Readers!

I am a very average Slay the Spire player. I'm sure I've mentioned it before, but, briefly, Slay the Spire is a roguelike deck-building game, which sounds like an odd mishmash but really works for the game. Players start on the first floor of a tower (the eponymous "spire") and gain cards, 1-use potions, permanent relics and deadly curse cards and choose a branching path through the labyrinth... but I guess it's like a vertical labyrinth... Look, the game is fun, all right? You get to choose new cards for winning fights and ideally the new cards improve your deck. There are several distinct archetypes for each character but the cards sometimes overlap and synergize meaning you find new ways to play even as you begin to think you have everything mastered. After playing for years, you will still find new interactions between cards, relics, curses, status effects and other game mechanics, keeping the game fresh and exciting. It's a game of skill, cunning and planning and I will always be medium at it.

Being good at Slay the Spire requires hours of playing but being great at it requires trying to get better at it as you play and... I just don't have it in me. Make no mistake, it's not a mental thing, because the more I play Slay the Spire, the more I know what the right play is. I am playing better than I used to, but I noticed the real bottleneck in my skill level is my card selection. The way to win at Slay the Spire is to take the cards the Spire gives you and build the best deck you can. The way to have FUN at Slay the Spire is determine your favorite archetype and force it. About 2/3 of the time, the Spire does not give you the right deck, or the end boss is tailored to beat that exact strategy and you lose the game. I have discovered that the 1/3 of the time you get the archetype you force, you have a fantastic time Slaying the Spire to pieces of spires, and the 1/3 of the time you almost get there with not the right cards is exhilarating and the 1/3 of the time you die in the middle of act 2 because you built your deck wrong doesn't hurt my feelings. I don't miss out on a prize payout or anything. I just get to start out at the bottom of the spire and try my luck again.

I found out the Slay the Spire YouTuber I watched, Jorbs, plays Magic, too and invited him onto our twitch stream to play a four-player pod of Commander with decks I designed based around the four Slay the Spire characters. Over the course of the match, it came up that I mostly play The Defect, the character Jorbs selected and I mostly force the powers archetype because it was fun. I obviously look up to him as a Slay the Spire world record holder who was kind enough to grace our playgroup and play his first ever game of EDH, a game he nearly won, and I basically apologized for being a scrub. The thing is, he was supportive and reminded me there is no wrong way to play Slay the Spire. Does he take a relic called Frozen Eye that lets you see the order of your deck whenever he can, leading to a fairly thrilling battle on his world record win streak run where he spent an hour with spreadsheets and the list of the order of his deck trying to find a line and eventually getting there? He does. Have I ever taken Frozen Eye? Never. I want to sling garbage and see what happens. The thing about Slay the Spire is that I wasn't playing wrong if I didn't care how much I won. If someone kidnapped the President and for some reason the only way to get him back was to win an A20 Defect run, yeah, probably taking that Frozen Eye. Otherwise, I'm taking the Orange Pellets, baby. They're pellets, but they're also orange. That's something I look for in my pellets.

All of this is to say that it took me a long time to be comfortable with not caring about playing optimally because Slay the Spire isn't a game where I get very much dopamine from slaying the spire. It's a game where I gets lots of dopamine by saying "YOLO" and literally not doing any math. Slay the Spire is not a game I play to win, it's a game I play to have fun. You know what else is a game I play to have fun? Elder. Dragon. Highlander.

This card seemed pretty tame for about a decade and a half until it became a $30 common. The reason for the price? This is a Frozen Eye. I mean, it doesn't function like a Frozen Eye, but it's a card I include in decks because I feel like I have to if I want to win. But, like, I don't really care if I win. I want to win sometimes but if I'm not going for a world record streak for most wins, maybe I stop making myself play Rhystic Study. I don't particularly like Rhystic Study. I don't like the stress of reminding everyone to pay the . I don't particularly like how this card kind of makes me the Archenemy. I don't like how the table gets upset at people who don't pay. I don't like that I got rid of my Prophecy bulk for $5/thousand cards in 2008. I don't even take Frozen Eye in Slay the Spire. So why did it take a completely different game to make me realize I make myself have less fun during the deck-building process? Because I always have fun when I play Slay the Spire. Always. When I'm one gold short for a relic I want? Hilarious. One damage short to kill an enemy? Tough break. Blast the final boss, a giant sentient heart (don't ask) with 12 Lightning Orbs that deal 15 damage each? Superlative. Bad beats, good beats, it's a Skinner box, man, and I need that sweet, sweet dopamine so I can face another day of laboring under capitalism. Why should Commander, a format I play with people I like on twitch for people who like me and I like back for no prizes stress me out? Why do I start the game with Frozen Eye already in my relic pool? It's simple, I forgot this is a pet card format.

Lately people have talked a lot about how EDH is becoming optimized because of all of the new products tailor-made for the format and how it's making it less fun to play and how they're resorting to boxing leagues to have fun again. My brother in Christ, you built the deck. If it isn't fun, it's because you decided you'd rather take Frozen Eye than Orange Pellets. EDH isn't a roguelike, you start the game with the cards you want to play. Are you playing cards you don't want to play? Wow, that's weird, nobody made you do that. It took someone who is very good at Slay the Spire telling me that it was great to have fun at Slay the Spire to make me realize I was trying to have fun at EDH and not doing as good a job as I could be because I was playing cards that aren't fun. I don't like Rhystic Study, I like Cosima, God of the Voyage // The Omenkeel. I don't like Damnation, I like Ritual of the Machine. The great thing about EDH is that there is no prize money for winning a game. The prizes were the friends we made along the way were killing everyone by playing Transcendence and targeting it with Fractured Identity. You can't make that play if your deck is full of cards you don't even like.

What is the lesson here? I have no idea, and while that answer may be infuriating to some, it's the truth. I don't know if it's a good idea for you to play fewer staples in your decks to make room for pet cards because I don't know how you derive dopamine (some people use the word "enjoyment") from EDH. What I do know is that if there are cards like Smothering Tithe, Rhystic Study, Esper Sentinel (I'm sensing a theme here) in your deck because you think they have to be there, I figured out that they don't. At all. You're free to include all the Orange Pellets you can... I assume... eat? It's literally completely legal to put pet cards in your decks. Maybe you didn't need me to tell you that, but I had to learn it from someone who has played EDH once. If you're interested, here's the deck he almost won with.

Jorbs' The Defect Slay the Spire Deck | Commander | Jason Alt

• Commander (1)
• 1 Sisay, Weatherlight Captain

• Creatures (15)
• 1 Birds of Paradise
• 1 Bloom Tender
• 1 Captain Sisay
• 1 Destiny Spinner
• 1 Dryad of the Ilysian Grove
• 1 Esika, God of the Tree // The Prismatic Bridge
• 1 Faeburrow Elder
• 1 Golos, Tireless Pilgrim
• 1 Jhoira, Weatherlight Captain
• 1 Kambal, Consul of Allocation
• 1 Keranos, God of Storms
• 1 Kethis, the Hidden Hand
• 1 Lavinia, Azorius Renegade
• 1 Reki, the History of Kamigawa
• 1 Shalai, Voice of Plenty

• Planeswalkers (4)
• 1 Calix, Destiny's Hand
• 1 Kaya the Inexorable
• 1 Nicol Bolas, Dragon-God
• 1 Teferi, Time Raveler

• Instants (5)
• 1 Arcane Denial
• 1 Cyclonic Rift
• 1 Disallow
• 1 Dovin's Veto
• 1 Enlightened Tutor

• Sorceries (6)
• 1 Cultivate
• 1 Farseek
• 1 Kamahl's Druidic Vow
• 1 Kodama's Reach
• 1 Rampant Growth
• 1 Replenish

• Enchantments (26)
• 1 Assemble the Legion
• 1 Court of Ambition
• 1 Court of Bounty
• 1 Court of Ire
• 1 Ghostly Prison
• 1 Greater Auramancy
• 1 Honden of Cleansing Fire
• 1 Honden of Infinite Rage
• 1 Honden of Life's Web
• 1 Honden of Night's Reach
• 1 Honden of Seeing Winds
• 1 Karmic Justice
• 1 Oath of Nissa
• 1 Oath of Teferi
• 1 Privileged Position
• 1 Propaganda
• 1 Sanctum of All
• 1 Sanctum of Calm Waters
• 1 Sanctum of Fruitful Harvest
• 1 Sanctum of Shattered Heights
• 1 Sanctum of Stone Fangs
• 1 Sanctum of Tranquil Light
• 1 Sigil of the Empty Throne
• 1 Smothering Tithe
• 1 Sphere of Safety
• 1 Sterling Grove

• Artifacts (7)
• 1 Arcane Signet
• 1 Chromatic Lantern
• 1 Chromatic Orrery
• 1 Commander's Sphere
• 1 Fellwar Stone
• 1 Mox Amber
• 1 Sol Ring

• Lands (36)
• 1 Mountain
• 1 Swamp
• 2 Forest
• 2 Island
• 2 Plains
• 1 Blood Crypt
• 1 Bloodstained Mire
• 1 Breeding Pool
• 1 Cascading Cataracts
• 1 Command Tower
• 1 Evolving Wilds
• 1 Exotic Orchard
• 1 Flooded Strand
• 1 Godless Shrine
• 1 Hallowed Fountain
• 1 Indatha Triome
• 1 Jungle Shrine
• 1 Ketria Triome
• 1 Mana Confluence
• 1 Overgrown Tomb
• 1 Polluted Delta
• 1 Raugrin Triome
• 1 Sacred Foundry
• 1 Steam Vents
• 1 Stomping Ground
• 1 Temple Garden
• 1 Terramorphic Expanse
• 1 The World Tree
• 1 Throne of the High City
• 1 Watery Grave
• 1 Windswept Heath
• 1 Wooded Foothills
• 1 Zagoth Triome

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That does it for me, readers. Thanks for reading, don't forget to share on social media and meet me next week for more things that should have been obvious to me years ago. Until next time!