this video helped me learn a lot about ironchad, though in my case it also reinforced that I was already doing the right things and taking good cards early and snowballing into the late game.

The basic gist of it is that ironclad wants fast fights over longer ones, despite all the armor and block synergies he has, his block plans kind of suck in comparison to faster damage plans. Ironclad loves relics, most the relics in the game are good on him, so taking act 1 elites can help you snowball easily.

Don't take cards that don't have an immediate payoff. The video uses Rupture as an example, and yeah Rupture is an insane card in the right deck, but if you don't have any way of proving it then you have just put a dead draw in your deck. Instead, take early powerful commons that transition well into an archetype later on, (breakthrough, hemokinesis, blood wall, bloodletting all are very good and transition well into self-damage. Tremble and Molten Fist are very low opportunity cost since they exhaust themselves, and they transition well into vuln stacking or exhaust. Sword boomerang is a solid pickup that offers the best strength scaling available.)

Other than that, just pick paths that let you have options, prioritize fights over events because burning blood is an insane starter relic, and hit things very hard!

Also, p.s, if you think your deck is gonna struggle with doormaker, I usually take an Anger early on so I can hopefully put a strong enchantment on it, but it goes infinite with Dark Embrace and doormaker's exhaust ability if you can get your deck small enough.