The Balatro Thread

[Touring Mars]

I beat Orange Stake on Black Deck tonight, leaving just 5 Gold Stake games for Completionist+...

It was a comfortable game with a horrible sting in the tail though...

I had The Family (4X for 4oaK) and Blueprint, plus loads of high +Mult jokers, and with 15 4s, I was hitting 4oaKs at will.

But... my usual favourite Ante 8 Boss Blind - Amber Acorn - is a ***** if you need Blueprint, which I did.

I had to play a 4oaK to find The Family, and I was able to identify 4 of my 5 other Jokers and shift them left, leaving two Jokers to the left of The Family - one of which was Blueprint and the other was Drunkard... it was a 50/50, and Blueprint needed to trigger for me to score enough to win on my final hand - and I got lucky 😊

Looking back at the replay after the game, I should have spotted Blueprint earlier, but I was too busy moving Jokers around before I forgot them. At least I played the game honestly and didn't resort to using the replay function to manipulate the Joker deck during the final round, so it was an honest win... if a tad lucky 😅

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I currently have 38/150 Gold Stickers... so a looooong way to go for Completionist ++

 

[Touring Mars]

I beat Gold Stake on Nebula Deck tonight 🥇

I had two copies of Onyx Agate (∞) and so I was able to use Hex on a Flush joker - I leveled up Flushes to Level 24 (everything else was Lvl. 1!)) and collected Clubs - I got Throwback up to 3.5X and got The Duo and other Pairs Jokers near the end, so pivoted towards playing Flushes containing a Pair, which was pretty easy.

I got Crimson Heart as the Ante 8 Boss Blind, and played a dead hand to debuff a non-important Joker, then played a Club Flush with a Pair for an easy win

The very next Boss Blind was The Club, so I was certain I'd lose - but I managed to beat it with the help of Steel Cards and The Duo.

I reckon I got 4 new Gold stickers out of it too.

 

[RX-7_FD3S]

I get the feeling that you're pretty good at this Balatro thing. Deck looks beautiful. So much deck manipulation. Did you use Vagabond a lot or not anymore once you had Business Card? That must have been tons of Tarot Cards.

The greenish Clubs +3 mult joker is Gluttonous Joker.

Na I used Vagabond mostly on ante 1. After that it was just business card and very lucky tarot and lucky cards. I had a lots of death, fools and hangman.

 

[Wilsonson]

No update in a while but I took notes on and screenshots of the 4 more wins I had in the last few weeks.

Two new gold stickers for Yorick and Wily with 3 of a kind build. Early Ouija plus deck manipulation later gave me 15 4s and some aces for easy trips. Both of the discard vouchers gave me 6x Yorick. A super lucky Wheel of Fortune made it Polychrome.

Eternal Banner was probably bad especially once I had Yorick and needed the discards.

I was trying to figure out if swapping Throwback for another non Gold sticker joker could work but it would have become super risky.

The next win I got new Gold stickers on Blue Joker, Vampire and Bootstraps. Photo Chad is just so good. A couple base levels and you're good to go. Even pairs quickly get good enough.

Gold Joker count at 80 now. I seem to get the feeling that commons might be more difficult to get a sticker on than I would have thought. Many of them just do nothing in the endgame. You essentially need a good build out of four jokers to be able to carry one of the more useless commons to the end.

The next win came with a nice chunk of negatives from the Anaglyph double tags. It finally worked again.

A round one Supernova got me into a pairs strategy and it worked out. Ultimately Acrobat wasn't even needed. Should have switched for another non gold stickered joker.

More than 50 mult from Supernova, 30 from a Polychrome Red Card and level 23 pairs made for a ton of base mult already. I had Hiker for a long while before switching it for the Ice Cream. Therefore also quite a bit of chips.

A total of 5 new gold stickers. Nice.

Tons of losses in between including some where I had a winning build but didn't pay attention to the boss. Now finally another win, 3 new stickers this time. 8 Ball, Hallucination and Mr. Bones.

Pair builds are my new favorites. Just need to get them off the ground. On e I found a polychrome Supernova the run was a win. I knew that I was scoring high enough. Since I had a lot of steel my +mult jokers weren't super important. I still had all double tags. When I saw the rare joker tag I thought I could find a nice non gold rare in exchange for my +36 Fortune Teller but I didn't realize that the shop would only be after the boss blind.

An early Midas Mask and a perishable DNA in the middle gave me a nice deck of gold, blue steel and 3 nice red steel kings. Would have made for a nice Baron build.

 

[Wilsonson]

Another win shortly after this post. 4 Gold stickers for Cloud 9, Hit the Road, The Duo and Stone Joker.

An early Ouija have me Kings. I also got Juggler early for an extra discard which was important to find my Kings and later also Jack's once I had Hit the Road.

It got close in the middle but I managed to always one shot my 4 of a kind. Ultimately the Trio plus ever increasing 4 of a kind levels sealed the deal. Throwback was for peace of mind.

The final boss could have hurt me. But thanks to stocking Death I would always be able to play 4 Kings once I held 3 of them in hand. My well prepared red glass King finally had his moment to shine. Cool 15 mil score to finish it off. A very satisfying run.

Edit: another win. 4 new stickers. Flower Pot, Scholar, To the Moon and Rocket. Again it was 4 of a kind powered by Ouija. In the beginning I was close to death numerous times but at some point there was no looking back. Once again I realized that economy is king.

On ante 8 I still had all of my double tags when a Buffon pack tag came up. I took it and hoped for some non gold sticker 3x joker to replace Blueprint which was doubling The Trio.

The dreadful Flower Pot showed up. Since my Aces were very evenly distributed I took the gamble. Thankfully it payed off.

 

[RX-7_FD3S]

Huge win yesterday (well this morning), couldn't sleep so fired a black deck, heres the final jokers, noon were gold before. Cameo 5x, obelisk 3.8x, had a rocket for econ for most of the game but it was with a gold sticker. Switched it in ante 8 for the 3x jokers

 

[Wilsonson]

6 new golds is epic. I love it when I get obelisk at just the right time and my build being strong enough. It is usually tough to stop playing the main hand up to that point. Switching to it is super delicate but it's great when it works.

I gotta ask what hands did you play? What was your most used hand (and how often played) and what did you mostly play to finish the run. 3.8x Obelisk is only 14 hands so maybe you switch from pairs to high card?

 

[RX-7_FD3S]

When I got obelisk I was on 15 pair, 2 high card and a tree of a kind. Played mostly high card and skipped the last round. Last boss was all card disable until you sell a joker, never had to do it. I dont remember my planet levels.

 

[Wilsonson]

2 new gold stickers in Misprint and one of the weak page 1 commons +12 mult on straight Crazy Joker.

I had a very tough decision on the first shop into ante 5. I had Madness in the shop with eternal Misprint, eternal polychrome Brainstorm and some other scoring cards in hand. The boss was The Needle for only a single hand. I knew I couldn't beat it with my current build but 2x mult from two blinds of Madness scaling would also not be enough.

Thankfully I had the Hieroglyph voucher for going back in time in the shop. That did it and from then on Madness scaling plus Blue Joker for chips in the mid game allowed for one shotting my pair build till the end.

I saved enough to be able to reroll the last shop for a non gold sticker joker. It would survive because Madness only destroys on small and big blind, not on bosses.

I only used 2 double tags for improving pairs a lot. From then on nothing that was better than Madness scaling came up. No negatives this time.

A day after this win my PS5 broke. Thankfully it was only the power unit. Got a replacement part and was able to swap it myself. 55 euros instead about 200 for a repair shop. Happy it worked out.

Had to get my Balatro fix in started a game. Won straight away.

Early Spare Trousers which ended up +76 gave me a nice two pair run. 4 new gold stickers in Gluttonous, Clever, Cartomancer and Perkeo.

Pair Levels from Perkeo and some Deck fixing worked. I even dared getting a negative from Ectoplasm which takes away hand size. Kind of risky with Two Pair.

 

[Touring Mars]

I've had 2 wins in a row on my iPad...

Zodiac/Blue Stake - playing Flushes and later Flush Houses, I made good use of Mime and discovered it synergizes very well with Raised Fist and Reserved Parking; I had Brainstorm as well, and was copying Mime mostly. With Steel cards retriggering, I was getting beating most Rounds in one Hand; Had a funny moment in the game when I had a Blue Seal but no Flush, so I played High Card in the hope of getting a Flush, only for the High Card to score over the 460k needed to win, so I ended up with a Pluto card instead...

And today's chemo game: Erratic/Purple Stake - playing Full Houses and 4oaK. I had Acrobat, The Trio, Baseball and Spare Trousers - it was a relatively easy game as I had 11 Aces and 11 Jacks, plus a decent number of Steel cards again. I was nearly tripped up by collecting Spades (had Wrathful/polychrome), as instead of a Lvl 10 Full House, I got a Lvl 1 Flush House instead. Fortunately I was able to pivot to 4oaK (also high level) and take advantage of Acrobat to win comfortably without a Full House.

 

[Touring Mars]

I won a very marginal game on my iPad this afternoon - Plasma/Blue Stake

I didn't get great Jokers and won with an unusual (for me) Joker deck with no XMults except Photograph. Fortunately, I had Certificate of Authentication and got a double Spectral Pack which gave me another red seal, and those cards won me the game ultimately.

I just squeezed through and no more to get to the Final, and had to sell a Joker to play Verdant Leaf, which was painful - but it worked - just. I then got wiped out in the very next Round, again quite marginal, but I'm just glad to beat Plasma Deck at all...

Ante 6 Boss Blind: the dreaded Flint... very close win:

Ante 7 Boss Blind: The Needle - didn't have much choice but to play the only 3oaK I had, which I think was 3 Aces... it was very close:

And finally, the Ante 8 Boss Blind - Verdant Leaf... the Venus card gave an essential 1.5X boost, and I squeezed past with three 3oaKs:

Despite an extra level up and holding 2X Venus cards in the consumables slot, I lost the very next Round (again quite close), but it only proved how marginal the game was...

 

[Touring Mars]

I lost the Gold Stake final on Plasma Deck after an easy run to the final

I had Selzter (perishable) and skipped a bunch of Rounds to make sure I had it for the Ante 8 Boss Blind - it also still had 4 Hands left to play on it, so I only needed two Full Houses to win - but I just didn't get the cards I needed I ended up having to play a sub-optimal hand, used up both discards, and then had no choice but to three High Cards in a row - which, although I got one of the Full Houses I needed for my final hand, Seltzer expired - and the boss blind (Crimson Heart) also killed a vital Joker just to add insult to injury - it was all looking so good too, as it was very easy up to that point, and I was very disappointed not to finally have Plasma Deck defeated.

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Made up for somewhat by beating Gold Stake on Zodiac Deck

I had a killer Joker deck, a strong economy and Full Houses levelled up, collecting Qs and Js to trigger Photograph.

I had Photograph (holo), Throwback (3.25X, holo), 2X Driver's Licence and Hologram (4.75X). With a Full House, this was enough to yield over 19,000 Mult - so it was an easy final, thanks also to getting Amber Acorn!

I now have just 3 Gold Stake games left on my PS5 game to get Completionist+ - Black, Magic and Plasma.

 

[Touring Mars]

I beat Purple Stake on Zodiac Deck on my iPad today, after a couple of defeats.

I had a bunch of Glass Cards and PhotoChad, plus Brainstorm to retrigger Hanging Chad (and Ancient), so I was scoring massively.

I also made a discovery - I had Cryptid in hand for the Ante 8 Boss Blind, which turned out to be Cerulean Bell. Luckily, the first mandatory card was exactly what I needed - a Glass Queen of Spades, which triggered Ancient as well. I also had another Q, so I used Cryptid to copy the Queen of Spades. Weirdly, they weren't automatically selected, but once I had selected them, I couldn't deselect them - this almost killed my game, but for the extra Q I also had which gave me 4oaK, which netted me 604M 😅

 

[Wilsonson]

Had 3 wins in the meantime.

1st was for 3 new stickers. Flush run with photo chad, infinite diamond cards and thankfully no disable diamonds boss.

My many steel cards were quite vital and Mime made them even stronger. I gambled and took the Vagabond instead to get a sticker on it. Having all the Double Tags with the mega arcana tag coming up I was even more sure because my deck would be insane afterwards. Which it was.

Another +3 hand size skip tag on top made the final boss easy. First draw all diamonds with a glass face card.

I kept he +10 mult flush Droll Joker and the +80 chips flush Crafty Joker for stickers. Both are somewhat useless once you have photo chad and sufficient planet levels.

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2nd win for 2 new stickers in Even Steven and Obelisk started with an eternal holographic To Do List and a hexed Even Steven. 4.25 Hologram, 3.6 Obelisk, Bull with money in the bank and lots of enhanced even cards got the win.

Unfortunately no Negative Tag. Skipped Ante 8 for more money and to get the win in the bag.

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In between I botched a fantastic setup due to being greedy, not paying attention and then getting unlucky. I started with an eternal hexed Astronomer combined with Satellite. I was making tons of money and leveling up my hands. It was fantastic synergy. But then I messed up.

This and the following run are on Ghost Deck. It's a lot of fun. The initial polychrome easily carries you through the start which allows for stressless build up. The nice Spectral Card every now and then is fun too.

Never had too much luck with the Negative Tags on Anaglyph anyways. I will try it again every now and then but not that much anymore.

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3rd win for 4 new gold stickers. I was already doing quite well when I was thinking "well, hello there".

Initial hexed Wrathful (not gold yet) along with an early Bus carried me along well. Later due to Supernova with tons of pairs I was doing so good that I decided to trade the bus for the +8 mult pairs Jolly for stickers. Since I never needed Acrobat anyways I traded it for Marble Joker for another sticker.

I then timed the Loyalty Card perfectly with a skip and a superfluous high card hand to finish with my biggest score of the run.

 

[Touring Mars]

AFantastic progress on the Gold Stickers - you must be getting close!

I botched a fantastic setup due to being greedy, not paying attention and then getting unlucky.

😅 This sounds painfully familiar...

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I just beat Gold Stake on Black Deck - leaving just Magic and Plasma to go.

I found a couple of unexpected synergies with Jokers I usually don't play that worked out perfectly. First was Burglar - it solves the missing Hand problem on Black Deck, and boosts the economy too - I also got it on Ante 1, so that worked really well. Second was Green Joker - again, I got it nice and early, and with no discards to use thanks to Burglar, it leveled up every hand, giving me a very healthy base Mult for other Jokers to use. And those other Jokers... well, I got lucky with Invisible joker and it duplicated Driver's Licence, and I also had Throwback...

On Ante 5, I got a perishable Hanging Chad, and with a Glass card, it was blizting through the score barriers. At that point, I figured to go for broke, and skip all Small and Big Blinds, leaving me with Hanging Chad for the final before it died - that also gave Throwback a huge boost, so I had +32 Mult (Green), X3 (DL1), X3 (DL1), X3.5 (Throwback), so pretty much any hand was scoring quite big, but my optimal hands (3oaK with a Glass Card leading) was enough to beat the target easily.

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And that's Magic Deck done now too... I think that's my first back to back Gold Stake wins...

Once again, Throwback and Hanging Chad were essential to winning, and I got The Trio early so focused on 3oaKs. I collected 13 Ks, and had a few Glass Ks to really make Hanging Chad work. By the end, I passed up the chance to reroll Violet Vessel as I was confident I could win, and fortunately I did.

One slight problem was the Ante 7 boss - Face cards were down face down, and I needed at least one 3oaK in Ks. Fortunately, after one error, I was able to win the hand without playing Ks at all.

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Only Plasma Deck to go now, but that can wait for another day.

 

[Wilsonson]

Thank you and great progress for you too. Beating Black Deck is huge. Probably the hardest deck in the game.

Totally with you on those terrible seeds where you get absolutely nothing going.

GL on the remaining Gold Stakes!