Balatro

Jokers

Jokers are the most important for getting an engine going to crush the game. There are some jokers which are very strong in the first couple of antes but fall off later. It's important to invest only a minimum into the cards which are strong early so you can focus on building jokers which will carry you through the whole game.

You need a mix of three types of jokers:

• Chip Builder
• Flat Mult
• Multiplying Mult

With the right mix of these three, you don't need to buy a single planet card, your jokers ( under the right circumstances ) will be paying out 20-30k per hand even on a High card 2 without special conditions.

You can use Utility jokers to aid you, but you need these three types to win, so focus on these first. ( The exception being Smeared Joker, because that's just busted. )

If you have a deck that has 250 chips, 60 mult into 3x multiplied mult, then you score a minimum of 250 x 60 x 3 = 45k per hand, before any consideration of the hand you played or the value of the cards you played. That will easily win you the run against any boss.

Flat Mult

Flat multi are cards such as "Gros Michel" (+15 mult, 1 in 4 chance to disappear), Abstract Joker (+3 mult for each joker), etc. Some of these are only good for the first few antes, while others scale better into the later game. You can also get flat mult from holographic jokers which is generally a much more efficient place to get it from.

A card like misprint is fine to pick up in the first couple of antes, but should be sold for better as soon as it's reasonable.

A few flat mult cards also scale, these are absolutely worth building around if you come across them:

• Green Joker ( Incredibly powerful, especially with "Banner" )
• Red Card
• Erosion ( very difficult to make work, only suggest if you have a reliable way to destroy cards )
• Fortune Teller
• Spare Trousers ( Not actually great, feels like a worse version of Green Joker )
• Flash card
• Bootstraps ( Incredibly powerful )

Early on a card like "misprint" seems powerful because you one-shot everything with some luck but these cards scale much more reliably into the end-game. They should all have at least a flat 10-15 mult by the end unconditionally.

If you have a flat 15 mult, that's like having 5-10 levels on every one of your cards. In other words, one joker and some investment replaces investing into dozens of planet packets.

Chip Builders

Chip builders are any cards which give chips. Foil jokers help a lot giving a 50 chips, but there are some very powerful chip builder cards which give around 100 chips each, and are far more powerful than the conditional "30 chips if an odd number" type cards which should be avoided unless desperate:

• Banner ( Probably overpowered by a factor of 2, this gives 120 chips or 160 chips with the Wasteful voucher. )
• Ice cream ( Great early game, falls off quickly so needs to be replaced asap )
• Blue Joker ( As with banner, ridiculously good value. )

There are also some scaling chip builders, which are tricker to make work, but can be scaled to late game:

• Square Joker ( Difficult to make work unless you have a utility joker which lets you play short hands )
• Bull ( Extremely powerful, can easily scale to 250 flat alone )
• Castle ( Very fun to get going, surprisingly quick to scale if you're not reliant on non-discard strategies, but avoid if using banner. )
• Wee Joker ( Tricky to scale without screwing up and leaving yourself with no hands! )

Mult multipliers

These are cards which read "x2 Mult" or similar, and are very unpowered early while essential late. The naturally scale with the power of the rest of your deck, although there are still some which provided a fixed multiplier and some that further scale the multiplier.

It's worth having only one of these and investing in the scaling of it, although you can get away with two if you have extra joker slots. It's generally better to look to scale your chips and flat mult rather than have powerful multipliers which are multiplying a small sum.

NB: Do not get "photograph", the multiplier applies before your jokers have added their mult, it's worthless in a joker focussed build.

Some examples of powerful ones:

• Joker Stencil ( Not worth unless you're playing the deck with the extra joker slot )
• Blackboard ( Not recommended without utility, you will kill yourself trying to get the mult active )
• Cavendish ( The 1 in 1000 discard chance is a joke, this is basically a flat x3, it's a run winner )
• Acrobat ( Surprisingly useful, especially if you want to play extra hands to boost Green Joker )
• The Trio ( Make sure your deck can support playing 3 of a kind regularly )
• Constellation ( Amazing if you can support it, this can scale up to around 4x if you invest into planets )
• Hologram ( One of the best jokers in the game if you can get it early. )

Utility and Money makers

A last note about utility jokers. These are jokers which provide utility such as allowing freedom of suit or gapped straights. I've not had much success trying to get the straight based cards to work, but Smeared Joker is incredible. With a hand size increase such as from paint brush, you are guarenteed to be able to play a flush every hand without having to do any deck management whatsoever.

If you can afford a slot for a joker which makes money, and that can include doing things like generating consumable cards ( remember these can be sold too if you don't want them ) then it's worth doing so, as that money can be poured into scaling your scaling jokers, be it directly such as the bull, or being able to afford lots of packs or extra cards to boost others.

If you're happy with your joker selection based on these criteria, you're free to invest all your money into deck enhancements and deck-shaping if you need them for conditional jokers ( which I'd recommended avoiding if possible, but it isn't always possible. ).

Original Post By u/Zeeterm on Reddit