KEY POINTS
- Dropkick regenerates energy and draws a card when used against Vulnerable enemies
- Two Dropkick cards are required to make the deck work
- Consider using the Exhaust effect to reduce the number of cards in a deck
One of the simplest pleasures in “Slay the Spire” is the ability to play as many cards as possible with complete disregard for the energy counter.
Though the Silent may be the first to come to mind when card spamming is brought up, there’s also a way for the Ironclad to pepper monsters with attacks by using a specialized deck that abuses Energy generation without sacrificing damage output.
The Dropkick card deals middling damage by itself, but its true strength lies in its ability to be used repeatedly in a single turn, assuming that players have the right cards on their hands.
When used against a Vulnerable target, Dropkick will generate one point of energy while also drawing a card. Both of these effects can be used to abuse Dropkick and hopefully create a chain that can last the entire fight. Try to get the following cards during a run:
- 2x Dropkick
- 1x True Grit
- 1x Burning Pact
- 1x Bash
- 1x Shockwave
Players can only use Headbutt and Pommel Strike to draw used Dropkicks from the discard pile.
Drop Kick can be used to setup continuous attack chains Photo: Slay the Spire
There are many other cards that can make Dropkick more powerful like Demon Form, Flex or Inflame, but it’s highly recommended to have a deck with 10 cards or less to make the infinite Dropkick loop easier to achieve.
Apart from removing cards via shrines and merchants, players can use Exhaust cards. These can come in the form of self-exhausting cards like Shockwave or cards that exhaust others like True Grit or Burning Pact.
Exhausted cards become unplayable for the rest of an encounter, which will make getting the perfect infinite Dropkick hand easier to get.
Once the perfect hand is available, it’s simply the matter of applying Vulnerable via Bash, Shockwave or Uppercut then repeatedly casting Dropkick until the enemy dies. Reaching this point is this deck’s win condition, and the only real counter to this are enemies that can cast Thorns.
Like every curated deck in the game, the worst part of the infinite Dropkick deck is how terribly RNG-reliant it is. There will be runs where players won’t get a single Dropkick card, let alone two. This is best enjoyed in custom games with the Sealed or Draft modifiers.
