Glass, Stone, Iron, Gold etc

[Jamie Aubrey]

Is it worth upgrading cards to these ? I tend to skip them and try and just get my deck all kings of the same suit

[HeraldOfOpera]

Steel jokers are a major part of one of the three or so builds that can actually make it to Ante 12: the Baron-Mime combo. Stone is a nice chip supplement for High Card builds, while Glass isn't terrible in Photochad (the other major Endless build). Gold cards similarly do really well in Baron-Mime and are economy regardless.

[RazzberryMocha]

All card enhancements are very powerful, with mult and wild being the only ones that are just fine.
Bonus cards can provide lots of extra scoring, mult cards can help enable certain builds while also being a nice boost for many others, wild cards are okay but are really good with ancient joker, stone is very powerful with any hand type that doesn't score 5 cards, lucky cards are very strong for economy and are the best "go-to" enhancement (i.e. you have nothing better to put on a card), gold is very strong economy just like lucky cards, and glass cards are absurdly broken.

[raichudoggy]

Glass is a typical end-plan for endless for 5-card hands (esp. 5oak, Flush Five), Red Seal if possible. Pre Ante-8 they can also give you a boost (For help against bosses like The Needle or the Wall, for example) or can be applied with the express intention of breaking them (like a discount Hanged Man). People often worry too much about their Glass breaking, but usually the blinds outscale you before you run out of Glass that you need to score enough.

Stone, in addition to boosting hands that aren't five cards, also works as a mask of sorts, Jokers like Castle and Idol will be more in your favor if you make cards that aren't your preferred one into stone.

Gold is 100% worth it every time. It costs $3 for a Devil so it pays for itself, then every future round it's another potential $3, even if you're not going to intentionally dig for it later or even hang it later, you should apply Gold to cards if nothing better to do.

Bonus / Mult are weaker than Glass but don't break your cards; they're reliable score boosts early game.

Wildcard makes Flushes (and flush variants of hands like Flush House, Flush Five, Straight Flush) easier to make; it's Just OK but some jokers like Ancient Joker and Flower Pot play really nicely with it.

[kaibarnard]

Yes at various times - gold and steel tend to be universally useful, extra multi is nice and extra money nice too

Glass at the right time gets you out of jams, add in re-triggers, like the ballot/chad - bonuses go brrrrr

Stones when you're playing pairs/3oaks is just free chips

[Twelvefield]

The card variations are useful, but they also depend on your Jokers. Generally, I'd rather add a variant through Tarot rather than buying the card from the shop of a bonus pack and bloating my deck, but there's Jokers that reward deck bloat as well.

Vanilla cards are just that. They get the job done, but they won't much help past the eighth Boss. Steel cards I consider the best: the more the merrier. Gold does tend to pay for itself over time, and it may relieve you from having to rely on a payout Joker. Multi and chips are fine, they are better than vanilla. Glass is kind of a gamble - generally it's a 1:4 chance you will lose that card, so it's more often valuable than not. But if you are carefully managing your deck, Glass could wreck that.

Deck management, like OP describes, is trickier. It's certainly possible to transform your deck to support a certain hand (especially with Spectral cards), but most of those hands will be four or five cards to be valuable enough to play. That becomes unreliable the more you chase the eleventh boss. All Kings, especially, would be a gamble, since there are anti-royalty blinds. Getting Kings and then the Baron, though, that's rare but beautiful.

[CMDR Shven]

The tarot that turns a card gold costs $3, at most, and can be held and used on a card right before playing your winning hand in the next game, and the $3 you get from the gold card is counted before interest is calculated. So buying the tarot has zero downside.

[False Prophet]

I will say stone and multi suck unless it is very early in the run. Steel and glass are easily the best enhancements by far