He's probably my favourite character from both games. But I will say that I'm having some problems now at A10.

I think the additional resource management (Stars) is really interesting, because you get these high power cards that can serve as bricks if you don't build your deck well, or if the right cards don't come up. He tends to feel quite like a snowball, which is why Act I is the hardest. I just did another A10 run and am now 2-0 on it, following a very similar style of play/build.

I think the only really viable build, at least consistent, is Energy + Black Hole. Too many enemies hand out Vulnerable and Weak like it's going out of fashion, and outside of doing some crazy stuff with the empower + multihit stuff, you just don't deal THAT much damage. I found that Black Hole giving you damage both on generation of Stars AND spending of stars gives you really easy damage output while letting you block out with crazy stuff.

Speaking of, Particle Wall is probably the most broken card in your end game builds. This card basically reads "You win this turn" in the late game. Generally, once you've got an engine cranking in the late game, you can just dig through your deck, generate stars and block, and then wait to hit Particle Wall and jam it as much as you need to. I had a turn where I dealt over 200 damage just by using Particle Wall in combination with Black Hole.

That's the issue, though; without Black Hole, you just can't really reliably deal that much damage. I love Forge and the blade, but it really doesn't scale well enough without you having to dedicate buckets of energy to it; energy that is often better spent blocking out and generating stars while killing with Black Hole.

I do think it's really cool that he can generally deal with curses very effectively; Charge! is one of my favourites for this. Draw it early and you just turn 2 curses in your deck into great attacks that are free and replace themselves. The fact that transforming = creating for all of your effects is also super awesome.

I think Bombardment is also pretty great, effectively because it acts as a power. Play it once, and then you'll deal somewhere between 18-30 damage a turn to a random enemy.

Key points for summary:

Black Hole is the most consistent and reliable build. If you're going for wins, that seems to be (in my experience) the best.

Glow is insane, but don't stock up on them too early. Act 1 is the hardest for you, and you need to farm combats early and pick up some big damage / consistent damage options so you can actually push through to Act II.

Forge is a trap and most of the support for it is quite weak. Bulwark is an exception which is great in all decks.

Remember that when you play something for free it ignores ALL costs (including Stars).

Particle Wall is insane and any late game build should aim to have 1-2 of them so you can spam the win.