The Balatro Thread

[Wilsonson]

What fascinates me about this game is how delicate everything is. Your setup sounds really good but wasn't enough. I guess flat chips and flat mult either via jokers or even more planet levels was necessary. But all to often the game punishes one like this.

Personally I'm doing quite well. Won gold stakes on the Nebula Deck (starting with telescope for guaranteed planet of most played hand but with only one consumable slot) today.

All the planets pumped Constellation up to 4.1x. Combined with the high base mult of all of my flush levels this worked pretty well. Mist crucial though was the combo of flushes with Ancient Joker. 1.5 to the 5th is about 7.5x. I had a few red seals which got it to over 11x when I drew them.

My biggest blunder was taking the eternal Mystic Summit after already having the Ancient Joker. The 1.5x per correct suit is added on during the cards phase of pont calculation. The measley +15 flat mult on top is pretty meaningless then. To make things worse I already had a good sticker on it too.

The egg gave me very nice Temperance value every now and then. Odd Todd wasn't necessary in the end but kept both around to get them their well deserved gold sticker. Temperance got a new one too.

After this I did another run continuing the next deck. It was Green Stakes on the Abandoned Deck.

I got the Runner early which is why I concentrated on straights. A holographic Gift Card soon after carried me for a bit and increased my sell values massively. This made Ceremonial Dagger the perfect fit towards the end.

Full Houses and Flushes should work well too here I guess. Quads should be more easy too once you manipulate your deck a bit. I will do this deck now till I win Gold Stakes and will report back about what works well.

 

[Touring Mars]

A couple of very nice results @Wilsonson

The egg gave me very nice Temperance value every now and then. Odd Todd wasn't necessary in the end but kept both around to get them their well deserved gold sticker. Temperance got a new one too.

Haha, I've only just started doing that - having the choice to ditch a Joker that has performed well before the A8 Boss Blind is tricky, but I also think that some jokers 'deserve' a win, and funnily enough, Odd Todd is a favourite of mine - it is very handy early on, but with a bit of deck manipulation, it can be good for the whole game.

 

[Wilsonson]

Another game, another win tying my longest win streak of 3.

Continuing on the Abandoned Deck it was Black Stakes now. Went for Two Pair this time. Worked well, especially once one or at most two of them get you through a round reliably.

My joker luck was pretty crazy. I had all of this at about Ante 4. The 4x Lucky Cat was built over time off course.

Three cool new seal cards every round. At the top I had 140 dollars for a very nice Bootstraps. Copied that with Brainstorm then multiplied by double Lucky Cat through Blueprint.

Unfortunately I blundered twice at the Ante 6 and 7 bosses. I almost died to the Needle when I tried playing a random high card to farm gold seals. Luckily I had reset the jokers already from triple seals to enhanced scoring. Therefore I barely scraped by.

Then I squandered all my riches because when the Ox said playing high card sets money to zero I of course played high card to once again farm a gold seal. Oh well triple Cat isn't bad either.

I skipped through Ante 7 and 8 because I was already scoring in the millions.

I went for Lucky cards aggressively, especially making my red seals lucky. The nicest cards I had were red seals holographic Lucky cards like this one. Beautiful with a Lucky Cat.

Blue Stakes next. One less discard makes this the first Stake that really hurts in my opinion. Purple stakes afterwards sets the score requirement for winning to 400k which also becomes a real problem on many runs. Added perishable and rental jokers on Orange and Gold Stakes are the cherry on top of the difficulty cake.

I will hope to keep my streak going for one more run but I do not bet on it.

 

[Touring Mars]

After a frankly astonishing run of losses (I'd not won a single game on my PS5 since June 5th...), I beat Painted Deck on Gold Stake last night with the help of Certificate and Photograph.

As has happened ALOT lately, I had a great Joker but it was temporary (Baseball card) and I was going to struggle without it. Fortunately - for once - I got lucky and was immediately able to replace Baseball card with Photograph, which given that I had also focussed my deck toward Glass Face cards (I had 13 of them!), I managed a very big win - I even got lucky with the final boss, with no rerolls possible, I got Verdant Leaf, and had a useless Negative joker that I was able to sell to debuff the boss blind, and I won easily...

I had Two Pairs up to Level 22, and was able to play K (Glass), Q, Q, K (Glass) with both Sock & Buskin (retrigger all Face Cards) and Photograph - which yielded a 64X Mult on an already decent score, and was enough to win the Final Boss Blind by a big margin.

-

And a 2nd great game tonight - beat Anaglyph deck on Orange Stake - with the help of two VERY useful Immolate cards, and a combo of Hanged Man, Justice and Strength cards, I managed to get the Legendary Joker Canio up to a crazy 21X Mult... 😅

Edit: I had the joker that doubles a random joker, and sold a couple of decent jokers in order to optimise my chances of doubling Canio - it doubled Fortune Teller instead, but that worked out OK as FT is a pretty strong Joker, esp. when it's enhanced. But 2X Canio would have been amazing in this game!!

 

[-Fred-]

Just scored my 200th run win with a combo of PhotoChad/Trib/Sock/Blueprint, one of the easiest games I've had in... 400 hours of play?!? 🤯

 

[Wilsonson]

Nice one. I'm approaching 200 hours. Where can you see the amount of won runs?

 

[Touring Mars]

Just scored my 200th run win with a combo of PhotoChad/Trib/Sock/Blueprint, one of the easiest games I've had in... 400 hours of play?!? 🤯

That's super impressive! I've had 90 "Stake Wins" and 4 Challenges wins in 406 hrs of play on my PS5; so by the sounds of it, you have about double my success rate! 😅

Nice one. I'm approaching 200 hours. Where can you see the amount of won runs?

I keep a track of my wins outside of the game, but it tells you "Deck Stake Wins" in the Stats section - but that doesn't count any games on a deck/stake game that you have already beaten - though I rarely revisit a deck/stake combo that I've already beaten, other than the very occasional morale boost if the game has beaten me too many times 😅

I also the play the game on my iPad, and have 70 wins in total there, but that has missed at least 10 wins due to a game save bug that prevents new wins from registering.

 

[Touring Mars]

Back in hospital again today - 4 hours and counting to have my bloods checked

On the upside, I just won a game of Balatro on my iPad - Erratic Deck/Black Stake 🙂

I had a strong Joker deck, but rerolled the final Boss from Cerulean Bell to Violet Vessel, and then panicked as although I was hitting 200k for a Full House, I would need 3 of them to beat VV... but I got a very lucky break and had the chance to swap Hanging Chad (I would never sell Hanging Chad unless I absolutely had to...) for Acrobat (permanent). As it turned out, I beat VV with just one hand, and didn't even need Acrobat.

I had Death and Emperor waiting in the wings, so I was pretty confident I would beat VV, but I didn't need them either... 🙂

Jokers: Delayed Grat (Poly); Arrowhead (Poly); Blueprint; The Trio; Acrobat - Trio is awesome, fast becoming a favourite!

 

[Wilsonson]

Another game, another win tying my longest win streak of 3.

View attachment 1543555

Continuing on the Abandoned Deck it was Black Stakes now. Went for Two Pair this time. Worked well, especially once one or at most two of them get you through a round reliably.

My joker luck was pretty crazy. I had all of this at about Ante 4. The 4x Lucky Cat was built over time off course.

View attachment 1543553

Three cool new seal cards every round. At the top I had 140 dollars for a very nice Bootstraps. Copied that with Brainstorm then multiplied by double Lucky Cat through Blueprint.

Unfortunately I blundered twice at the Ante 6 and 7 bosses. I almost died to the Needle when I tried playing a random high card to farm gold seals. Luckily I had reset the jokers already from triple seals to enhanced scoring. Therefore I barely scraped by.

Then I squandered all my riches because when the Ox said playing high card sets money to zero I of course played high card to once again farm a gold seal. Oh well triple Cat isn't bad either.

I skipped through Ante 7 and 8 because I was already scoring in the millions.

I went for Lucky cards aggressively, especially making my red seals lucky. The nicest cards I had were red seals holographic Lucky cards like this one. Beautiful with a Lucky Cat.

View attachment 1543554

Blue Stakes next. One less discard makes this the first Stake that really hurts in my opinion. Purple stakes afterwards sets the score requirement for winning to 400k which also becomes a real problem on many runs. Added perishable and rental jokers on Orange and Gold Stakes are the cherry on top of the difficulty cake.

I will hope to keep my streak going for one more run but I do not bet on it.

Almost 2 weeks since my last update. I am continuing on the Abandoned Deck. The smaller deck is quite interesting. Most 5 cars hands are much easier to make than on the full deck. No face cards however means less chips and also quite a few useless jokers in the shop. On the other hand some bosses do not affect you.

I managed to beat blue, purple and orange stakes. Purple and up are a real pain though.

Green joker works well on abandoned deck because you almost always have some sort of hand straight away. Especially pairs of course. Blue seals then sealed the deal to win blue stakes.

Bull, Bootstraps and tons of money coupled with Burnt Joker for Pair levels won me purple stakes.

And then just now I beat orange stakes after losing only once.

I started out with with Scholar for aces and Onyx Agate for +7 mult for clubs. Not sure about the vampire later. I think I only got it to about 1.8x. I had never used it naked before (only within the Midas Mask combo) because its mechanic of taking away the enhancements feels so répulsive to me.

Then I opened a mega Buffoon pack and got both Astronomer and Constellation. I was a bit hesitant because of the eternal Astronomer but I decided to trust this alignment of the stars and take them both.

I had to survive the all clubs debuffed boss on ante 7 but thankfully my setup was strong enough the a Lucky draw if a hearts flush along with a debuffed clubs flush got me through. This deck composition almost cost me there.

Ultimately it was a somewhat easy win. I also got what seemed like a huge amount of planet cards and celestial packs which allowed me to scale up Constellation pretty nicely.

My first gold run afterwards was going pretty well too but ultimately fell short. Feeling hopeful to beat abandoned deck soon.

Good luck with your health @Touring Mars !

 

[Touring Mars]

Almost 2 weeks since my last update. I am continuing on the Abandoned Deck. The smaller deck is quite interesting. Most 5 cars hands are much easier to make than on the full deck. No face cards however means less chips and also quite a few useless jokers in the shop. On the other hand some bosses do not affect you.

I managed to beat blue, purple and orange stakes. Purple and up are a real pain though.

Green joker works well on abandoned deck because you almost always have some sort of hand straight away. Especially pairs of course. Blue seals then sealed the deal to win blue stakes.

View attachment 1546247

Bull, Bootstraps and tons of money coupled with Burnt Joker for Pair levels won me purple stakes.

View attachment 1546246
View attachment 1546248

And then just now I beat orange stakes after losing only once.

I started out with with Scholar for aces and Onyx Agate for +7 mult for clubs. Not sure about the vampire later. I think I only got it to about 1.8x. I had never used it naked before (only within the Midas Mask combo) because its mechanic of taking away the enhancements feels so répulsive to me.

Then I opened a mega Buffoon pack and got both Astronomer and Constellation. I was a bit hesitant because of the eternal Astronomer but I decided to trust this alignment of the stars and take them both.

I had to survive the all clubs debuffed boss on ante 7 but thankfully my setup was strong enough the a Lucky draw if a hearts flush along with a debuffed clubs flush got me through. This deck composition almost cost me there.

View attachment 1546249

Ultimately it was a somewhat easy win. I also got what seemed like a huge amount of planet cards and celestial packs which allowed me to scale up Constellation pretty nicely.

View attachment 1546245

My first gold run afterwards was going pretty well too but ultimately fell short. Feeling hopeful to beat abandoned deck soon.

Good luck with your health @Touring Mars !

Great progress 👍 Abandoned Deck is alot of fun, but it ALWAYS gives me 'Smiley Face' Joker, and if I buy that, then I know it's time to stop and take a break 😅

-

I just beat Anaglyph Deck on Gold Stake 🏅 - quite an incredible game - I had 2 Rental Jokers and then got the horrible boss where it's $1 a card, and I ended up on -$13 - somehow I managed to recover to hold $150 by the end, which is frankly amazing. I got one extremely well timed $20 pay out from a Lucky Card, and that saved my game; I then got two doubled money pots from skipping rounds, and made a smart choice to skip the Small Blind so as not to lose more money.

Remarkably, I only played 5 planet cards in the entire game, and only got 2 Pairs up to Lvl 4 - despite spamming them to win. I also had 4oaK levelled up to Lvl. 9 (thanks to a double level boost) but never played a single 4oaK in the game...

The killer Joker was, once again, Baseball Card. I had 3 Uncommons (inc. Hologram at 4X), and Baseball basically meant a virtually certain win - but my MOTM was Spare Trousers - finished on +60 Mult, and Misprint was extremely useful too.

Oh, and that means two wins back-to-back on Anaglyph Deck - Orange Stake last night, and Gold tonight 🍻