Slay the Spire is as groundbreaking a roguelike as Magic the Gathering is a card game. They also both happen to be some of my favorite games of all time. They’re both deck-building card games with a genre-defining energy system and near infinite replayability. So what would the Slay the Spire characters look like in Magic card form?
We begin with the Ironclad, the first character players of Slay the Spire are introduced to and one of the simplest. His main mechanics are strength, which increases attack damage, dense block cards and barricade (which allows block to be maintained between turns), exhaust, which removes a card from his deck for the whole fight in exchange for some greater benefit, self-damage, high costed cards, and strike typal (playing cards with “strike” in the name to boost a Perfected Strike). In terms of color identity, this screams Red-White-Black to me. Strength reminds me of +1/+1 counters, a classic white strategy, as are defensive creature decks. Exhaust seems like a great fit for Red’s “impulsive draw” mechanic, where it exiles cards with a time limit to use them. Self-damage reminds me of Black’s use of life total as a resource. The Ironclad’s demonic, fiery, aesthetic is also very Red-Black.
With the Ironclad being the most energy-hungry character in Slay the Spire, it’s natural to assign a huge mana cost, and this gives us lots of room for a bombastic, blowout, ability. The recent design philosophy has been to make this an enter the battlefield ability, so that even if that expensive creature is removed, you still get some kind of value. I like the idea of representing the Ironclad’s two iconic powers on the card–Corruption and Demon Form. (Sorry, Barricade. You’re just as good, but less instantly recognizable.) Corruption seems like impulsive draw, while Demon Form seems like it’ll have something to do with +1/+1 counters. While both are long-term effects in Slay the Spire, Corruption feels more suited to an ETB ability, since the whole point of Demon Form is ramping up over time.
MTG’s demons have a variety of incredibly flavorful effects with staggering costs, but the most iconic of all is the deadly Griselbrand. Banned in Commander, his ability allows you to pay seven life to draw seven cards, as often as you can afford. But paying seven life and exiling seven cards would make for a nice shout-out to that ability. Originally I wanted to have that be pure impulse draw, with the ability to cast those cards until end of turn, but that would be sort of a flavor fail considering that Corruption makes the cards free and exhausts as a downside, while this ability has the exile as an upside and the cost of the cards as a limiting factor. So instead, casting one of those seven without paying its mana cost fits a lot better.
So far, the card we’ve created is solidly Black-Red, so Demon Form, ironically, should be a white effect. Putting a +1/+1 counter on all your creatures at the beginning of combat feels like a shoo-in for the ramping effect of Demon Form, and something like that shows up on a lot of white cards, famously Felidar Retreat.
Both of those effects are incredibly powerful, enough that you should have to wait to cast this until you have 8 or 9 mana. At that point, any spell you cast should put you so far ahead that you win the game quickly. Finishing the Griselbrand impression with 7/7 stats seems only fitting, especially since that allows the card to be easily reprinted in a Universes Within version just by calling it Griselbrand, Corrupter of Angels, or something like that. That would probably mean 9 mana, but with a highly restrictive colored mana cost we could knock it down to 8.
And here’s our final card! Huge shout out to the STS wiki for finding this awesome official Ironclad art so I can have some art on my custom cards for once. (Don’t get used to it.) Flavor text is from the Sensory Stone event.
Unless there’s something particularly exciting between now and next Sunday, I’ll follow this up with the Silent next week, so stay tuned for more Universes Beyond: Slay the Spire!
This is a very cool idea! I’ve noticed that the Ironclad is a very easy character to make fit into any game. Excited to see what you do with other characters, especially the Defect! one question though – any ideas for making the non-playable characters into cards?
Thanks! I’m planning to at least make the Corrupt Heart as a card, and possibly the other bosses and Neow. It depends on whether interesting official designs end up inspiring other projects.