I'm having a terrible difficulty with my Plasma Deck

[ulzgoroth]

It's kind of embarrassing, since it has a very powerful ability to be sure.

It works great in the low antes, of course. But I keep getting stuck in the 'decent chips but weak mult' hole, and scaling on chips instead of mult-mult doesn't really seem like enough to go well in the upper stakes. With other decks I often get proper mult takeoff, but I keep missing it with plasma and don't quite know why.

[Entity]

getting 2 copies of Bull (using blueprint, invisible joker, brainstorm, ankh, ...) works well for me.

[RazzberryMocha]

With plasma deck chips will not cut it on purple stake and higher unless you get an absurd setup with something like wee joker. Instead, use chips early on to breeze through the earlier antes and focus on establishing a strong econ so you can then pivot into mult later.

[ulzgoroth]

Originally posted by RazzberryMocha:

With plasma deck chips will not cut it on purple stake and higher unless you get an absurd setup with something like wee joker. Instead, use chips early on to breeze through the earlier antes and focus on establishing a strong econ so you can then pivot into mult later.

Yeah, I've got all those parts except actually making the pivot to mult work.

[revlayle]

Mult eventually, always, out-scales chips, regardless of the deck. Strong chips at first gets you thru early antes. However, around ante 3-5 (depending on the stake you are playing), you have to eventually have to switch to a mult-based strategy like every other deck.

White stake Plasma can win a run with high chip jokers, but it will not cut it for the higher stakes.

As RaxxberryMocha said, strong econ is the key to winning a lot of runs, so you can pick and choose new purchases you need to get to the mult strategy.

[ulzgoroth]

Originally posted by revlayle:

Mult eventually, always, out-scales chips, regardless of the deck. Strong chips at first gets you thru early antes. However, around ante 3-5 (depending on the stake you are playing), you have to eventually have to switch to a mult-based strategy like every other deck.

White stake Plasma can win a run with high chip jokers, but it will not cut it for the higher stakes.

As RaxxberryMocha said, strong econ is the key to winning a lot of runs, so you can pick and choose new purchases you need to get to the mult strategy.

You're telling me the things I already said I know.

[malogoss]

My first climb to gold with Plasma, I just brute forced it with chips. That was BEFORE the patch that changed blue seals, orange and gold stakes, so it was much tougher. I don't think one should expect this to work every run, even in the current version, but it'll eventually work. It does not require the perfect run. Things like red seal stone cards, red seal foil cards, Chad all really go a long way. Or Odd Todd and Hack. Or Marble + Stone joker, that pair alone would carry a whole run. Or Wee alone. There's a decent amount of options. Or get 4 of a kind to level 25, even if you may think it's impossible.

Else, it's the option B described by @RazzberryMocha

It's not that intuitive to execute though. The problem is, if you never tried at low stakes, at purple+ you might get overwhelmed many times before even starting to learn the how to.

If the goal is to beat Gold and be done with it, brute force it with chips. In terms of hours spent trying, that has to be the fastest option. If you want to become more consistent at high stake, practice the 2nd option. Up to you.

[ulzgoroth]

Not interested in brute forcing the bad strategy until I get lucky.

The thing that's confounding me is that the late-game build for plasma deck is almost the same as the late-game build I use for any other deck - maximal mult-mult plus a mult add base. But I'm missing the landing here.

I think the problem is partially that when I'm trying to raise mult but haven't yet exploded it, I'm losing plasma deck's advantage in the intermediate phase where chips and mult are near balance. But also I'm just doing something wrong...or maybe it's that I'm not actually good at black stake level yet even though I have played it before.

[malogoss]

Then don't brute force it. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
The other method needs practice, black stake seems like a good spot for that honestly. You'll get there.

[malogoss]

I just ended a nice purple stake plasma deck run. 1st shop green joker, then a Splash to help a bit on the chip front and it was all mult from there, except for maybe 4 cards with bonus enhancements. Ended with Green joker, Photograph, Chad, Hologram and Brainstorm. 25M hand on the last boss.

So it can be done that way. Point is, the earlier the pivot, the easier.

Before that I did a gold stake run and I got a Wee at ante 1. I guess that does not count as a win? But it's not even brute forcing it, just go with what you get when you're lucky. All chips worked in that case.

[ulzgoroth]

Originally posted by malogoss:

I just ended a nice purple stake plasma deck run. 1st shop green joker, then a Splash to help a bit on the chip front and it was all mult from there, except for maybe 4 cards with bonus enhancements. Ended with Green joker, Photograph, Chad, Hologram and Brainstorm. 25M hand on the last boss.

Can you explain this one? I don't understand how it makes sense as a build.

Well, mostly I don't understand what the green joker is doing, I guess.

I assume you're using photograph+chad+hologram+brainstorm to make the first played card double mult something like 12 times? Having no way to add mult before the great multiply seems sad, but sure, that'll give a big number. But all of that will happen before the jokers run, so green joker's add is useless, isn't it?

[malogoss]

Originally posted by ulzgoroth:

Can you explain this one? I don't understand how it makes sense as a build.

Well, mostly I don't understand what the green joker is doing, I guess.

I assume you're using photograph+chad+hologram+brainstorm to make the first played card double mult something like 12 times? Having no way to add mult before the great multiply seems sad, but sure, that'll give a big number. But all of that will happen before the jokers run, so green joker's add is useless, isn't it?

At around ante 6-7, yes, Green joker was pretty much useless. I kept it because once you score 2M per hand, you've already won anyway. I don't even remember if I saw another xmult joker. That was pretty much the only possible upgrade. Or a Blueprint, but I did not see one.

But the Green Joker, grabbed at the first shop IIRC, was an absolute MVP for the first 4-5 ante, at least. It's one of the easiest +mult to scale because you can almost always go for a lesser hand that won't finish the round. You get to +30 really fast. Plasma can go a long way with Splash and a few bonus cards. Then you find a xmult joker, for me it was Hologram. Green joker keeps scaling, Hologram too, the bonus cards still contribute and that's it.

It took me a while to have the Photograph + Chad combo.

By the way, Brainstorm was only copying Chad, so the first card (well, it always was a face card) scored 6 times. I think I simply had no red seals, too bad. But still. Play a hand that has 10 mult as a base, play a +4 mult face card the result is... over 1,000. Add 2 steel cards into the mix with a 3x Hologram, you're over 7,000 mult. That's a 13M score.

I could have used glass cards, but that's like selling the Green joker, totally not needed. 10+ billion hands are cool, but still worth only 1 win.

steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3401833495
It got Holo from a rather late WoF, which changed nothing, but still funny.

Plasma deck.
Purple stake.
SEED: HN98NY1Z
steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3401838898

(edit: just realised I counted 6 trigger of the first card. It's 5. But the result is still on screen. Numbers go brrrrr, 25M hand, WITHOUT glass)

[ulzgoroth]

Welp, I just cranked my plasma deck (and overall) high score up to the tens of billions.

And still didn't beat ante 12, largely but not exclusively because I was playing a higher stake at the time. And because my red seal glass queen broke too soon (and I didn't have more).

And I am mad about it because I had Hanging Chad + Triboulet and I passed up the chance to add Photograph to that because I didn't accept that my Wee Joker was obsolete.