What are your best and worst decks?

[He Shoots, He]

Personally I love playing the yellow deck and painted deck, both seem to offer a great early game with easy potential for snowballing. On the other hand, black deck feels like its way too hard to work with and nebula deck feels lack-luster with only 1 consumable slot, especially with the emperor / high priestess tarot cards. What do you all think?

[malogoss]

I'd rate Nebula as one of the best decks. Free Telescope is a huge deal, even more at high stake.

Black deck is the toughest, at all stake levels.

If you are playing at low stake (black and lower), then all decks with some kind of stability or economy perk are the most constant. Blue, yellow, Abandoned, Checkered. Then Zodiac and Green to a lesser degree. Painted deck offers huge stability but with only 4 joker slots, it becomes tricky at high stake.

Plasma is probably the most braindead deck to play at white stake. Buy +chips jokers, win. Maybe not 100% of the times but very often, without thinking.

[DirtCheap]

The best decks have good economy or good scoring power from the beginning, though there are good economy decks that are strong in the mid-game.

Highest rated economy decks:
Green deck, Yellow deck

Good economy decks:
Magic deck (2 Fools), Anaglyph deck (double tag)
What these two decks have in common, is that if you survive early game with enough $ saved up, then with high probability at around ante 3 you'll receive a boost of $40. The Anaglyph deck is not purely an economy deck but is strong overall.

Highest rated power decks:
Checkered deck, Ghost deck, Painted deck
People say that checkered deck isn't as strong late game, at high antes; that is true, but what you do is leverage the early power into a good economy the first 4 rounds. The checkered deck can beat the first boss without jokers, and in fact can beat the following round (1000 chips) without jokers. That means you can be at $23 after the first boss (at least $23, can be better with early economy tags), with the option to not spend and be at $27 after. With any power joker or one Jupiter planet card and you're set to survive the ante 2 boss.
The Ghost deck with the starting Hex spectral card is similar, with an innate 1000 chip starting deck power -- the difference being that you have to buy or find an acceptable first joker to activate that innate strength (starting ~650 chips power -> ~1000 chips). A good economy joker can be that first joker, as long as it's not perishable or rental.

Good power decks:
Abandoned deck
While not strong early, improvements to the starting deck is magnified with the smaller deck size. It's similar to the Checkered deck in that you get the equivalent of 6 free tarot cards spent to modify your deck, compare to the ~8 free tarot cards of the Checkered deck. It's easier to make straights with this deck.

With that we've covered 8 decks. Of the rest, I like the Zodiac deck and the Blue deck, even though they seem a bit weaker when compared to the top decks. For example, compare the Blue deck the the Ghost deck. The ghost deck is 1.5x power -- a little less, due to committing it to be on a sub-optimal first joker -- then a little more, from spectral cards in the shop. The blue deck is 1.25x power+ : it's more flexible in that when searching for one-shot (one big scoring) hands you can dig 5 or 4 cards deeper, and if you buy Hieroglyph voucher with no hand voucher then if becomes 1.33x.
The Zodiac deck has starting Overstock, which is always great, but the deck doesn't see more jokers on average. Apparently the math works out that the number of jokers per shop is very similar, like 1.43 jokers per shop -> 1.45 per shop. It's still good to see the extra Tarot cards and Planet cards. If it's the card you want like the Hermit, Temperance, or the Fool, or the planet card you want, then good; otherwise through non-duplication it narrows down the possibilities in the booster packs, for a higher chance of good tarot and planet cards in there. Btw, holding on to bad tarot/planet cards in the inventory has the same effect.

The rest:
Red deck, Black deck, Nebula deck, Plasma deck, Erratic deck
None of these decks are awful. The worst two are probably Black deck and Erratic deck as they have weak early game, leading to a more early losses and retries. People say the Nebula deck is strong, and I could have listed it with the interesting Zodiac and Blue decks; yet, I happened to have lost a bunch of times with it on high stakes, and I've beaten gold stake with Erratic deck first, since it was an interesting deck to me. Basically my quick take on the Nebula deck is that you only see between 0.4 and 0.5 Celestial packs per shop, but often on Blue Seal runs after midgame I proc 2 Blue Seals per round (Blue seal on the new patch). The problem is having the money to find the Blue Seal(s) and multiple Death tarot cards in the first place, not whether I have the Telescope voucher early or not.
Beside the Erratic deck these are just the last decks I've tried to beat gold stakes with.

[BaconX]

The black deck is the hardest deck imo.

[Ravenous Roxy]

I've completed 13.5 decks on gold at this point.

I've really like the abandoned deck for it smaller deck size. More consistently got the hands i wanted. It also really allowed the hack joker to shine often.
Checkered deck was just turn your brain off and spam flushes. Having a """free"""smeared joker made the deck kind of just refreshing to play. A very nice break from the other decks. You either play flushes and it works or it doesn't work and you try it again next run.
Anaglyph and Ghost decks just consistently allowed for some more wild builds to occur.

Black deck was obviously awful. That -1 hand really hurts.
Alternatively, I really disliked the painted deck too. That -1 joker slot was such a headache and would ultimately end in failure cause of it. I tried getting it done before the update because i knew it would be a pain. I beat purple and then the new update rolled out with the new orange and gold stakes. I had the longest and worst string of bad luck with perishables/rentals with that deck. I'm never going back to this awful deck.
Currently in the middle of completing plasma deck. I have to say I'm not a fan of it. On paper I know it scores higher due to always splitting the numbers for maximum scoring. However, I just can't get that to work at all. I get some chip jokers for the early game, and then just fall flat. I can't manage to get absurdly high mult to abuse the score split mechanic. So I'm just playing the same game now with x2 scores to reach and losing because of it. Feeling like an absolute slog...

[malogoss]

Originally posted by Ravenous Roxy:

(...) Currently in the middle of completing plasma deck. I have to say I'm not a fan of it. On paper I know it scores higher due to always splitting the numbers for maximum scoring. However, I just can't get that to work at all. I get some chip jokers for the early game, and then just fall flat. I can't manage to get absurdly high mult to abuse the score split mechanic. So I'm just playing the same game now with x2 scores to reach and losing because of it. Feeling like an absolute slog...

To me, plasma is the weirdest deck at high stakes. So I agree with you.

The reason why is exactly the reason you gave.

If your only goal is to beat gold stake and be done with it, my suggestion is to caveman it. Pick only +chips jokers. Well, maybe econ and utility too, but no +mult, no xmult.

Sooner or later, you'll find a Stuntman, a Square joker, some bonus cards and red seals, add foil to a few jokers and beat it. Or find a Wee, or whatever works. It won't take long because you can play very fast doing that.

If you care about win rate, then yes, you likely need to move from chips to mult at one point. It's tougher to execute than brute forcing it with chips only. Maybe you'll need less attempts, I doubt you'd save much time, it involves tough decisions. Can't decide in 1 second for anything. And if you take the wrong decision, you're screwed.

You also need to do that if playing Plasma in endless, but then you should be playing white stake and the transition from chips to mult is a lot easier.

Good luck