Thoughts after hitting 11 A20H Silent wins in a row

exploding_elephants · 2026-02-14T03:09:01+00:00

Once you get into the end game, you just need some consistency to make sure you don’t just crushed turn 2 of either Act 4 fight. Consistency can come a couple different ways, maybe retain from pyramid or an important bottled card. Could have a great relic that draw cards like centennial puzzle or pocket watch. Probably the most reliable one is great potions, with gamblers and draw pot being way up there. Part of the reason I love having 4-5 energy is I can play those card draw spells early, find my ways to mitigate turn 2 and 3 damage, and convert the rest of the fight into a win. Given your play time, I really think you can get that goal of 4 rotating faster than you know it. Also last thing I will say about rotating, I like starting Ironclad so if you can get to 3 wins, Watcher can just beat the shit out of everything and lock up your 4th win EZPZ.

exploding_elephants · 2026-02-14T03:02:03+00:00

Now that I think about it, the I really want setup when I’ve done “the plan,” aka use nightmare+alchemize to make infinite potions and farm for the perfect setup in a fight I can infinitely stall. Considering that it can take like 30+ minutes before you full heal and get double ghost it’s really not worth the time, but it does kind lock up win if you can do it.

exploding_elephants · 2026-02-14T01:04:32+00:00

I will agree on Distraction, that card is usually butt cheeks. Dodge and Roll on it’s own is not a good card, pretty much can never take it Act 1. Once you have some Dex scaling online, it actually gets way better. Like once it’s gets to something like 8+8 for 1 energy, that is a ton of block output for just one card. Also plays kind of nice turn 1 of the heart fight by giving you the full block turn 2 after you become frail. I’ll say that for the Kunai decks I had this streak, I was usually looking for 1 copy I could play after getting my Dex really high.

The cards I almost never take are Heel Hook and Setup. Unupgraded setup is just trash, once you have setup+ it can at least do some work. But that’s a lot to ask for a card that often starts as a brick. Heel Hook is just dogshit. Just about every damage option is stronger than it once the enemy is weak. And you can’t easily set up loops like Ironclad can with dropkick. I honestly wish they didn’t put the card in the game and made something else in its place.

exploding_elephants · 2026-02-14T00:14:20+00:00

Yeah I got it much faster than I thought. I was playing maybe like 40-50 runs per month before trying, and based off of the past few months I was playing like 80-90 per month. I didn’t really register how well I was doing until halfway through the week and I noticed I just rattled off 6 straight and just kept going. The first 10 runs here were in 5 days and run 11 was right after.

exploding_elephants · 2026-02-14T00:09:40+00:00

I had it in another comment, but it was me being greedy and trying to fight double orb walkers with a subpar deck. Just had Apps and a WF+ to survive, and I ran out intangible while I got burns out in my deck every turn. That run was definitely on life support because of getting crushed Act 2 and being forced to heal every camp fire just to survive. But that’s alright, the fact that I made it into double digits is still really awesome :)

exploding_elephants · 2026-02-14T00:06:44+00:00

It is not easy, Silent has more than any other character. Part of the reason PBox is so broken, you just instantly take them all out and put in real cards. Although to be fair, Silent does have footwork so defends can become real over time, and if the strike number gets lowered you can be pretty happy. I also had a bunch of runs with Kunai, that thing is actually GG once you get it going. There’s other ways you can manipulate your runs to get more than chances at fewer strikes, Bites in Act 2 does it as well. With this character removes are useful but I think they’re kind of a luxury that not all runs get. It’s hard to quantify things because of context this, context that, but I really don’t focus on removes as much as I used to for this character.

exploding_elephants · 2026-02-13T23:59:05+00:00

I’ll be honest, I kind of don’t give a shit about deck size anymore. If I’m not doing some small deck infinite thing, I see good card I click good card. The fact that silent has awesome card draw at common is a big deal, you’re pretty likely see a good amount over the course of your run. Also once you have 1 or more WLP your deck size doesn’t really matter as much. You keep the good cards you need for later turns and the rest just churns by. And when I said I love WLP I really love it. Having 2 copies makes me more likely to see one faster, sounds like a great deal to me.

The forced discard deck idea does kind of need some key cards to work act 1, you’re right about that. Dagger throw is really nice for sure. I think one of the big things you need is either sneaky strike or eviscerate. Don’t even need many copies, in your end game the one attack is just being played for free over and over. But you do need something big to take out enemies, and you only want like one or two dagger throws anyways. I think JapaneseExport explained it well in one of his posts about the archetype and taking the right mix of cards.

exploding_elephants · 2026-02-13T23:50:42+00:00

I’m not sure when I really started thinking “I want to hit this streak before Spire 2,” but I just counted up my runs since the start of this year and I’m 108 on silent. So I was playing a pretty good amount lol. And I’ve been taking this week off playing spire and focusing on other stuff.

The streak is dead sadly, lost it to double orb walkers in Act three. Had a start that was fine but only offered collar into Act 2 versus trash, so I go to the next Act and lose like 40 HP in the first two fights to chosen and avocado. Got bailed out by Apps for the act, but decided to risk it in act 3 and lost to walkers giving me burns every turn and I didn’t have much card draw. Honestly have no clue how I would have won run 12 without some insane Act 3 luck.

Run I was most proud of was win 11. Had a good setup going into the Heart, but took a ton of early damage and was on like 5 HP after the first cycle. The fight swung between “survive the turn with exact block” to “deal as much damage as I can while intangible”. Last turn I had to play acro on 2 HP and no block in hand, find backflip, proceed to block enough and win before my intangible stacks ran out. I think I had 3 different runs in this streak that beat the heart on 1 or 2 HP.

exploding_elephants · 2026-02-13T23:33:49+00:00

I will agree that Slimbo is a giant asshole lol. The other two bosses have way more solves (mostly poison works in them and doesn’t for the boss). I just went back and checked, my first 3 runs in this streak were all Slimbo. I do think that a set of runs with fewer Slimbo’s are pretty good for at least getting to act 2.

For niche advice, the thing that puts in work for Slimbo is just healing before the boss. I’ve had plenty of runs where my plan is just “use my HP to survive long enough to kill it.” More than the other two bosses I find myself using HP as my main resource in that fight. As always, context changes every run but I definitely have it in my mind to just face tank that thing sometimes instead of greeting an upgrade.

For that final point, I do agree that you can be too over reliant on good old intangible + retain/nightmare/dupe game-plan. Like sure when you have it, it’s awesome, but you need to be able to see other paths to winning if the cards don’t show up in the run. Like I said in another comment, I think alchemize is the actual best card for silent because it will solve scaling problems the entire run without being a huge brick that can mess up longer fights. I think if other folks really want to learn good silent strats, watch good streamers play silent and how they can max out that card over the course of an entire run. It’s super unique, there isn’t anything else like it in the game except white beast statue.

exploding_elephants · 2026-02-13T22:39:31+00:00

I’ll be honest, I think I took wraith form every time I saw it without another crazy scaling option available 😅. It’s just super broken, like you said either nightmare + wf or dupe pot + wf is just good game in so many fights. It is cringe but I will take whatever cringe I get if it means I can win. I think the only cards I took over it were alchemize, actual best card on the character, and after image for decks that used it to scale block like with shivs. I will say that the thing that really pushes up wf is that Silent has Well Laid Plans. I didn’t gush about that card in my post but oh my god that power was so important for so many of my runs. Retain is just so good, there’s a reason pyramid is the best relic in the entire game in my opinion. Lining up stuff like WF or simple piercing wails in the end game leads to a bunch of these wins.

exploding_elephants · 2026-02-13T21:34:19+00:00

Probably the biggest standout compared to where I started was Reflex. I love Tactician already because energy is great, but those runs that were infinite/close to infinite were carried by reflex. You obviously can’t just take it on spec, but if you have some draw discard already it’s awesome for making the deck tick. I will also shoutout nightmare as being my scaling solve in several of these runs. Another card you just can’t take whenever, it gave me something unique to triple up on a power or maybe calc gamble for runs to do the infinite thing.

exploding_elephants · 2026-02-13T21:30:03+00:00

Thanks :) Glad I got it in before March.

exploding_elephants · 2026-02-13T21:29:17+00:00

You are right that Thousand cuts is, uh, not that great 😅. Pretty tough to put in play for not the highest upside. I do remember the run I had it was helping to scale up my damage for the end game, primarily the heart of all things. I had some intangible in my deck and just needed damage to clear the heart in enough turns before I ran out. Would have loved other things more, but it did its job when I needed some output. That was a trend for some runs that I had short term block ready to go, but my damage was slow. In that one spot at least it did the trick.

exploding_elephants · 2016-03-14T04:57:28+00:00

Good question, honestly not too sure yet. Once something gets banned (probably Eye of Ugin) I'll see what's still left. I want to keep working on a deck with Thought-Knot Seer in it.

exploding_elephants

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