How do you play (setups)? (discussion)

[Tommy]

How do you normally approach a game of Balatro, unseeded? Do you go in hoping for a certain build, or do you "see where the cards lie" and flex build around what you get (what I do)?
This is meant as a discussion, but also as a bit of advice seeking. my highest run has been ante 10, with 1.29M, and I guess I want to know if I'm just playing wrong.

[malogoss]

If it's important for you to get a win by reaching ante 8, then you should adapt to whatever the game gives you. Past ante 8, usually you'll do your best and the run will end at ante 10-13 and that's it.

If you are very lucky, taking what the game gives you will turn into an incredible build, that will go beyond ante 13. This rarely happens.

If you are using the Plasma deck, in all cases, you can push further on average.

If you don't care at all about reaching ante 8 and win rates, then you can start the game with 2-3 different ideas in mind that are ways to achieve crazy scores, try to make as much money as possible early on and if the opportunity for one of those ideas shows up, jump on it. And then you might be in a new personal record run. The downside is, you'll restart many runs to finally get what you want. The upside is, if you have nothing good by ante 6-7, restart a run with no remorse and go at it again. In this scenario, always use Plasma deck.

For example, some high score builds revolve around Perkeo or Triboulet, legendary jokers. Trying to hit those in unseeded runs will require patience, a lot of it. So my hint is to try to have 2-3 other scenarios that don't involve legendary jokers.

[Tommy]

Originally posted by malogoss:

I
For example, some high score builds revolve around Perkeo or Triboulet, legendary jokers. Trying to hit those in unseeded runs will require patience, a lot of it. So my hint is to try to have 2-3 other scenarios that don't involve legendary jokers.

current game, i was doing my usual, build for straight and flushes, and for whatever first suit debuff I beat. however, i opened a Buffoon pack on Ante 3, got Rough Gem, and Hallucination procced and gave me a Star tarot. I guess the game wants me to do diamonds this time.
And then I got Crazy, Droll, and a poly Shortcut, so straight flush diamonds it is

[malogoss]

Originally posted by Tom:

current game, i was doing my usual, build for straight and flushes, and for whatever first suit debuff I beat. however, i opened a Buffoon pack on Ante 3, got Rough Gem, and Hallucination procced and gave me a Star tarot. I guess the game wants me to do diamonds this time.

If you care about reaching ante 8, yes. Rough Gem is a good money source and a good economy soon becomes a win.

If all you want is to beat your high score (highest ante reached), forget straights. Flushes are not great, not terrible. The top 2 options are High card and Flush Five. Not necessarily in that order.

[Tommy]

Originally posted by malogoss:

Originally posted by Tom:

current game, i was doing my usual, build for straight and flushes, and for whatever first suit debuff I beat. however, i opened a Buffoon pack on Ante 3, got Rough Gem, and Hallucination procced and gave me a Star tarot. I guess the game wants me to do diamonds this time.

If you care about reaching ante 8, yes. Rough Gem is a good money source and a good economy soon becomes a win.

If all you want is to beat your high score (highest ante reached), forget straights. Flushes are not great, not terrible. The top 2 options are High card and Flush Five. Not necessarily in that order.

I opnly start out for those, since they seem to be the easiest for me to get. However, it seems the game wants me to at least Ante 8 with this hand, since I got a poly shortcut, and droll and crazy.
Edit: Or not. Got The Mouth on Ante 6, couldn't get a good 1st hand, suffered

[malogoss]

While it's hard to force a single build you'd have in mind in the early game, it's always possible to avoid straights. Always.

But sometimes I feel like I need something spicy, I go for straights anyway, and the results go accordingly.

[Tommy]

Originally posted by malogoss:

While it's hard to force a single build you'd have in mind in the early game, it's always possible to avoid straights. Always.

But sometimes I feel like I need something spicy, I go for straights anyway, and the results go accordingly.

I have now seen what you mean. I'll try to avoid straights in the future. are straight flushes/ Royals still good to build for?

[malogoss]

Straight flushes are tougher version of the straight.
Can you guess what I think of them?

[srn347]

In general if I go for straights it means I have runner. That way I don't actually need to get straights every round, just every now and then to keep scaling chips. Depending on straights every round is a way to die the moment you're unlucky.

[Beakstore]

Taking what the game gives you makes sense. To a point at least. You don't want to just accept anything it throws at you. But say you start out with an idea of a build and try to force flushes while the game is desperately trying to give you jokers that would give you an easy win with pairs (non-checkered deck obviously). What's the point of playing like that?

[undeadnightorc]

Even though straight builds were given a bit of a buff in the last patch I still am hesitant to play them. But I will admit there was one gold stake win I managed to pull off with a straight build, and I only went in that direction because I was on Abandoned Deck and one of the early skip tags gave me +3 levels on straights so I was like "alright, let's yolo this!" and everything came together afterwords with the right jokers popping up to boost the build.