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STRATEGY
Iron Ledger Review: A Deck-Builder That Actually Makes Me Think (Unfortunately)
Another itch.io deck-builder that wants my attention. Except this one has a genuinely clever twist that made me restart three times before I figured out I'm supposed to NOT play my cards. Which is... different.
Paul
February 12, 2026
6.2
Overall Score
"Iron Ledger surprised me, which is the highest compliment I can give an itch.io prototype."
First Impressions (Or: When Your Tutorial Is Just Letting Me Fail)
I loaded up Iron Ledger expecting another Slay the Spire wannabe with tower defense window dressing. The art is... well, it's shapes and colors that technically convey information. The UI looks like a spreadsheet had a baby with a board game prototype. But then I played my first hand, felt smug about building three economic structures, and watched my town get demolished because I had zero soldiers. Because the cards I DON'T play become my army. Oh. OH. Suddenly I'm not playing a deck-builder at all â I'm playing resource allocation disguised as a deck-builder. Every card is a gut-wrenching choice between immediate power and future scaling. Do I play this marketplace for long-term gold generation, or do I throw it away to spawn a soldier who'll die in thirty seconds? This is the kind of mechanical tension that made me fall in love with strategy games back when Advance Wars was the only game I owned. I'm annoyed that I'm impressed.
The Core Loop: Why This Actually Works Despite Looking Like Excel
Here's what you do every turn: draw five cards, agonize over which ones to play for buildings, discard the rest to create soldiers, watch your army auto-battle the incoming wave, repeat. It sounds simple. It's not. The Merchant Guild wants you to build an economic engine and barely fight early. The Iron Legion demands you calculate exact damage ratios because each soldier hits harder but you field fewer. The City Watch just vomits numbers at problems. I started with Merchant Guild because I'm a coward who likes scaling, and the mid-game clicked when I realized I needed to intentionally deck-thin by NOT taking reward cards. That's smart design. Most deck-builders punish you for having too many cards. This one makes you actively curate because your hand size is fixed and every dead draw costs you either economy or military. I spent twenty minutes theorycrafting optimal deck compositions, which hasn't happened since Dominion ruled my life in 2008. The balance is rough â some cards feel mandatory, others useless â but the skeleton of something genuinely clever is here.
Three Factions That Actually Feel Different (Miracle)
I'm so tired of games claiming their factions are unique when they're just stat variations. Iron Ledger's three guilds actually force different strategies. Merchant Guild is turtle-and-scale: suffer early, dominate late, pray you survive to round 15. Iron Legion is precision strikes: every unit is expensive and deadly, so you're constantly calculating whether that elite soldier is worth not upgrading your barracks. City Watch is quantity-over-quality: your hand becomes a swarm, and you're playing probability rather than tactics. I won with Merchant Guild by round 28 before the difficulty spike murdered me. I lost spectacularly with Iron Legion at round 12 because I miscounted damage against the mini-boss and got wiped. Then I tried City Watch and actually had fun watching fifty soldiers overwhelm enemies through sheer stupid numbers. This is what faction design should be â not just different cards, but fundamentally different decision trees. I haven't felt this distinct of a playstyle difference since StarCraft made me choose between Zerg rushing and Terran turtling back when I had free time.
What This Prototype Desperately Needs (Besides Art)
Look, it's a prototype. Mort-on admits it. But some issues go beyond placeholder graphics. The difficulty curve is a cliff â rounds 1-15 are sleepwalking, 16-25 are tense, then 26+ is a brick wall unless you drew perfectly. There's no run-saving mechanics, no emergency buttons, no comeback potential if you stumble. Balance is all over the place: some buildings are mandatory auto-picks, others are traps that dilute your deck. The boss at round 10 is easier than the mini-boss at round 15, which makes no sense. Audio is non-existent except placeholder blips that make me want to mute my browser. And critically: there's no meta-progression. When I lose at round 23, I start from absolute zero. No unlocks, no permanent upgrades, nothing. That's fine for a prototype testing core mechanics, but it murders replayability once you've seen all three factions. I need SOMETHING to work toward beyond 'git gud.' Even a basic unlock tree would make me replay this ten more times instead of three.
The Play-or-Discard Mechanic Is Legitimately Clever
I need to give credit where it's brutally earned. The core innovation here â cards you don't play become your army â creates genuine tension every single turn. Most deck-builders have dead turns where you draw poorly and shrug. Iron Ledger doesn't allow that. Bad draw? Those 'bad' cards still become soldiers. Good draw? Now you're agonizing over what NOT to play. This inverts the traditional deck-builder dopamine hit. Instead of excitement when I draw my best cards, I feel stress because playing them means fewer soldiers. It's brilliant and frustrating in equal measure. I caught myself calculating 'is this upgrade worth three fewer units this turn?' more than I calculated damage ratios. That's deep strategy hiding in a browser game that looks like a community college project. The last time a deck-builder made me rethink fundamentals like this was... honestly, I can't remember. Maybe Griftlands in 2020? This mechanic alone justifies the download, even if everything around it is rough.
Rating Breakdown
Quality
5
It's a prototype and it shows â placeholder art, rough UI, but nothing crashes and the core loop works, so I can't complain too much.
Innovation
8
Cards you don't play become your army? That's the most interesting deck-building twist I've seen since Slay the Spire made me care about relics in 2017.
Value
7
It's free and gave me two solid hours of strategic head-scratching before I hit the current content wall, which is more than I can say for most $15 roguelites.
Gameplay
7
The play-or-discard tension is real and kept me engaged longer than I expected, though the balance needs work and the mid-game drags.
Audio/Visual
4
Programmer art and placeholder sounds that make me miss the days when indie devs at least pretended to care about aesthetics, but it's a prototype so whatever.
Replayability
6
Three factions with genuinely different strategies means I actually replayed it voluntarily, but 30 waves gets repetitive and there's no meta-progression yet.
What Didn't Annoy Me
The play-or-discard mechanic is genuinely innovative and creates real strategic tension every turn
Three factions with legitimately different playstyles that actually change how you build and fight
Free, browser-based, and gave me two hours of solid strategic decision-making without crashing
The core deck-building loop kept me engaged despite the rough presentation
Forces you to think about deck composition in ways most deck-builders don't
Actually respects the 'prototype' label â it's testing a mechanic, not pretending to be finished
What Made Me Sigh
Programmer art and non-existent audio make this feel like a math problem, not a game
Difficulty curve is a mess â easy until suddenly impossible with no middle ground
Zero meta-progression means failed runs feel pointless after you've seen all three factions
Balance is rough with some cards being mandatory and others being deck-diluting traps
The mid-game drags when you're just grinding waves waiting for the next difficulty spike
Final Verdict
Iron Ledger surprised me, which is the highest compliment I can give an itch.io prototype. The play-or-discard mechanic is smart enough that I actually want to see where this goes. It's rough around every edge â the art is placeholder, the balance needs work, the audio is basically absent, and the difficulty curve resembles a wall more than a curve. But the core is solid. The faction variety is real. The strategic decisions matter. I replayed it three times voluntarily, which hasn't happened with a browser prototype in years. If Mort-on adds meta-progression, polishes the balance, and hires literally anyone who can draw, this could be legitimately great. As it stands, it's a clever proof-of-concept that justifies an hour of your time if you like deck-builders and can tolerate rough edges. I'm actually hoping this gets finished, which is more than I can say for most games I review.
Iron Ledger
Tags
deck-building
auto-battler
tower-defense
roguelite
prototype
strategy
wave-defense
turn-based
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