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Balatro is the best deck builder since Slay The Spire.

bender

What time is it?
There's a voucher that decreased your ante and your hand size and I always skip it because I can't fathom why someone would want to do that, anyone know a use case?

There are a couple of reasons to take that voucher. It gives you more cracks at the store to find Jokers for your build. It also let's you build up money. Also, if let's you feed the machine of your build. If I have a cards that increment based on actions (playing a hand, using a Tarot, etc.), you are giving yourself more opportunities to build those. Lastly if your on an Ante where your deck is scaling and you think you'll fail, take that Voucher to give yourself more opportunities to improve your build.

Beat Black Stake this evening after having miserable luck most of the day. I should have had it earlier but I stupidly misplayed a hand. It introduces Jokers that can't be sold or destroyed so it adds a layer of strategy. It does make Mr. Bones a must though and kind of obsoletes Luchador (I think).

Food for thought: If you are running with Blueprint, really think about how you are using it. If something triggers once a round, place it before that trigger action and then move it elsewhere for better scoring. If something triggers by a shop action, move that card before the trigger Joker before taking the action. Make sure you are maximizing the potential of this card. Also, for scoring, it appears to only take into account the base value and no bonuses from special Joker types so keep that in mind when calculating scoring.
 

T-0800

Member
Probably not fair to compare this to Slay the Spire but do you all think you will still be playing this a month or two from now? I'm approaching 250 hours in Slay the Spire and 99% of that has been with the Ironclad.
 

MudoSkills

Volcano High Alumnus (Cum Laude)
Managed to unlock the vouchers for having 5 foil jokers and a hand size of five on the same run - which then got absolutely torpedoed. Used the spectral card that gives a negative joker for -1 hand size and again for an additional - 2. Unless you rig the deck so you can always get 4/5 of a kind or full house it's almost unplayable with a hand that small.

Still haven't managed a win on the blue or black decks. Haven't played with the faceless deck yet but might mix it up a bit and give it a go.
 

amigastar

Member
I've seen people sinking 6500 hours into Slay the Spire on Steam. I'm wondering if this game has this potential too. It looks good, though.
 

Lux77

Member
I couldn't stop playing, luckily I completed 1st run after ~13h, so now its a bit better, addiction is now in a normal, bearable state :)
 

StreetsofBeige

Gold Member
Only got a small number of decks, but I seem to do best with blue. Red is tough. That extra discard perk is junk.

On an aside, I requested my first steam refund for a different game last night for a super boring game after half an hour. Woo hoo. Got a reply it's approved for refund and will show up back on my credit card. Always heard about good steam customer service. Yup, 1 for 1. Thanks Gabe.
 

Majukun

Member
it's an interesting little game but a little too easy...when you understand what kind of play is OP you are unstoppable...at my third run reached ante 10 and only lost because I didn't read the condition of the ante 10 boss and fucked myself over
 

MudoSkills

Volcano High Alumnus (Cum Laude)
The black deck is driving me fucking nuts. Can't beat a run with it!

I haven't really tried a run thinning the deck. Other than the hanged man and a joker that burns it if you discard a single card or your first of the round I haven't found a way to get the number down fast. Maybe glass cards, which I always tend to avoid.
 
Why did I click this thread? Game is addictive as fuck. Idk the names of the cards but I just got to ante 10 because I had one that adds multi each hand and it’s upgraded any time my hand is two pairs, which is like all the time. Got it up over +90 multi per hand. Then I had one that started at iirc 1.1x multi and it upgraded any time you played a planet card. Then I had a voucher that made it so every single celestial pack had an upgrade for your most played hand (two pair). So I eventually had over +90 multi to each hand and triple the multi to each hand because I got two pair up to like 15 or something. Was getting over 100k per hand. Could have been way more with better jokers.

Slay the Spire is better but this is damn good.
 

StreetsofBeige

Gold Member
The black deck is driving me fucking nuts. Can't beat a run with it!

I haven't really tried a run thinning the deck. Other than the hanged man and a joker that burns it if you discard a single card or your first of the round I haven't found a way to get the number down fast. Maybe glass cards, which I always tend to avoid.
Just did black an hour ago! I've completed blue, green and black. Major trouble with red. Cant come close.

Got lucky. I forget what my jokers were but I've found trying to stack on the joker that adds x0.1 per celestial used can work wonders long term. I had it at roughly x5.0 after cashing in around 40 planet cards. The jokers I remember I had were the joker I mentioned, the joker that treats reds and blacks the same so I can do flushes almost every hand as a minimum, the card that adds 2 chips per card left in deck (pretty good, since on avg it'll probably be around 40 x 2 as you play hands). I forget the rest.

If you guys get lucky in the early game, buy the joker that gives $4 per hand or credit card giving you -$20 balance. Its really important to buy as much early useful cards as possible. You can worry about building a positive balance later in the game to buy more cards. To not get burned with a bad short game, you really need one or two decent joker multiplier cards like 4x per hand, 4x per face card, or that blurry card that gives a random multi which is probably around 10x on avg.

If you dont get multipliers early, you can get burned with a short game and might not even get a couple thousand pts.
 
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StreetsofBeige

Gold Member
Why did I click this thread? Game is addictive as fuck. Idk the names of the cards but I just got to ante 10 because I had one that adds multi each hand and it’s upgraded any time my hand is two pairs, which is like all the time. Got it up over +90 multi per hand. Then I had one that started at iirc 1.1x multi and it upgraded any time you played a planet card. Then I had a voucher that made it so every single celestial pack had an upgrade for your most played hand (two pair). So I eventually had over +90 multi to each hand and triple the multi to each hand because I got two pair up to like 15 or something. Was getting over 100k per hand. Could have been way more with better jokers.

Slay the Spire is better but this is damn good.
Those are good cards to go pretty far. I dont know which cards can lead to going super far as I couldnt beat the 7.2M ante (my max pts is about 1,500,000 getting around $200-300k per hand). The +2 two pair joker is the one that looks like pants called Spare Trousers, and the celestial multiplier booster is the dark green joker called Constellation.
 

bender

What time is it?
Slay the Spire is better but this is damn good.
nuh-uh-eric-cartman.gif
 
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it's an interesting little game but a little too easy...when you understand what kind of play is OP you are unstoppable...at my third run reached ante 10 and only lost because I didn't read the condition of the ante 10 boss and fucked myself over

If it's just your third run you're also only playing on the base difficulty... as you clear runs you unlock higher difficulties which add modifiers to up the difficulty.

The game also goes far beyond Ante 10, up to Ante 16 where the numbers to reach are in the exponential quadrillions +. So there's lots more to discover.
 

bender

What time is it?
Gold Stake cleared. (Supernova - Egg - Swashbuckler - Ramen - Cavendish(new to my collection))

Ante 8 was randomly disabling one Joker which sucks considering two of my jokers depending on one another. Barely scraped by (~6,000 points). My Orange Stake RNG was much worse than Gold. I completely misplayed one run but had a few other good runs that got demolished by Boss Blinds.

The platinum trophy in this seems impossible with needing to get a gold sticker on every Joker. Just a Gold Stake win is currently at .5% completion rate. It also kind of sucks that you need to unlock difficulty levels per deck.

 
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StreetsofBeige

Gold Member
Was rocking and rolling.

Had a heavy flush skewed joker and planet deck with tons of multipliers, flush planets, voucher to skew to flush planets, all suits are red or black joker etc.... But ran into a boss saying clubs are debuffed, so there goes my dark suit flush tactic, so all dark cards worth zero. That middle ancient joker was set at hearts, so red flushes made no dent.

With the build I had going, I could probably hit about 20M.

RoJYfi3.jpg
 
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MudoSkills

Volcano High Alumnus (Cum Laude)
I got my first set up that got a 1m+ hand and suddenly it's asking me for 300m to beat the small blind.

Sad Tobey Maguire GIF
 

Ron Mexico

Member
I lose so many good runs from stupid mistakes. Not reading the boss blind, not checking the Obelisk count, forgetting to move the Blueprint, etc.

I'm not a huge fan of mobile games BUT it also has a bit of Solitairica to it and that was one of the few mobile games I do enjoy.
 

BennyBlanco

aka IMurRIVAL69
The bosses that make you draw face down are completely bullshit and have ruined so many runs for me. There is no way to mitigate it other than 2 jokers ive found and 1 voucher. The odds of running into those bosses are way higher than getting anything to stop them. Ruins the balance.
 

bender

What time is it?
The bosses that make you draw face down are completely bullshit and have ruined so many runs for me. There is no way to mitigate it other than 2 jokers ive found and 1 voucher. The odds of running into those bosses are way higher than getting anything to stop them. Ruins the balance.

Try a high card build.
 

Dacvak

No one shall be brought before our LORD David Bowie without the true and secret knowledge of the Photoshop. For in that time, so shall He appear.
I just got my first 5+ million round and I’m on ante 10 now I think. I’m terrified to continue. This is only the second time I’ve beaten ante 8.
 
Put a lot of hours into the game but have focus a little bit more on the challenges. Also a blast (although I don't think they have much replayability as the decks). Such an awesome game. It's so simplistic but yet has so much depth
 
Try a high card build.

Ultimately I think the most limiting factor of the game is that builds that focus on high card or pairs are really the only viable ones to get through the bosses. It’s fun trying to come up with a flush or straight one but way too many bosses kill a run built around them unless you get very lucky
 
Maybe this happens more often but I dont recall seeing this and just realized the other day that the PC version of this game is a different build than ps5/switch and has been that way since launch. On PC, you get +4 instead of +3 on mult cards. You also get 50 chips on foil cards/jokers compared to 30 on consoles. But the biggest difference is the arm boss can't take you to level 0 anymore on PC but still does console. As someone who only plays on PS5, this sucks lol. Not that it makes it impossible without but those buffs would for sure help on higher difficulty stakes, especially early to mid game trying to get a build online.

Don't have many gripes with the game overall, it's awesome, but the arm boss needs a rework or removal. The not taking a hand down to level 0 on PC probably makes it tolerable but that boss kills a run I have like 80 % of the time no matter what I try running. I don't like the idea of having a boss that hurts you both short and long term and it's the only boss that does that. The only other exception sort of is the verdant leaf, which makes you sell a joker. But that's a little different as that's a "final" boss.
 

AV

We ain't outta here in ten minutes, we won't need no rocket to fly through space
Ultimately I think the most limiting factor of the game is that builds that focus on high card or pairs are really the only viable ones to get through the bosses. It’s fun trying to come up with a flush or straight one but way too many bosses kill a run built around them unless you get very lucky

Yeah, you can only really lean into something like a flush run if you roll something appropriate early, like the spectral that converts a random hand into one suit, or the joker than counts reds and blacks as the same suit.
 

StreetsofBeige

Gold Member
I've been trending to flushes and straights to get far. If you get the right cards and planets you can get pretty far (I havent beat the 7.2M tier). But there's many boss blinds that fuck up that strategy.

But I have never tried a high card or pair build. I find it hard to believe since that tier of hands are shit points unless you level it up a lot. I'll look into it on the net. But what kind of strategies can build uber high card/pair builds?
 

AV

We ain't outta here in ten minutes, we won't need no rocket to fly through space
I've been trending to flushes and straights to get far. If you get the right cards and planets you can get pretty far (I havent beat the 7.2M tier). But there's many boss blinds that fuck up that strategy.

But I have never tried a high card or pair build. I find it hard to believe since that tier of hands are shit points unless you level it up a lot. I'll look into it on the net. But what kind of strategies can build uber high card/pair builds?

The base values become almost negligible with the right jokers, but you can also pump it up with the right voucher. My succesful pair runs have mostly been made up of some of these:

- Telescope voucher: the planet card for your most used hand will always appear in tarot packs. Can easily pump pairs up to level 15+ by endgame. There's a deck that starts with telescope active
- Supernova: +1 mult upgrade for each time you've played the same hand, easily gets over 40 if found early
- Half Joker: +20 mult for pair and 3-of-a-kind, this has carried the first few antes for me before
- Ride the bus: sometimes useful, +1 mult upgrade every time you play a pair that isn't a face card. very easy to upgrade with pairs
- Jolly/Sly Joker: +8 mult / +50 chips for pairs
- Banner: +40 chips per remaining discard, can be useful with increased discard decks
- Blueprint: copies one joker, slap it next to your best one

I really love getting riff-raff early and just spawning jokers until useful ones come in, sell the crap ones each round for cash.

Completed a few decks with pair hands this way, craps out at ante 10 but I'm gonna stop playing endless unless I have something utterly broken.
 

bender

What time is it?
Ultimately I think the most limiting factor of the game is that builds that focus on high card or pairs are really the only viable ones to get through the bosses. It’s fun trying to come up with a flush or straight one but way too many bosses kill a run built around them unless you get very lucky

Most hand types are viable, especially as you unlock more decks, jokers, and as you experiment with Tarot/Spectral abilities.
 

GermanZepp

Member
I'm playig it. it's super fun. From my hours so far im really conditioned to the jokers i randomly get (early). Using Tarot, Planet and discards more wisely. The strategies involved are very cool. Some ANte are almost unffair, one time i encouter myself that selling jokers help me to win that particular boss. Lots of stuff happenning.
 
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Maybe this happens more often but I dont recall seeing this and just realized the other day that the PC version of this game is a different build than ps5/switch and has been that way since launch. On PC, you get +4 instead of +3 on mult cards. You also get 50 chips on foil cards/jokers compared to 30 on consoles. But the biggest difference is the arm boss can't take you to level 0 anymore on PC but still does console. As someone who only plays on PS5, this sucks lol. Not that it makes it impossible without but those buffs would for sure help on higher difficulty stakes, especially early to mid game trying to get a build online.

Don't have many gripes with the game overall, it's awesome, but the arm boss needs a rework or removal. The not taking a hand down to level 0 on PC probably makes it tolerable but that boss kills a run I have like 80 % of the time no matter what I try running. I don't like the idea of having a boss that hurts you both short and long term and it's the only boss that does that. The only other exception sort of is the verdant leaf, which makes you sell a joker. But that's a little different as that's a "final" boss.

This update was applied to the Switch version over the weekend for sure, not sure about PS5.
 

nashman

Member
Used to really hate the bosses that give cards face down too but now it’s not so bad.

One only does 1/7, one only does first hand and the third is bad doing it after played hands. If it’s the first hand you just burn a discard and re draw 5, then, this works with the face down after playing aswell, you will have a mis mash of cards face up and face down. Now use the sort buttons, going from rank to suit, remember suit is sorted by rank aswell. Now you can usually guess the exact cards are, at worst a tight range of what it is by sorting back and forth rank to suit. It’s not perfect and helps to have already half the cards face up but it can help out, try it.
 
I've been trending to flushes and straights to get far. If you get the right cards and planets you can get pretty far (I havent beat the 7.2M tier). But there's many boss blinds that fuck up that strategy.

But I have never tried a high card or pair build. I find it hard to believe since that tier of hands are shit points unless you level it up a lot. I'll look into it on the net. But what kind of strategies can build uber high card/pair builds?

I did an interesting one that included +20 mult for hands of less than three cards, Re-trigger the first card played, If first hand only has one card then make a copy of the first card played and put it in your deck, etc. Then started adding a bunch of stone cards. Could do a high level enhanced card + 2 stone cards and get a bunch of points. Had a couple other unrelated ones building up money and giving multipliers.
 
Man I fired it up at midnight or so last night and “one more run” had me up until goddamn 6am. Good thing I am off Mondays. I legit can’t remember the last game that had me up all night, maybe the first Titanfall 🥰

I’ve only completed two decks so far but I’m just now getting into manipulating decks. I usually try to power through with two pair. Maybe I’ll try this one pair you guys are talking about.
 

T-0800

Member
Probably not fair to compare this to Slay the Spire but do you all think you will still be playing this a month or two from now? I'm approaching 250 hours in Slay the Spire and 99% of that has been with the Ironclad.
I'm going to answer myself. No it doesn't have the staying power of Spire as I've stopped playing less than 2 weeks after buying it. I don't regret buying it though.
 

StueyDuck

Member
I'd say its better than slay the spire. Personally for me the first rogulike deck builder that's truly topped it.

Inscryption took my attention for a while but there's a beautiful simplicity to Balatro that just takes the cake
 

Bridges

Member
Was late to work today because the "one more run" mentality kept me up til 2am.

Was worth it though because I won the run and got a new legendary joker
 
Finally beat the black deck yesterday.

Man has anyone ever gotten the Wheel of Fortune card to trigger? Always a Nope for me.
I got it a number of times but the odds def don't seem like 20%.

Thankfully I just got one on the last bind before the ante 8 boss which gave me 5 jokers with either foil, hologram or polychrome to unlock me my last voucher. Super lucky
I'd say its better than slay the spire. Personally for me the first rogulike deck builder that's truly topped it.

Inscryption took my attention for a while but there's a beautiful simplicity to Balatro that just takes the cake

Also think it's better than slay. Oddly enough, I first tried slay on January of this year. So I kind of played these games back to back. Slay is awesome too but I think Balatro actually has more depth, even with slay having more characters. Also feel with slay, classes outside of ironclad are not that fun. Silent is decent but the other 2 are pretty lame tbh.
 
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