Slay the Spire 2: How to Build Ironclad Decks – Vulnerable, Slam, Exhaust

Why Ironclad Archetypes Matter (and How I Stopped Dying on Ascension)

After spending dozens of hours wiping on mid-Act 2 elites with Ironclad in Slay the Spire 2, the breakthrough came when I stopped building “good stuff” piles and started committing to one of three clear archetypes: Vulnerable, Body Slam, or Exhaust. Once I treated each run as “which of these three am I actually building?” my win rate – especially on higher Ascensions – jumped hard.

This guide breaks down how I now approach every Ironclad run on PC: what early cards and upgrades I look for, when I pivot, and how I blend these archetypes without creating a confused, bloated deck. I’ll also walk through a practical card tier list (S-D) you can use as a sanity check during rewards and shops.

Step 1 – Read Your Opening Rewards Before You Commit

My early mistake was forcing a favorite archetype every run. Ironclad in Slay the Spire 2 will punish you very heavily for that. Now, my first 3–5 card rewards decide my direction:

• If I see good Vulnerable payoffs or enablers (like Tremble, Taunt, Uppercut, Molten Fist): I lean Vulnerable.
• If I see premium Block and Body Slam pieces (like Shrug It Off, Blood Wall, Flame Barrier, Body Slam): I lean Block/Slam.
• If I see Exhaust engine cards (like True Grit, Burning Pact, Evil Eye, Forgotten Ritual): I start an Exhaust shell.

I don’t fully commit until around the first elite, but I keep a running tally in my head. If you can identify which archetype your deck is naturally drifting toward, you’ll avoid the trap of grabbing every “good looking” card and ending with a 25-card mess that does nothing consistently.

Vulnerable Ironclad – The “Point and Delete” Archetype

Vulnerable in Slay the Spire 2 is still the classic debuff: enemies take 50% more damage. Ironclad is special because many of his cards actually reward you for maintaining Vulnerable, giving you draw, Block, and extra scaling on top of the raw damage boost.

When I want a run that feels straightforward and aggressive, this is where I go. It’s also the easiest archetype to pilot if you’re newer to Ironclad, as long as you don’t neglect Block.

Early Priorities – Get Consistent Vulnerable First

You start with Bash, and that’s key. The first thing I do when Vulnerable looks promising is:

• Upgrade Bash early at a campfire if I haven’t found another solid Vulnerable enabler yet.
• Look for these early cards:
  • Molten Fist
  • Tremble
  • Taunt
  • Dismantle
  • Uppercut

Tremble is one of those cards I underestimated. It doesn’t look flashy, but applying Vulnerable over multiple turns for a modest cost is huge when you’re trying to set up big follow-up attacks. Uppercut gives you both debuffing and damage in one package and smooths Act 1 immensely.

Dismantle, when upgraded and active, starts spitting out crazy damage per energy. If I see it in Act 1 and already have 1–2 good Vulnerable sources, I snap pick it – that’s often the moment a run turns from “decent” into “this might be the one”.

Late Payoffs – Close Fights Before They Snowball

• Cruelty – Incredible for finishing enemies fast once they’re softened up. This is where you start ending hallway fights in 2–3 turns.
• Colossus – Great when you’re frequently hitting Vulnerable enemies; it scales into elites and bosses.
• Dominate – I treat this as a boss/elite tech card: in longer fights it quietly snowballs into an inevitable kill if you’ve got Strength or recurring Vulnerable.

The main pitfall with Vulnerable builds is going too all-in on attacks. I’ve lost more runs than I care to admit by ending up with hands full of damage and no way to Block lethal.

Rule of thumb: by the end of Act 1, I want at least 4–6 good Block cards if I’m on a Vulnerable plan. Cards like Shrug It Off, Flame Barrier, Blood Wall keep you alive long enough for your damage to actually matter.

Body Slam Block – Turning Defense into Nuclear Damage

This archetype is my go-to on high Ascension when I want reliability. The idea is simple:

• Stack absurd amounts of Block.
• Convert it into “nuclear” damage with Body Slam and friends.
• Use your defensive tools to completely shut down enemy turns.

When it comes together, you take zero damage and one-shot elites with a single slam. But you need the right mix of early defensive tools.

Early Signs You Should Go Slam

• Shrug It Off – Premium common. Block + draw is always good, but it’s especially insane when you’re scaling Block totals every turn.
• Body Slam – Obvious, but if I see this early, I’ll grab it even if I’m not 100% commit yet. It’s cheap and harmless in other decks, broken in full Block builds.
• Blood Wall – Chunky Block that helps you reach those huge totals.
• Flame Barrier – Defends and punishes multi-hit enemies; also a nice bridge into Exhaust synergies later.

If I have Shrug It Off + another good Block card + Body Slam by mid-Act 1, I already start favoring defensive picks and consider upgrading Body Slam (for better scaling) earlier than usual.

Late Payoffs – When Your Block Never Goes Away

• Unmovable – This is the card that makes even basic Defends feel premium. With this online, your Block per card starts to skyrocket.
• Crimson Mantle – Another strong block-focused payoff that lets you safely tank and convert defense into a win condition.
• Impervious – Chunk Block in a single card. With Barricade or similar effects, this is absurd; even without, it’s often worth it to set up a lethal Body Slam.

Where Body Slam decks really shine is when you can add Barricade from the S-tier pool. Once Block stops decaying, every defensive turn is an investment in future damage. That’s how you comfortably farm elites on high Ascension.

Late Payoffs – When Your Block Never Goes Away

• Unmovable – This is the card that makes even basic Defends feel premium. With this online, your Block per card starts to skyrocket.
• Crimson Mantle – Another strong block-focused payoff that lets you safely tank and convert defense into a win condition.
• Impervious – Chunk Block in a single card. With Barricade or similar effects, this is absurd; even without, it’s often worth it to set up a lethal Body Slam.

Where Body Slam decks really shine is when you can add Barricade from the S-tier pool. Once Block stops decaying, every defensive turn is an investment in future damage. That’s how you comfortably farm elites on high Ascension.

Sample Body Slam turn (late game):

• Play Shrug It Off → draw, raise Block.
• Play Flame Barrier and Blood Wall → you’re at 60–80 Block.
• Play Body Slam (0–1 cost) → deal 60–80 damage in one hit.
• With Barricade, that Block remains next turn, so you’re now permanently ahead.

The most common mistake here is taking too many clunky 2-cost Blocks without enough energy or draw. If your hand is full of expensive defense and you can’t play enough cards, even Body Slam won’t save you. Prioritize cheap Block and card draw first, then sprinkle in the big stuff.

Exhaust Ironclad – High-Skill, High-Reward Deck Thinning

Exhaust builds scared me at first – “I only get to play this once?!” – but once I internalized that Exhaust is actually free deck-thinning with upside, it became one of my favorite ways to play Ironclad.

The plan is to burn away your low-impact cards mid-combat, so the rest of the fight is just you drawing your best stuff over and over while your Exhaust payoffs (Block, energy, card draw, scaling) ramp up.

Start with Targeted Exhaust Tools

• True Grit – Early on it’s awkward because it Exhausts a random card, but once upgraded to chosen Exhaust, it becomes a key piece. I love using it to delete Strikes/Defends or curses during combat.
• Burning Pact – Draw engine and deck filter in one. Sacrifice a junk card, draw into your power cards. I pick this highly even in non-dedicated Exhaust builds.
• Evil Eye – Reward for playing Exhaust cards; a nice defensive backbone once you’re consistently Exhausting.
• Forgotten Ritual – Massive energy advantage when you’ve stuffed your deck with Exhaust fodder. This is your “massive energy cheat” card.

The idea is: use True Grit / Burning Pact to remove your worst cards on the fly, and let Evil Eye / Forgotten Ritual feed you Block and energy as compensation.

Then Add the Real Engines and Finishers

• Feel No Pain – Every Exhaust becomes Block. This is what turns your “deck management” into real survivability.
• Dark Embrace – Card draw every time you Exhaust. Together with Feel No Pain, you get both Block and cards for doing what you already want to do.
• Second Wind – Deletes a whole hand (especially Status cards) and gives you Block. Incredible against late-game fights that flood you with junk.
• Fiend Fire – Big finisher that eats your hand. I treat this as a burst tool; ideally you line it up when your hand is full of cards you’re happy to lose for a turn-kill.
• Pact’s End & Ashen Strike – Pact’s End takes the Burning Pact plan even further; Ashen Strike scales with your Exhaust pile and becomes a deadly attack in longer fights.

Typical “engine” sequence once online:

• Play Feel No Pain and/or Dark Embrace early in the fight.
• Use Burning Pact / True Grit / Second Wind to strip junk cards, gaining Block and drawing more cards.
• Cash out with Evil Eye for more Block or Fiend Fire / Ashen Strike to close the fight.

The main thing that took my Exhaust runs from “messy” to “consistent” was not exhausting my win conditions too early. Don’t feed your only good attack to Fiend Fire just to clear your hand unless you’re sure it ends or completely stabilizes the fight.

Blending Archetypes Without Diluting Your Deck

The real strength of Ironclad in Slay the Spire 2 is that these archetypes actually play nicely together. Some of my strongest Ascension wins come from hybrid decks:

• Vulnerable + Body Slam – Use Vulnerable to end fights quickly when your Block engine lags behind. A single Vulnerable stack can turn one Body Slam into lethal.
• Exhaust + Body Slam – Feel No Pain and Second Wind let you generate huge Block, which naturally feeds Body Slam as a finisher.
• Vulnerable + Exhaust – Use Exhaust tools to thin the deck and ensure you keep redrawing your Vulnerable enablers and payoffs.

My rule: Pick one archetype as “core” and the others as “support”. For example, “I am a Body Slam deck that splashes Vulnerable,” not “I am all three at once.” If a card doesn’t clearly help your main plan or fix a weakness (Block, draw, energy), skip it – even if it looks strong in isolation.

Ironclad Card Tier List (S–D) – Cheat Sheet for Picks

This tier list assumes you’re playing around the three archetypes above. Tier isn’t absolute – a B-tier card that perfectly fits your deck is better than an S-tier that doesn’t – but this is what I mentally reference when choosing rewards in serious Ascension runs.

S Tier – Core Engines and Win Conditions

• Body Slam
• Headbutt
• Battle Trace
• Second Wind
• Feel No Pain
• Thrash
• Brand
• Offering
• Dark Embrace
• Barricade
• Demon Form
• Break

A Tier – Premium Support and Strong Payoffs

• Bloodletting
• Armaments
• Shrug It Off
• True Grit
• Whirlwind
• Ashen Strike
• Dismantle
• Burning Pact
• Taunt
• Pact’s End
• Feed
• Fiend Fire
• Impervious
• Aggression
• Unmovable

B Tier – Solid, Often Synergy-Dependent

• Breakthrough
• Pommel Strike
• Perfected Strike
• Tremble
• Blood Wall
• Uppercut
• Dominate
• Evil Eye
• Forgotten Ritual
• Flame Barrier
• Inflame
• Juggling
• Stone Armor
• Colossus
• Stoke
• Crimson Mantle
• Cruelty
• Hellraiser
• Pyre

C Tier – Playable Filler or Niche Tech

• Anger
• Iron Wave
• Molten Fist
• Setup Strike
• Twin Strike
• Cinder
• Havoc
• Bully
• Spite
• Hemokinesis
• Pillage
• Unrelenting
• Bludgeon
• Howl from Beyond
• Stomp
• Rage
• Infernal Blade
• Expect a Fight
• Drum of Battle
• Inferno
• Rupture
• Vicious
• Stampede
• Conflagration
• Cascade
• Primal Force
• One-Two Punch
• Juggernaut

D Tier – Usually Skip Unless You Have a Very Specific Plan

• Sword Boomerang
• Thunderclap
• Grapple
• Rampage
• Fight Me!
• Mangle

When I’m uncertain on a reward, I quickly ask: “Is this S–A tier for my current archetype, or is it just dilution?” If it’s not clearly moving me toward Vulnerable, Body Slam, or Exhaust value, I skip. That discipline alone cleaned up so many of my runs.

Early Shop & Upgrade Priorities

Shops are where runs are quietly won or lost. Here’s the mental checklist I now use:

• First priority: remove a Strike or Defend if your deck is starting to form an archetype.
• Vulnerable decks: buy/consider Tremble, Taunt, Uppercut, Dismantle, Cruelty. Upgrade Bash and high-impact Vulnerable cards.
• Body Slam decks: look for Shrug It Off, Blood Wall, Flame Barrier, Unmovable, Barricade, Body Slam. Upgrade Body Slam early.
• Exhaust decks: prioritize Feel No Pain, Dark Embrace, Burning Pact, True Grit (to upgrade), Second Wind. Upgrading True Grit to targeted Exhaust is huge.
• Relics: energy relics and anything that rewards blocking or exhausting are almost always worth reshaping your route around.

High-Ascension Survival Tips and Final Thoughts

Once you’re climbing Ascension with Ironclad, fights get tighter and mistakes more costly. The habits that helped me stabilize:

• Prioritize Block in Act 1 even in aggressive Vulnerable builds. You can’t scale damage if you’re dead.
• Use early elites as a test: if your deck feels clunky, start skipping more cards and focus on upgrades that enhance your archetype (Bash+, Body Slam+, True Grit+, key powers).
• Don’t be afraid to rest if your HP is low before a tough elite or boss. Burning Blood helps, but it’s not magic if you chain multiple bad fights.
• Keep deck size lean: 15–22 cards is a sweet spot for most of my wins. Beyond that, you need strong draw engines (Battle Trace, Dark Embrace, Shrug It Off spam) to justify it.

If you commit to one main archetype, respect your HP, and treat this tier list as a guide rather than a script, Ironclad becomes an incredibly consistent S-tier climb character. I bounced off him early in Slay the Spire 2, but once these patterns clicked, the class went from “brute force warrior” to a flexible strategist who can win runs in three very different, very satisfying ways.