DICEOMANCER Barbarian A20 Draw-and-Smash Deck Guide

To beat Agony 20 with the Barbarian in DICEOMANCER, assemble a high-velocity cycle deck built around card draw, energy recovery, and heavy attacks such as Smash. Agony 20 scales enemy damage and health pools high enough that traditional defensive blocking stalls out. Prioritize aggressive deck thinning, use dice manipulation to increase draw amounts and lower card costs, and cycle your discard pile multiple times per turn to defeat enemies before their attack timers overwhelm you.

Core Deck Drafting Priorities

Keep your deck compact, ideally around twelve cards, so you reliably draw your primary finishers every turn. Do not draft generic utility or standard block cards that disrupt your draw chains. Every card added must draw cards, provide energy, or deliver heavy physical damage.

Skip card rewards aggressively after combat. A bloated deck with unupgraded starter cards dilutes your draw consistency and prevents you from finding Smash during crucial damage checks.

Dice Manipulation: Modifying Draw and Energy Costs

Reserve your magical dice for altering card text variables rather than chasing minor flat damage increases. Rolling to turn an attack from 18 damage to 24 damage provides far less value than altering draw thresholds or energy requirements.

Inflating Draw Counts

Apply high-value dice directly to the draw values on your cycling cards. Overwriting a "Draw 1" cantrip into a "Draw 6" engine piece allows you to dig through your entire draw pile and trigger an immediate reshuffle of your discard pile in the same turn. This returns Smash to your hand immediately without requiring extra attack cards in your deck.

Lowering Finisher Energy Thresholds

Barbarian burst attacks often cost two or three energy, creating an early-turn bottleneck. Use low die rolls—specifically 0 or 1—to overwrite the energy cost of Smash and other heavy attacks. Reducing a 2-cost finisher to 0 cost lets you empty your hand, immediately play newly drawn cards, and maintain uninterrupted offensive momentum.

Act-by-Act Strategy

Adapt your route and card choices to the specific encounters across the three acts.

Act 1: The Road

• Focus on immediate frontloaded damage to survive aggressive early beasts and bandits.
• Acquire at least one primary physical attack from early combat rewards.
• Visit shop nodes early to purge basic starter strikes.
• Preserve health to take on elite fights, which provide the relics needed to support your engine's scaling.

Act 2: The Forest

• Transition fully into an active cycling engine to counter enemies with defensive shields, passive retaliatory spikes, and status cards.
• Use dice manipulation on draw cards to cycle past enemy shield barriers in a single turn.
• Focus down secondary minions first to remove incoming incoming multi-hits before bursting the primary elite.

Act 3: The Royal City

• Strip your deck to its absolute minimum size before entering the final boss encounters.
• Enter boss fights with high-value dice ready to overwrite card draw numbers on turn one.
• Loop your Smash attacks three to four times in the opening turn to push through multi-phase health pools before boss mechanics can trigger.

Deck Thinning and Gold Management

Card removal at shops and rest sites is your highest economic priority throughout an Agony 20 run. Basic strikes and defends dilute your opening hand and prevent reliable cycling.

Evaluate all shop purchases against the cost of purging starter cards. Avoid purchasing expensive relics if the cost prevents you from removing basic cards. Because Agony 20 enemy damage scales rapidly each turn, eliminating the enemy on turn one or two is more dependable than attempting to mitigate incoming hits with defensive cards. Prioritize card purges, maintain draw momentum, and cycle your highest-impact attacks repeatedly.