The Balatro Thread

[Touring Mars]

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Balatro (video game) - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

As if Balatro was not enough of a time sink, I thought I'd start a thread on it here for players at GTP to share their experiences, advice etc.

I only bought the game on PS5 5 days ago, and it's already giving GT7 (and everything else for that matter) a run for its money in terms of competing for my attentions.

This thread is for general discussion of the game, but please make use of the spoiler (and ispoiler) tags if you think something merits it. My buddy at work has already dropped a couple of spoilers while we've been chatting about it 😅

@Spacegoat @Joey D @-Fred- @RYAN @Stilva @Touring Mars

 

[Joey D]

I bought it during the Steam holiday sale, and it's the best thing to play during conference calls, which I have no desire to be on. It's challenging, but not so challenging that it's impossible. I have something like 20 hours on it, which is a ton for me with a game.

 

[FuriousDemon]

I got it around New Year's on the iPhone and I managed to beat it with maybe 4-5 different decks. It was very exciting early on, but after about a week with it I pretty much haven't opened it up. It's a cool game, but not as replayable as I thought it would be. In the end, it's pretty much poker with a twist. I'll probably try it out again, once they release that shiny big new patch.

 

[Touring Mars]

I got it around New Year's on the iPhone and I managed to beat it with maybe 4-5 different decks. It was very exciting early on, but after about a week with it I pretty much haven't opened it up. It's a cool game, but not as replayable as I thought it would be. In the end, it's pretty much poker with a twist. I'll probably try it out again, once they release that shiny big new patch.

Yeh, I think there is plenty of scope for expansion.

I've beaten the game 3 times now, and each time I've not made it past Ante 10 - it's very cool though, as you start to realise that just 'winning' is not enough, but that you need to be thinking much earlier on in the game about how to cope with the exponentially higher scores required to survive.

My trick in the last two games has been to level up the lower ranked hand types - particularly Two Pairs by spamming Uranus. That produces amazing scores by Ante 7 or 8, but it starts to become a bit of a problem when you encounter Boss Blinds like the one that just killed my most recent game, where you can only play each hand type once - I was getting something like 300,000 points per hand of Two Pairs, but I needed 1,200,000 in 6 Hands - easy if I could just spam Two Pairs, but almost impossible when I could only play it once.

Lesson learned though - spamming Uranus can be a lot of fun, but it becomes more painful as time goes on.

 

[FuriousDemon]

Yeh, I think there is plenty of scope for expansion.

I've beaten the game 3 times now, and each time I've not made it past Ante 10 - it's very cool though, as you start to realise that just 'winning' is not enough, but that you need to be thinking much earlier on in the game about how to cope with the exponentially higher scores required to survive.

My trick in the last two games has been to level up the lower ranked hand types - particularly Two Pairs by spamming Uranus. That produces amazing scores by Ante 7 or 8, but it starts to become a bit of a problem when you encounter Boss Blinds like the one that just killed my most recent game, where you can only play each hand type once - I was getting something like 300,000 points per hand of Two Pairs, but I needed 1,200,000 in 6 Hands - easy if I could just spam Two Pairs, but almost impossible when I could only play it once.

Lesson learned though - spamming Uranus can be a lot of fun, but it becomes more painful as time goes on.

Yeah for sure, you need to plan ahead. Sometimes though, that would get me in trouble since I'd plan too far ahead and lose in the first like 3-4 Ante

 

[Spacegoat]

particularly Two Pairs

Two Pairs are what I always fall back on. Think the Flushes and Straights are the best strats to go for but for obvious reasons, Pairs and Two Pairs are just so much easier to come by. Stuck trying to get the last deck unlocked. For the life of me, I just cannot beat the Purple Stake difficulty.

Have you attempted any of the challenges yet? Some of those can be a bit of fun just to mix things up a bit. Altho, the "Double or Nothing" challenge that debuffs every card you play can go to hell.

spamming Uranus can be a lot of fun, but it becomes more painful as time goes on.

 

[-Fred-]

I've found not upgrading the hands until you reach the later part of the game, around ante 5-6, and focusing on the mult and chip Jokers instead works a treat, especially the ones that are "X" instead of "+" and finding ones that work together to add bonuses. Of course that's down to luck and a lot of re-rolling jokers, so it doesn't always work. The run I won yesterday, I had a Joker that gave me a completely new seal card for every round I played, one that added an X Mult for every card I had in my deck over the original 52 (by the end of the run I had 84 cards, good for something like a 7x mult), one that scores cards as colors no matter the suit, and one that kept giving me the planet card for the hand I was playing, which came in handy because flushes become really easy to do if clubs and spades are scored as the same suit, for instance. I was pulling million plus scores by the end of ante 6, which made it easy. Getting the Joker card that gets rid of the boss blind also really helps.

Heaps of fun, especially for the price.