What does "skip blind" do? And what does "ante" do?

[lydocia]

I didn't quite grasp it from the tutorial.

[Speed-Dial]

Skipping a blind awards you with a special tag, which can range from jokers, booster packs and money depending on the specific tag type of the blind you skip. Be warned that skipping a blind also skips the shop of that blind, and may stunt your ability to enhance your deck, jokers or overall economy.

[Mel Gibson]

Each blind has a tag (that little icon at the bottom of the blind's area, hover it to read what it does). Skipping the blind gives you that tag, but you will miss the money reward of beating that blind normally, and you also skip the store after, potentially missing good offers there. Skipping is also bad for jokers that get stronger progressively the longer you play with them, since you go directly to a more difficult blind without playing any hand. Skipping is also useless if you can't afford the hike in difficulty from the next blind.

Despite all this, there are situations where skipping is good. Some examples:
-skipping the first blind of a run at high stakes, where you would only get at most 3+ gold as reward in exchange of a foil/holographic/polychrome (and now also free) joker at the next store. The Coupon tag is also very strong in this situation. Just reset if you don't get anything good
-investment tag, allowing you to spend more liberally / get out of a massive debt
-negative jokers, specially on anaglyph deck where you have a massive stack of double tags. It's the most reliable way I know to hunt for bad jokers for the Completionist++ achievement
-going straight to a hard boss while you still have a very strong perishable joker that would otherwise expire before you get to the boss
-desperate boss blind reroll, if absolutely necessary

By the way, don't let the poker lingo confuse you: blind in this game is pretty much just "level", or "sublevel". There are three blinds (sublevels) in each ante (level) and there are 8 antes to beat the game.
You can only skip the two first blinds (small and big) of each ante, but not the third one (boss blind).

[lydocia]

Ahh thank you, that makes sense!

What about ante?

[UrsuFox]

Ante is your progress. The Higher it is, the more money you need to clear the blind.

[lydocia]

Originally posted by UrsuFox:

Ante is your progress. The Higher it is, the more money you need to clear the blind.

So using cards that lower the ante makes it "easier", right?

[Starmender]

Originally posted by lydocia:

Originally posted by UrsuFox:

Ante is your progress. The Higher it is, the more money you need to clear the blind.

So using cards that lower the ante makes it "easier", right?

Yes. You'll still need to clear ante 8 to win, but it gives you a bit more time to upgrade your cards.

[lydocia]

Originally posted by Starmender:

Originally posted by lydocia:

So using cards that lower the ante makes it "easier", right?

Yes. You'll still need to clear ante 8 to win, but it gives you a bit more time to upgrade your cards.

Aha, thank you! That dimension to the strategy was lost on me.

[Mel Gibson]

Originally posted by lydocia:

Originally posted by UrsuFox:

Ante is your progress. The Higher it is, the more money you need to clear the blind.

So using cards that lower the ante makes it "easier", right?

It costs you one hand (and then one discard if you take the next voucher too) per round though, so the game doesn't necessarily get straight up "easier" every time, not to mention the $10 down the drain. It can be good, again, as a desperate measure to salvage a run if you get a boss you know you can't beat or something like that, as it does give you more time.
I personally rarely get it.

[Goblin]

Originally posted by Mel Gibson:

Originally posted by lydocia:

So using cards that lower the ante makes it "easier", right?

It costs you one hand (and then one discard if you take the next voucher too) per round though, so the game doesn't necessarily get straight up "easier" every time, not to mention the $10 down the drain. It can be good, again, as a desperate measure to salvage a run if you get a boss you know you can't beat or something like that, as it does give you more time.
I personally rarely get it.

Its usefulness can be somewhat quantized: A normal game lasts 24 rounds (8 x 3). The earlier you get the voucher, the more hands you lose - if you got it right at the start of the game you'd lose 23 hands but gain ((hands per round after the -1) x 3). So if you have 3 hands per round before buying it, you'd lose (-23 + 2 x 3) = 17 hands. If you buy it the last round before the final boss, you gain (-1 + 2 x 3) = 5 hands. Having more hands per round makes it more worth it/worth it earlier on.

All of this hinges on you having stuff that scales per hand played, and assumes you can play max hands per round. If you can't help but oneshot rounds, you just gain 2 hands played, period.
Aside from that, it gives you 3 more shops and rounds worth of income. But if you desperately need those, you are probably not doing well and are going to lose anyway due to the hand loss.

[Mel Gibson]

Originally posted by Goblin:

Having more hands per round makes it more worth it/worth it earlier on.

Yeah, good summary.
It's generally a good voucher in lower stakes and a more situational in higher stakes (also corroborated by the possibility of perishable/rental jokers).

Worth mentioning that the second voucher is much more of a no-brainer: if you already benefited from the first one, taking the second is probably always a good idea.