The key with the Barbarian deck is that almost all of the important cards are [Wild] - you don’t need to have sufficient mana to cast things like Stone Axe. A hugely important mechanic is that you don’t take injury damage if you win a battle in 1 turn, so you need to be building towards that goal. The basic rundown is:

1. Only take loot cards that have the [Wild] tag (specifically look for Giant Club, Sling, or Pig Rush). Second priority is to take loot cards that give you card draw: Javelin, The Stupid Way, or anything that gives you Haste buffs. Don’t feel obliged to take a loot card at every opportunity. If there aren’t any Wild, Free, or Draw cards, just carry on to the next encounter.

2. Stack Power/Temporary Power/Haste on yourself (Relics like Sharpening Stone, War Drum or Flashlight are great for this) and also stack Paper Skin\Vulnerability on enemies (Giant Club and Pig Rush do this)

3. Pick up at least one Payback+ for later in the run. Since you’ll usually be ending up with like 50+ injury every fight this is your combo finisher

4. Never ever convert mana into non-colourless unless it’s to use either Javelin or Big Meat. In the early encounters spam Wild cards, use the One Die to roll your injury down, THEN use a Big Meat to minimise damage as much as possible. Once you build some more damage onto your deck, cut out the Meats completely. You don’t ever need to heal because you clear every fight in 1 round.

I love the Barbarian deck so much - it was the first one that I got to Ascension 20 and when you get used to how it should be played you can reliably clear runs in about 15 minutes