The Balatro Thread

[Touring Mars]

I've won two Blue Stakes games on my iPad today, and I had a really great game just now.

I had Wee Joker, DNA and Hologram - and then I got Invisible Joker... so it was likely to copy something tasty, and it did - it copied DNA, which sent Hologram and Wee Joker through the roof - Hologram ended up on 9.5X Mult, and Wee Joker ended up on 648 chips, thanks to holding 31 Twos in my deck 🤣

I also levelled up Pairs to Level 28, so they were outscoring everything by a country mile, even though I was hitting 5oaK and even Five Flush a few times.

 

[Wilsonson]

Beat Anaglyph Deck tonight with this setup.

Baseball plus all uncommons worked quite well. The bull was perishable and on its last leg. I took the screenshot after the end when it got disabled. All but baseball were new gold stickers as well.

Tons of clubs could have enabled flushes but they were great for straights combined with Seeing Double too.

Only all of Painted Deck plus Orange and Gold of Plasma left now.

For Completionist++ however… that's going to take a loooong time. I made the effort and noted down all my gold stickers. You can see the overall in the bottom right. A bit more than 1/3rd gold stickers so far.

Pages go from top left to the right then down. U, R and L in the corner denote uncommons, rares and legendaries. Big G means gold sticker. Unfortunately didn't find a purple pen for ultimate colorfulness.

 

[Touring Mars]

That's awesome, and great progress towards C++ - though yes, that is still a tall order, and I'm not even thinking about it 😅

Painted Deck is great - more fun and easier than Plasma. I still have 7 decks to Orange and Gold, and I've been making heavy weather of it; I've not won anything on my PS5 for several days now, so it's getting a bit frustrating, esp. with limited time to play - but I have enjoyed several Blue Stakes wins on my iPad to keep me going. I need to up my game though for Completionist +.

 

[Wilsonson]

Got a good Mine Baron build going on my first try of Painted Deck. 4th joker was random. Other than blueprint or some xMult they don't do much anyways.

Playing with a huge hand size is a lot of fun. I love playing for straights anyways. Will report back on how it goes, but probably only if there's a very fun build or once I am at the highest stakes.

GL all, it's fun to see how everyone is doing.

 

[Touring Mars]

My Mum asked me to show her Balatro, so I played an 'easy' game (Red Deck/White Stakes) to show her the 'basics'.

It was actually a really fun game, and we ended up Ante 12 / Round 30. We reached Round 24 playing just 26 hands in total, which must be some kind of personal record!

The Joker deck was sweet - I got Baseball as a free negative Joker and had 4 Uncommons for most of the game, plus The Trio with 3oaKs levelled up. By the very end, I had Baseball, Card Sharp, Acrobat, Cavendish and The Trio - and Hanging Chad as well.

It was a great way to show off what the game was all about, and I think my Mum was suitably impressed by my knowledge of the game 😅

-

It wasn't entirely an 'exhibition' match either - a couple of Jokers had no stickers and now have a White sticker to show for it 😊

 

[Wilsonson]

Making some progress through Painted Deck. (Forgot to take a screenshot of Blue Stakes)

Now only Purple, Orange and Gold left. And then ultimately Orange and Gold on Plasma Deck.

 

[Touring Mars]

I beat Blue Stake on Ghost Deck tonight, starting with a Polychrome Bloodstone joker...

... but boy did it let me down at the end (as usual ) - I just scraped past Verdant Leaf, but largely no thanks to Bloodstone.

I had two Heart flushes, but they only triggered Bloodstone three times, twice in the first and once in the second, leaving me about 40,000 short of the target score. Fortunately, I had Full Houses leveled up and managed to scrape over the line, but even that saw Bloodstone fail to trigger when I really needed it.

 

[Touring Mars]

Balatro 1.1 is coming...



Apparently the new content can be switched off, which sounds good - even though the base game will change slightly.

 

[Wilsonson]

Thanks for that. Will check the video later.

Today I won Purple Stakes on Painted Deck after what feels like 5 to 10 defeats.

With the big hand size of Painted I dared taking Ouija which I usually always skip. It came up all Jacks which allowed me to make it through the antes with mostly 4 of a kind and full houses. I got close a couple of times before I was able to get some planet levels and Photograph.

With Blueprint and Stuntman I already had a winning setup when I came across this.

I traded it in for Acrobat which removed the need to always go to the last hand to win. 2 to 5th is a lot of xMult.

On the last boss I added a glass Jack just for the fun of it (I made it a habit to carry a Justice towards the end of runs) and had the final score explode to 18 mil.

A mix of 5 and 4 of a kind combined with 21 Jacks made this a fun run.

Four more (tough) wins till Completionist+.

 

[Touring Mars]

I beat Gold Stake on Ghost deck tonight

It was a great game - I had a very unusual (for me) Joker deck, and what was a comfortable game quickly turned into a 'marginal' one, and I realised I was in trouble as I hit Ante 8.

tl;dr version: Mime saved my game, but I needed to draw Steel cards to have any chance of winning. By a great stroke of luck, I chose an Emperor tarot card immediately before the final, and it gave me a Chariot tarot card - enough to guarantee at least one Steel card, and hence two lots of 1.5X Mult - enough to give me a chance... and it paid off. I beat Verdant Leaf with one hand in the end, but it was mighty close before that - it's probably the most satisfying win I've had, and it was for a Gold Stake win too!

Spoiler: Long version

I had Burnt Joker (negative) right from the start, but misplayed my hand by failing to realise that Hex can't be used on negative Jokers. So I got a second joker (Even Steven) which should have been Polychrome throughout the game, but instead I had to sell Hex in order to hold onto Burnt Joker. It was a big mistake and I thought the game would end quite early - I have never had a good game with Burnt Joker, hence it doesn't have any stickers on it - in the end, I had to sell it for the final boss, so it was cruelly denied a Gold sticker 😅 It helped me level up Two Pair to L18, so it was vital to my game - and by maxing out just a few (even) numbers, I was hitting Two Pair most hands.

My other Jokers were Greedy (also negative), Mime and Stencil. Stencil was strong because I had 2 free slots thanks to the double negative Jokers, and when I sold Burnt Joker, Stencil stayed at 3X for the final, which was crucial. But... it was Mime (which I have rarely used) that saved the day. It turned out my Steel cards were vital to score big enough to win, and Mime retriggering them was the difference between success and failure.

Crucially, before the final round, I opened an Arcana Pack and chose Emperor in desperation - knowing that I was likely to lose the final barring some very good luck... and, it duly came in the form of a Chariot card... having a Chariot card in hand for the Ante 8 Boss Blind was absolutely crucial, as it guaranteed 2 lots of 1.5X, which I needed at a minimum. It turned out I got a good deal and got 2 Steel cards right away anyway, and so with the Chariot card, I ended up with 3 Steel cards, so 6 lots of 1.5X for the first hand, which was enough to win me the game with one hand

 

[Wilsonson]

Congratulations on the Gold Stakes win!

I now got Gold on Painted Deck.

After my last post I started a new game and won it first try. Only afterwards did I realize that I accidentally started another Purple game instead of Orange. Still nice to win back to back.

After that win I tried Orange. And to my surprise I immediately won it as well.

After 3 or 4 defeats I now also won Gold Stakes.

These were the games:

Purple

352 Wee (but didn't even need it at the end with a Glass Queen and PhotoChad.

Once you have Photograph +Mult jokers becomes less useful because of hand effects. True for any kind of xMult hand effects builds. Lots of steal. Baron. Triboulet. With PhotoChad they become effectively useless.

Full houses are really great with this big a hand size. Easy to draw. Manipulating the deck to make them easier to draw is also more straightforward than optimizing for straights. And Two Pair or Trips as a fall back if draw doesn't come in.

Orange

Got Shoot the moon and DNA early. The latter gave me tons of steel Queens early on. That's a nice combo. Bit of a gamble to not get spades or face cards debuffed but it worked out.

After surviving debuffed clubs (Seeing Double) I found the Steel Joker for a guaranteed win. Early Hologram which went 5x was clutch too.

Ended with 21 Queens, 14 of which were Steel. Might have been my first really good Shoot the Moon build.

Gold

I gkt this insane setup by ante 4. Since the first 3 did all the heavy lifting I decided to carry Faceless to the end for the Gold sticker.

I desperately tried to get rid of Hanging Chad to fill it with another new Gold sticker but the math wasn't mathing. 2 extra triggers on a double Triboulet means 2 to the 4th for a total of 16x mult.

With a normal boss I could have tried, because I would have made about 200k per hand. But that would have been super risky too. No way I'm doing that just for another sticker.

Glad I got another Legendary out of the way though.

 

[Wilsonson]

I finally did it: Completionist+. Orange and Gold on Plasma was tough but both took only about 6 to 8 runs each. It still feels like I know nothing about this game but in reality I seem to slowly get the hang of things.

I got a bit scared first because the achievement didn't pop. But it seems to be a common glitch. After winning any other run it pops. I did a quick white stakes game and there it was.

On Orange I went for pairs with lots of levels this time. Combined with playing lots of hands, Supernova and some xMult I scraped by. It was a real nail biter at times though. Ultimately when I found Seeing Double I should have ditched the Burglar instead of some mediocre chips joker (forgot which) but I wasn't totally sure how much more I would score adding Seeing Double and if I needed the extra hands or not. Especially since I needed a club within the pair for it to trigger its 2x. On the final boss I only needed three pairs to get over the hump.

On Gold I kind of stumbled my way through the first few blinds. Ultimately used Four Fingers to settle on some kind of straights/flushes/straight flushes kind of combo.

It was also the first time I ever did a Pareidolia build. Combined with Scary face for chips, Seltzer for double trigger and the Bull with lots of money made for a bould with tons of chips. With a highly tuned deck it was possible to do 3 of the hands mentioned above consistently which was enough to make it through. Seltzer expired on the 2nd to last hand of the final boss which made it disappear (already had a gold sticker though).

Plasma Deck is really interesting. But I'm also glad being back at easier decks now.

I will try to get lots of the remaining gold stickers playing Anaglyph and hoping for negative tags. It seems to be a common strategy until there are fewer and fewer non gold sticker jokers left.

I also like ghost deck. What I didn't know for a long time is that Soul cards (and black holes) can only be found in packs. You will never get them from the shop on Ghost Deck or from the two jokers that can give you a spectral card.

 

[Touring Mars]

I finally did it: Completionist+. Orange and Gold on Plasma was tough but both took only about 6 to 8 runs each. It still feels like I know nothing about this game but in reality I seem to slowly get the hang of things.

View attachment 1566405

I got a bit scared first because the achievement didn't pop. But it seems to be a common glitch. After winning any other run it pops. I did a quick white stakes game and there it was.

On Orange I went for pairs with lots of levels this time. Combined with playing lots of hands, Supernova and some xMult I scraped by. It was a real nail biter at times though. Ultimately when I found Seeing Double I should have ditched the Burglar instead of some mediocre chips joker (forgot which) but I wasn't totally sure how much more I would score adding Seeing Double and if I needed the extra hands or not. Especially since I needed a club within the pair for it to trigger its 2x. On the final boss I only needed three pairs to get over the hump.

View attachment 1566401
View attachment 1566404

On Gold I kind of stumbled my way through the first few blinds. Ultimately used Four Fingers to settle on some kind of straights/flushes/straight flushes kind of combo.

It was also the first time I ever did a Pareidolia build. Combined with Scary face for chips, Seltzer for double trigger and the Bull with lots of money made for a bould with tons of chips. With a highly tuned deck it was possible to do 3 of the hands mentioned above consistently which was enough to make it through. Seltzer expired on the 2nd to last hand of the final boss which made it disappear (already had a gold sticker though).

View attachment 1566403View attachment 1566402

Plasma Deck is really interesting. But I'm also glad being back at easier decks now.

I will try to get lots of the remaining gold stickers playing Anaglyph and hoping for negative tags. It seems to be a common strategy until there are fewer and fewer non gold sticker jokers left.

I also like ghost deck. What I didn't know for a long time is that Soul cards (and black holes) can only be found in packs. You will never get them from the shop on Ghost Deck or from the two jokers that can give you a spectral card.

Congratulations!!! Great screens and some really interesting builds/games... I like to mix it up a bit, and it's pretty cool that the game kind of forces you to play every Joker eventually - and that you can get a very nice achievement for doing it too.

I'm just 10 wins away from Completionist+ now too, but that is really good to know about that glitch - I would be worried that it didn't appear immediately, so it's handy to know that you need to win another run on any stake to trigger it.

I'm not even thinking about Completionist++, but at least you can focus on the decks you prefer rather than having to face the harder ones on Gold Stakes. I think once (if!) I beat Plasma on Gold, I may not play it again 😅

--

I beat Orange Stake on Magic Deck at the weekend, despite making a silly mistake with my Joker deck that, in a height of irony, actually worked out as a blessing in disguise.

I got Scholar and started collecting Aces after an early Spectral Pack. I then got a permanent Photograph, and was playing Two Pairs with AA and KK, QQ or JJ. I then got the chance to buy a permanent "The Family" (4X for 4oaK), and bought that before realising that Photograph was permanent, but I was only going to get 4/5oaK in Aces, rendering my permanent Photograph redundant.

As I collected 13 Aces, I was hitting 4oaK easily, and also had Brainstorm to copy The Family, so it was looking good - and in fact, I leveled up 5oaK and was scoring that pretty much every Round.

The final boss blind was Crimson Heart, and lo and behold, it disabled Photograph when I already held 3 Aces, and with my discards and Ace collection, I ended up with 6 Aces, enough for 5oaK and a Steel A for a nice points bonus; so that was a very nice win after a bit of blunder.

P.S. I only had one potentially swappable Joker before the final boss, and it was Fortune teller at +38 Mult, which under most other circumstances I would never sell; but Cavendish came up and of course I had to buy that!

 

[Wilsonson]

Great run there on Ghost Deck. I love that feeling when you mess up on an eternal bit still get the win without it ever doing anything for you. I blunder all the time. The games I lose because of lapses of co concentration are uncountable.

One thing I found is that even high +Mult jokers often aren't even that impact full if you already have a lot of mult from levels and hand effects (both played and in hand). This is especially true for a lot of xMult from hand effects like Baron or many steel or glass cards.

You can either calculate this (approximation is good enough) or reduce the game speed and check how high it is before the jokers start triggering.

If you already have hundreds of mult before jokers even come into effect then an additional 40 or so is almost irrelevant.

Only 10 more wins! Great job. But would be sad if you stopped playing afterwards. I kind of enjoy doing these write ups. I even think they might have made me a better player because they make you rethink your run and what actually contributed to the win.

 

[Touring Mars]

Only 10 more wins! Great job. But would be sad if you stopped playing afterwards.

Lol, don't worry - I was only talking about not playing Plasma Deck again 😅

I also have my iPad game though too, which I'm much further behind on, so I will have to play it again even if I finish it on PS5.

I kind of enjoy doing these write ups. I even think they might have made me a better player because they make you rethink your run and what actually contributed to the win.

Yes, me too - that's one of the things I love about this game, is that a large part of the fun of it is learning and finding out new things, which often only comes after learning the hard way or after a tight game.

Keeping track of games has certainly made me a better player, but I am still capable of some horrendous mistakes! 🤣

--

Another GOLD stake win tonight, Green deck this time - that's 10 golded decks now, 5 to go...

I won using The Ancient and by keeping my deck balanced suit-wise; and collecting Wild Cards really helped. Otherwise it was a pretty low-key game - just leveled up Flushes (thanks to an early Telescope) and had 6 Hands, which meant I could hit a Flush on the right suit for The Ancient - I also got Amber Acorn as the final boss and remembered by own tip to check the suit of The Ancient before starting!