Ironclad exhaust builds not worth it?

[MobyPhallus]

Am I the only one who has trouble with exhaust builds for ironclad? Maybe I am not playing them right. But they seem way, way too reliant on luck, both in card draws and relics. And if you choose not to make an exhaust build, your card rewards are going to be extremely diluted because like 1/3 of ironclads cards are exhaust cards, which are mostly useless 99% of the time.

[Targuil]

At the very least you're going to profit from exhausting bad cards from your deck, making future draws inherently better.

[crate]

Exhaust is really not primarily a deck archetype. It's primarily a bonus on other cards. The only deck I personally think of as an exhaust deck is one that aims to exhaust all but 5 cards during a fight, and those decks are pretty rare.

Decks that play Feel No Pain and True Grit but don't exhaust down to 5 cards are just playing exhaust cards because they are good, the deck probably aims to do something else.

[Dad Poets Society]

Corruption+Dead Branch is the easiest win condition in the game, but most other times I avoid exhaust decks.

[Player Won]

Exhaust synergy is real. The main issue is having enough cards to exhaust - this is one of the reasons Dead Branch is so nuts, because now exhaust stops running out of gas (it's extra nuts because it can give you a bunch of free cards with Corruption). Another way to keep some gas is by running an exhaust/wound deck, ie: play Feel no Pain (this turn or previous), Power Through (get wounds), and then something like True Grit or Fiend Fire to get rid of wounds and get more benefits.

It's also important to know when you can afford to exhaust your long-term cards for a benefit in the short-term. If I don't have Dead Branch, I usually wait a shuffle or so against bosses before casting Corruption, to make sure he's low enough for the rest of my cards to win.

Exhaust can also shrink your deck down to where you can do something like an infinite Flying Knee combo, without having to remove a ton of cards outside of combat.

[Player Won]

Also I just beat ascension 12 with an exhaust deck, no dead branch, and I didn't even play my corruption (wasn't worth it earlier because it was Unawakened).

[Yxklyx]

I won ascension 10 with a few exhaust options - wouldn't call it an exhaust deck. I had Corruption, Feel No Pain, and Barricade. About halfway through the battle I played Corruption - can't play it too soon I think. Feel No Pain is such a useful card for some of the non-elite battles I nearly always take it even if I don't have any other cards that work with it. Didn't have dead branch.

[MobyPhallus]

I guess I have just been playing them wrong. I bring up the topic because my last run I had a really interesting synergy. I had the relic that allows you to retain your entire hand, and I also had fiend fire (10 damage for each exhausted card). So I would max out my hand and one-shot pretty much any enemy. It worked great until I reached the second boss, where that strategy only works once or twice before you have exhausted your entire deck.

Exhaust cards are definitely interesting but I think it takes some practice to learn how to utilize them.