your hand at end of turn, came from Dominion (2008).
@@Jet-ij9zc i find shop exclusives easier to find than anything else, the shop pool isn't exactly that large and i always try to find a shop on every floor
I think it's important to recognize in Slay the Spire that "card advantage" isn't as important as other card games. It was mentioned at the beginning, but the fact that you always draw a hand of 5 and then discard them away, while eventually redrawing your deck, means that what you actually want is more card selection, not card advantage. This is also why I disagree with the evaluation of Reflex vs Tactician. Extra energy is somewhat of a noob trap because in order for energy to be good, you need good cards to spend it on, as well as needing enough card selection to play enough cards in the first place. You don't get to store cards for later (exceptions being retain keyword and why Runic Pyramid is such a powerful relic), so extra energy to eventually play them is usually worse than being able to see more of your good cards. Reflex is more card selection (especially with Calculated Gamble, the 0 energy wheel) and generally more consistent than Tactician. This is what I've observed watching A20 streakers at least. Also, Watcher is definitely the Yugioh character. She can most easily go infinite and often has to check if she has lethals turn 1 against most fights. Watcher is just absurd when played well.
"Card advantage" is a relative term; enemies in Spire don't have cards, thus you can never have card advantage over them. However, bricking is still a very real threat, especially with status cards being put in your deck, or Time Eater's draw down debuff. You would generally prefer looking at more cards over less, but generally, to get the numerical output necessary to deal with late game threats, you need to play more cards as well. There are obviously strategies that can play well under choker, like poison starter+multiple catalyst+Wraith form, but infinites/"lots" tend to require less specific card combinations to increase your output. Tactician is probably the best reusable energy generation card in the Silent's card pool, the only other one that does something the turn you play it is concentrate, which I can circle back to later. It's the easiest one to make work because acrobatics, dagger throw, calculated gamble etc. are cards you would probably be drafting anyway. Combine a high volume of draw cards with card removes and a Tactician or two, and you can either go infinite, or just play a lot of cards if you can't. Now, I think reflex is a good card, but Tactician is not a noob trap, it works with the discard you would be drafting anyway and allows you to play more cards. I think reflex plays better with cards that go minus 1 or more, especially if a lot of your deck's draw cards are minus, in similar fashion to expertise. So if you didn't get offered many acrobatics, but instead you got offered things like gamble, prepared, and concentrate, you can use reflex to offset your minus 1s (concentrate ofc being a minus 4 un-upgraded/3 upgraded) and maintain your combo. I personally prefer Tactician+acrobatics and some different draw cards to make sure my Tacticians don't miss the reshuffle (as this often can cause you to drop your combo, unless your deck is very small/has a huge energy surplus), but reflex in combination with concentrate can do the same job. You can also use them in the same deck if you don't have many cards like acrobatics or backflip that go plus. As a bit of a note, I think calculated gamble is also a powerful enabler of infinites, and just a generally good card. I tend to draft it regardless of whether or not I think my deck can go infinite, because it's really good anti-brick insurance. It's also good at getting to your setup cards like Apotheosis and powers faster, reducing your first cycle's turn count. Late game you tend to only get "1 free turn", so being able to cycle faster becomes increasingly more valuable as the game progresses. I would also add, that being able to play all of your powers and exhaustable setup/extenders also reduces the number of cards you have to draw through on subsequent cycles, making it less likely that you brick, which either requires energy generation, or zero cost upgrades like for tools of the trade/terror/alchemize. Runic pyramid is not retain, it does the same thing, but much like Yugioh, wording matters. Effects that proc on retain do not proc from pyramid.
i usually prefer tactician because it allows you to play your whole deck, several times even. silent already gets a ton of card draw from other cards like acrobatics(common), expertise etc
Tactician is way better than Reflex. The way infinite silent generates energy is with Tactician or Concentrate, Sundial if you're lucky. The way infinite silent draws cards is with Acrobatics, Calculated Gamble, Prepared, Backflip, Reflex, Escape Plan (sort of), Well Laid Plans/Runic Pyramid (for card advantage), Dagger Throw (in a pinch), and Expertise (if the deck is bad). Notably, the best card draw cards discard as a bonus, so it's super easy to load up on them, slot in one Tactician+, and be infinite as long as you aren't getting bricked by basics. This doesn't work for Reflex since its activation condition is the same: having good enough card draw to draw it before using a discard effect. That means it's card draw that only works if you have good card draw, and if you just look at the list drawing cards is a lot less exclusive than gaining energy. Most decks would rather rely on Tactician than on Concentrate, Reflex's strongest synergy. Most forms of Nightmare would rather work with Tactician, either by making a bunch of Calculated Gambles and playing one Acrobatics per draw cycle (which is paid for by Tactician) or by making a bunch of Tactician and playing a bunch of Acrobatics and Calculated Gamble per draw cycle. The "energy is bait" phenomenon disappears when your deck actually runs a sufficient amount of card draw (and removes basics) and it's super easy to throw in another acrobatics if you're still running out of stuff to spend it on.
One thing I just wanna add for card evaluation: There are two endpoints to the game. One is considered the "true end", but it's the one point in the game where you fight the same enemies every single time. This allows you to prepare yourself for it, but the problem is, these enemies just eliminate a few deck choices that can get you a pretty solid win on the not-true-end route. So a lot of cards that are considered "bad" by the community actually allow you to carry pretty easily, as long as you don't go towards the true end. You can kinda liken the final enemy to someone always playing Jinzo Turbo with Royal Decree etc. You can easily build to defeat him, but you won't be bringing any trap based strategies for that.
To add to this a bit, the more I've played Silent in particular (I'm around 20 a20 heart kills now), the more I've realized that your entire deck building plan needs to prioritize time eater and heart as key fights (2/3 odds of having to fight time eater every run means you may as well assume you will). While shivs can deal very good damage and are a great solve for early to late game, unless you get very lucky with relics and card rewards focusing too hard on shivs will likely kill you in time eater/heart. Strength reducing cards like piercing wail and malaise are not great in most fights but the fights they are good in (time eater/heart/awakened one/stabby book etc) make them crucial picks for any deck.
i find that all decks are viable, it's just that some decks need either a silver bullet, backup or just sheer defensive power for things like time eater
@@skibble7444 i personally find that it's really easy to find a silver bullet for shivs or discard, just having two different sides to your deck that meld well together is enough like having skewer with discard and energy scaling.
@@Ghorda9 this is pretty much what I was saying. Shivs can be very strong but if you lowroll synergistic cards and relics for them you absolutely need contingencies for time eater. I just think the idea of a "crazy shiv build" can inspire focusing too much on shivs and pure damage hoping for a lucky run rather than building a solid deck that happens to have shivs in it.
Would be lovely if some of the more funky mechanics/strategies like Poison, Terror, Lightning Quick cycle, or simple combos like Barricade Body slam, as well as "noob traps" were shown here. Slay the Spire has a lot of cards you really don't want, but that look neat, (like some of the colourless trash), so showing those to the unknown could be fun
I think specifically with distraction (and all other card generators), the only restrictions are that: 1. It cannot give you starter cards (in fact, there is no way to generate more starter cards in combat except by using Nightmare) 2. It cannot give you cards that could heal your HP 3. It cannot give you cards that are generated by other cards (like shivs)
Also, all things that generate random cards during combat (including potions, relics, and cards) can't give you cards that don't belong to the card-pool of the character you're currently playing as (with the exceptions of Foreign Influence, Colourless Potion, Toolbox, Jack Of All Trades, Magnetism, and Transmutation), nor can they generate Feed, Lesson Learned, Alchemise, or Wish, nor can they give you event-specific cards such as J.A.X. or Apparitions.
I'd love you to play Slay the Spire on the channel. I think you'd have a lot of fun, but I also think that the Slay the Spire community will hound towards your channel from that video. So i'd say, set your expectations and set the channel's expectations appropriately. I think it could be really easy for you to end up playing Slay the Spire more often on the channel from this, but also maybe that's not what you'd want to do longterm for this channel.
Would love to see you play Slay the Spire! By the way, FrostPrime, a very fun sts RUclipsr has been doing more collabs with people recently coaching them at playing the game- namely with Rarran from hearthstone, might be worth reaching out!
Its literally impossible to not LOVE this game, if you have background with card games such as Magic the Gathering. The design is sublime, its super impressive, the skill ceiling high, the combinations too fun to not tinker with, the replayability through the roof. You can play thousands of hours and still keep improving, and still keep doing new combinations. Its absurd how well designed this all is. Easy to learn but so hard to master. Hearthstone players, MtG players, all card gamers in general, this will always be the deckbuilder we never knew we wanted. Absolutely peak card gaming of our century.
I think giving some context on what your goals are in the early game, mid game and late game would have been useful. The analysis on distraction for instance is just wrong. Distraction is one of the worst cards in Silent's pool not because it is necessarily inherently bad but because it doesn't fit your goals at any stage in the game, unless you are desperate. In the early game, your only real goal is adding damage (especially on Ascension 20 but even on lower ascension). Distraction doesn't do that in a reliable manner. Additionally, your other top priority in the early game is to find cards that help deal with elites, and distraction is extremely bad into Gremlin Nob. Distraction also doesn't scale at all into late game because it is so unreliable. I wouldn't call this a situational card at all, largely because the early game does not favor picking skills that don't guarantee damage.
I wouldn't call distraction bad at all. In certain decks where you want to play alot of cards it is certainly playable. Now of the "playable" cards (that arent outright detrimental) it might be on the lower end, but calling it bad is a bit much. Edit: Just rewatched the section where they explain how they tier the cards and distraction would definitely go into the "bad" tier. But my reply still stands that I think the card itself is basically a neutral do nothing card and I would call that mid.
@@TheKastellan It is really not good. There are far better options in the silent card pool if you want to play lots of cards, and it doesn't fit into the best version of this archetype (discard synergies) very well. Picking a non-upgraded Distraction up after act 1 is pretty difficult to justify and at ascension 20 at least, it is simply not a card you can afford to pickup in act 1 because it is so bad into gremlin nob and the bosses. If you get an upgraded Distraction in act 2 and you don't have an energy relic, you can get some value from it, but its lack of reliability and its pretty poor return on investment makes it pretty bad. Silent's card pool is actually pretty high quality, so justifyng a Distraction is hard.
@@TheKastellan It is just straight up bad, distraction is a noob trap card and shouldn't be even given "mid". Other commenter is right, in act 1 you need to pick damage cards early on, so it's not good early, and it doesn't scale because it doesn't add any direction to your deck for synergy later on. Not only that, there are so many synergy reliant silent skills that are completely useless in the wrong deck, the average random skill is often pretty bad or a 0 cost skill that you paid 1 energy for. As for "playing lots of cards" as a strategy, this is done so much better through draw and discard synergy, which also have much more potential for infinites later on, having a "2 for 1" card the first time you play it is not worth it
@@Jonathan_Guan Honestly don't really agree with my original comment, I replied given the original comment said it was one of Silent's worst card which I definitely would disagree. If I had to evaluate silent it would be a "do nothing" card since for the most part the value it generates. Which obviously is bad in act 1 (which was never an argument) and is mostly neutral-bad in act 2 and above. I called it mid in my reply given that it isn't usually outright detrimental in my experience compared to some cards but to be fair given the criteria of the video which I just checked again it would definitely go into bad.
Tactician better than reflex? that's a strange take. Tactician can so easily brick your deck and do nothing, even when you can discard it you might just not have anything to spend the mana on. Reflex is much more consistent and it also enables infinites in a very similar way. I'd say tactician is very mid and reflex is good.
My evaluation for a few of the cards or card-pairs presented, in order, below. 1. The only times in which it's a bad idea to pick up Acro (in card reward screens) is if it's being offered alongside a higher-priority card, or you don't have enough Energy being generated by your Cards/Relics to justify adding more card-draw to your Deck, or you already have so many copies of Acro, Backflip, and Reflex in your Deck that you virtually always have positive card-draw effects in your hand no matter how many times you use them, or you have Runic Pyramid and don't want to make hand-clog issues worse for yourself (STS had a handsize limit of 10 cards). 2. Distraction is easily one of the worst Silent cards for two main reasons: The first is Gremlin Knob. The second is the fact that it gives you a Skill that is RANDOM. Out of the three main card-types, Skill Cards are easily the most powerful because of how versatile they are. However, this extreme amount of variability in the types of effects that Skill Cards can have means that Distraction may give you a card that's not only useless on the particular turn you're given it, but it may also be useless in the current combat overall because it doesn't synnergize with the current Deck build you have (for example, imagine Distraction giving you Prepared, Concentrate, Tactician, or Reflex when you don't have a discard build). At least Infernal Blade is GUARANTEED to give you a card that'll damage the enemies after you play it and White Noise is ALMOST guaranteed to give you a good form of scaling (and if not, the Power Card it gives you still combos with Storm, Heatsinks, Forcefield, Mummified Hand, etc.). Additionally, the VAST majority of Silent Skill Cards cost 1 Energy or less anyway, therefore Distraction NEEDS to be upgraded for it to be better than simply adding the random card that it gives you to your Deck normally. Going by the definitions of your ranking system, this card is bad. 3. This is very dumb, but Finisher actually DOESN'T count itself. I think the reason why is because the game is programmed to not consider a card to be 'played' until after it's fully resolved its immediate on-play effect(s). This is the main reason why Finisher is bad. It makes it very unideal in Act 1. Finisher is also NOT the best card to combo with Blade Dance, that card is Accuracy because at least Accuracy doesn't need to be played after the Blade Dance. In fact, Accuracy doesn't even need to be played on the same TURN as the Blade Dance because it's a Power Card (similar deal with Terror). Ideally, in the late game, you generally want your Deck to be at about 20% card-draw cards, 40% Block, while the rest is damage, scaling, and other esoteric effects (like Energy gain). You only want a small portion of your Deck to be dedicated to damage (at least by the late game, which is when Finisher is going to be able to combo with stuff because you'll have more combo pieces by that point). Therefore, if you're running a Shiv Deck, you'd rather have a Terror and a couple of Accuracys as your few damage-based combo pieces (not considering Relics), rather than having something less viable like Finisher. 4. Just because Tactician is the main infinite enabler for Silent Decks doesn't mean that it's better than Reflex. That's like saying Reversal Quiz is the best Spell Card in classic Yugioh because its the enabler for Library FTK. You seem to not remember that STS is not only a Deckbuilder, it's a card-drafting game. I virtually never see Silent infinites in high-level STS play and I watch it a LOT. The majority of the time, you're not going to be given a good opportunity to do a proper discard Deck in a Silent run, let alone go infinite. Generally speaking, Reflex is a better card than Tactician for two main reasons. Firstly, if your handsize is getting smaller because you're discarding a card from your hand, Energy is going to be less useful because you now have less potential good cards to spend that Energy on. Meanwhile, card-draw becomes MORE valuable the less cards you have in your hand because gaining more optionality becomes more valuable. To give a specific example, a 5-Card hand that contains Tactician, Survivor, Defend and 2 Strikes isn't as good as a hand that has Reflex, Survivor, Defend and 2 Strikes. Secondly, Discard Decks are VERY heavily dependant on you drawing certain combo pieces alongside each other for them to work (with a few exceptions, such as Tingsha and Hovering Kite). So having more card-draw to more reliably draw those combo pieces alongside each other is VERY valuable. Think of it this way, would you rather add Acro, Tactician, and Sneaky Strike to the Silent's starter Deck, or would you rather add Reflex instead of the Tactician? Which do you think is going to get more work done in Act 1? Finally, Energy is ONLY useful on the turn you gain it (unless you have Ice Cream), whereas the value gained from cycling your Deck by drawing cards persists. Reflex is generally better than Tactician. Tactician becomes better than Reflex once you have the Deck-control. BTW, I'd LOVE to see this guy try to evaluate Clash, Grand Finale, and Signature Move, the three most unreliable Attack Cards in the game XD.
@@TheOneJameYT I also find it funny that Doppelganger in Slay The Spire is FAR more similar to the card Tactician in Dominion than the Tactician card in Slay The Spire is.
I think it might be useful to put the context of what you're trying to do in Slay the Spire in tcg terminology. The problems your deck will have to solve in a spire run are known ahead of time, although not every problem will show up every run and the order in which they show up will be random. As such, most of your decks will have to be pretty multifaceted, very few runs will allow you to steamroll everything with a fast degenerate combo. There are three types of fights in spire (loosely speaking). The shorter fights typically have low health enemies that output a lot of immediate damage, you want your deck to play like an aggro deck in these fights, outputting lots of front loaded damage and block. Then there are medium health enemies that still output lots of immediate damage. In these fights, you need to play like a mid-range deck, setting up some long term scaling while still having good immediate output. Then there are (most of) the bosses, where you want to play like a control deck, setting up strong long term scaling, or permanently debuffing enemies, at the cost of immediate output. In practice, this is hard to do. Sometimes, you can setup your deck with enough glue through card draw or card retain to be all three decks in one, but more often, your decks will only be good at 2 of these aspects and your relics, permanent power upgrades you acquire through the game, will cover the rest. This is why very few cards can really ever be more than situationally good in Spire. A card can be a really good control card, but if you're lacking in immediate frontload, that card will likely be a brick that weighs you down. Nightmare is a perfect example of this. It's an insane card in terms of end game scaling, but if you're lacking efficient immediate damage, you don't have the ability to retain it for consistency, or you don't have an energy relic to make it easier to play, it's usually a skip. I would very rarely pick Nightmare over Glass Knife (1 mana deal 24 when upgraded) or Die Die Die (1 mana deal 17 AoE) at the end of act 1, but at the end of act 2, when my deck needs to focus more on it's controlling aspect, Nightmare will often be much better.
@@cragl3yman343 Nightmare Wraith Form is the classic combo but there are a couple other reasons to pick it. Well Laid Plans or a Pyramid/Snecko boss swap are near mandatory, but I've also picked it if I found some Adrenalines and have a good discard setup with Calc Gambles and Reflexes/Tacticians. I might also pick it as the boss reward if I had a really great set of frontload damage cards in act 1 and can afford to carry Nightmare as a curse temporarily, because it does have such good late game potential. Nightmare After Image or Footwork can also win fights in the same manner as Nightmare Wraith Form, and I've had a number of great A20H runs that have had Nightmare Calc Gamble as their main engine.
Personally I would absolutely rate Reflex higher than Tactician, it is more useful for more of the game where Tactician is one of the last cards you want to add to a discard focused deck. Yes it is strong when your deck is ready for it, but the deck is ready for Reflex much sooner and Reflex enables you to take a lot more different cards and abuse a lot more cards, e.g., Calculated Gamble (already good but benifits way better from Reflex than Tactician), Storm of Steel (Tactician does nothing for this card, but Reflex works wonders with it), Concentrate (basically a better energy engine than Tactician if you have it combo with Reflex, seeing an upgraded Concentrate will make you really sad not to have a Reflex), Eviscerate (when picking Eviscerate you want to cycle a lot while discarding, Reflex basically makes this card free to play every single turn). It is especially true for act 4 that you rather want Reflex due to the amount of curses/statuses that pushes you to have a strong draw engine, especially due to the Spear putting 2 burns on top of your drawpile making you only draw 3 useful cards by default the next turn. Tactician would not help in that situation, for that you would want as high of a chance as you can have to cycle to other cards. I know it is a bit of a hot take, at least it use to be 2 years ago, but I think the community mostly agree that Reflex is a better pick more often. I've seen a lot high-end players slowly shift to that being the more consistently good pick for most of the game.
100% agree I much prefer Reflex. I wonder how high of an ascension they’ve beat the game on, because I also believe Bullet Time is a good even great card. The ability to play like 7 cards for free is absurd. Meanwhile After Image is super situational and usually provides little value.
I really liked how the explanation of the game was given at the beginning of this video, which I don't think has been done for the other non-Yugioh non-MTG games so far. But sure, I'd be interested in you playing Slay the Spire!
Great video and Nick was a cool guest, would certainly love to see more of this or actual StS content. Also would love to see you collab with KMBest, who does similar content for Marvel Snap, assuming you haven't played that.
Bullet Time is mid to good. It's downright busted if you can get artifact charges or orange pellets to negate the draw debuff. But even without that, Bullet Time+ in any deck, especially shivs and poison can be what lets you win the fight on that turn, by drawing as much as you can before playing BT+ with your remaining 2 energy. This is viable because The Silent has very good and cheap draw engines, and many of her decks are able to get a large hand while still saving enough for BT. Not to mention ring of the snake letting you start off with 7 cards.
Great video! Someone mentioned it already so I wont harp too much, but i do agree that reflex has (especially recently) been seen to be on average better than tactician cause reflex is usually a very easy take near end of act 1 or during act 2, which is generally the hardest part of sts runs. While the deck is still fairly small, having a reflex just helps you find your answers faster, whereas tactician usually gets you more energy to use the cards that help you find your answers, which is better for act 3/infinites.
I think the thing that popularized the genre is NOT Slay the spire, but the Hearthstone adventures. They were around way before and are also very fun to play (especially Saviors of uldum)
5:28 Flesh and Blood does not do that tho, in FaB, you can Arsenal a card at end of turn (that's basically a slot on the battlefield to stock a card) and then you keep the remaining cards in your hand and you draw back to 4.
It really says a lot that, there's been quite a good number of digital deck builder/card games that have come out on Steam SINCE Slay the Spire, yet StS is the one that I always go back to.
I really liked this video! It was fun, and Nick was very erudite. Ive put ALOT of time in slay the spire and even made a character mod so Ive done a lot of analysis on these cards. I would love to see you do more videos maybe with the other classes or comparing different archetypes within one class (because here we just saw most shiv/play lots of card, and the discard engine.) And yeah i would watch you play slay the spire on the channel,
5:20 I think you're thinking of Rush Duel, not Duel Links. Although Duel Links did add Rush less than 1 year ago, but the main mode is similar to regular YGO
After Image is much better because 1) you play it for one mana and it's gone from your pool for the rest of the fight and 2) they stack. So if you have a few of these stacked and you cycle through a lot of cards, which you do with the kind of deck that takes After Image, you can just focus on attack and not worry so much about defense. It synergizes really well with The Silent, in my opinion.
This game is very context based so this is all subjective but I think bullet time is better than it's given credit here. Just having a handful of 2/3 cost cards in your deck makes it so that playing a bullet time then dumping the rest of your hand is effectively like gaining an additional 5+ energy on a character who struggles usually with energy production. This guy thinks less of it because he's trying to infinite stacking draw and discard but it does nothing in that style of deck. If your deck is full of things like wraithform, Nightmare, bouncing flask, catalyst, leg sweep, crippling cloud it gets a lot better.
Play dance being one 16 Damage is already bananas and then just the sheer amount of. Extra things it gives you access to it. Like the other strategies that you are unlocking by using that card is nuts. It's probably my favorite card in the game because silence is my favorite character to. Play.
I’d love to see STS content here. Also couldn’t find a bunch of comments about the opinions in this video but to me Reflex slightly outweighs Tactician and Bullet Time clears After Image. I’d put it as a good card for sure.
There was a game before Slay the Spire on mobile called DeckDeDungeon that was a roguelike deckbuilder. It's no longer playable and I have suspicions about the connection between the two games.
My favorite card is also Nightmare. I like to get 2 upgraded nightmares and nightmare a nightmare plus so I can do it again later on all my power cards.
Just saw the Frost Prime updated tier list rating Reflex higher than Tactician. It's kinda cool that various top players rate cards different, even years after the last balance patch released. IMO unupgraded Reflex is better than unupgraded Tactician, but upgraded the Tactician is better.
Powers are more like Emblems than Enchantments. skills and attacks would be sorceries, as afaik there is no way to play cards on your opponents turn, you can draw on your opponents turn with like 1 specific relic iirc, it's like, the first time you'd take damage in combat, draw 3.
It'd be interesting to see you evaluate the class tier list once you've seen all the classes like you do when you have someone compare archetypes against each other.
I have a problem with the doppleganger slanmder, espically upgraded its just a free energy and draw every turn, and you can use it after using other cards while nightmare you have to almost soley use that card so you better hope they aren't hiting you hard when you draw it
Great video but personally I'd disagree with the after image being ranked mid. Since silent deck almost always end up being shiv decks (or at least having some shivs) after image ends up giving a decent amount of block. 1 mana for 5 to 15 block per turn, every turn for the whole fight is great. I dont see a scenario where you're offered an after image and dont pick it (unless that card choice offers one of the few better cards). It also combo very well with blurs. Also, ud like to see you play slay the spire
20:50... I mean, the sentiment exists, but you don't really have card advantage in StS... considering the enemies have no cards. You have a card economy. The important distinction is that you don't gain anything from having more cards by itself, most important testiment to that are cards like slimed or Dazed. You rarely want to draw extra copies of those, unless your deck really revolves around discarding/cycling
Ok so I mostly agree with most of the comments and I've been persuaded by the reflex fans but I'm not convinced about nightmare. I am really never happy to see nightmare in the rewards screen. Why do I want to spend all my mana on making three copies of a card if I can just draft that same card again (which has got to be the same rarity or more common than nightmare) then cycle my deck until I see it again a few times? Which btw I don't like the idea of card copies in the first place since they clog up my draw and it's not like I only wanna play that one card all combat save for very specific scenarios. Not to mention you need to draw and keep the nightmare and the target card at the same time while keeping enough energy to do the combo and not doing anything else that turn. And I'm not gonna say doppelganger is a beast but if it's in my deck it is always nice to see. Unlike nightmare, you don't need to play it for 3 mana. The fact that it's an x cost makes it infinitely more versatile. If you had a shit draw, it allows you to spend your three mana on your next turn with extra draw. You had a good draw, maybe playing doppelganger is a better use of the last 1 mana than that 6 dmg strike. If you didn't play doppelganger then it was a great fricking draw and having it as a "dead draw" didn't impact you. It's a viable strategy to balance your energy generation in the worst case scenario. It's mid and not flashy but way better and more flexible than nightmare pretty much always. Nightmare is very situational and there's often an easier more consistent way to get the same result. The only moment I think nightmare might be better than just drafting more copies of a card is if you just madness'd some power or high impact exhaust card that by their nature take themselves out of your deck after play, and even then that ends after that combat. The other thing that bothered me was the bullet time analysis. Yeah cycling is cool but 99% of the game isn't infinite drawing. You can easily get like 2-4 card draws for 0-1 mana (especially on discard focused decks) very easily which lends itself nicely to a 2 cost bullet time. If you don't have draw you still got to play 4 cards when you would've played 3-4 assuming no curses. If you have infinite cycling then the place it took didn't affect you. Not even counting 2- or 3-cost cards which really shine with bullet time. When considering upgrades, many of them lower your energy cost making them easier to play; well upgrading bullet time makes *all* of them infinitely easier to play for the cost of a *single* upgrade! And then you can consider x cost cards. There's a few ways to generate energy mid turn as discussed in the video, well you bullet time'd and generated a bit of energy and you think that's useless because it all costs 0 - no! You just increased the value of your x cost card by an order of magnitude. And you might say "that's really specific tho"; not as specific as any nightmare combo, I'll say that much. And it's not better than after image but only because afterimage is absolutely goated. Spend 1 mana at the start of combat and easily get anywhere between 3, 5, or 20 block every turn for free. This allows you to be much more aggressive, especially against enemies with thorns, and can make the difference between life and death when you really need to turtle down. "1 block isn't all that great considering you have 70 health" yeah but throughout the whole fight it generated anywhere between 20 and an arbitrarily large amount of block for a one mana cost and that's huge. This comment might read as harsh but I'm just really passionate about this game, that's all. Cheers.
Slay the Spire is great, would definitely be interesting. Or a sequel with the red cards or blue cards. (I do kinda like the Defect just because: orbs)
if you are gonna play slay the spire, check out Frost Prime he's kinda got a series of helping content creators play the game. he's helped people who are brand new with no card game knowledge all the way up to people who're on the hardest difficulty. he's even played with Rarran from Hearthstone. also, i would like to see you play the game :)
I want James/You to play Slay The Spire. A lot. And thats both "I want it a lot" and "I want you to play it a lot.", At the very least, I'd want to see a few runs as each character, so you can see how they differ, and what different builds you could try.
I think it was an incredibly smart decision not to include any poison cards in this - it adds another axis of complexity in comparing cards against each other which would make it way harder without having the experience of actual gameplay.
I actually disagree with Tactician being superior to Reflex. Firstly, going infinite just rarely happens on Silent, so the infinite potential hardly matters. Secondly, getting to your best cards ASAP is usually something Silent wants. You want to get to your Wraith Form, Bouncing Flask, Noxious Fumes, Catalyst, Nightmare, etc. as quickly as possible, so massive card draw is really what you need in most fights toward the end-game.
as a “pro” spire player i was pleasantly surprised with the explanation of the game and the card evaluations. i would say that distraction is definitely a “bad” card though, mostly just because the value of having skills in early game are greatly reduced due to the elite and hallway fights. really cool vid though, if you ever want to get some coaching and play spire more seriously please hit me up!
You should definitely play Slay The Spire, if nothing else to understand where a lot of modern card design is coming from in videogames. The developers struck pure gold with the game's mechanics.
![Twenty One Pilots - “The Line” (from Arcane Season 2) [Official Music Video]](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/E2Rj2gQAyPA/mqdefault.jpg)
If you want me to play Slay the Spire on this channel, 100 comments starting here 👇
I would absolutely love to see that. If for no other reason than seeing like, your initial first reactions to the game. That being said, its really really fun.
I'd love to see that. Super fun game.
Slay the Spire is the greatest card game ever made. Play it.
Ta ta ta today junior!!!
That would be awesome, and playing the game itself would almost be a little version of your videos where you are forced to evaluate cards on the spot to see how/if they fit in your deck. It has the perfect amount of depth to be endlessly replayable and yet approachable too; highly recommend.
It is genuinely impressive that he managed to go through an entire explainer of the Silent without ever showing a poison card, given that Poison is one of the Silent's major mechanics.
shivs are much better than poison
@@DjilaliAlaouia You make it sound like an either/or proposition, rather than it being a case of knowing how to best make use of mechanics. If you only know how to use shivs, you understand maybe a 1/3 of how the Silent works.
@@Mrinsecure the thing about shivs is that there like the main source of damge in early game you'll always take a knife dance and can synergize with discard builds and shiv builds while poison is just too slow in early game and dosnt synergize with shiz and enemies with artifacts will only make your run harder
@@DjilaliAlaouia The real issue is that you can never truly control what cards you're going to get. If you don't get decent shiv synergy early, do you just restart the run? Or do you try to build off the Silent's other mechanics like discard/draw and poison?
I mean, yes, you *could* just keep restarting until you get blade dance after your first battle, but then you haven't really learned how to play the game, have you?
@@Mrinsecure brother blade dance is a common card its like 90% of the time you'll find it
and i understand your that you need to make a deck from what ever the game gives you after all thats what rogue lite are about . but sometimes you dont like the way some cards play sometimes you dont understand the cards sometimes you're simply not good enough
the point that i want to make is that you dont need to learn 100% of the game you just need to learn about 80% of the game
Slay the Spire is so tight designwise its impressive
💯
I loved it so much I’ve played like a dozen mods for adding more characters, they’re not always balanced, but it is interesting to see what sort of things you can do with the game engine…
@@jamesfirecat6652 Try avocado if you haven't yet, it's hilarious
So frickin excited for StS 2
The mechanic of building your deck from a starter deck as you play (as opposed to up front as in MtG or in a separate drafting phase), and discaring your hand at end of turn, came from Dominion (2008).
Good to know!
Once a cards exhausted, it tends to stay in exhaust?
Laughs in ironlad exhuming ritual dagger over and over.
Literally only one card in the entire game to do it though. So not just rare to happen, but more like ultra rare.
@@kobarsos82 spoon
@@jesperjrgensen7067spoon doesn't exhume. It prevents cards from being exhausted.
It's also a shop exclusive relic, so it's quite rare
@@kobarsos82 you also have silver spoon and duel wield
@@Jet-ij9zc i find shop exclusives easier to find than anything else, the shop pool isn't exactly that large and i always try to find a shop on every floor
+1 "Hey James! I want you play Slay the Spire."
I think it's important to recognize in Slay the Spire that "card advantage" isn't as important as other card games. It was mentioned at the beginning, but the fact that you always draw a hand of 5 and then discard them away, while eventually redrawing your deck, means that what you actually want is more card selection, not card advantage.
This is also why I disagree with the evaluation of Reflex vs Tactician. Extra energy is somewhat of a noob trap because in order for energy to be good, you need good cards to spend it on, as well as needing enough card selection to play enough cards in the first place. You don't get to store cards for later (exceptions being retain keyword and why Runic Pyramid is such a powerful relic), so extra energy to eventually play them is usually worse than being able to see more of your good cards. Reflex is more card selection (especially with Calculated Gamble, the 0 energy wheel) and generally more consistent than Tactician. This is what I've observed watching A20 streakers at least.
Also, Watcher is definitely the Yugioh character. She can most easily go infinite and often has to check if she has lethals turn 1 against most fights. Watcher is just absurd when played well.
"Card advantage" is a relative term; enemies in Spire don't have cards, thus you can never have card advantage over them. However, bricking is still a very real threat, especially with status cards being put in your deck, or Time Eater's draw down debuff. You would generally prefer looking at more cards over less, but generally, to get the numerical output necessary to deal with late game threats, you need to play more cards as well. There are obviously strategies that can play well under choker, like poison starter+multiple catalyst+Wraith form, but infinites/"lots" tend to require less specific card combinations to increase your output.
Tactician is probably the best reusable energy generation card in the Silent's card pool, the only other one that does something the turn you play it is concentrate, which I can circle back to later. It's the easiest one to make work because acrobatics, dagger throw, calculated gamble etc. are cards you would probably be drafting anyway. Combine a high volume of draw cards with card removes and a Tactician or two, and you can either go infinite, or just play a lot of cards if you can't. Now, I think reflex is a good card, but Tactician is not a noob trap, it works with the discard you would be drafting anyway and allows you to play more cards.
I think reflex plays better with cards that go minus 1 or more, especially if a lot of your deck's draw cards are minus, in similar fashion to expertise. So if you didn't get offered many acrobatics, but instead you got offered things like gamble, prepared, and concentrate, you can use reflex to offset your minus 1s (concentrate ofc being a minus 4 un-upgraded/3 upgraded) and maintain your combo. I personally prefer Tactician+acrobatics and some different draw cards to make sure my Tacticians don't miss the reshuffle (as this often can cause you to drop your combo, unless your deck is very small/has a huge energy surplus), but reflex in combination with concentrate can do the same job. You can also use them in the same deck if you don't have many cards like acrobatics or backflip that go plus.
As a bit of a note, I think calculated gamble is also a powerful enabler of infinites, and just a generally good card. I tend to draft it regardless of whether or not I think my deck can go infinite, because it's really good anti-brick insurance. It's also good at getting to your setup cards like Apotheosis and powers faster, reducing your first cycle's turn count. Late game you tend to only get "1 free turn", so being able to cycle faster becomes increasingly more valuable as the game progresses. I would also add, that being able to play all of your powers and exhaustable setup/extenders also reduces the number of cards you have to draw through on subsequent cycles, making it less likely that you brick, which either requires energy generation, or zero cost upgrades like for tools of the trade/terror/alchemize.
Runic pyramid is not retain, it does the same thing, but much like Yugioh, wording matters. Effects that proc on retain do not proc from pyramid.
i usually prefer tactician because it allows you to play your whole deck, several times even. silent already gets a ton of card draw from other cards like acrobatics(common), expertise etc
Tactician is way better than Reflex. The way infinite silent generates energy is with Tactician or Concentrate, Sundial if you're lucky. The way infinite silent draws cards is with Acrobatics, Calculated Gamble, Prepared, Backflip, Reflex, Escape Plan (sort of), Well Laid Plans/Runic Pyramid (for card advantage), Dagger Throw (in a pinch), and Expertise (if the deck is bad). Notably, the best card draw cards discard as a bonus, so it's super easy to load up on them, slot in one Tactician+, and be infinite as long as you aren't getting bricked by basics. This doesn't work for Reflex since its activation condition is the same: having good enough card draw to draw it before using a discard effect. That means it's card draw that only works if you have good card draw, and if you just look at the list drawing cards is a lot less exclusive than gaining energy. Most decks would rather rely on Tactician than on Concentrate, Reflex's strongest synergy. Most forms of Nightmare would rather work with Tactician, either by making a bunch of Calculated Gambles and playing one Acrobatics per draw cycle (which is paid for by Tactician) or by making a bunch of Tactician and playing a bunch of Acrobatics and Calculated Gamble per draw cycle. The "energy is bait" phenomenon disappears when your deck actually runs a sufficient amount of card draw (and removes basics) and it's super easy to throw in another acrobatics if you're still running out of stuff to spend it on.
One thing I just wanna add for card evaluation: There are two endpoints to the game. One is considered the "true end", but it's the one point in the game where you fight the same enemies every single time. This allows you to prepare yourself for it, but the problem is, these enemies just eliminate a few deck choices that can get you a pretty solid win on the not-true-end route. So a lot of cards that are considered "bad" by the community actually allow you to carry pretty easily, as long as you don't go towards the true end.
You can kinda liken the final enemy to someone always playing Jinzo Turbo with Royal Decree etc. You can easily build to defeat him, but you won't be bringing any trap based strategies for that.
To add to this a bit, the more I've played Silent in particular (I'm around 20 a20 heart kills now), the more I've realized that your entire deck building plan needs to prioritize time eater and heart as key fights (2/3 odds of having to fight time eater every run means you may as well assume you will). While shivs can deal very good damage and are a great solve for early to late game, unless you get very lucky with relics and card rewards focusing too hard on shivs will likely kill you in time eater/heart. Strength reducing cards like piercing wail and malaise are not great in most fights but the fights they are good in (time eater/heart/awakened one/stabby book etc) make them crucial picks for any deck.
i find that all decks are viable, it's just that some decks need either a silver bullet, backup or just sheer defensive power for things like time eater
@@skibble7444 i personally find that it's really easy to find a silver bullet for shivs or discard, just having two different sides to your deck that meld well together is enough like having skewer with discard and energy scaling.
@@Ghorda9 this is pretty much what I was saying. Shivs can be very strong but if you lowroll synergistic cards and relics for them you absolutely need contingencies for time eater. I just think the idea of a "crazy shiv build" can inspire focusing too much on shivs and pure damage hoping for a lucky run rather than building a solid deck that happens to have shivs in it.
this is why i wish there were more custom campaign mod options, i think ive played gensokyo more times then regular at this point
Would be lovely if some of the more funky mechanics/strategies like Poison, Terror, Lightning Quick cycle, or simple combos like Barricade Body slam, as well as "noob traps" were shown here.
Slay the Spire has a lot of cards you really don't want, but that look neat, (like some of the colourless trash), so showing those to the unknown could be fun
I want to see a followup where you introduce Curses and ask him to identify the most detrimental Curse cards.
I think specifically with distraction (and all other card generators), the only restrictions are that:
1. It cannot give you starter cards (in fact, there is no way to generate more starter cards in combat except by using Nightmare)
2. It cannot give you cards that could heal your HP
3. It cannot give you cards that are generated by other cards (like shivs)
Also, all things that generate random cards during combat (including potions, relics, and cards) can't give you cards that don't belong to the card-pool of the character you're currently playing as (with the exceptions of Foreign Influence, Colourless Potion, Toolbox, Jack Of All Trades, Magnetism, and Transmutation), nor can they generate Feed, Lesson Learned, Alchemise, or Wish, nor can they give you event-specific cards such as J.A.X. or Apparitions.
Please get around to doing Ironclad, Defect and Watcher as well I would love to see more of this!
Slay the Spire may or may not be on sale for 66% off for the next week and a half.
I'd love you to play Slay the Spire on the channel. I think you'd have a lot of fun, but I also think that the Slay the Spire community will hound towards your channel from that video. So i'd say, set your expectations and set the channel's expectations appropriately. I think it could be really easy for you to end up playing Slay the Spire more often on the channel from this, but also maybe that's not what you'd want to do longterm for this channel.
Would love to see you play Slay the Spire! By the way, FrostPrime, a very fun sts RUclipsr has been doing more collabs with people recently coaching them at playing the game- namely with Rarran from hearthstone, might be worth reaching out!
+1 to seeing TheOneJame try to tackle the Spire on the channel here
Its literally impossible to not LOVE this game, if you have background with card games such as Magic the Gathering. The design is sublime, its super impressive, the skill ceiling high, the combinations too fun to not tinker with, the replayability through the roof. You can play thousands of hours and still keep improving, and still keep doing new combinations. Its absurd how well designed this all is. Easy to learn but so hard to master. Hearthstone players, MtG players, all card gamers in general, this will always be the deckbuilder we never knew we wanted. Absolutely peak card gaming of our century.
Not only I want you to play slay the spire, I NEED you to play it on the channel 😂
I think giving some context on what your goals are in the early game, mid game and late game would have been useful. The analysis on distraction for instance is just wrong. Distraction is one of the worst cards in Silent's pool not because it is necessarily inherently bad but because it doesn't fit your goals at any stage in the game, unless you are desperate. In the early game, your only real goal is adding damage (especially on Ascension 20 but even on lower ascension). Distraction doesn't do that in a reliable manner. Additionally, your other top priority in the early game is to find cards that help deal with elites, and distraction is extremely bad into Gremlin Nob. Distraction also doesn't scale at all into late game because it is so unreliable. I wouldn't call this a situational card at all, largely because the early game does not favor picking skills that don't guarantee damage.
I wouldn't call distraction bad at all. In certain decks where you want to play alot of cards it is certainly playable. Now of the "playable" cards (that arent outright detrimental) it might be on the lower end, but calling it bad is a bit much.
Edit: Just rewatched the section where they explain how they tier the cards and distraction would definitely go into the "bad" tier. But my reply still stands that I think the card itself is basically a neutral do nothing card and I would call that mid.
@@TheKastellan It is really not good. There are far better options in the silent card pool if you want to play lots of cards, and it doesn't fit into the best version of this archetype (discard synergies) very well. Picking a non-upgraded Distraction up after act 1 is pretty difficult to justify and at ascension 20 at least, it is simply not a card you can afford to pickup in act 1 because it is so bad into gremlin nob and the bosses. If you get an upgraded Distraction in act 2 and you don't have an energy relic, you can get some value from it, but its lack of reliability and its pretty poor return on investment makes it pretty bad. Silent's card pool is actually pretty high quality, so justifyng a Distraction is hard.
@@Sidnv honestly until this video I forgot distraction existed ngl. I never pick that card
@@TheKastellan It is just straight up bad, distraction is a noob trap card and shouldn't be even given "mid". Other commenter is right, in act 1 you need to pick damage cards early on, so it's not good early, and it doesn't scale because it doesn't add any direction to your deck for synergy later on. Not only that, there are so many synergy reliant silent skills that are completely useless in the wrong deck, the average random skill is often pretty bad or a 0 cost skill that you paid 1 energy for. As for "playing lots of cards" as a strategy, this is done so much better through draw and discard synergy, which also have much more potential for infinites later on, having a "2 for 1" card the first time you play it is not worth it
@@Jonathan_Guan Honestly don't really agree with my original comment, I replied given the original comment said it was one of Silent's worst card which I definitely would disagree.
If I had to evaluate silent it would be a "do nothing" card since for the most part the value it generates. Which obviously is bad in act 1 (which was never an argument) and is mostly neutral-bad in act 2 and above.
I called it mid in my reply given that it isn't usually outright detrimental in my experience compared to some cards but to be fair given the criteria of the video which I just checked again it would definitely go into bad.
Tactician better than reflex? that's a strange take. Tactician can so easily brick your deck and do nothing, even when you can discard it you might just not have anything to spend the mana on.
Reflex is much more consistent and it also enables infinites in a very similar way.
I'd say tactician is very mid and reflex is good.
You DO NOT discard your hand when the turn ends in duel links
I agree with Nick. You like the cards enough looking at them you're going to LOVE playing it. Its the ultimate deck building roguelike
My evaluation for a few of the cards or card-pairs presented, in order, below.
1. The only times in which it's a bad idea to pick up Acro (in card reward screens) is if it's being offered alongside a higher-priority card, or you don't have enough Energy being generated by your Cards/Relics to justify adding more card-draw to your Deck, or you already have so many copies of Acro, Backflip, and Reflex in your Deck that you virtually always have positive card-draw effects in your hand no matter how many times you use them, or you have Runic Pyramid and don't want to make hand-clog issues worse for yourself (STS had a handsize limit of 10 cards).
2. Distraction is easily one of the worst Silent cards for two main reasons: The first is Gremlin Knob. The second is the fact that it gives you a Skill that is RANDOM. Out of the three main card-types, Skill Cards are easily the most powerful because of how versatile they are. However, this extreme amount of variability in the types of effects that Skill Cards can have means that Distraction may give you a card that's not only useless on the particular turn you're given it, but it may also be useless in the current combat overall because it doesn't synnergize with the current Deck build you have (for example, imagine Distraction giving you Prepared, Concentrate, Tactician, or Reflex when you don't have a discard build). At least Infernal Blade is GUARANTEED to give you a card that'll damage the enemies after you play it and White Noise is ALMOST guaranteed to give you a good form of scaling (and if not, the Power Card it gives you still combos with Storm, Heatsinks, Forcefield, Mummified Hand, etc.). Additionally, the VAST majority of Silent Skill Cards cost 1 Energy or less anyway, therefore Distraction NEEDS to be upgraded for it to be better than simply adding the random card that it gives you to your Deck normally. Going by the definitions of your ranking system, this card is bad.
3. This is very dumb, but Finisher actually DOESN'T count itself. I think the reason why is because the game is programmed to not consider a card to be 'played' until after it's fully resolved its immediate on-play effect(s). This is the main reason why Finisher is bad. It makes it very unideal in Act 1. Finisher is also NOT the best card to combo with Blade Dance, that card is Accuracy because at least Accuracy doesn't need to be played after the Blade Dance. In fact, Accuracy doesn't even need to be played on the same TURN as the Blade Dance because it's a Power Card (similar deal with Terror). Ideally, in the late game, you generally want your Deck to be at about 20% card-draw cards, 40% Block, while the rest is damage, scaling, and other esoteric effects (like Energy gain). You only want a small portion of your Deck to be dedicated to damage (at least by the late game, which is when Finisher is going to be able to combo with stuff because you'll have more combo pieces by that point). Therefore, if you're running a Shiv Deck, you'd rather have a Terror and a couple of Accuracys as your few damage-based combo pieces (not considering Relics), rather than having something less viable like Finisher.
4. Just because Tactician is the main infinite enabler for Silent Decks doesn't mean that it's better than Reflex. That's like saying Reversal Quiz is the best Spell Card in classic Yugioh because its the enabler for Library FTK. You seem to not remember that STS is not only a Deckbuilder, it's a card-drafting game. I virtually never see Silent infinites in high-level STS play and I watch it a LOT. The majority of the time, you're not going to be given a good opportunity to do a proper discard Deck in a Silent run, let alone go infinite. Generally speaking, Reflex is a better card than Tactician for two main reasons. Firstly, if your handsize is getting smaller because you're discarding a card from your hand, Energy is going to be less useful because you now have less potential good cards to spend that Energy on. Meanwhile, card-draw becomes MORE valuable the less cards you have in your hand because gaining more optionality becomes more valuable. To give a specific example, a 5-Card hand that contains Tactician, Survivor, Defend and 2 Strikes isn't as good as a hand that has Reflex, Survivor, Defend and 2 Strikes. Secondly, Discard Decks are VERY heavily dependant on you drawing certain combo pieces alongside each other for them to work (with a few exceptions, such as Tingsha and Hovering Kite). So having more card-draw to more reliably draw those combo pieces alongside each other is VERY valuable. Think of it this way, would you rather add Acro, Tactician, and Sneaky Strike to the Silent's starter Deck, or would you rather add Reflex instead of the Tactician? Which do you think is going to get more work done in Act 1? Finally, Energy is ONLY useful on the turn you gain it (unless you have Ice Cream), whereas the value gained from cycling your Deck by drawing cards persists. Reflex is generally better than Tactician. Tactician becomes better than Reflex once you have the Deck-control.
BTW, I'd LOVE to see this guy try to evaluate Clash, Grand Finale, and Signature Move, the three most unreliable Attack Cards in the game XD.
Maybe I’ll do that 👀
@@TheOneJameYT I also find it funny that Doppelganger in Slay The Spire is FAR more similar to the card Tactician in Dominion than the Tactician card in Slay The Spire is.
no, but the second Finisher would count the FIRST Finisher, which is what he said
A slay the spire video here on the channel would be fire
I think it might be useful to put the context of what you're trying to do in Slay the Spire in tcg terminology. The problems your deck will have to solve in a spire run are known ahead of time, although not every problem will show up every run and the order in which they show up will be random. As such, most of your decks will have to be pretty multifaceted, very few runs will allow you to steamroll everything with a fast degenerate combo. There are three types of fights in spire (loosely speaking). The shorter fights typically have low health enemies that output a lot of immediate damage, you want your deck to play like an aggro deck in these fights, outputting lots of front loaded damage and block. Then there are medium health enemies that still output lots of immediate damage. In these fights, you need to play like a mid-range deck, setting up some long term scaling while still having good immediate output. Then there are (most of) the bosses, where you want to play like a control deck, setting up strong long term scaling, or permanently debuffing enemies, at the cost of immediate output. In practice, this is hard to do. Sometimes, you can setup your deck with enough glue through card draw or card retain to be all three decks in one, but more often, your decks will only be good at 2 of these aspects and your relics, permanent power upgrades you acquire through the game, will cover the rest.
This is why very few cards can really ever be more than situationally good in Spire. A card can be a really good control card, but if you're lacking in immediate frontload, that card will likely be a brick that weighs you down. Nightmare is a perfect example of this. It's an insane card in terms of end game scaling, but if you're lacking efficient immediate damage, you don't have the ability to retain it for consistency, or you don't have an energy relic to make it easier to play, it's usually a skip. I would very rarely pick Nightmare over Glass Knife (1 mana deal 24 when upgraded) or Die Die Die (1 mana deal 17 AoE) at the end of act 1, but at the end of act 2, when my deck needs to focus more on it's controlling aspect, Nightmare will often be much better.
I only pick Nightmare end of Act 1 if I have Wraith Form in my deck already
@@cragl3yman343 Nightmare Wraith Form is the classic combo but there are a couple other reasons to pick it. Well Laid Plans or a Pyramid/Snecko boss swap are near mandatory, but I've also picked it if I found some Adrenalines and have a good discard setup with Calc Gambles and Reflexes/Tacticians. I might also pick it as the boss reward if I had a really great set of frontload damage cards in act 1 and can afford to carry Nightmare as a curse temporarily, because it does have such good late game potential. Nightmare After Image or Footwork can also win fights in the same manner as Nightmare Wraith Form, and I've had a number of great A20H runs that have had Nightmare Calc Gamble as their main engine.
I'm a yugioh player who has played a bunch of clones before and maybe a month ago started playing slay the spire. I would totally watch a run.
Personally I would absolutely rate Reflex higher than Tactician, it is more useful for more of the game where Tactician is one of the last cards you want to add to a discard focused deck. Yes it is strong when your deck is ready for it, but the deck is ready for Reflex much sooner and Reflex enables you to take a lot more different cards and abuse a lot more cards, e.g., Calculated Gamble (already good but benifits way better from Reflex than Tactician), Storm of Steel (Tactician does nothing for this card, but Reflex works wonders with it), Concentrate (basically a better energy engine than Tactician if you have it combo with Reflex, seeing an upgraded Concentrate will make you really sad not to have a Reflex), Eviscerate (when picking Eviscerate you want to cycle a lot while discarding, Reflex basically makes this card free to play every single turn).
It is especially true for act 4 that you rather want Reflex due to the amount of curses/statuses that pushes you to have a strong draw engine, especially due to the Spear putting 2 burns on top of your drawpile making you only draw 3 useful cards by default the next turn. Tactician would not help in that situation, for that you would want as high of a chance as you can have to cycle to other cards.
I know it is a bit of a hot take, at least it use to be 2 years ago, but I think the community mostly agree that Reflex is a better pick more often. I've seen a lot high-end players slowly shift to that being the more consistently good pick for most of the game.
i disagree with you massively, tactician allows you to cycle your deck many times if you have acrobatics(common) or expertise.
100% agree I much prefer Reflex. I wonder how high of an ascension they’ve beat the game on, because I also believe Bullet Time is a good even great card. The ability to play like 7 cards for free is absurd. Meanwhile After Image is super situational and usually provides little value.
The first roguelite run attempt (30 minutes or so) is always great to see. It would be great to see.
You should absolutely play slay the spire on the channel, I'd love to see it!
Wow I just got back into slay the spire, what a nice coincidence.
I really liked how the explanation of the game was given at the beginning of this video, which I don't think has been done for the other non-Yugioh non-MTG games so far.
But sure, I'd be interested in you playing Slay the Spire!
Great video and Nick was a cool guest, would certainly love to see more of this or actual StS content.
Also would love to see you collab with KMBest, who does similar content for Marvel Snap, assuming you haven't played that.
I recently started playing Slay the Spire and it's very fun, I'd enjoy watching it on the channel too!
"there's no graveyard or cards that interact with it"
Exhume/exhausted cards:
Bullet Time is mid to good. It's downright busted if you can get artifact charges or orange pellets to negate the draw debuff. But even without that, Bullet Time+ in any deck, especially shivs and poison can be what lets you win the fight on that turn, by drawing as much as you can before playing BT+ with your remaining 2 energy. This is viable because The Silent has very good and cheap draw engines, and many of her decks are able to get a large hand while still saving enough for BT. Not to mention ring of the snake letting you start off with 7 cards.
Great video!
Someone mentioned it already so I wont harp too much, but i do agree that reflex has (especially recently) been seen to be on average better than tactician cause reflex is usually a very easy take near end of act 1 or during act 2, which is generally the hardest part of sts runs. While the deck is still fairly small, having a reflex just helps you find your answers faster, whereas tactician usually gets you more energy to use the cards that help you find your answers, which is better for act 3/infinites.
I think the thing that popularized the genre is NOT Slay the spire, but the Hearthstone adventures. They were around way before and are also very fun to play (especially Saviors of uldum)
Slay the Spire 2 is my most anticipated games now. It’s so well-designed.
5:28
Flesh and Blood does not do that tho, in FaB, you can Arsenal a card at end of turn (that's basically a slot on the battlefield to stock a card) and then you keep the remaining cards in your hand and you draw back to 4.
Wow, finally a video about a game I understand
Never seen this channel before (never played yugioh, barely played some MTG), but I will watch the guy play STS for the first time, that sounds fun.
This is my 1 month check in / reminder looking for the follow up slay the spire video on this channel.
It is coming!! I have a queue of videos to be edited, I like to stay ahead of myself
@@TheOneJameYT Perfect! I'm new here, been checking back relatively frequently and a month felt like a good time to check in.
I DEFINATELY want James to play Slay the Spire! Great game!
That last pairing really tested you. Well done to both of you with that question!
Thanks!
The people demand you play Slay the Spire. I agree with them.
Solid video mate, would love to see more slay the spire content.
Time to play slay the spire on the channel!
It really says a lot that, there's been quite a good number of digital deck builder/card games that have come out on Steam SINCE Slay the Spire, yet StS is the one that I always go back to.
As both an avid yugioh and slay the spire player, I'd love to see you attempt a blind run!
Do another one but with the other character pools! I would love to see a 1h video trying to figure out how good each card of the character is
I really liked this video! It was fun, and Nick was very erudite. Ive put ALOT of time in slay the spire and even made a character mod so Ive done a lot of analysis on these cards.
I would love to see you do more videos maybe with the other classes or comparing different archetypes within one class (because here we just saw most shiv/play lots of card, and the discard engine.)
And yeah i would watch you play slay the spire on the channel,
I’d love to see you play slay the spire on the channel
5:20 I think you're thinking of Rush Duel, not Duel Links. Although Duel Links did add Rush less than 1 year ago, but the main mode is similar to regular YGO
After Image is much better because 1) you play it for one mana and it's gone from your pool for the rest of the fight and 2) they stack. So if you have a few of these stacked and you cycle through a lot of cards, which you do with the kind of deck that takes After Image, you can just focus on attack and not worry so much about defense. It synergizes really well with The Silent, in my opinion.
This game is very context based so this is all subjective but I think bullet time is better than it's given credit here. Just having a handful of 2/3 cost cards in your deck makes it so that playing a bullet time then dumping the rest of your hand is effectively like gaining an additional 5+ energy on a character who struggles usually with energy production. This guy thinks less of it because he's trying to infinite stacking draw and discard but it does nothing in that style of deck. If your deck is full of things like wraithform, Nightmare, bouncing flask, catalyst, leg sweep, crippling cloud it gets a lot better.
Now I'm thinking one of these videos with Inscryption.
The sacrifice mechanic, the pelts' risk and reward, totem battles....
It’s on my list!
I've been wanting to see this video for a while. Slay the Spire is an incredible game that every card gamer should play.
Play dance being one 16 Damage is already bananas and then just the sheer amount of.
Extra things it gives you access to it. Like the other strategies that you are unlocking by using that card is nuts. It's probably my favorite card in the game because silence is my favorite character to. Play.
I’d love to see STS content here. Also couldn’t find a bunch of comments about the opinions in this video but to me Reflex slightly outweighs Tactician and Bullet Time clears After Image. I’d put it as a good card for sure.
There was a game before Slay the Spire on mobile called DeckDeDungeon that was a roguelike deckbuilder. It's no longer playable and I have suspicions about the connection between the two games.
Heck yeah, let's see the Spire.
I'd like to see you play slay the spire
Hey James! I want you play Slay the Spire.
And w dog btw.
Sincerely,
100 viewers
My favorite card is also Nightmare. I like to get 2 upgraded nightmares and nightmare a nightmare plus so I can do it again later on all my power cards.
After showing him Blade Dance and Finisher, I would give him Envenom. YGO mind would go boom.
YES DO A RUN, its a fun time!
Just saw the Frost Prime updated tier list rating Reflex higher than Tactician. It's kinda cool that various top players rate cards different, even years after the last balance patch released.
IMO unupgraded Reflex is better than unupgraded Tactician, but upgraded the Tactician is better.
Powers are more like Emblems than Enchantments. skills and attacks would be sorceries, as afaik there is no way to play cards on your opponents turn, you can draw on your opponents turn with like 1 specific relic iirc, it's like, the first time you'd take damage in combat, draw 3.
You will never get starting deck cards from Distraction. At least, I've never gotten one in ~370 hours of playing.
We need to see that James blind run
I'm sure I'm not alone in saying it would be dope to watch you play through a run of STS for the first time 🙌
Subscribed just to watch you play slay the spire!!
🫡
It'd be interesting to see you evaluate the class tier list once you've seen all the classes like you do when you have someone compare archetypes against each other.
I have a problem with the doppleganger slanmder, espically upgraded its just a free energy and draw every turn, and you can use it after using other cards while nightmare you have to almost soley use that card so you better hope they aren't hiting you hard when you draw it
Jame should Slay some Spires
Great video but personally I'd disagree with the after image being ranked mid.
Since silent deck almost always end up being shiv decks (or at least having some shivs) after image ends up giving a decent amount of block. 1 mana for 5 to 15 block per turn, every turn for the whole fight is great. I dont see a scenario where you're offered an after image and dont pick it (unless that card choice offers one of the few better cards).
It also combo very well with blurs.
Also, ud like to see you play slay the spire
20:50... I mean, the sentiment exists, but you don't really have card advantage in StS... considering the enemies have no cards. You have a card economy. The important distinction is that you don't gain anything from having more cards by itself, most important testiment to that are cards like slimed or Dazed. You rarely want to draw extra copies of those, unless your deck really revolves around discarding/cycling
I'd like to see you play Slay the Spire. See how fast you pick up all the skills.
Ok so I mostly agree with most of the comments and I've been persuaded by the reflex fans but I'm not convinced about nightmare. I am really never happy to see nightmare in the rewards screen. Why do I want to spend all my mana on making three copies of a card if I can just draft that same card again (which has got to be the same rarity or more common than nightmare) then cycle my deck until I see it again a few times? Which btw I don't like the idea of card copies in the first place since they clog up my draw and it's not like I only wanna play that one card all combat save for very specific scenarios. Not to mention you need to draw and keep the nightmare and the target card at the same time while keeping enough energy to do the combo and not doing anything else that turn.
And I'm not gonna say doppelganger is a beast but if it's in my deck it is always nice to see. Unlike nightmare, you don't need to play it for 3 mana. The fact that it's an x cost makes it infinitely more versatile. If you had a shit draw, it allows you to spend your three mana on your next turn with extra draw. You had a good draw, maybe playing doppelganger is a better use of the last 1 mana than that 6 dmg strike. If you didn't play doppelganger then it was a great fricking draw and having it as a "dead draw" didn't impact you. It's a viable strategy to balance your energy generation in the worst case scenario. It's mid and not flashy but way better and more flexible than nightmare pretty much always. Nightmare is very situational and there's often an easier more consistent way to get the same result. The only moment I think nightmare might be better than just drafting more copies of a card is if you just madness'd some power or high impact exhaust card that by their nature take themselves out of your deck after play, and even then that ends after that combat.
The other thing that bothered me was the bullet time analysis. Yeah cycling is cool but 99% of the game isn't infinite drawing. You can easily get like 2-4 card draws for 0-1 mana (especially on discard focused decks) very easily which lends itself nicely to a 2 cost bullet time. If you don't have draw you still got to play 4 cards when you would've played 3-4 assuming no curses. If you have infinite cycling then the place it took didn't affect you. Not even counting 2- or 3-cost cards which really shine with bullet time. When considering upgrades, many of them lower your energy cost making them easier to play; well upgrading bullet time makes *all* of them infinitely easier to play for the cost of a *single* upgrade! And then you can consider x cost cards. There's a few ways to generate energy mid turn as discussed in the video, well you bullet time'd and generated a bit of energy and you think that's useless because it all costs 0 - no! You just increased the value of your x cost card by an order of magnitude. And you might say "that's really specific tho"; not as specific as any nightmare combo, I'll say that much. And it's not better than after image but only because afterimage is absolutely goated. Spend 1 mana at the start of combat and easily get anywhere between 3, 5, or 20 block every turn for free. This allows you to be much more aggressive, especially against enemies with thorns, and can make the difference between life and death when you really need to turtle down. "1 block isn't all that great considering you have 70 health" yeah but throughout the whole fight it generated anywhere between 20 and an arbitrarily large amount of block for a one mana cost and that's huge.
This comment might read as harsh but I'm just really passionate about this game, that's all. Cheers.
Play Slay the Spire on stream! Also, make it a poison build :) Wishing he had shown some of those cards to you. Great video
Oh interesting! This will be fun
I dont know who either of you are, but I love sts. Please play it on the channel. :)
Slay the Spire is great, would definitely be interesting. Or a sequel with the red cards or blue cards. (I do kinda like the Defect just because: orbs)
I'm planning on doing another video with a different color!
22:28
54, but close enough
I cannot wait to see you play slay the spire!!! It is my favorite game!!
Definitely would watch you play some slay the spire
Let's see some slay the spire gameplay!
if you are gonna play slay the spire, check out Frost Prime
he's kinda got a series of helping content creators play the game. he's helped people who are brand new with no card game knowledge all the way up to people who're on the hardest difficulty. he's even played with Rarran from Hearthstone.
also, i would like to see you play the game :)
I want James/You to play Slay The Spire.
A lot.
And thats both "I want it a lot" and "I want you to play it a lot.", At the very least, I'd want to see a few runs as each character, so you can see how they differ, and what different builds you could try.
I think it was an incredibly smart decision not to include any poison cards in this - it adds another axis of complexity in comparing cards against each other which would make it way harder without having the experience of actual gameplay.
I actually disagree with Tactician being superior to Reflex. Firstly, going infinite just rarely happens on Silent, so the infinite potential hardly matters. Secondly, getting to your best cards ASAP is usually something Silent wants. You want to get to your Wraith Form, Bouncing Flask, Noxious Fumes, Catalyst, Nightmare, etc. as quickly as possible, so massive card draw is really what you need in most fights toward the end-game.
Play the Spire! I'd be curious to see how you handle drafting when your deck has to be playable after every pick.
Yes absolutely James play Slay on the channel. :)
+1 on seeing you play Slay the Spire
Yes.
I do want to see you play Slay the Spire
as a “pro” spire player i was pleasantly surprised with the explanation of the game and the card evaluations.
i would say that distraction is definitely a “bad” card though, mostly just because the value of having skills in early game are greatly reduced due to the elite and hallway fights.
really cool vid though, if you ever want to get some coaching and play spire more seriously please hit me up!
Maybe you can rate some MTG or Yugioh cards 👀
@@TheOneJameYT would be very down to try!
@@JapaneseImport add me on discord, the name there is TheOneJame
i love slay the spire, just saw the other day the second ones coming out next year i cant wait!
EDIT: Play slay the spire
If you start playing Slay the Spire now, you'll be an expert by the time Slay the Spire 2 comes out. Go for it!!
+1 STS is amazing
You should definitely play Slay The Spire, if nothing else to understand where a lot of modern card design is coming from in videogames. The developers struck pure gold with the game's mechanics.