There's a high card build??

[A Silly Cat In A Top Hat]

I am new to the game & have about 1hr.
I heard someone say you can make the game work using just high cards.
How is that possible? Or am I being trolled lol

[RazzberryMocha]

High card/pair are very strong hand types to build into as they are the most consistent (you will always draw a high card and almost always a pair) and can take advantage of in-hand effects like gold cards and blue seals more effectively than other hand types. The tradeoff comes from the fact that they will typically score less and that there are no jokers that directly synergize with high card and the pair synergies are weaker than other options.

Typically you'd want your point scoring to come from your jokers with less focus on card/hand level point scoring than other builds. If you have a ton of chips and mult from your jokers it doesn't matter what hand you play. It does help a lot to level up high card/pair though, as the added chips are very appreciated.

Two standout jokers for this strategy are green joker (+1 mult per hand played, -1 mult per discard) and ride the bus (+1 mult per consecutive hand without a scoring face card). Both scale at a fantastic rate and reward you for playing lots of hands, something you already do with this strategy. Their downsides are also both pretty easy to ignore with high card/pair as there's little reason to discard and playing face cards is nice but not necessary.

[A Silly Cat In A Top Hat]

Originally posted by RazzberryMocha:

High card/pair are very strong hand types to build into as they are the most consistent (you will always draw a high card and almost always a pair) and can take advantage of in-hand effects like gold cards and blue seals more effectively than other hand types. The tradeoff comes from the fact that they will typically score less and that there are no jokers that directly synergize with high card and the pair synergies are weaker than other options.

Typically you'd want your point scoring to come from your jokers with less focus on card/hand level point scoring than other builds. If you have a ton of chips and mult from your jokers it doesn't matter what hand you play. It does help a lot to level up high card/pair though, as the added chips are very appreciated.

Two standout jokers for this strategy are green joker (+1 mult per hand played, -1 mult per discard) and ride the bus (+1 mult per consecutive hand without a scoring face card). Both scale at a fantastic rate and reward you for playing lots of hands, something you already do with this strategy. Their downsides are also both pretty easy to ignore with high card/pair as there's little reason to discard and playing face cards is nice but not necessary.

Thanks. That's good to know that the game is mostly around jokers. I'm not far enough yet I don't think to know what gold cards or blue seals are.

[CMDR Shven]

The game is primarily about joker selection, though as the jokerless challenge proves you can win without them entirely. But generally yes it is advised to consider what jokers are given to you and build around that, be it high card or anything else, and not to try to force a particular build every time and ignore jokers that don't fit. One of the biggest issues a lot of new players seem to face is attempting to force flush builds every single game regardless of deck or which jokers they get.

[A Silly Cat In A Top Hat]

Originally posted by CMDR Shven:

The game is primarily about joker selection, though as the jokerless challenge proves you can win without them entirely. But generally yes it is advised to consider what jokers are given to you and build around that, be it high card or anything else, and not to try to force a particular build every time and ignore jokers that don't fit. One of the biggest issues a lot of new players seem to face is attempting to force flush builds every single game regardless of deck or which jokers they get.

Thanks, also, jokerless challenges? You can beat the game w/o jokers? Is it just down to getting 20 full houses in a row?

[srn347]

There's a lot of different hands you can beat jokerless with. Mine was with two pair, although most of the guides will probably tell you to deck fix towards a stronger hand.

[A Silly Cat In A Top Hat]

Originally posted by srn347:

There's a lot of different hands you can beat jokerless with. Mine was with two pair, although most of the guides will probably tell you to deck fix towards a stronger hand.

How can you beat a run with two pair? Isn't the thing that makes hands more valuable the jokers? I imagine two pair base value isn't good enough? Or is it you need to get like level 10 two pair.

[RazzberryMocha]

Originally posted by A Silly Cat In A Top Hat:

Originally posted by srn347:

There's a lot of different hands you can beat jokerless with. Mine was with two pair, although most of the guides will probably tell you to deck fix towards a stronger hand.

How can you beat a run with two pair? Isn't the thing that makes hands more valuable the jokers? I imagine two pair base value isn't good enough? Or is it you need to get like level 10 two pair.

The only thing that matters at the end of the day is that you meet the score requirement and your jokers, hand type, and playing cards all contribute towards that with some form of chips, flat +mult, and multiplicative Xmult. Something like high card will mainly rely on jokers and maybe planets, but rarely playing cards. The more scoring cards a hand has the better it will be at using playing cards to score as there are more opportunities for special effects such as bonus cards or glass cards.
In the in-game challenges there is a challenge that removes all jokers from the shops but is still very possible. Something such as a level 10 straight is worth 300 chips x 34 mult (excluding scoring cards) will be worth 10,200 points, nowhere near the required 100,000 points even with multiple hands. But if you add two glass cards with red seals (effectively making those cards worth x4) and it will score over 100,000 (if all of them were glass+red seals it's effectively 300 x 4 x 128 and would score 1,305,600), all without a single joker.

[burl]

Originally posted by A Silly Cat In A Top Hat:

I am new to the game & have about 1hr.
I heard someone say you can make the game work using just high cards.
How is that possible? Or am I being trolled lol

Theres a build for every hand, and you can beat ante 8 with any hand

[HeraldOfOpera]

Originally posted by ----:

Originally posted by A Silly Cat In A Top Hat:

I am new to the game & have about 1hr.
I heard someone say you can make the game work using just high cards.
How is that possible? Or am I being trolled lol

Theres a build for every hand, and you can beat ante 8 with any hand

I'd say Straights and Full Houses are the trickiest just because you need multiple different things instead of a lot of the same thing. You can't make them much more consistent than they are at base the way you can get Flush literally 100% of the time with fairly little effort. (This is why they have significantly different score scaling)

[burl]

Originally posted by HeraldOfOpera:

Originally posted by ----:

Theres a build for every hand, and you can beat ante 8 with any hand

I'd say Straights and Full Houses are the trickiest just because you need multiple different things instead of a lot of the same thing. You can't make them much more consistent than they are at base the way you can get Flush literally 100% of the time with fairly little effort. (This is why they have significantly different score scaling)

Yeah that's fair, 5 card hands are definitely harder to consistently draw than smaller hands. I just mean with the seeded runs you kinda have to play whats given to you and I think you can win any given seed if you make the right choices. Like you don't necessarily need to force flush every run. If the jokers and planet cards you are offered point towards two pair or even high card, you can still win. for example, My highest scoring hand ever was a "high card" steel king with Baron joker deck.

[Moray Eel]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WeYsTmIzjkw

[Twelvefield]

Originally posted by A Silly Cat In A Top Hat:

I am new to the game & have about 1hr.

Just keep playing. It will take you about 15-20 hours just to figure out how to win. After that, the game clicks into place and you can start thinking about high scores. For now, have faith that these things are possible, as they absolutely are. You don't yet have the foundation to build on that, though.

I've mentioned this before - and got derided for this before - the game very much is about how you get up again after you've been knocked down.

[A Silly Cat In A Top Hat]

Originally posted by Twelvefield:

Originally posted by A Silly Cat In A Top Hat:

I am new to the game & have about 1hr.

Just keep playing. It will take you about 15-20 hours just to figure out how to win. After that, the game clicks into place and you can start thinking about high scores. For now, have faith that these things are possible, as they absolutely are. You don't yet have the foundation to build on that, though.

I've mentioned this before - and got derided for this before - the game very much is about how you get up again after you've been knocked down.

Thanks for letting me know that. I'm now like ~6 hours into the game and haven't won yet and I'm like "Man I must really be bad". It's really nice to know I'm still on-track & that it can take 15-20 hours to figure out how to win lol.

[CMDR Shven]

Originally posted by A Silly Cat In A Top Hat:

Thanks for letting me know that. I think I'm now like 4 hours into the game and haven't won yet and I'm like "Man I must really be bad". It's really nice to know I'm still on-track & that it can take 15-20 hours to figure out how to win lol.

I'm really good at this genre of game and it still took me 8 or so hours to win once. Plenty of other people report taking 20+. Definitely don't be discouraged if you take a while to win for the first time. Even when you're losing you're still learning the game and unlocking jokers.

[A Silly Cat In A Top Hat]

Originally posted by CMDR Shven:

Originally posted by A Silly Cat In A Top Hat:

Thanks for letting me know that. I think I'm now like 4 hours into the game and haven't won yet and I'm like "Man I must really be bad". It's really nice to know I'm still on-track & that it can take 15-20 hours to figure out how to win lol.

I'm really good at this genre of game and it still took me 8 or so hours to win once. Plenty of other people report taking 20+. Definitely don't be discouraged if you take a while to win for the first time. Even when you're losing you're still learning the game and unlocking jokers.

At 7.7 hours, Just beat my first run. Flush deck, got a 2x tag w/ a "Level up flush 3 times" tag. So first ante I had a level 7 flush. Then spent the rest of the game using tarot cards to convert as much of my deck to the same suits as possible.