Slay the Spire Ironclad: Cards, Builds, Strategies (2024)

Ironclad in Slay the Spire is one of 4 playable characters in the game and the only available hero at the beginning. He has the item that allows Ironclad to heal a small amount of HP at the end of each combat. Most of all, the hero focuses on powerful sword attack cards, strength-enhancing cards, and self-damaging cards. The general playstyle of Ironclad is often about increasing his strength and unleashing strong attacks on enemies. However, it's not always so.

I’ve played about 100 hours in the game, and it was my favorite character for some time, so became familiar with Ironclad pretty well. In this guide, I will break down the playstyle of the Ironclad, look at his cards, best builds, and strategies.

Ironclad Basic Mechanics

Let’s begin our Slay the Spire Ironclad guide from its mechanics. He is not very difficult to master, but Ironclad still has some features that you need to understand. During the game on this character, you can choose 1 of 4 strong strategies of the game: defensive, increasing strength, exhausting cards, and negative statuses.

At first, you may think that the most effective strategy is increasing the hero’s strength. I personally used mostly this style for a long time before I started figuring out how the others work.

Moreover, you should know some general information and features of the Ironclad.

Starting Relic of Ironclad

More Health Points

Another feature of Ironclad is that he also has the highest starting HP among the four characters in the game – 80 HP.Thanks to this, in the initial stages of the game you can not think about the health of the character at all, as there is a lot of it, and it is constantly restored thanks to the relic.

Strength Potential

Every character has the ability to increase their strength, but Ironclad has the most opportunities to do so.There are many cards that maximize this ability and focus on increasing strength many times over. Ironclad also has several class relics to help with this.

Ironclad Build on Strengths

Basic Cards: Spot Weakness, Limit Break, Inflame, Demon Form, Whirlwind, Heavy Blade, Rupture.

One of the most popular and easiest builds on Ironclad is the strength increase. Strength adds extra damage to your attacks, and you can build up so much strength that you will deal colossal damage from attacks (3-5 times higher than normal).

The main principle of this build is to gain strength in a couple of turns and at the same time defend from the enemies. Once you gain enough power you use attack to hitmultiple enemiesand win in a couple of turns. However, your actions can vary depending on the enemies and available cards.

Best Cards for This Build

There are a few basic cards in Ironclad build to increase your strength:

• Spot Weakness: gives 3/4 of your power if the enemy is going to attack
• Inflame: Costs 1 mana and gives 2/3 strength
• Demon Form: Worth 3 mana and gives 2/3 strength every turn
• Limit Break: Doubles your strength
• Flex: Gain 2/4 strengths. At the end of the turn, loze 2/4 strengths

As for the attacking cards, the best choices are:

• Whirlwind: Deal 5/8 damage to ALL enemies X times
• Heavy Blade: Deal 14 damage. Strength affects Heavy Blade 3/5 times
• Sword Boomerang: Deal 3 damage to a random enemy 3/4 times.
• Twin Strike: Deal 5/7 damage twice.
• Cleave: Deal 8/11 damage to ALL enemies.

Additional cards that may be very useful in this build for Ironclad:

• Reaper:Deal 4/5 damage to ALL enemies. Heal for unblocked damage. Good card for extra healing
• Trip:Apply 2 Vulnerable to all enemies (upgraded version)
• Thunderclap: Deal 4/7 damage and apply 1 Vulnerable to ALL enemies

Best Relics for This Build

The following relics are great for this build:

1. Vajra: Gives you 1 power every battle
2. Red Skull: Gives you 3 powers if you have less than 50% health
3. Mutagenic Strength: Gives you 3 strengths for the first turn of a fight
4. Akabeko: Increases first attack damage in combat by 8. This bonus works great with carats that deal more than one hit at a time (increases the damage of each attack)

Build on High Defense of Ironclad

Basic Cards: Barricade, Entrench, Impervious, Power Through, Body Slam.

One of the popular Ironclad builds focused on high defense and Barricade talent, which prevents you from losing defense at the end of your turn. This allows you to build a huge amount of armor with cards like Impervious (gives 30/40 armor) and Power Through (gives 15/20 armor).With these cards you’ll be able to increase your armor up to a few hundred, so you won’t take any damage from enemies at all.

However, you need to defeat your enemies somehow. You can use Body Slam, which deals the same amount of damage as your armor to the enemy.This means that you can focus on getting ready to defend, create hundreds of blocks, and then just play Body Slam, dealing hundreds of damage to end the fight on the spot.

If you can’t find this card, the alternative is the Juggernaut talent – it deals 5 damage to a random enemy every time you increase your armor.

Best Cards for This Build

There are several cards you can use to maximize your armor:

• Barricade:Block no longer expires at the start of your turn
• Entrench:Double your current Block
• Impervious:Gain 30/40 Block.Exhaust
• Power Through:Add 2 Wounds to your hand.Gain 15/20 Block
• Shrug It Off: Gain 8/11 Block. Draw 1 card
• Ghostly Armor: Ethereal. Gain 10/13 Block

To deal damage you can use:

• Body Slam:Deal damage equal to your current Block
• Juggernaut: Whenever you gain Block, deal 5/7 damage to a random enemy
• Immolate:Deal 21/28 damage to ALL enemies.Shuffle a Burn into your discard pile
• Whirlwind:Deal 5/8 damage to ALL enemies X times
• Flame Barrier: Gain 12/16 Block. Whenever you are attacked this turn, deal 4 damage to the attacker.

Ironclad Build on Exhaust Cards

Basic Cards:Fiend Fire, Second Wind, Dark Embrace, Feel No Pain.

This deck is based on card exhaustion in your hand. It doesn’t sound very logical, but if you do it right, the effect is strong. What’s more, this game strategy is more variable than the previous two decks.

This deck is more armor-oriented than attack-oriented. For example, the Feel No Pain talent gives you 3 armor every time you exhaust cards, which will happen often. Another defensive card is Second Wind, which exhausts all cards except the attacks in your hand and gives 5/7 armor for each. It’s important to consider that status cards, unplayable or curses will also exhaust and give you armor.

As for the attacking cards, you can useFiend Fire orSever Soulto deal damage to your enemies. Actually, other common attacking cards also will be good here.

This build for Ironclad is difficult to master. You need to understand which cards can be exhausted and when, and which ones you should keep. One is more versatile, as it allows you to deal damage and accumulate a lot of armor.

Best Cards for This Build

First of all, you need cards with an Exhaust effectyou can use to deal damage, accumulate defense for Ironclad, and draw new cards. It can be any of the following:

• Fiend Fire: Exhaust your hand. Deal 7/10 damage for each Exhausted card. Exhaust
• Second Wind: Exhaust all non-Attack cards in your hand and gain 5 Block for each
• Dark Embrace: Whenever a card is Exhausted, draw 1 card
• Feel No Pain: Whenever a card is Exhausted, gain 3 Block
• Reaper: Deal 4/5 damage to ALL enemies. Heal for unblocked damage. Exhaust
• Seeing Red: Gain 2 energy points. Exhaust
• True Grit: Gain 7/9 Block. Exhaust a card from your hand

You can also use any of the cards with negative statuses, as you can burn them and get an additional advantage on that.

Best Relics for This Build

There are several relics that reinforce this deck:

• Charon’s Ashes: deals three damage to a random opponent each time a card is exhausted
• Dead Branch: adds a random card to your hand every time you exhaust a card, giving you the opportunity to continually gain and exhaust cards
• Runic Pyramid: At the end of your turn, you no longer Discard your hand. It can help you collect a large number of cards in your hand