They did say it never strikes twice (Slay the Spire 2)

Name: They did say it never strikes twice (Slay the Spire 2)
Uploaded: 2026-06-21
Channel: Northernlion
Description: Full searchable transcript of "They did say it never strikes twice (Slay the Spire 2)" (Slay the Spire 2) — 64 lines, each linking straight to that moment on YouTube.

Northernlion2026-06-21Slay the Spire 2

Watch on YouTube ↗ Latest videos

64 lines transcribed from this video. Click any timestamp to jump to that moment.

0:12 i was muted the whole time. um, suffice it to say i was about to say we can't. even though i love the ironclad and we literally just got an a10 win with the ironclad in the last video, i can't. i can't run back the ironclad like three times in four videos. it's intellectually dishonest. now if we were to random him again, apparently, i'm sorry, the remnant doesn't exist. sorry, inury2, your movie didn't win best oscar. it actually doesn't exist, just so you know.
0:43 they've replaced it with the ironclad and honestly i mean i like the revenant as much as anybody which is to say i thought it was pretty good but at the same time if they made a movie about the ironclad that could be feeding families i don't know i'd have to think about it. so far i gotta think as the defect i really i mean an upgraded charge battery is nothing to sneeze at i am also i'm realizing my computer is like running just a little slow
1:16 this is where you go to chrome and you start checking the memory usage in tabs. 825 megs, nothing too crazy. how about this one? how are we looking on this one? 346, that's not, i mean, i closed them, but that's nothing, man. 761, that's not, a quick control shift escape might unveil the culprit for us. discord? who would have thought discord? why i got two chrome tabs open, 15 processes.
1:54 i know i'm not trying to just make like the most relatable joke of all time. it's just a little bit surprising to me is all. it's just a little bit surprising to me. i'll take the charge battery. fusion could be good too. i always underrate plasma, i think. i don't give it its due day on the catwalk. i really like finesse as a card, to be honest. cold snap, i also of course like, but we can get it at the common level.
2:23 something to be said for the value of uncommon cards for sure. i mean, they made them uncommon for a reason. right? i'm not trying to just default to heuristics, but at the same time, i mean, it's like me thinking that when i was a kid, i was like, substitutions in soccer don't seem that valuable. i mean, if someone was good, wouldn't they want them to be on the field the whole time? and then when i got older, i realized they were good. why? because a player has fresh legs. no, because if they weren't good, they wouldn't limit you to three or five of them.
2:52 it's that simple. hologram upgraded, gets rid of the principal problem with hologram. wait, silver crucible synergy? i didn't know, man. i didn't know. it is interesting that like from this, we're not necessarily at all stuck with orbs. like i really like the idea of maybe making this into a, into like a status deck.
3:23 like a gunk up is 15 damage and a status. a turbo is synergistic with the status deck, but i almost feel like a momentum strike just for raw damage might be the play. and then i actually, i feel like our deck is quite strong. so i'm gonna brick a shop that i'm assuming is we're not gonna be able to even afford anything in and that's indeed the way it went. i wanna fight two elites, the mythical aoe elite that we weren't 100% sure even existed but
4:01 here they are. is that really like finesse drawing a hologram? but it would have been slick. it would have been slick. i'm gonna use like the world's worst vulnerable potion as long as you don't mind. get some orbs out there. i really like the cadence of this fight right now. i think the cadence of this fight is gonna be absolutely perfect for us. you being cooked is fantastic as well. we got extra energy next turn. just two slimes in the,
4:30 not sweating that at all, would happily send that out there. and you know what? look at this. always better to only have the possibility of dealing with one unit, i think. absolutely no problem with this. i'm really feeling good about this double elite path right now, because we have no aoe. that should have been like the hardest one. right most orb triggers one more time. getting a glass on the far right here could actually be pretty swag then.
5:07 a finesse that blocks six and draws one seems awesome. this could be a three elite path now that i look at it. hologram already has been played. there will be no going back to hologram a zap or something for future damage. yeah, that's my bad. not necessarily even the wrong play, but it's actually good to have another orb out there now that i think about it cuz we get the gold plating.
5:36 definitely that's big. definitely you have to play your highest damage attacks. i think you have to play a zap. the reason is this allows us to play a dual cast but still get gold plated cables value out of the orb that ends up in that slot. we have six damage coming out, you're gonna be on 82, which means, oh, you know what? i can just break you because of the gold plated cables. and i think it's
6:04 advantageous to break you even though the hp looked like it's the least amount i could possibly hit but still break you on because we wanted to block the 24 damage. that seems like a give me to a guy like me. so taking nine damage here far from the end of the world, you just got to hope we finish it in like the next the next right now. that was totally fine man. absolutely fine. loop i don't know. it's got some of the same keywords that we've been looking for so far. i can't be too mad. let's
6:38 get some smithing. you would block 9 and draw, man. i mean, our energy is not bad. a zero cost block 9 draw card is very interesting. i think you just play it like that. you may be a little bit annoying for us. i don't think anybody would deny that this enemy can be a little bit annoying. how about we're doing 9 damage, so we only need to do 6. what are attacks in our draw pile?
7:18 the thing is, i don't really want to draw an uproar later. i think i'd rather just have a momentum strike for zero cost in the future. and then we get one more this turn anyway, right? maybe. maybe not. let me think about this. we'd like to hologram back probably like our best attack. we also don't want to play too many gunks. i'm kind of shocked at how well we match up right now.
7:53 nothing in the dang draw pile. let's see if we draw a defend. then what are you gonna do? you can't really bring it back. you know what, this takes us to 12 damage and then just hologram. the holograms kind of inconsequential but all we do is kill you this turn anyway. could have been better but could have been worse. i think this is still a pass. we don't have the necessary payoffs for a status build yet.
8:23 let me get loop upgraded. we got the fish. the fish ruined that necrobinder run a few runs ago and i've legitimately never forgiven them. i have to think about what we even want, man. against the fish, i mean more block. we don't really wanna race you though. and i don't think capacitor, our build doesn't necessarily scale with more orb slots right now except it scales linearly. you get three extra damage per orb slot per turn.
8:56 this is like at some point with a lot of help this becomes worth like a strike. that's not necessarily gonna last forever. even this is also like not that impressive. i think this is just a straight up like cut a strike angle and then hope that this isn't combat. i'll take the clumsy man. that's mighty interesting. they want me to build a silent deck but now i'm realizing now don't worry about it we're gonna die.
9:31 yeah, we're probably just gonna die. i'm gonna try to lean into this k'nai build right now, but the beckons are gonna ruin our life, man. unless we remain deceptively strong, but i would be a little surprised to be honest. taking one damage is no big deal at all, but the beckons don't exhaust. i really wanted to see a strike there, cuz that gives us one more dex at the cost of six of our hp, which is crazy. how about a momentum strike?
10:11 polygram. well, you should play something that buffs you next turn. a zap buffs us next turn. no beckons, please. it's not realistic, but if you could just never draw beckons, that would be huge for us. i think we have to live for like four more turns. bring back a finesse. play a beckon. take no damage. i think you still want to... you're clogging up your deck, but we don't really want to have to live through too many more shuffles of this beast. one lightning is worth three damage per turn.
10:59 realistically, since we're playing a beckon, a zap will outplay a strike, i think at that point. equivalent or better. whereas a strike is always going to be six damage. swing for defenses, man. so we got 12 damage on the field. you're intangible. we're literally going to survive. why did i think the fish was hard? we probably could have done this without even resting. maybe that's pushing it a little bit. that went well. general, too dark. at the end of your turn, evoke. i always, i want this card to be good.
11:41 super critical we just don't need, we don't have expensive cards. if we had ice cream it's different but channel 2 dark, channel 3 dark at the end of return of völk, your leftmost orb. we're not an orb driven deck man, i think this is a straight up creative ai play. and then take stuff that synergizes with powers. realistically to play creative ai we need energy so we're probably gonna take radiant pearl and then roll with luminescence.
12:10 and i'm just trying to think. creative ai, we can upgrade it to cost two. maybe that early campfire is the way. did i sound confident? i don't feel necessarily super confident. why did i not have enough block? did i just do the math wrong? i felt like i shouldn't have taken damage on that one. okay, our power is creative ai, which in a lot of circumstances would actually be pretty awesome.
12:51 but obviously here we lack the energy to play it. now something like a super critical feels like we could actually get a lot of value out of that. this was a really okay first fight, to be honest. it's not quite over yet, but it's also over. luminescence gets added to our hand. it's not innate. so it's not taking away from our starting draw where we really want to draw creative ai as early as possible. but
13:25 being able to generate some block for free is also really nice. and not just for free, but consistently. we still need a reliable heavy hitter to finish the job. and right now, i mean, there's no reason to play anything, but right now that heavy hitter is just creative ai eventually playing two echo forms. and at some point after that situation comes to pass, there's nothing they could do. you want to do that.
13:53 we want to do that. i think the play here is luminescence for 0, snekko eye, and then hope you just get enough to kill or at least put up enough defend to take no damage. we have a 1 cost strike, a 2 cost strike. so it only hits for 3. you get less... oh, but one more attack stuns you. okay. so we'll play the 2 cost strike instead of the 1 cost strike for some reason. the finesse, it literally might be our best card.
14:26 double energy is probably also something we could consider right now. enchant an attack with vigorous 8. i mean, a gunk up that does 39 damage once is for one energy is pretty darn good. i'm not going to be disappointed about that. 21 block. you play creative ai. i still think you want to play luminescence. luminescence allows you to get some good stuff out there. and with creative ai, now we have kind of like our wind condition out there against an enemy that can be
15:04 pseudo annoying. i can't necessarily guarantee that gunk up would kill you, but i can guarantee that you die, which is important to me. hey, we got a status enabler. to be honest, smokestack is like way better for us, but whatever. lose an orb slot, get jacked, okay. you're not supposed to still be alive on this turn, but it happens from time to time. this might be like a double potion situation, as embarrassing as that is.
15:43 then block for eights take ten problem is we really want to upgrade at the campfire like really really want to upgrade at the campfire. i still think the second floor, you know like by my standards this is going pretty well man be able to get an echo form out there i mean, this is like a preview of what boss fights are supposed to look for us look like for us i should say the the more echo forms we get out there the the merrier the problem is
16:20 i mean, fight through upgraded is a stat. you know what? maybe statuses and powers can be friends. maybe they can end the beef. not thrilled with this first turn. the second act in slay the spire is also where you have these moments where you're like, i like you, you feel like your runs invincible and you couldn't possibly lose. and then you just fight an enemy that hard counters you and like zeroes you out. and you go, oh, okay, well it turns out like not only was my build bad, but i guess i don't know anything about the game.
17:02 you double your energy. well, luminescence, double your energy. play a finesse. fight through is pretty nice. you're obviously creative ai. i mean the turn just plays itself. one leftover energy to me means we did the sequencing right. probably you know could just run the numbers but where's the fun in that? and once we you get this one is like the it's like cliffhanger on the the price is right.
17:29 you can see when the man's yodeling a little close to the edge and then he goes over but in this case going over is a good thing for us because he's going yodel a hee, yodel a hee, yodel a hee. let's dodge the elite to go. oh god, this is an elite man! you don't need to, you could save luminescence. and then big cards. i mean you, you want to play gunk up. truth be told let's play it early and we don't even need to play our double energy. just play your defense as early as possible.
18:09 the glass can come out whenever it comes out. am i st oh, it's right at the end of the turn. that's right. um, do we have the we have the zero cost blocks in here. okay, so hologram of finesse. i would play a consuming shadow just for the raw damage. trash to treasure when you draw a status, when you create a status. channel an orb? okay bud, whatever you say. um, that's beautiful. that went really well.
18:51 storm is obviously something we'd really like to see. i'm sorry, i mean, i'd love to upgrade creative ai, but it's just not in the cards for us with our current hp. lantern's really nice. i'm going to continue to be a little bit of a coward. they're trying to tempt me. they're trying to tempt me to give it a try, and i'm going to say no. i'm going to say no, sir. you're doing 24 damage. okay, i love that.
19:21 truth be told, i don't think you have to kill the bull bug first. the ones that do a lot of damage have to die. don't need to fight through. we have six block. we're going to get one more. okay, in that case, bring back momentum strike. we still got luminescence. we don't have to... okay, well this sucks, but that's also bad. i was going to say you don't have to use it to play creative ai because we're kind of past the halfway point of the fight, but it looks like that might indeed be necessary.
20:08 maybe this is like a luminescence storm. creative ai charge battery, i guess, man. how much damage you do? we're taking five, i think. taking five is not that bad. beautiful for us. summon an orb. do enough damage to basically kill you. right, kunai exists. this is something. all status cards become fuel. we're not really a status build. i just want to make that clear. we're not garbage. we're not trash.
20:45 now if we end up getting a little benefit from trash, well then who's to say? i really don't have three attacks, huh? okay, is what it is. is he always coughed? you heard that, right? that wasn't just me. i don't want to play gunked up on this turn. gunked up is not going to stop us from taking seven damage. it's going to make us take 15 damage. it's not going out of style. we can play gunked up later. i'll own it, by the way. we actually did not at all need double energy.
21:31 far from me to say that it's been a curse so far, but we've it's been very inessential so far. you should be cooked. now the real question is maybe if we got a good potion here, you could persuade me. ooh, you could possibly persuade me to fight this elite. but i'm not gonna do it because i think then we die to the crab, man. i don't think i can't freaking do it!
21:58 you know what, rainbow ring, i've never even considered the consequences of having rainbow ring in a creative ai deck. because power, you have skills and attacks every time you draw cards, but powers tend to be a little bit more rare until now. we'll definitely want this. two, three, four, five, six, seven. let's draw three. huge. so two powers is lovely. and then an attack gets us the decks.
22:32 one strength and one dex, oh my gosh. and then we take no damage. and we're still holding luminescence for creative ai, which is awesome. we didn't get it, but you will notice we did get a power, an attack, and a skill, so we get one more dex out of it. and honestly, i think that's your fortifier turn to keep yourself ahead of the curve here. now you get creative ai,
23:10 and i honestly think our turn is not very good, which to me means save luminescence, play creative ai, and then just play your best block. and you can save luminescence to smooth out a turn that's even tougher. okay, now we got some interesting stuff going on. a power, a skill, and then an attack. we are weak, which sucks, but i'll stand by it. so we get strength index. you're doing 38 damage, not great.
24:01 get to 24, 30... i don't really want to add two wounds if i can avoid it. we have to draw them the same turn as compact to really make it happen. so i'm gonna settle for taking eight damage, which i think is not that bad. another storm. okay, so i mean we kind of know what we're gonna play. a storm. we're gonna strike at you to minimize the damage and then play a charged battery that gives us one strength and one dex.
24:32 things can go wrong really fast on the turns they start to attack together though. okay, it's a power and then it's a strike and you get re added to my hand two times, which is obviously crazy, which gave us extra dex, which i did not consider. and then we're facing the wrong direction. however, still only taking 8 damage and did an awful lot of damage. now echo form is like a must play unless we can't play it. and i think that's the case you're witnessing right here.
25:10 i'm gonna hologram back a momentum strike. it's just, i mean, i didn't really consider the implications of the cards we were playing there, but i mean, everything still looks really good. we're doing 32 damage. this turns a gimme, man, because you play defrag, which is awesome. channel a bunch of lightning. that's a skill. that's an attack. so we get the strengthened decks. we literally take one damage and don't add statuses to our deck unnecessarily.
25:50 and i mean this momentum strike combined with two ferals was, i mean it was feeding families there. we don't have a good energy base. so i'm not in love with voltaic, although we do have one double energy at some point. it not exhausting, i mean we'll hit a point probably where we're channeling a ton of lightning. but i still, i don't see us being able to consistently play it.
26:24 but it would be fun. it would be fun to get it off on a long boss fight. one of five random cards in your hand, add retain to the chosen. remove three, add folly. folly is like a, it's a curse. it's innate. add an enthralled, gain energy at the start of each turn. you can't get rid of it. you know, you know, i don't, i don't really care to cut three cards.
27:06 the strikes are useful to trigger the ring at the very least. i think a choice is paradox. the heuristic i hew to in slay the spire 2, especially, but also in 1, i guess, is that choosing abilities that let you choose a card are always op because you just choose something you need. like being able to choose a card is just really, really high value. i mean, to retain double energy is absolutely insane.
27:39 especially if you don't just burn it immediately like i would in 90% of the situations. we know we want this out there. we don't need to retain it. you just retain it. we have no other attacks, which is kind of crazy. you might as well bring back
28:07 i think you bring back a momentum strike just to do some damage and then we don't take any damage. we rather not dual cast with the gold plated cables, i think. can i say something? i should record at like 8 p.m more often because like i'm thinking stronger than i've ever thought in this game. we do want to put up a bunch of block. this is a turn where we use the double energy so then we can play
28:36 all of our relevant blocks. i'm not paying 3 energy to channel 1 lightning. it's just not gonna happen. now this turn, i will do that because we get to strengthen a dex out of it. and now this is theoretically where the fun is supposed to start. so you're definitely with double energy. probably just straight up kill you. one of those... we haven't played a power yet. all the powers here are good, but thunder is good especially. you're doing 25? that's not good.
29:14 i'll play more powers because the powers will also help us with voltaic. i don't like that you're hitting me so hard, but i actually do feel like this run has a certified chance at success. not necessary. what do we need? i actually have no idea. i have no clue whatsoever. i think that's the only option for us here. holy cow, i actually hit two cards that help us. hp is getting a little low, big guy. keep in mind it doesn't cost zero.
29:51 but still, i mean an ice lance so i can like run through yeah ice lance seems insane that i can't just kill you. we're taking we're losing like a little max health. i think it's worth it to pop luminescence here. the extra strength that we got allowed us to get the kill holy cow. we were really hoping to get like a double energy but let me think about this you're doing 32.
30:45 i'm gonna operate under the delusion perhaps that we don't even need to play creative ai on every hallway fight. how could this not be it? it must be ice lance. ice l okay, it turns out i did figure out what we needed. we need to have an ice lance in our deck at all times. and if we can get an ice lance then everything's totally fine. because this went very well. who are we fighting? doormaker queen. okay, doormaker queen. no test subject.
31:19 i feel like we draw enough that a hotfix could be a good zero cost skill to trigger the ring. probably we're in... i think we could do 150 hp with good draw. it requires a little thought. we're not creating a status which sucks. i think you have to take a reboot. and then the play is like finesse. dunk up is a really important play.
31:54 and i think also momentum strike. and then you play luminescence to get the energy, hologram back a momentum strike, and then reboot and hope you get some stuff that is like it does a lot of damage. okay, this has done nothing for our future, but doing 150 damage in attacks right off the bat was like surprisingly good for us. it's totally plausible we don't do 29 to you on this turn. it's not plausible, it's what's going to happen.
32:29 i'm gonna do like 12 to you. that's so funny. we didn't draw our win conditions, okay? oh no. this is not the fellow we want to see. i clicked on the wrong thing. powers cost a 6 to play. you need to play storm, probably. i'd like to play loop. i don't think you need to play loop. i think i'd like to play loop.
33:15 similarly, i would really like to play creative ai, but may or may not happen. i'm gonna stick with operation, like, don't take any damage if you can avoid it. i really like to play creative ai. we've channeled two lightning. i'll say it. it's worth it. the voltaic has been kind of a colossal flop for us so far. for some reason, i was under the impression that we generate a lot of lightning. obviously, that was false.
33:59 i don't necessarily think we need more orb slots. more powers is good, but we generate the powers for ourselves. okay, so now, i mean, this has been a very successful one shot run. we didn't start with four losses, which is nice and also a little bit out of the box for us. i'd like to keep that trend going if possible. but i still think it needs a little something extra to take it to the end. and it could be as much or as little, i guess i should say, as just getting perfect draw.
34:29 like being able to just, yeah this is fine. being able to do something like that and just get a meteor strike right out of the gate is kind of awesome. i guess we could have afforded to play luminescence considering the circumstance, but you know what? send them back around bro. i'm gonna try to hold off playing a valuable potion. i may indeed regret it. we need help, we need buffer. oh my god! buffer isn't even that good for us here. buffer saves us like 10 damage.
35:20 at least voltaic is not like pure garbage. i actually did a lot of damage that turn. 28 damage. okay, you have your creative ai. should be played. i guess the turn plays itself. i mean we took some nasty hits, but we're gonna make it. the problem is we have to do one more elite fight like right after this. centennial puzzle. i'm gonna hit that with the classic. could be better, could be worse. now this time we only have 41 hp going into the fight.
36:05 these fellas, i have no idea how to think, to be honest. a hyper beam is interesting, but i think we're giving up too much. i think it's a storm again, to get as much lightning whipping around as fast as possible. but i'm never going to be mad about drawing creative ai on turn one and getting exactly the right amount of block. that's huge. and we have the storm out there, so we're somewhere... okay, a buffer? buffer is very, very nice.
36:46 not to mention the thunder is something. and then i'm just wondering if i have to bring back something that causes zero. so it has to be zap or momentum strike. or you could play luminescence, because otherwise it's gonna get lost anyway, right? bring back a charged battery to preserve your buffer, because that buffer could be way more valuable than 17 damage. now it could probably be less valuable too, but well,
37:29 you know what, the turn played itself. would have been nice for some of the damage to hit the flail knight, but okay, buffer comes out, good stuff. you need the storm. the storm working together with a loop is gonna be incredible. we have to play a defend. and i was just gonna say, oh my god, you didn't get hit twice? you've been hit by one of like the last nine lightnings. get a life. now obviously here you need to not die. so as tempting as something like a voltaic is,
38:07 which would actually channel 10 lightning. i can't shake the feeling without doing the math, but i can't shake the feeling that we live if we do that. so i think you literally just play your best blocks and i'm looking and it's looking very bearish. but i don't think there is a better option. you're doing 57 and i got 48.
38:37 i genuinely think we lost. i'm gonna take ownership. i think we lost because we didn't use a basic attack on that guy because we assumed that the lightning would get him and then it didn't. but still, a great run and i really felt like we made something out of nothing for a while. i started to believe in myself. i mean, creative ai is like obnoxious fumes. you just add it to the deck and then build block and you got a shot, which i appreciate. but for now, thanks for watching. if you enjoyed it, please click the like button. i'm so grateful. subscribe if you want to see more in the future. i'll see you next time. later.