Game Design Tips from Slay the Spire

November 2, 2020 AC Atienza

At Cloudfall Studios, we have a channel for “presenting” design theories that we’ve been learning or practicing. This one is based on Slay the Spire: you should play it!

Presenting:
“What Goes Through My Head When Playing
Slay the Spire”

AC: I’m trying to figure out Slay the Spire’s card design and I think I have an idea. cheque it out

AC: Specifically ive been thinking about how jorbs frames fights, but i want to think about it from a designer perspective. first of all, enemies present two base problems:

They have health. Reduce it to zero to win
They damage you, and if you take too much over time, you lose.
[health persists across fights. this means players can choose to lose health on Elite enemies or events now, in order to get strong relics and save health later.]

AC: and complicating factors are:

some enemies get STRONGER as the fight goes, meaning there are frequent situations where you must choose whether to spend your limited energy on attacks or blocks.
Often, you must willingly take damage, spending energy to attack instead. That can overall save you more health because you end the fight sooner
Sometimes there are MANY enemies. If one enemy gets stronger over time but has more health than the second enemy, who do you prioritize with your attack?

AC: Players have 2 x 2 + 1 + 1 solutions.

Frontloaded damage cards turn your energy into pain. they do… what they say.
- I guess to be fair they tend to have some bonus effects on them. Usually they’re really strong but present a downside. Sometimes they’re strong but you can only use em once.
- I like Carnage poetically. the fact that you have to give into your aggressive urge in order to deal dmg. & if you ever let the urge pass, it won’t come back.
Scaling damage cards turn your energy into less damage upfront, but more and more dmg over time. I think they’re a trap for intermediate players, because they see the potential and forget that you could have spent your energy dealing 10 damage. instead, players often deal 1+2+3+4 damage across like 5 turns of getting smacked.
- I think scaling damage can be in the form of a passive ability that makes your other cards better, or an active ability that contextually gets better with preparation.
- Noting: It doesn't have to be an exponential curve. Sometimes just giving a +1 boost to all your other cards for 1 energy is technically scaling.

Frontloaded block cards... block. They block the amount they say. I noticed that often block cards do it in a variety of cute ways like “block whenever you play an attack” or “reduce your enemy’s attack” instead of just “block”.
Scaling block cards improve your block as the fight goes on. Things like Footwork or Feel No Pain. I think specifically, it’s “scaling” if instead of directly offering you a large amount of upfront block, it indefinitely increases block without needing to spend that energy/card again.

AC: Secondlast solution: card selection lets you get to the specific card you need on any given specific turn. This can help you lean on a handful of really niche-powerful cards instead of a bunch of lukewarm consistent cards.

AC: last solution: utility cards that kinda give scaling, but in more meta ways? it seems like most cards present or solve a “meta” problem. For example, 0-cost cards are usually balanced to be worse than 1-cost cards. But if you have something that turns energy to card draw, then you can play like 7 no-cost cards instead of 3 one-cost cards.

AC: im oversimplifying but you get the idea. some cards do nothing but manipulate secondary stats like energy, card selection, and all the other stats that surround - but don’t substitute for -your actual ability to do what matters. (dealing pain & staying alive.)

AC: If we extrapolate these lessons, we can see one potential formula to design a game system:

Present more than one need, and some mutual exclusivity that prevents you from doing it all at once. There must be compromise somewhere. In StS, you have limited energy and card draw. You need to choose between ending the fight sooner but taking immediate damage, or prolonging the fight and maybe taking more damage if you get a bad draw or they get stronger.
Present complicating factors that make the answer harder to learn. For StS, it's the fact that some enemies scale up, or slow you down by trashing your deck / debuffing you. It's not always apparent if you scale faster than your enemy or not.
Present solutions that could solve one base problem, but never directly or fully. It must:
1. Partially solve a complicating factor [it's an aoe card! or, it gets stronger each time!]
2. Is stronger than average, at a cost [lots of damage, but puts a wound in your deck].
3. Is slightly weaker than average, but provides a potential bonus [deals more damage if you played lost of frost cards this combat]

4. …finally, add solutions that tie together any shared mechanics. reward players for choosing particular synergies.

For example, Ironclad’s Wild Strike offers extra damage, but puts a Wound in your deck (a useless card that essentially wastes one of your draws).
However, Ironclad also has Evolve, which lets you draw through Status cards - It partially negates some of the downside to Wild Strike!
Finally, if you have a card like Fiend Fire, you have an engine at this point. Get lots of status cards in your deck from Wild Strike, fill your hands with more cards than usual [thanks to Evolve], then use Fiend Fire for massive damage!

In this sense, Slay the Spire characters have several mechanics that "pivot" on one another. They’re incidental in some cases (Wild Strike is servicable even if you don’t have Evolve) but you can lean into them if you want.

AC: You can make individual cards more important in exchange for the variability of drawing cards in a bad order, or sacrificing frontloaded damage in order to scale better. For example, Evolve as a card doesn’t help you win when you first play it, but it’s useful in like 3 turns from now. It’s up to you to figure out if your deck needs help in long fights or short fights!

AC: As game designers, we can probably make players have fun by forcing them to choose between short-term gain and long-term gain in this fashion. I have a feeling we’re “supposed” to design cards that only ever solve some of the problems. If any choice is obviously the best regardless of what your past or future is, then I think we’ve failed as designers.

AC: Slay the Spire solutions either introduce new problems, or are otherwise definitely only useful in a portion of the situations you’ll find yourself in.

AC: Anyway, here’s my first card choice of the session. [yeah havent picked my card yet.]

Poisoned Stab deals a fine amount of damage, but the poison mechanic can be the key to killing BOSSES… I’d just need to find 1-2 more poison cards.
- It can't do this big long-term goal on its own - but it does open the door to solving the “how the heck do I kill a boss” problem if I can just keep an eye out for a few more poison cards.
Dagger Throw deals similar damage to Poisoned Stab. 6+3 isn’t the same as 9, but it’s close enough before Ascension 20.
- Drawing and discarding a card smooths out my draws, letting me dig towards better selection.
- This might be really useful right now, since most of my starting deck is bad. I’d rather filter my draws towards the few good cards in my deck if I can.
- Additionally, sometimes discarding a card is beneficial for other mechanics. Maybe I can let myself get cursed more often, since I can discard them? [probably not.]
Finisher is the worst card out of these and has a low floor. However, it has the potential to deal ridiculous damage if I lean into building my entire deck in a very particular way.
- That is to say: if I choose this card, I must dedicate myself towards building my deck out with a bunch of low-cost attacks to maximize this card.

AC: I want to pick Finisher because it's an uncommon card, meaning if I miss this opportunity I might not get another one. And it’s fun. But I’d rather not lose against Gremlin Nob.

interesting case of ‘fake’ synergy: Bane is often difficult to include in poison-heavy decks., even though at first it looks perfect.

Ultimately, I choose poison stab because I think the future synergies with poison are easier, and I don't want to dedicate myself into a narrow strategy off the bat. If I already had a bunch of cheap attacks, Finisher would be better.

(Postmortem: I should have chosen Dagger Throw.)

AC: Forgot to take a picture of the next few card choices because they were ‘obvious’. But noting that because I needed redundancy in damage cards, it meant that I picked a handful of things that don't have perfect synergies.

AC: As it stands, my card pool includes two poison cards and two cards that are rapid attacks. Reverse-engineering this design means that player needs require more than exactly one card [acquisition point] to fully solve certain problems.

I had to look for redundancy across different cards just because I only pick from 1 of 3 cards per fight.

Finding a shared redundancy [dealing damage] across different cards now means something cool: if I find a synergy card, it won't be a perfect fit! I’ve been wrestling that concept in design for forever!

AC: Like. I might find a card that synergizes with half my picks but not the other. and now I have to figure out what synergy is currently better [and what is projected to be better].

Additionally, having these 'random' but slightly shared mechanics means that you can construct synergies kind of on the fly. but it's not guaranteed that the synergies have to always match exactly card-to-card, if that makes sense

AC: An important part of card selection is being able to readily perceive future problems. In Slay the Spire [probably not important for all games, but still] there are very obvious threats that have obvious ideal solutions. For example, I'm very likely to enter a fight against Gremblin Nob.

That’s a guy I gotta kill REALLY fast, and without using skills.

AC: For context, Gremlin Nob deals a ton of damage to you, and he gets stronger when you use skills (whether to block or deal damage). Generally this means you’re in an all-out slugfest, launching every attack you have, almost no blocking.

Because I’m scared of the chance of fighting Gremlin Nob, I really value attack cards more right now. This is especially true since I got “greedy” and took a great block card last floor… that’ll be useful in like, 12 fights from now.

I definitely need more attacks in my deck in order to ensure I can actually kill this meatwall before he kills me.

AC: ...But life isn’t that simple, because the final boss of this area has a “defensive” phase where I'm punished for playing too many attacks.

So I have to navigate the tension of short-term attack priority, but longer-term block priority. But in this sense, I'm not just picking cards for synergies alone - I'm also driven to pick cards that suit the problems coming up ahead. More importantly for us, the game presents problems that make it obvious what you need to do to succeed!

Now it’s just a matter of doing it!

AC: LOL

AC: i DIED against gremlin nob because I couldn't deal enough damage in time. That Footwork… I regret taking it. I got too greedy taking these uncommon scaling cards instead of leaning more into attacks. and I paid the price!

AC: Anyway some key takeaways from designing games that involve lots of customization

Provide more than one problem, or more than one aspirational goal.
The solutions you offer can’t directly solve the goal. They need smth like:
- A long-term downside.
- Weaker numbers now, but better later.
- Imperfect numbers in this particular area, but also partially solves something else.
Building synergies isn’t just about “get a bonus for having both”. At least one half of a synergy pair needs to work fine on its own. The other half has to, as part of its own existence, shift the puzzle itself. IE it can’t just be stronger, it has to offer something like “long-term strength at the cost of energy or card draw this turn”.

In other games we have to make sure to “artifically” introduce some kind of sacrifice akin to “energy and card draw” to make scaling cards not an autoplay decision.
The core of games is maybe “accept some loss now for later gain in some category” vs “gain or preserve something now, but take greater losses in some category later”.
present OBVIOUS problems. don’t be shy. let players prepare for SOMETHING, have SOME kind of guidance instead of running a calculator in the mist.
Gremlin nob is terrifying, but is also INTEGRAL to the Slay the Spire experience. It sets the tone for the entire game [forcing you to be less picky about attacks early, meaning afterwards you have to adapt to whatever cards you rush-picked early on. it forces you to prioritize defense cards in act 2 to make up for all the attacks you drafted early on… etc)

AC: Maybe every game could use a gremlin nob. Is that the robber in catan? Is that prospero in Captain’s Gambit?

AC: the answer is yes

If you’d like to read my thoughts on Deckbuilders and how to get into the genre, I have a 3-part series here:

one - two - three

We have a Discord! Check us out here.

Stay lofty!

How to Win as Viola

October 15, 2020 AC Atienza

Have you ever worried if you have a genuine personality? Have you ever wondered if you’re just a mimic of the people in your social situation, or that you’re just a collection of functions rather than a particularly unique individual?

Viola relates to that mood but would like to offer a word of encouragement: your ‘self’ doesn’t have to be a consistent set of behaviours. Your ‘self’ can also be the factors behind how and why you change in each moment.

And just like you, Viola is an incredibly complex character with a lot of nuance. Not only does Viola’s copycat ability mean that he gets a unique plan for nearly every other captain in Captain’s Gambit, but he also has a multitude of strategies regarding how to get a satisfying set of deaths in the first place.

Similar to Portia, your strategy as Viola depends on a combination of which captains are at your table, and which players are piloting them. Unlike Portia, however, Viola can care slightly less about particular captains from the start, and instead cares about preparing for whatever captain is most likely to become ‘available’.

I pondered several ways to prepare a Viola guide, and I believe the best approach involves two sections: a discussion of the death-trigger, and then an exploration of each captain dynamic.

The Death Trigger

Viola can only win after at least one captain dies - and only if that death doesn’t end the game with a victory trigger.

Things are further complicated by the fact that Viola can only Reveal in the moment that a captain dies - if you pass on the flip, you’ll have to wait for someone else to die before you can choose again.

There are a few ways to go about choosing when to Reveal, and it really depends on your confidence and aggression levels at the table. Some methods include:

Predicting a captain identity and preparing to take their card & win shortly after they die.
Having any captain die, then once you know for sure who they are, secretly going for their objective and preparing to “push the button” once a second captain dies.
Playing in such a way that you could win as any captain (ie having both blood and energy) and then just trying to amass as many dead captains as possible until a captain fits you.

Overall, there are two broad things to consider as a Viola player: first, you want to optimize your Reveal opportunities by shaping the graveyard a little bit. Second, you want to ensure that nobody wins from these deaths - if the game ends before you can Reveal and take someone’s card, you’re entirely out of luck.

Part of Viola’s complexity comes from the fact that your strategy really depends on which captains you presume will be available.

Some people like to enter a midpoint position where they can pivot to win with any captain that dies, while others like to prepare for a specific subset of captains while ensuring that a captain of that “style” dies in time. Either way, your broad strategies are:

1) Improve the frequency of deaths

2) Maximize the odds that you’ll be able to win with a captain by the time they die

Let’s quickly talk about death: every time a captain dies, the game accelerates for the surviving captains. With fewer targets to attack, that increases the chance of being targeted next by a domination captain - but it also increases the chance of successfully pulling off a Reveal if you’re an ascension captain (ie if fewer people can Barrage you).

In other words, deaths increase the “swinginess” of games. You put yourself closer to death and victory at the same time when there are fewer captains around to stop each other. This can be a bad or good thing depending on whether you prefer planning or improvising your games.

In hindsight, my Puck guide was somewhat tinted by my penchant for aggressive strategies - you probably don’t have to go as hard as I do when playing Puck. But this time, Viola really does get easier once a handful of captains die. So if you want to win, start a ‘mask collection’. :)

How to increase death frequency

In order to increase your odds of getting a good mask - a captain objective that suits you - you’ll want more captains to choose from.

For example, if you don’t have very much blood and Lady Macbeth dies, it’d be useful if another captain died so you could hopefully snag a Puck or Imogen. The more deaths in the game, the better the chances are that your current blood/health/energy/permits will be useful for someone’s win condition.

Viola reference image for Bo. “Is Viola the boy or girl?” “Yeah”

The obvious strategy to increase death frequency would be to say “well, Barrage everyone”. And while that would be my own method, you don’t necessarily have to be the one Barraging.

Indeed, if you can persuade others to attack a high-health or high-energy enemy, that saves you a handful of energy in addition to keeping hostility away from yourself.

The slightly more subtle point behind “get others to attack” is that you need to create an environment that encourages attacks, if you want to increase the number of dead captains in the game.

Mechanically, we designed captains to make attacks inevitable - but socially, you still want to eliminate any awkwardness that may otherwise arise from Barraging someone.

For example, many players get nervous about being the first to Barrage someone else because they don’t want to become part of a vengeful counterattack. That makes them hold back longer. Multiplied by a few players with the same mindset, if you go about things the wrong way, you’ll have to do all the work yourself - which can cost energy and make you an enemy.

Ironically, you can help players get less nervous by calmly launching the first few attacks yourself, and even by receiving an attack or two without complaint.

Normalizing attacks without hard feelings can make players more comfortable to join in. That leads to more lower-health captains, which increase your picks for later death. Just make sure that you don’t let yourself become the only target for attacks - always call attention to the potential Prosperos, Richard IIIs and Lady Macbeths at the table.

Encouraging a “barrage-friendly environment” isn’t always the right call depending on your prospective captain, however, so make sure you fill your toolkit with other approaches too.

If you’re not a player who typically springs for barrage-heavy behaviour, you may need to find an alternative method of nabbing yourself an easy objective.

My first exploratory Viola sketches for Bo. Exerpt from my email: “…she technically only wants one disguise at a time, instead of stealing everyone's identity, and is a lovable good character,so the usual archetype of evil face stealer doesn't apply… — My first exploratory Viola sketches for Bo.
Exerpt from my email: “…she technically only wants one disguise at a time, instead of stealing *everyone's* identity, and is a lovable good character… so the usual archetype of evil face stealer doesn't apply quite the same. Happy face copier?”

How to increase death quality

You could shop for five or six deaths… or just one.

While encouraging death will increase the odds of a good captain showing up, that’s not always the right call to make. Maybe you don’t have any good aggressive permits like Drain or Barrage. Maybe the table seems to be weirdly pacifist despite your best efforts.

Such scenarios may encourage you to lean further into a curation strategy than normal. It’s not like curation is mutually exclusive with graveyard-stacking, but leaning into this can become especially important when you can’t rely on odds to fall in your favour.

To increase the quality of your captain pool, you’ll need to:

Know the signs of each captain
Determine the captain that would be most likely to win in the current game state
Make sure that captain dies

Actually doing this stuff takes a lot of practice, and requires information and instinct you can’t get from this guide alone. One reason is that each player approaches captain playstyles in a different way - it’s not just enough to know that Prospero wants energy, you have to also consider each player’s inclinations and what it means about their identity.

For example, you’ll have to recognize that ____ is quieter than normal when they play ascenders, while _____ accepts alliances with a different tone of voice. Meanwhile, ______ always Overcharges, so assuming he’s Prospero would be a false positive.

Once you have a good idea of which captains are in the game, you’ll want to wait for - or cause - a gamestate that maximizes the odds that any given captain will be a favourable pick for you.

For the most simple example, you can prepare for a potential Iago or Lady Macbeth death by getting blood before anyone dies. That way you won’t find yourself wincing if either of those two captains die, and instead be excited for the opportunity. The cost - two or three Strikes - is really not that high when you consider that it’ll bring you so much closer to victory.

Similarly, if you see some energy-hoarders at the table, it’s a safe bet that the likes of Prospero and Richard are present. If you can convince Prospero that you’re an ally, you can bait a Reveal. That’ll make everyone else spend energy killing him, and then you can ideally take his card at the moment of death and Reveal once everyone else is out of energy.

In general, when someone gets low on health, you may want to emulate their behaviour. That can help you prepare for their objective in advance, even if you’re not 100% sure what it is!

In many cases, curating your captain pool also means preparing death triggers at opportune times. After all, everyone will know who you’ve become as soon as you take their card, meaning you can only rely on the surprise of when you become a certain captain, rather than the surprise of who you are.

If your captain isn’t somebody like Iago or Imogen, you’ll need to make sure you can arrange your objective almost immediately after donning the mask.

Get in Character

While his official role is a spy, Viola always referred to himself as a ‘personal historian’. She possesses the rare ability to manifest the condensed desires of the forgotten and fallen into masks, which she considers to be immortalizations.

Their empathy, which allows them to make these masks in the first place, also gives them the strong compulsion to follow through with those desires.

Some sources indicate that - perhaps as a quirk of their gift - Viola takes an atypical stance on life and death. Their views allegedly align with cosmic philosopher Pons-2, most aptly summarized in this quote:

“Life is the flow of force to realize desire. Death is the end of desire. There are no people that die - there are only wills that fade and wills that endure.”

As a Viola player, it’s your responsibility to carry on the wills of those who pass. To win, you must ensure you can actually follow through with whichever objective you decide to adopt.

A key mistake some beginner players make is preparing for victory after taking a mask. The two problems with doing that are:

1- Regular captains often need the entire game to prepare for their objective. If you only start about halfway through, that’s a big disadvantage.

2- Everybody will know which captain you are, meaning they’ll almost immediately want you to die depending on who you take.

The solution, luckily, is “simple”. Once you know a captain is in the game - either due to your intuition or because they’re face-up across the table - you can start taking a few steps towards approaching that goal.

For example, if you sense or see a Prospero, you can start Networking for Shield/Drain/Overcharge. In another example, if the table’s looking bloody, you’ll know that joining the blood train will increase your odds no matter who ends up dying.

In terms of specific captain strategies, though, things get a lot more complicated. That’s because your strategy changes when publicly taking somebody’s identity halfway through, compared to secretly realizing your plan from the start of the game.

Let’s take a look at some captain-specific relationships now.

Portia

Portia isn’t an ideal mask, since most of Portia’s power is about snagging an unexpected kill. This only really makes sense to strive for when you have an ally like Cordelia or King Lear on your side.

Most of your Portia-based interaction comes in the form of players being too scared to murder high-blood targets. This could be a problem since high-blood targets like Iago and Lady Macbeth are otherwise excellent mask choices - if you really want a bloody person to die, you’ll either make other people suspicious that you’re Portia, or you’ll otherwise directly grant Portia the killing blow.

Portia’s death is less helpful for mask purposes than it is for ‘unlocking’ future death. Once nobody is scared that the game will end from a specific captain’s death, it gets a lot easier to start tossing Barrages around.

…Of course, that also means things will get dangerous for you. Make sure you have some kind of alliance or leverage going on so that you can stay alive after Portia dies.

Prospero

Prospero is a fine captain to take late in the game. The easiest way to win with a Prospero mask is to fool him into forming an alliance with you before killing him, taking him, and Revealing yourself before your opponents can gain their energy back and fight you.

However, that type of scenario isn’t necessarily something you can directly shape. That’s more of a scenario you gently encourage. Realistically, most of your Prospero wins will come from late in the game, when there are only a handful of captains left - perhaps around round 11, when Puck is willing to lend his support.

On paper, hoarding energy to prepare for a sudden Prospero Reveal sounds like a good idea. Realistically, though, keeping that energy means fewer Barrages from you and more negative attention against you. Not a great combination.

Lady Macbeth

Lady Macbeth is one of the best masks you could ask for. Prospero’s resource - energy - is fluid, and the tradeoff is that he must very-clearly signal his intent a round in advance. In some ways, Prospero almost has two turns of being “Revealed”.

Conversely, Lady Macbeth’s resource - blood - can never be lost. It naturally accumulates over time without too much effort. Lategame, it’s common for multiple captains to rest at 2 or 3 blood, and that lets Lady Macbeth blend in much better for “surprise” Reveals.

As Viola, such a playstyle works in your advantage. Before the first captain dies, you can easily sit at 2 blood, but you can’t really keep 6 energy without getting looks.

Thus, you can almost entirely prepare for a potential Lady Macbeth opportunity by simply dishing out two or three Strikes in advance, and you won’t get nearly as much hate as you would get for pooling up energy.

That is to say, while it’s not literally easier to win with Lady Macbeth compared to Prospero, it’s definitely easier to prepare at a moment’s notice, which is very useful for Viola who needs to rely on specific triggers in order to grab a captain card.

Additionally, the act of gaining blood (Striking and Barraging) actively brings you closer to a captain death, whereas hoarding energy runs counter to activating your trigger.

Overall, as Viola, you’d be just a little foolish to have any fewer than 2 blood. Just don’t be too obvious with your plans, or else you’ll just get pinned as Macbeth directly.

Iago

Iago is another excellent mask to take, but actually gaining him is tricky. The fact that everyone loves Iago makes it hard to want him dead, especially because the threat of Portia makes you look suspicious if you attack him at all.

Sometimes, it’s also literally difficult to just get that much blood. Iago’s actual action choices are technically not particularly creative - he needs to Strike or Barrage almost every other turn - and most of his gameplay comes from making friends with people and discussing alliances.

Because he can easily finish his objective with just Charge and Strike, it’s really easy for someone like him to amass blood. Meanwhile, you’ll likely need to dedicate more turns hedging your bets and preparing your permits (ie Networking for Barrage, Draining other captains to prevent early Reveals, etc).

Additionally, Iago gets away with attacking so frequently by constantly advertising his own identity. Your best bet to have him die is to cast doubt onto his identity - perhaps by claiming that you’re Iago - or to at least using him as leverage to ally with someone like Prospero.

For example, you could say something like “If we kill Iago, I’ll become him and help anyone else. I don’t want to have to oppose anyone’s Reveal, and once I become Iago you’ll have fewer people hitting you.”

Either way, if you think you might want to arrange an Iago plan, it’d be wise to start collecting blood soon.

Note that once you claim Iago, it’s a major advantage (Portia aside) to be publicly known as him, since captains can no longer doubt (or pretend to doubt) that you can be their friend. The hardest part is just becoming Iago in the first place.

Puck

Puck is an interesting mask to consider - compared to the original player, you have the useful advantage of being undeniably Puck. Normally it’s tough to fully trust someone who claims to be Puck, but in this case, the only real problems you have to contend with are captains trying to end the game before you’re ready.

My personal Puck playstyle is to prevent captains from winning by making everyone middle-health, and sowing enough discord that nobody trusts each other to bring anyone else into the kill zone. I also like to personally take out captains, if I suspect that somebody like Portia would otherwise win the game. Check out this guide if that sounds like fun.

As Viola, Puck isn’t a great option to take until later on in the game. He’s a rather difficult captain, and it’s generally wiser to check if you can get a lucky Cordelia or Iago mask before commiting to our green saboteur.

Cordelia

Cordelia is almost an automatic win, unless she marks you (but then you have an advantage in a different way). The only strategy you really need is ensuring you don’t murder Cordelia’s mark along the way.

Cordelia will often be happy to have you kill her and assume her identity, since you can both win together. Once you become Cordelia, you’re actually fine with dying too, which makes things even easier.

Brutus

Brutus is really tough to win as - a shapeshifter just doesn’t make for a very reliable mask. His entire identity basically revolves around never being noticed, so publicly grabbing his card in most cases is essentially a throw.

The main time you’ll grab Brutus is when you have a guaranteed kill on his mark - like if nobody has the energy to shield your lethal Barrage/Strike, for example.

The best you can do for/with Brutus is lower the health of his target a little, so that if Brutus dies, you will have done some of the work in advance already.

There are definitely cases where you can rally the table against Brutus, making everyone spend their energy killing him, and then suddenly becoming Brutus and finishing off the precious Loyal target once nobody has energy left to Shield.

Romeo / Juliet

You can’t actually become Romeo/Juliet since they die together. You can have a very limited alliance of sorts with them, however, due to the fact that they also want at least 4 other captains to die. You may want to lean into their likely endorsement of violence for a bit - at least before they start to target you - so that you can accelerate your mask collection.

Richard III

The threat of Richard III will prevent you from wanting to hoard energy or from gently Striking everyone down to 5 or less health.

There’s not a ton you can do to ‘prepare’ for becoming Richard, other than doing your best to counter him while completing your own objective separately.

There’s the chance that Richard’s Reveal will leave you alive and kill everyone else, giving you a wide selection of captains to become, but it’s a lot more likely that his Reveal will also just straight-up kill you.

You can’t feasibly prepare for Richard without drawing negative attention for having so much energy, so I’d instead recommend doing your own thing and just keeping an eye out for grabbing his card if you suddenly realize you have a good shot.

Rosalind

(First of all, note that Viola can’t win as Rosalind if two captains have already died from damage. This bit is written assuming Rosalind was the first captain to die from damage).

Rosalind feels pretty different in Viola’s hands. Because Rosalind herself counts as the first death, Viola can’t win with assassins anymore. He can only win with an ascender, or otherwise stall the game until the end of round 7.

Luckily, that’s actually not too bad for Viola! While the original Rosalind had to prevent deaths since the start of the game, Viola may only have to prevent a second death for one or two more rounds.

Just so we’re clear with the maths - this isn’t saying it’s easier for Viola to prevent death than Rosalind, or that Viola truly has ‘fewer rounds’ (since it’s not like all captains go back to 10 health when Viola takes Rosalind).

What it means, though, is that Viola has the luxury of choosing if they want to take on Rosalind’s win condition or not. Rather than being forced to scramble if everyone is at low health, Viola can shrug and ignore her if it doesn’t look safe. You get most of the upside, with total control over whether or not you want the downside.

King Lear

King Lear is pretty similar to Cordelia but even stronger. I’ve lost as Viola>Lear before so it’s not totally foolproof, but it’s definitely a strategy you want to keep an eye on.

Because Lear Reveals himself at the end of round 4, he provides an easy kill-target: you can be 100% certain that you’re grabbing a high-value captain if you kill him. This strategy is only really countered by other players properly noticing your plans and killing you first.

Othello

I’d like to write out the nuances between Othello and Portia someday, but for Viola’s purposes, Othello is similar to Portia and Brutus. You can definitely win as Othello, but you’ll need to be pretty smooth and observant to make it work.

Tybalt / Mercutio

You can’t become them.

These captains are annoying because it’s suddenly quite likely that getting someone into critical health will lead to an immediate Tybalt/Mercutio victory. Identify them so you can save your energy and time on someone else.

Titus

Titus is a delightful captain to become, especially if you’ve been collecting blood for Iago and Lady Macbeth already. Aside from granting you an extra life of sorts, a Titus death means that he’s already Revealed and killed most of the table.

Of course, that also means he probably just killed you in the process, which is less great.

Because killing him is so dangerous, your gameplay around Titus in practice ends up very similar to anyone else - kill him before his Reveal becomes too strong, or attempt to ignore him and win despite his violent behaviour.

One minor thing that works in your favour is that Titus will likely be attacking captains quite a bit over the rounds.

Games that include Titus will have more violence than normal, letting you save a bit of energy for potentially completing the objective of whoever Titus kills.

Consider choosing Strike over Barrage if you heavily suspect a Titus presence at the table, so your fellow captains can absorb some of his Reveal damage instead of it all going to you.

You can also put yourself to more health and less energy so that you’ll be a last-priority target for Titus if/when the time comes for him to Reveal.

Imogen

You can trick Imogen into Revealing by convincing her that you’ll end the game. Once she’s dead, you’ll be at a comfortable spot where everybody knows you’re an ally captain - an advantage that Imogen herself doesn’t even have.

The main problem with Viola -> Imogen is that your second Reveal will have dealt 6 damage to everyone at the table at that point, which makes things quite scary if Romeo/Juliet, Richard or Titus are in the game. You may need to spend some time healing up to ensure that you don’t self-sabotage and obliterate the table / provide an easy win for potential dominators.

Otherwise, Imogen is a great Viola target.

I don’t think Viola technically a “difficult” captain (I seem to win more often than not) but she’s definitely the most complex. Your odds of winning with her really depend on how familiar you are with every other captain.

Not only do you have a ton of strategies regarding how you choose and become any given captain, but you also have to try and get yourself into a position where a wide variety of deaths can fall in your favour.

You have the major disadvantage of everyone knowing your identity, and a slightly dampened ability to prepare for any specific win condition. But the advantage of flexibility is extraordinary in a game with so many different board states.

That flexibility may seem daunting - the lack of a solid identity means a kind of ambiguity regarding what you are “supposed” to be doing at any given time.

However, by setting yourself up with a handful of different methods, you’ll find that improvement doesn’t quite come from practicing a narrow set of actions. Rather, you’ll improve by always considering how and why you decide on your actions each time you play.

Let’s see who you’ll become!

Adaptation and the Nature of Reality

September 13, 2020 AC Atienza

When you get information - fictional or not - your brain calculates what elements are plausible, given the contextual parameters of the story. Then, for all matches, your brain files away those plausibilities for later use.

All Blogs

Presenting:“What Goes Through My Head When Playing Slay the Spire”