These are my takes; they are not declarations of validity or supposed to function as condemnations of players who would win in other ways. Thanks for reading. :)

Thinner deck is better deck.

• Remove your train stewards and unupgraded spells sooner rather than later, so you can just cast good and/or upgraded stuff.
  
• You can play stewards suicidally to thin your deck mid-encounter and increase spell density. They're often worth placing for just the few damage they can deal, but this is an option.

Unit spaces, card draw, and embers are all resources to maximise.

• A unit that can't be placed is a dead card, but a space without a unit is useless space.
  
• Secondarily obvious is that there are resources outside of combat. You should aim to maximise the yield on your gold and chosen train tracks, for instance. Losing a run with hundreds of gold stored up happens, and it should probably feel pretty bad, even though it shows up as "Bonus" in the score screen.

Some cards suck bum

• Some cards are better early, others late. Be wary of confirmation bias: presumably you'll do more early runs than Seraph-slaying ones.
  
• Taking gold over dud/deck-fattening cards is often real good.
  
• Restarting a run because your random cards suck can and should be done. Draw two imp payoffs and no imps? A bunch of expensive card buffs and no protection for your beaters? Pinch your nose and hit the ouroboros hiding in the menu.
  
• My vibe of high-scoring, high-achieving players is that they decline bad cards and purge others like a truck. Unrelenting. Eager. Keen. We cannot all be so righteously conscientious, but we can try.
  
• Refer to gold star recipients at end of guide.

Some relics kick bum

• Know which relics make or break your strategies. Imps want the "summon effects trigger twice" and "play an imp, draw a card" effects. These drastically improve the quality of your deck, as in Slay the Spire. Hunt for them. Be hungry, like the wolf. Go on, don't be scared.
  
• Some relics stink real bad and will encourage you to make dubious plays. What the hell is a Tomb unit? I find the "gain 7 ember on turn 1" is pretty unplayable, too.

Limits only apply until they don't

• Making a "kill floor" of all your good beaters is worth doing.
  
• The upper limit of 3 upgrades on a card can make for some pretty busted stuff. I had a Crystalline Caverns let me cheat a third one on once, but I've since found it unreliable. Anyway, it's good, go for it. :)

Each faction has a way of explosively gaining damage output, sometimes two. The game is largely in finding those and protecting their operation in your deck and on the train.


Each faction's abilities are relatively self-explanatory. You'll find the payoffs as you go.
What is not relatively self-explanatory is an evaluation of whether or not these work at higher levels.
For that, see below, but also note that this is where the game really is, in my opinion.

These are combinations I used in beating Covenant 25.
I'm sure a lot more are viable, but I'm not skilled or knowledgeable enough to explain some of the options broadly available to you.
These worked for me.

Hellborne - Pick Impling Queen, build your family, and apply endless/duplicates/reforms to Transcendimp.
Awoken - Pick the quick enchantment buff champion. Multistrike. Escort your problems to the kill floor.
Wizardfish - Damage discount in conjunction with incant +2/+2 fish & multistrike.
Dinnertime - This caused me too much grief, I don't intend to finish it >:(
Candlefans - Little Flame hits like a truck. I won this with imps again. Just draft imps.

You can alt+f4 or hit escape and "Back to Main Menu" in the middle of an encounter to reset to the start of said encounter. It's up to you if you want to exploit this or not, but it's an oh-so-mildly hidden function. I'd say it's useful for when you misplay, but I abuse it much more than that.

Cards featured below are honorary recipients of this hypothetical sticker. I like them. They have done me well.



The value of Dante explodes on higher covenants as you are forced to take more blight cards. I enjoy the Crystal Caverns event that gives you 2x ping-pyre blights for additional energy in conjunction with him.

Overgorger is obviously better the earlier you take him.

Imp is Imp.