So yesterday the question was raised about How good is shrug? and made the claim that 4 shrugs and body slam would just be enough to win low ascension.

So here are the rules; replace starting relic with [[busted crown]], starting deck is replaced with 4 [[shrug]]s and 1 [[body slam]], upgrading is allowed, no adding any other cards.

And so lets take a look at that run. Images with captions hopefully work.

Slime boss our starting deck busted crown

Gremlin Nob was stated as a concern early on - after all our deck is 80% skills, but nope; get body'd.

I ate a banana at an event to heal up the 3 health I was missing from nob. Killed 3 sentries, bought a tea set, and made sure to split slime boss at the worst possible health.

And slim-bo was no problem. Lets take a black star.

Half way through act 2 and we upgraded body slam, picked up some relics from a shop, and are absolutely BODYING these Ascension Zero elites.

If you look in the top middle you can see that Gremlin leader gave us the relic that gives 2 skill upgrades... so now our deck is fully upgraded.

The champ actually delt damage to us! We still haven't used potions this run by the way, I just keep swapping out pots for better ones.

Ya know, I said that we would add cards to the deck, but taking Calling Bell is just too enticing. Calling bell is such a good relic! /s at this I am intentionally trying to play as bad as possible because this run is SO easy. Shrug body slam is just too good.

Time eater is our boss! Probably the worst boss for us TBH

We bought 2 speed pots and a toy ornithopter. I know we are at full health, but you can never be too safe!

So our whole deck is already upgraded, we just spent 200 gold on toy ornithopter for healing, AND we have a regal pillow. But fuck it. MIND BLOOM

Yea, if we might have had problems with damage, pen nib fixes that. Also I am not stacking pen nib, I'm just spamming cards.

Oh shit we are taking damage. Calling bell coming in CLUTCH AS FUCK.

lol bought the waffle instead of calipers

I am going to eat the time-USSY, but yea time eater dealt literally no damage to us.

I killed the spire shield on turn one and it was so quick that I forgot to screen shot them being alive in the first place.

So we had to use dupe and speed pot this turn and the heart is gonna smack us anyway.

OH SHIT LAST POT. Thank god for toy ornithopter's healing! Now if you were really paying attention you would remember that I actually have Torii. And so I don't need to use this speed pot to live, but I'm gonna use it anyway and see if it matters.

And so all good things come to an end. Damn, Slay the Spire is so unfair. There was nothing I could have done to win this run. Sometimes it just comes down to RNG ya know?

So yea, I played a poorly as possible and applied zero critical thinking and this whole run took about 20 minutes TOPS - but we didn't get a speed run thing because I was taking time to make screen shots and captions.

Turns out Shrug is a pretty good card.

Tomorrow I'm going to do this run again with some slightly different rules: no starting relic (and no relic to replace it), 4 shrug 1 body slam, and something SPECIAL that you are gonna have to wait for.

I've never made anything like this before, so if you guys want the next run of this to be in video form go ahead and say so. It probably won't even be 20 minutes long.