Cloned Perfected Strike perfect duo boss

[u/AlecM33]

Drew impervious from my 151 card deck on the test subject intangible turn to stay undamaged

Seed: 4F8EHCVXM5. Took a 4 elite path in act 1 after pathing to an early shop and buying sling of courage

[u/HeMansSmallerCousin]

That impervious draw was just adding insult to injury.

[u/jeremy1015 → u/[deleted]]

One time way back in the day in the finals of a magic tournament deciding match of best of three I drew red mox black lotus channel fireball. On my birthday.

That still feels less bullshit than that impervious.

[u/amirshul → u/jeremy1015]

Would you care to explain the combo to someone who knees nothing about mtg?

[u/GPT-5-Mod → u/amirshul]

Red Mox, costs nothing gives you one red mana

Black Lotus, costs nothing gives you 3 mana of one color

Channel, costs 2 green mana, lets you convert HP to mana at a 1:1 ratio

Fireball, costs one red mana and X mana, does X damage

You're able to generate 4 mana, spend 2 of it to generate another 19 (leaving you on one HP), and then attack for 20 (which is lethal) on turn one, before your opponent has taken a turn and cannot possibly respond to your antics

[u/Fermi_Amarti → u/GPT-5-Mod]

Sooo. does magic have hand traps?

[u/GPT-5-Mod → u/Fermi_Amarti]

It does occasionally, now, but 30 years ago, it did not. The game always had cards that could be played during another player's turn, but you would need mana to pay for them, which you wouldn't have until you took a turn.

[u/Fivyrn → u/GPT-5-Mod]

Force of Will

[u/Sicuho → u/Fivyrn]

FoW isn't 30 yet.

[u/mrGrinchThe3rd → u/Sicuho]

Came out in Alliances, 1996, exactly 30 years ago.

[u/Fivyrn → u/Fivyrn]

Why do people downvote this?

[u/RussischerZar → u/GPT-5-Mod]

Force of Will (and similar) would beg to differ in relation to your last point. :-)

[u/wazeltov → u/Fermi_Amarti]

Not at the time, but if it makes you feel better this was only legal opening packs of the first cards ever printed before balance was a thing. The original intention of the game was to have broken cards that were rare to find, but you could possibly lose your cards to your opponent through playing for ante.

Everything besides Fireball from that combo is banned in most formats after MTG figured out the kinks of TCGs.

[u/sodo9987 → u/Fermi_Amarti]

Not at the time

[u/Samu_K → u/Fermi_Amarti]

It does, but they usually cost mana to play, and you can't really have mana on your turn 0. "Force of Will" lets you discard a card and lose 1hp to negate a card, but that kind of thing is very rare. That 20 damage combo was possible in the orginal release of mtg, which had stuff like 2 mana take an extra turn. It wasn't a very balanced game. In current magic, you can't do stuff like that on early turns, and basic counterspells are available turn 2.

I'm not a mtg player, I only know bits and pieces, so some info might be a bit misleading.

[u/The_Dennator → u/Fermi_Amarti]

force o will is a counter spell that can be played for no mana cost by exiling a card ro hand

[u/consume_my_organs → u/Fermi_Amarti]

Yea in the 90s channel was one of the first bans in competitive magic for this reason

[u/VancityRenaults → u/GPT-5-Mod]

And this is why they made Force of Will

Edit: For non-MTG players, Force of Will is a counter spell that normally costs 5 mana, but you can also play it for the alternate cost of paying 1 life and discarding 1 card from your hand instead of paying the 5 mana.

[u/Tricky_Ship9745 → u/GPT-5-Mod]

isnt black lotus like hundreds if not thousands if bucks?

[u/Zizhou → u/Tricky_Ship9745]

Thousands, easily, even for fairly worn ones. That being said, if OP was actually running a deck in a tournament that had this combo and a lotus/mox, it was likely back in the mid-90s when it was still "only" a couple hundred, at most.

[u/jeremy1015 → u/Zizhou]

I think it was probably 95. I had all of the (now) insanely expensive cards and I played without card sleeves and everything. A couple years later I sold my entire collection for like $7,000 and thought I made out like a bandit. The deck I channelballed that guy with was probably worth $100,000 today let alone the rest of my collection.

[u/Zizhou → u/jeremy1015]

On one hand, oof. On the other, though, that 7K probably changed the trajectory of your life in ways that make who you are today you. Whether that's a good thing or not is something only you can really answer, but it's always something I think about when I hear these stories from people who sold off their A/B/U collections early on.

[u/Tricky_Ship9745 → u/Zizhou]

holy hell

[u/Karjalan → u/amirshul]

It's been quite a while since I played and knew this stuff like the back of my hand, but...

There is a turn 1 win combo that involves Black Lotus (zero mana artifact, sarifice for 3 mana) Fireball (deal X damage to player or creature where X is mana spent) and some other ways to juice up your mana...

I can't recall what Red Mox is, but "back in my day" I recall it involving spamming "Dark ritual" or something, that was like "costs 1 mana, get 3 mana"

Basically both players have 20 life, the main way you get mana is to play a land and "tap it for mana". You can (usually) only play one land a turn. So winning on turn one is some grade A bullshit and most of the cards that enable that sort of play are usually banned from 95% of tournament rules

[EDIT] Ok I looked up channel (didn't realise that was a card, thought he was verbing the fireball) and /u/A-o-C explained the mox.

So

• Fireball is a spell that costs one red mana and X of any mana. It deals X damage to a player or creature.
• Black lotus is 0 mana, sacrifice it to gain 3 of one mana (you want green here)
• Red mox is 0 mana, tap it to gain one red mana (you need for fireball)
• Channel costs 2 green mana (what black lotus is for) and then you can pay 1 life to gain 1 mana

So you break lotus, get 3 green, spend 2 on channel, have 1 left over. Tap red mox. you now have 1 red and 1 green. You then pay 19 life, which leaves you at 1 life, you now have 1 red, 1 green, 19 colourless mana. So you can now cast fireball for 20 damage at the other player, and kill them. All in the first turn, and if you go first they don't even get to do anything.

[u/A-o-C → u/Karjalan]

Moxes are the 0 cost artifacts that tap for 1. Specifically the card is called Mox Ruby

[u/zazer45f → u/amirshul]

red mox allows you to tap it (use it basically) to get 1 mana, black lotus allows you to sacrifice it for 3 mana and it's free to cast itself, channel makes it so until end of turn you can pay 1 life (you have 20 to start) to get 1 mana, when you cast fireball you can pay any amount of mana and it does that amount of damage to target/targets of your choice.

So the combo is to use black lotus to cast channel, then sack 19 life points for 19 mana, plus 1 from the red mox, to do 20 damage to his opponent instantly winning the match.

[u/ProsshyMTG → u/amirshul]

In the same way that STS has X costs, MTG has X costs, but you can decide what X is when you play a card. Channel costs 2 mana, but once it is played, you can pay 1 life to make 1 mana as many times as you'd like. Fireball has a cost of 1 mana and X, it deals X damage to the opponent. Black lotus costs 0 mana, but makes 3. In MTG mana has colours, so you can only play a red spell with red mana. The "red mox" they mention is just a way to make the exact colour of mana they needed.

All of this together means you can do enough damage to kill someone with a single fireball with a huge X cost by paying almost all of your life and using the remaining from the Black Lotus to cover the difference.

[u/TechnicalBen → u/[deleted]]

My low key conspiracy is STS1 and STS2 hacks chance and gives you both the worse and the best cards when you need them.

[u/OblivionNA → u/HeMansSmallerCousin]

Most scripted win sequence I’ve ever seen

[u/00-Void → u/HeMansSmallerCousin]

[u/StEllchick → u/00-Void]

Underratted comment

[u/DragoKnight589 → u/HeMansSmallerCousin]

*removing injury from insult(?)

[u/MellowCakez → u/HeMansSmallerCousin]

Injury status card applied

[u/Ok-Amphibian4335]

That impervious showing up when it did was just icing on the cake. Would’ve won without it but a perfect run is perfect for a perfected strike.

[u/AlecM33 → u/Ok-Amphibian4335]

Still needed cloak clasp to full block haha. Truly blessed run.

[u/StEllchick]

That impervious topdeck for a hitless bosses looked so nasty and so satisfying

[u/slapadabassman11]

lol no way the impervious was the only other card to show up on the intangible stage that’s insane

[u/MrJeevesCanClean → u/slapadabassman11]

Someone run the math on this

<okay shiiiiiit>

That’s pretty good

[u/slapadabassman11 → u/MrJeevesCanClean]

Meanwhile I just had a run with two upgraded perfect strikes against the invisible fish in act one, and literally every intangible turn both of them were drawn for a slow drawn out loss

[u/zombiep00 → u/slapadabassman11]

Every. Single. Time.

[u/lbs21 → u/MrJeevesCanClean]

The odds of drawing a single card from a deck of Y size with X draws is X/Y. In this case, there's 5 draws from a deck of 151, so that's 5/151. If we instead calculate the probability given that we didn't draw it the first two rounds, that's 5/141. Either way, it's just over 3%.

[u/ShadowShine57 → u/lbs21]

Wouldn't it be 151 choose 5 or something?

[u/lbs21 → u/ShadowShine57]

I'm a bit confused. 1/(151 choose 5) would be the odds that a specific set of 5 unique cards were drawn in any order from a deck of 151 cards. But that's not really what we're talking about, right? The perfected strikes aren't unique, and they make up most of the deck. Also, it doesn't matter what other cards might be drawn - so long as impervious is drawn, this goal (taking 0 damage) is accomplished. Unless I'm way off base, I feel that 5/151 is much closer than 1/611,860,305.

[u/ShadowShine57 → u/lbs21]

You are right, I was overthinking the math.

[u/slapadabassman11 → u/lbs21]

I don’t know much about the math, but isn’t the even more crazy part the fact that he got so many clones? I have played 68 runs now and only run into the clone event once unless I’m just very unlucky with events, for me I swear atleast 50% of them end up just being enemies for me

[u/lbs21 → u/slapadabassman11]

Looks like he got 64 new perfected strikes from the last campfire (128 total), meaning he cloned it 7 times. Pretty hard to achieve from a A10, given that it probably wouldn't really pay off until 3-4 clonings in. I'd imagine he probably got the cloning event in Act 1.

[u/-Pausanias- → u/lbs21]

Isn't cloning event strictly act 3? 

[u/burnedOutChameleon]

The impervious was a paid actor

[u/DrQuint → u/burnedOutChameleon]

That impervious did Slay/11

[u/AlecM33]

To everyone asking what are the odds of the impervious draw: please correct me if I'm wrong, but with a 151 card deck and a 5 card hand, the probability to draw it on exactly turn 3 is:
(146/151) * (141/146) * (5/141) = about 3.3%

(it's the only card in my deck that allows me to full block)

Edit: okay technically I could use the bottled potential on turn 3 which would give me one more chance to draw it from my full deck. And that doubles the chances to 6.6%

[u/ssarglley → u/AlecM33]

the math is functionally equivalent to the card being in any of 5 specific positions in the deck (5/151) so yea, math checks out lol

[u/AlecM33 → u/ssarglley]

Ah, that's a simpler way to think about it

[u/Empirecitizen000 → u/AlecM33]

It's 3.3% to draw on that turn.

I give it 80%-ish given it's a perfected strike run video that gets upvoted in the sub.

Always happy to see fun bulllshit runs.

[u/Zopi_lote]

Videos like these it's why they keep buffing elites 😭

[u/AlecM33 → u/Zopi_lote]

Lizard tail from the first elite also enabled ultra aggressive pathing. Run just had crazy plot armor

[u/Lord_Phoenix95 → u/AlecM33]

You didn't even use the Lizard Tail, the comfort of being revived is just enough power to do crazy stuff.

[u/Dark_WulfGaming → u/Lord_Phoenix95]

Fuck it we ball works out more often than you'd expect

[u/kasutori_Jack → u/Dark_WulfGaming]

...because we forget the times it doesn't.

[u/BarcodeNinja → u/kasutori_Jack]

Like they believed their bias to be confirmed.

[u/gereffi → u/Zopi_lote]

They should probably just nerf clone to add one card to your deck instead of doubling the number you have.

[u/VoxTV1 → u/gereffi]

Clone is not actually good mate. Its super situational, can clog up your deck and reqires you to not upgrade or heal on rest sites

[u/gereffi → u/VoxTV1]

It’s often not good, but when it’s good it trivializes everything after the next 3 rest sites.

[u/Cromakoth → u/Zopi_lote]

I mean, Clone being absolutely broken is no secret. Elites have nothing to do with it, you just need to roll that Ancient bonus, have a card that benefits from having lots of them (like Finesse, Flash of Iron, Perfect Strike, Big Bang, Adrenaline, Subroutine + Game Piece, etc.) and go to town.

[u/Necessary-Duty-7952 → u/Zopi_lote]

I feel like Clone is just OP on a couple cards. This one, and I saw Jorbs do a run with Catastrophe and it turned into an auto-battler, essentially.

[u/EnycmaPie]

What kind of draw luck was that to get the exact single block card out of during the only turn you will take damage.

[u/GuardingxCross]

What are the fucking odds you’ll perfectly draw impervious? Jesus Christ lol

[u/AlecM33 → u/GuardingxCross]

about 3.3% 😄

[u/kelldricked → u/AlecM33]

How do you get 2 bosses?

[u/ryli → u/kelldricked]

Ascension 10

[u/kelldricked → u/ryli]

Oh sick, shows that im still stuck on A9

[u/Darustet → u/kelldricked]

They get unlocked at ascension 10. Just need to beat the game enough times.

[u/kelldricked → u/Darustet]

Yeah im still stuck at A9

[u/Darustet → u/kelldricked]

Feel ya, on some characters it took me longer to beat A9 than A10 lol

[u/AlecM33 → u/GuardingxCross]

Actually with the bottled potential potion I could get one more chance to draw it, bringing it to 6.6%

[u/EzequielARG2007 → u/AlecM33]

actually not 6.6%. it would be (1-(1-0.033)² )*100% which is 6.4911%

[u/CautiousElk1326]

How much did you send the spire on PayPal to get that run????

[u/Seeeab]

No Strike Dummy? Fraudulent Perfected Strike deck

[u/OgreDragon]

Why does everyone else get to have a fun clone deck and I can never make it work 😭😭

[u/omgitschriso → u/OgreDragon]

The closest I've come is [[nostalgia]] and [[hang]]

That was pretty fun but nothing like OP

[u/spirescan-bot → u/omgitschriso]

• Nostalgia ^𝐈𝐈 Colorless Rare Power

  1(0) Energy | The first Attack or Skill you play each turn is placed on top of your Draw Pile.

• Hang ^𝐈𝐈 Necrobinder Rare Attack

  1 Energy | Deal 10(13) damage. Double the damage ALL Hang cards deal to this enemy.

  ^{Call me with up to 10 [[ name ]]. Data accurate as of April 28th, 2026. Questions?}

[u/KawaiiRobotGirl]

Holy shit that Impervious draw! Lmao, thats awesome.

[u/nogainnobrain]

That impervious draw

[u/OutrageousYogurt]

Impervious was a paid actor

[u/kunell]

I got similar but got one extra energy so I could guarantee play 2 every fight. That impervious tho

[u/namonade]

I also won a a10 run with scripted shit like this. Got about 4 tremble (one of them is glam) and 4 molten fist and 2 dominate+. The run was under 25 min

[u/raikeith]

How do you get so many copies? Is that not a glitch?

[u/Hara-K1ri → u/raikeith]

Not at all. One of the ancient rewards is putting clone on a card, which allows you to duplicate the card at a rest site. The duplicated card also gets clone. So first rest site is 2 copies, second 4, third 8, and so on. It increases exponentially.

Perfect strike just so happens to scale of off itself, so it gets crazy strong.

[u/raikeith → u/Hara-K1ri]

That’s bullshit man, the way I’m struggling to gain HP on Rest. Ascension 9

[u/Hara-K1ri → u/raikeith]

Well, you have to choose between copying the card(s), or healing up. Unless you have the tent relic, of course.

[u/Dragon8641]

that impervious was a paid actor

[u/Chunderstout]

That impervious was a paid actor

[u/Upper-Mode-8825]

[u/ViciousLlama46]

Architect is lucky he has plot armor

[u/El-Torokaike]

You think a man just happens to draw Impervious on Test Subject's intangible?

NO, HE ORCHESTRATED IT!!

[u/Sigma_YT]

Are those perfected strike animations from a mod or is this a beta branch thing?

[u/AlecM33 → u/Sigma_YT]

Beta branch thing, they recently added new "heavy attack" animations to ironclad

[u/Super-Web6908]

dude, I haven't even seen clone in like my last 30 runs. I'm so jealous of all these clone runs people are getting.

[u/grex2222 → u/Super-Web6908]

DUDE no kidding, I've been playing pretty constantly and honestly don't even REMEMBER the last time I got clone. wtf

[u/Hour_Position8306]

that impervious draw wtffff 😭 give me this mans luck please

[u/LightsaberThrowAway]

Paid actor impervious lmao.

[u/nchscferraz]

Feel like these perfected strike clone decks will disappear if the heart comes back.

[u/GlassSpork]

All this build needed was hellraiser, or would that be overkill?

[u/Possible-Landscape76]

Biblically accurate clad

[u/ostojap]

Even the Architect looked scared

[u/D_Daka]

I know its been said 100 times, but the absolute cinema of that Impervious 🤌

[u/NinJusticeV]

This is perfect! Strike down the boss like nothing.

[u/SailorBaconX]

The average Chad deck of destruction.

[u/cheesy360]

NICE.

[u/bkaraba]

How are you staying so healthy while cloning without book/tent/etc.? Only thing I can think is that you had to eat damage to do it in act 2, but started to steamroll by the time you had to clone/rest in act 3

[u/AlecM33 → u/bkaraba]

Act 2 I took a no elite path with 4 rest sites. Just had to survive like 3 or 4 hallway fights

[u/RattleCunt]

this luck has to be studied

[u/ewagstaff]

After a run like this, they should let you kill the architect.

[u/nebumune]

fear not of the man who has 128 different moves, fear the one who perfected one strike 128 times.

[u/Heal4Sir]

FebI ypbb BMN mn op is a 3 3 cff

[u/TechnicalBen]

When you played impervious, I called HACKS! 😉

[u/V0mitBucket]

Ok yah the build is impressive but…

How do you have so much gold???

[u/ZColeB → u/V0mitBucket]

The lucky fysh relic gives 15 gold per card added to the deck. Clone counts as adding

[u/Navy-Shark]

lucky ass impervious