Is there any point of removing cards?

[Fiercest Tuna]

Aside from curse cards, I mean.

[JellyPuff]

To thin out your deck (mostly Strikes or Defends depending on your deck), in order to draw more useful cards more consistently.

[Jeff]

It can make your deck more efficient & consistant, as well as enable possible infinite combos.

I would recommend removing a strike or defend whenever feasable until you figure out how it is helping.

The only hard decision you will have is at shops when you are between multiple options of buying a relic, or buying a removal + adding a good card. It is very situational.

[Zu]

Defends are aight when upgraded by chance. Strikes are largely horrible in the late game because all they do is deal crappy damage. That's something you care about in act 1, not 3.

[Caos Spawn]

Removal is the strongest thing you can do in your deck imo
True Grit ftw

[Dusk_Army]

It's a staple of deck builders, but a bit counterintuitive if you're new to the genre. Ideally, you remove cards that aren't good so that you're more likely to draw cards that are. Sometimes it is better to leave a Strike in your deck, but it's usually preferable to have less of them and more of any other attack card.

Also, there is a place for large decks in this game. There are builds and cards for which having a ton of cards is an enabler (like Mind Blast).

[BitterSwede]

If you want to see the usefulness, check out Northernlion's 5-6 most recent videos on the game. He has a few hundred videos and it took him this long to realize the potential of a thin deck.

As a card game veteran I've known about the thin deck meta for a while now, but Slay The Spire is the first one I've played that has no lower limit to how few cards you can have. With the right cards, you can go really, really low and make a near unbeatable deck. Things like a single Rampage (boosts its own strength every time you use it) becomes extremely good, if you are guaranteed to draw it several times per turn (something you can achieve with relics such as Unceasing Top, cards like Evolve, Dark Embrace, Brutality, Warcry, Battle Trance or Burning Pact and a very, very thin deck).

Mostly it's to remove cards that doesn't fit the current theme though. Each deck should have a theme and anything that doesn't fit that theme should be gone. That is why curses are so bad, they are dead cards in your deck. A card you don't use has the exact same effect as a curse, so you need to get rid of it.

[Zu]

Let's try not to shoehorn people into a compact archetype mindset that doesn't teach them to think about how the run is going and what's yet to come outside of the vacuum that is their deck, hm?

[BitterSwede]

Originally posted by Zu:

Let's try not to shoehorn people into a compact archetype mindset that doesn't teach them to think about how the run is going and what's yet to come outside of the vacuum that is their deck, hm?

Don't know if we've been reading from different perspectives here, but it seems to me like most people here have been giving two views in every comment, laying forth the argument for removal and then adding that it's optional. Not really sure how that is shoehorning. Your comment feels a bit out of the blue and confrontational to me.

[Zu]

I tend to get hung up on the small things

Originally posted by BitterSwede:

Each deck should have a theme and anything that doesn't fit that theme should be gone.

because things aren't black and white like this.

In the context of your post - a run that's already going in this direction - this makes sense.
Just making sure that people don't slip into tunnel vision.

And to be fair, what I said is incomplete too, because boi does it suck when you need to kill two exploders and you realize that you kept removing those upgraded strikes from the simplicity event and all of your damage is backloaded poison or lightning.

[BitterSwede]

Originally posted by Zu:

I tend to get hung up on the small things

Originally posted by BitterSwede:

Each deck should have a theme and anything that doesn't fit that theme should be gone.

because things aren't black and white like this.

In the context of your post - a run that's already going in this direction - this makes sense.
Just making sure that people don't slip into tunnel vision.

And to be fair, what I said is incomplete too, because boi does it suck when you need to kill two exploders and you realize that you kept removing those upgraded strikes from the simplicity event and all of your damage is backloaded poison or lightning.

I said a theme, not an archetype. Sorry if that was misunderstood. In card games, a theme is what you build your deck around, the cards you are using. An archetype is a gimmick, a narrow guide for a particular build.

An archetype is a theme, but a theme is not always an archetype.

For example, if you tend to use a lot of strikes as the Ironclad and pick up a Perfected Strike or two and decide to focus on getting as many strike cards as possible, you've gone into a Strike Archetype. However, if you notice you've picked up a lot of strikes and see a Perfected Strike and decide to pick it up, that is a theme. If you then see a Heavy Blade, but have no strength-enhancing cards or relics and is already halfway through the run, picking it up would stray away from the theme. You would end up not using it. Whereas another Perfected Strike is take-it-or-leave-it.

I know I'm crap at explaining things, but I hope you understand the difference between the two. I really don't want any hostility :)

[Zu]

Brilliant, nicely clarified. So that one line I cherry-picked is more about declining cards and less about removing what's already there, isn't it? P;

PS:
If there was any hostility at all, it was rather a challenge akin to "You forgot to say 'but'."

[BitterSwede]

Originally posted by Zu:

Brilliant, nicely clarified. So that one line I cherry-picked is more about declining cards and less about removing what's already there, isn't it? P;

Sometimes you don't know what theme to go for at the beginning. Or a theme you start out with changes when a much better set of cards/relics comes around later. Removal lets you change your theme mid-game. Or it could be, like so many before me (including you) stated, to shed those starter cards, if they don't fit the theme.

[Kelson]

Just ignore the overly confrontational troll with nothing to contribute to the thread.

Thin decks are very powerful in StS, especially because of there being no minimum deck size. Other deckbuilders have used thin decks as a strong strategy for decades, but they almost always have a set minimum deck size to keep it from being super OP. StS has a different take. Yes, there are some huge deck builds that work very well, but as with most deckbuilder strategies, some work in many more builds than others.

[itssirtou]

Strikes and defends tend to be low quality, energy and draw wise. So you take them out, strikes in particular since the defensive options are far more limited and you need SOMETHING to stay alive.

Most decks rely on a few key cards, you can get to them faster with a smaller deck size. When your Demon Form is on the bottom of your deck, theres a world of difference between seeing the bottom by turn 3 and turn 6.

Since theres no cycle limit you can get down to a few quality cards, its nice to trim the fat.

With Runic Pyramid and a few powers/exhaustibles its easy to hold your entire deck in your hand after a few rounds. This means you can adapt your turn every time.

Besides curses and basic cards you also want to get rid of non-synergistic cards, either that you picked up before your deck came together or from random things from, say, astrolabe, Neow, etc

[Penrose!]

no, if you are using an aggressive frost deck