Plasma deck at high stakes?

[brickey.8]

I've beaten gold with every other deck, but I can't even get near it with that deck. I just cannot figure out any strategy that works. If I focus exclusively on chips I coast through half the game and then just do not have enough scaling for antes 6-8, but any time I try to pivot to Xmult it does nothing because I didn't have much mult to start with. If I'm seeing the numbers right you'd need an x8 multipler for +4 mult to outperform +30 chips, so it just seems completely nonviable outside endless.

Any advice?

[malogoss]

It's not that you can't figure a strategy that works. You have. But it won't work every time. And even simple strategies can be polished.

If all you want is a single win then focus on chips exclusively, don't bother with mult jokers.

The more money you'll have, the more often you'll stumble on jokers like Wee or Stuntman. Which are great help, obviously. So economy is important, jokers can help with that. And some tarot cards may not have the word "chips" on them, but they can help a lot, as you know. Same for seals.

Else, consider all chips sources. The difference in chips scaling between pairs and straights is huge, for example. Stone cards are big. Bonus cards too. Red seals on the previous cards are crazy. Even a WoF becomes tempting if you have extra money, 1 in 4 is not great but if it procs it's then 1 in 2 to grant foil, which is what you want. So 1 in 8 of a permanent +50 chips on all hands played. Sometimes that lottery ticket is worth the $3-$4, sometimes not.

Don't expect all that to work in 3 attempts. I mean, I wish you the best, it could happen of course! If after 8-10 attempts you never had any hope, then it's weird, to a point where you are probably doing something wrong. Like skipping too many blinds, but that's something you should not do with any deck, it's not specific to plasma.

If anything, my post is a pep talk! A win will happen, keep trying. You got this. The game can't make it not work forever.

[Mel Gibson]

It's been a long time since I last played plasma, but from what I remember you are right by trying to pivot to mult + xmult sometime around the mid game.
Unlike in other decks, what you want here is to maximize the sum chips+mult. In the early game, chips are of course better because they provide higher numbers than mult (let's say usually something like +50 rather than +10).
But as you get towards the final antes, even strong chips will probably not be enough.
So to reach higher numbers, you'll want a strong mult with a good chain of xmults, which scale more than chips.
You might have noticed while playing other decks that sometimes you have a very strong composition for scaling mults, but the lack of a chips joker (even a weak one) ends up bottlenecking your score. Late game plasma is the opposite, you want mult to skyrocket, no matter if chips are unbalanced.

TL;DR you were probably right in your strategy of pivoting to mult, but got unlucky or something. Just keep trying.

[kh]

I recently beat mine with arrowhead, odd todd, hanging chad, smeared joker and seltzer. Once i get seltzer, i just skipped all blinds to rush to the last boss.

Also castle, stuntman, square joker, brainstorm and blueprint are all pretty helpful.

Keep restarting a new run until you get free first shop tag and free foil joker tag would make early game much easier too.