00:00.00 Dave Hello everybody. My name is Dave Jackson and you're listening to a special bonus episode of tales from the backlog. This is a video games review podcast where each week I'm joined by a guest to bring a game out of the backlog, play it and discuss. Although this game today I feel like number 1 is kind of new. But also I feel like it is not really in people's backlogs. It's kind of like everyone has seemed to buy it lately and jump straight into the deep end but before we get into the game today I would like to introduce a real jumbo buffoon pack of guests in this episode today. I'm joined by 1 of the hosts of fun and games reignite screens star podcasts welcome back Matt Aka a stormageddon and we're also joined by host of super pod saga Aaron Klaassen, Aaron welcome back. 00:43.56 Matt Hey, I'm happy to be back. 00:50.79 Aaron Hello I sort of God I don't plan on being late every single time I record with you stuff just happens like trees and kids and stuff but please please don't hate me. 01:00.20 Dave Yeah trees and kids and combinations of both of those things. It's all a good man happy to have you here today. The 3 of us are going to talk about Balatro which is a roguelike deck builder developed by 1 person developer localThunk. 01:05.75 Matt Exactly. 01:18.83 Dave And published by playstack for modern platforms here in 2024 and before we get started I would like to say thank you to localthunk and playstack for providing a review code for me. 01:31.10 Matt Yeah, and thank you for providing me with a review code as well. Ah, yeah, it's your fault. 01:34.82 Dave Yeah I think on the yeah, the email where they sent out the codes that I think they actually were like very sorry for ruining your productivity. But here's a review code for Balatro. 01:44.29 Matt Yeah, shout out too. 01:55.40 Matt Yeah, shout out to Wout aka the hashtagonist who's a dear friend and who does PR for Balatro. Yeah, he yeah he knows what he's getting us into as he's been playing it as well. 02:03.52 Dave Exactly yep! So if this is your first time listening to the show. First of all, thank you for stopping by here is how spoilers work on this podcast now this is a roguelike deck builder and it's very like It's all mechanics. Basically so there's no story to spoil here. But what we are going to do is we're going to do the normal subdivision of the ah parts of the episode. We're going to have the more general broad. No sicko shop talk section at the beginning and then we will. Do the quote spoiler wall per usual and then afterwards we'll get into that shop talk where we'll give recommendations for new players who are starting Balatro tips for how to make the best of your runs and then talk about what helped our best runs. In that later section of the episode. So well we will keep the earlier section of this episode to a more general overview of what this game is and why it works so speaking of what it is. We have elevator pitches for what Balatro is. I say it's a roguelike deck builder where you use poker hands. 2 score points. 03:14.29 Matt And I say it's a bonkers Rogue like poker with rude jokers and game breaking bonuses. 03:23.47 Aaron I describe it as Jester makes you win chips by scoring big numbers. 03:28.94 Dave And I played this on pc mostly on steam deck. I played the first play session I played on pc. I streamed that session. I should put that up on the Youtube channel if anyone wants to watch it. Ah, fall into the pit in real time. Um, and then afterwards it was all steam deck. This game runs great on steam decks. All told I've got about eleven or twelve hours played 03:51.14 Aaron The pit. 04:01.45 Matt Ah, for me I played it on switch Dave and I are both notorious handheld sickos and I've put in about 6 hours or so. Ah, it's a really convenient commuter game. I've been playing it like to and from work on the train. It's kind of perfect for that on switch. 04:06.62 Dave Yep. 04:19.92 Aaron And ah you once again I had to pay full price for this for this fucking thing twice and so switch I got 10 hours xbox I have 15 hours but I've got more more cleared runs on the switch in those 10 hours I guess so that's cool. 04:33.49 Dave Yeah, so this is a game that you will see hours melt away and like I think so I've got. Like I said 11 or 12 hours played that's like 4 or 5 play sessions like it's not a game where I pick it up and play for 15 minutes and then put it down. It is a compulsive 1 more run type of game and um I personally like. Deck builders one ah some of my favorites monster train and slay the spire of course games I've put tons of time into especially slay the spire that was ah that was a real time sink for me personally so I kind of got into this because I didn't play it during nextfest. I heard about it during next fest and then when the game released and it was just everywhere every single you know what are you playing lately segment on my favorite podcast was all like Balatro sicko time list off and ah, all of our other friends were just talking about Balatro. So. Um I reached out and was able to get that code and jump in. Now Aaron I know that you're a roguelike Deck Builder Freak so what was it that drew you to Balatro? How did you hear about it? 05:51.69 Aaron Ah, 2 words deck building roguelike no ah in all in all seriousness. No. It just looked really different because like all of the other deck builders that I've played like 2 that you mentioned, the spire monster train a few more little hidden gems in there wild frost and ah. 06:10.91 Aaron Heck even dicey dungeons I Guess it's just different than those because most other deck building Roguelikes are like ah you versus monsters or like you in some kind of combat type situation and this one just looks chill as hell. It's just like hey rack up a gigantic. 06:19.77 Dave Yeah, yeah. 06:29.60 Aaron Skyscraper multiplier and then yeah win big numbers and all in. 06:33.00 Dave Yeah, this is ah if you like numbers going up. This is this is the game for you? Yeah Matt what was it that drew you to Balatro. 06:41.88 Matt So I mean I have a history with a rogue like deck builders though it's less hours like I only first played slay the spire I think two years ago and in those two years I then got it on steam and on switch because it was before the steam deck came out. Ah. And so I've become a pretty big sicko for that. But I think more for me, it's just deck builders and card games in general. I mean I like a lot of our friends who are addicted to Queen's blood right now in rebirth but I also love joustus in king of cards which was the one of the expansion campaigns for shovel knight. 07:10.10 Aaron Oh that's a good one. 07:13.90 Dave Yeah. 07:15.90 Matt And like I scoffed at that I was like a card game like Yacht club I Love your games but you're going to make me play a card game and after like three rounds I was like oh no I'm in trouble. Ah and so but for whatever reason Balatro like I had heard murmurs of it during steam next fest and then kind of didn't pay attention. What did it was. 07:22.59 Dave Fifth. 07:34.62 Matt For your listeners in case they don't know, besides the podcast that I do, I'm also the editor for the game inform show which is a weekly podcast about the games industry often hosted by Alex Van Aiken, Marcus Stewart and Kyle Hilliard though they have tons of guests on and like the week before. No, actually it might have been during steam next fester like right after but like during that like a few week period before the game was released. Ah they were all talking about it like they were and like full sicko deck builder mode while I was editing and I was like oh no am I going to have to play this game and then. Again, shout out to our friend my friend wow I saw him tweeting about you know, folks still want codes if they want to cover the game to reach out and so I did and once I got the code I went all right? Well, let's see what this game is about I don't know and the next thing I know 3 hours went by like I said that I've been playing for like 6 or 7 hours half of that time was one sitting just me like I was like oh no, ah, in fact, at one point if you look on the internet if you go to my Twitter you can see a photo of me playing Balatro while watching Dave Play Balatro on stream so like like that's how you knew like I was literally the sicko. 08:24.83 Dave Yeah, yeah. 08:43.10 Matt Imagine the sicko Gif like I like full on and I didn't expect to love it as much as I did but it is just kind of one of those games that just gets its hooks in you especially if you like that kind of style. 08:55.97 Dave Yeah I'm a big fan like I said of Roguelike deck builders. But I'm actually not a big fan of poker. Um I did not grow up playing poker. I've played it maybe twice in my life and one of those times is in red dead redemption too. So I. 09:04.25 Aaron No me neither. 09:13.98 Dave Know what a flush is but like if people are like hey do you want to come over and play poker I'll probably just like say no I I don't really like poker so that was ah a source of hesitation for me shout out to euchre by the way I'm I'm a euchre boy out here in the midwest. Um. So the fact that everyone described this as a poker rogue originally was kind of like oh ok yeah I hope you kids have fun with that. But then I heard some people kind of saying it like it is. It has poker theming but you're not playing poker. 09:50.73 Matt Yeah, yeah. 09:52.40 Dave Like and you don't have to know poker. The game will teach you everything you need to know right away so that kind of broke down that wall for me too and I wanted to make sure we mentioned that fairly early in the episode that like you may hear the word poker thrown around here. But you're not. Playing poker like you're not playing against people. You're not bluffing or any of that shit like it's just using the hands that might win you a poker hand to score points. It's all just the terminology. Basically. 10:22.36 Matt Yeah, ah I it's funny I might be the only person on the call who actually played poker regularly for any period of time like I'm not really a gambler every time I've ever gone gambling I have like a set amount of money and once I lose it which is often very quickly if I go to a casino or on a cruise or something. Once I've lost that when I went well, that's it. I guess I'm not gambling anymore like I am just not my thing but when I do I'll often do poker because like I know it I used to play poker with my grandfather growing up like we would just play hands together. Um, and then when I was in my. Ah, early 30 s a friend of mine who used to own a bar in Brooklyn like we became good friends and he would do poker nights with friends and so like we'd have small ante and like buy ins were really low but we would you know there'd be a nice little friendly pot of money and then we'd just play poker and I was notoriously bad at it too like I don't have a good poker face. 11:12.76 Dave Yes. 11:14.61 Matt I would often like to win with the wildest hands on bluffs that I had no business bluffing. It drove my friends crazy. My friend Ben, who grew up in Vegas, was a bouncer. Played a lot and did a lot of gambling I always threw him for a loop because he liked how the hell did you win with that hand. That's Bs and it's just but like I was never like I never liked to go out of my way to play poker. It was always friendly games and stuff so I wasn't really worried about the terminology. But that said I mean this game really does set you up for success like you don't have to memorize. 11:35.10 Dave Ah. 11:47.56 Matt The hand types to know to know or be able to play this game. 11:49.63 Dave Yeah. 11:51.92 Aaron Yeah, I Only know the hands now because of Balatro and by the way this game is coming to mobile phones real soon. So to Triple dip. 12:00.91 Dave Um, oh yeah, oh yeah. 12:02.00 Matt If it goes to Apple Arcade I won't have to go on a trip . I won't have to at least purchase that version because I still have one of the weirdos who pays for Apple arcade. 12:05.50 Aaron Who: That's true I could bait. Yeah. 12:11.44 Dave Yeah, it's ah it's one of the more obvious mobile ports in the history of mobile ports this and like also slay the spire and vampire survivors and stuff like that and dicey dungeons. Yeah. 12:15.24 Matt Yeah. 12:23.20 Aaron Dicey dungeons. It's buttery smooth. 12:27.38 Dave So yeah, if you are listening to this and you don't have a pc or a switch or playstation or Xbox well you have a phone. Don't you as the famous press conference went so you can play this on your phone and um, hopefully there's some kind of like cross progression between platforms that would be nice, but. 12:47.16 Dave Yeah, ah so before we kind of talk about how the game is we don't want to bury the lead too much. Um I think this game's really good and we saw earlier today I think they just announced today as we're recording that it has sold a million copies in. What, like 2 three weeks since it released such a very successful game and it deserves that success. It's a really really good game. I think it has good themes and stuff around it. But it is mechanics , numbers and math. 13:04.86 Aaron Damn. 13:05.94 Matt Yeah, yeah. 13:23.35 Dave Game at its core. Ah, you could, I feel like you could almost replace the cards with other stuff. You would still have this math behind it all and it would still work IF I'm not sure that this game is going to have like the long legs for me Personally that. Other things like slay this buyer did but I don't want to take away from how well-made this is as an experience and we'll talk about what the secret sauce is a little bit after this ah this upcoming music break here. But I do think this game is really really good and. 13:59.89 Dave Sometimes you know a game will sweep the industry and you'll be like I don't really get it. What does everyone see in this and this is not one of those cases I 100% understand. 14:08.93 Matt Yeah I agree I think that I was hesitant at first because also I'm not great at roguelikes like notoriously I really didn't play any of them until hades like 90% of the games industry who didn't play roguelikes started playing them after hades but like. 14:26.53 Matt That when I heard this was also when I went wow I don't know but like losing is so painless in this and we'll get more into that but like it flows so well that yeah I agree I think it's a great game I think it's worthy. Ah, a lot of folks are saying it's their game of the year which I can totally see that especially if you like these kinds of games. Ah. 14:44.55 Matt But it definitely left an impression and mostly made people stop talking about Pal world. So there's that too. 14:48.55 Dave Oh yeah, props with that? yeah. 14:50.84 Aaron Thank god yeah, it is really really good and I like that it's basic ah up until I guess this game and maybe a few other games deck building roguelikes were more of like a hardcore experience at least from like my point of view because as like as the resident. Deck builder sicko I guess talking to like a few other people they say that card games just aren't their thing or like rogue rogue likes aren't their thing but I'm glad this one drew in a whole new crowd of just people who want to play ah a chill-asss game and just throw all like a 2 pair and and score like 2000000 chips or whatever. It's. 15:28.68 Aaron It's awesome. 15:29.98 Dave Yeah, so let's ah, let's do a bit of music from Balatro, that nice soothing calm music and when we come back, We'll talk about what that game play is actually like. 15:46.10 Dave So like I said earlier Balatro is often described in shorthand as a poker rogue like and I guess if you want to describe the game in 2 words, that'll do. But again, you're not actually playing poker. Ah you have a standard deck of cards regular playing cards and what you're trying to do is you're trying to make poker hands. To score points and the kind of hierarchy of poker hands determines how many points they're worth all by themselves so a straight flush is going to be the best hand a single card is going to be the worst hand and then everything in between um, each. 16:24.23 Dave Kind of round is set up. They use poker terminology in ways that they don't mean in real life. So each round and there's 8 rounds in a run if you want to beat 1 you have to go through 8 rounds. Each round is called an ante and in each ante there are 3 battles. We'll say. You have to get through they call them blinds in the game. Um, each one of those has an increasing set like target points that you have to reach and the way that you reach those points is you try to form poker hands with the cards that you draw. And each hand has a specific value. We'll say the number of points and a multiplier modifier and then you get more points called chips in the game based on the value of the cards. So an ace is worth 11 a king is worth 10 9 is worth 9 yadda yadda yadda and then ah in between those rounds. There's a shop where you can buy all manner of things that can enhance your deck, modify your multiplier, dictate your strategy and all kinds of things like that. So. The first thing I think that makes this game really good. If they start out with things that you know you know playing cards. Everybody knows the standard set of playing cards. You know that an Ace is better than a king is better than a queen etc. 17:58.24 Dave And then they give you a ton of very small but very ah, let me rephrase that then they give you a very simple decision but lots of them like all in a row. So you get your cards and you can choose what hand to play. Yeah if you get through the round you reach the Target Score you go to the shop then you get to choose what to buy and all of the decisions are really well-explained they're all very simple on their own. But since it's one of these rogue-like deck builders. You need to. Try to choose things that will end up synergizing together because you will not be able to reach those target scores just by playing you know a full house every hand eventually that's not going to be enough all by itself. You're going to need these extra things. So I will kick it to the both of you if you want to talk about what some of those extra things are like the jokers and the planets and stuff. 19:00.24 Matt Sure I'll talk about the jokers because I think they're kind of the core and then the other bonuses kind of build on it so in this game you don't have just a couple of jokers like a typical playing card deck. There is a there's one hundred and fifty different jokers that you can get in this game and. 19:05.14 Dave Yeah. 19:18.46 Matt How they work is they modify the chips you get which are the points, the malts which are the multipliers and other things in between um and you can buy them from the store between each of the blinds. Ah, you earn a little bit of money after every round and then you can put that towards the jokers and they all do a variety of different things and have different fun names. Some of them are pretty basic like just giving you extra chips for a type of suit or extra chips for a type of card. Um. And it builds out from there like some turn changing your cards like make them ah make them do different things or ah like there's one that makes your cards gold and when your cards are gold if they're still in your hand at the end of the turn you get more money things like that and. Very quickly. The game is not about a standard 52 card deck. It's how many of these jokers you can have to make the run different to earn you more chips to help you beat these blinds that escalate you can have 5 jokers standardly you can have 5 jokers. In your like top bar screen that modifies and then you can sell them if you don't want them and buy more and like swap them out to create a strategy. 20:24.76 Dave Yeah. 20:31.82 Dave Yeah, so like ah 1 of the key things that you'll realize very very soon in playing Balatro is that your jokers will dictate the hands that you play not necessarily what the best poker hand will be so like let's say you have a joker. They. 20:48.74 Dave That gives you plus 4 to your multiplier every time you play a spade, then playing a pair of spades will probably get you more points than playing a full house that doesn't involve spades. But if you're playing poker that's not going to be the case. So what I really like about this is. 21:04.71 Matt Um, right. 21:07.95 Dave You start with those very core poker rules like you need to know what a full house is but after that you're really following the deck that you make and the deck can involve adding regular playing cards to your standard deck but what it really means is you're trying to collect. Ah, a set of Jokers that will just bust the math wide open in your favor. 21:30.89 Matt Yeah. 21:31.33 Aaron But the math the really, it's ah it's all about getting like the right setup Jokers and also having the right amount I Guess you can also tweak your deck I Really like you can tweak your deck with the spectral cards and the tarot cards and. 21:48.68 Dave Um, yeah. 21:49.76 Aaron Of course the planet cards where you can level the hell out of your different hands like if you're going all all flushes you crank them all the way up to like level I don't even know what the max I think the max level is 20 level twenty with the with the planet cards. Um, yeah, um. 22:03.42 Dave You get him pretty high. Yeah, so like um, a specific hand will have a specific chip value and multiplier value and you can upgrade how good that hand is which will add chips and a higher multiplier every time you play it. So. You can try to synergize this like you can get a joker that will give you a huge bonus if you play a flush and then you can also level up the base value of playing a flush by getting these planet cards and if you're able to get those things to synergize really? well. You can really start kicking ass pretty early on and then if you go on Youtube and search for people's winning Balatro runs like I think to beat them for the very first battle you have to get three hundred points three hundred chips and then if you can look and find people getting likes. 22:51.50 Matt Um, yeah. 22:56.10 Dave Billion point hands near the end of these runs in Balatro like it can get completely out of control based on all the ways that you can edit and enhance your deck. 23:08.59 Matt Yeah, it's really cool and like Aaron also mentioned the spectral and tarot cards. Those don't enhance the cards themselves and it's and you say how do you enhance playing cards. Well you can increase their value. You can change their suits. 23:09.44 Aaron Yeah. 23:25.40 Matt You can turn some cards to stone which just gives you fifty chips when you play them and you can play them by themselves part of a hand either or um, they do a bunch of different things and they use all of these modifiers. Both affect the multipliers like um Dave was talking about or the chips. The value of the chips, but they affect the cards directly. You can even delete cards ah duplicate cards up rank cards. So make a 9 a 10 a ten and eleven whatever else. It's really like there's a I don't I mean I know at this point I've still not seen all of them. There are tons of different ones that you can get and. It's interesting how all of these things interlock together to make a unique run because it's not just you can't just use the jokers to win a run. You can't just use the planet cards I mean I guess you might be able to but you're going to have a more successful run if you mix and match the different strategies. 24:12.70 Dave Yeah. 24:18.53 Dave Yeah, and there's so there's like I think 4 main ways that you can edit your deck with jokers: the planet cards, the tarot cards and the spectral cards and you get them all in the shop in between the fights we'll save the blinds. Um, and what I really like about this is that each individual joker or planet card or tarot card is extremely easy to understand what those things do so the just the text descriptions are all really descriptive and really easy to understand. So you will pick up a tarot card and you'll read what it says and it will say like this turns 3 cards in your hand into multiplier cards or whatever and then it will tell you multiplier adds plus 4 to this card's multiplier boom done. Very simple procedure. But then as you go, you'll get like I don't know between all these different types of cards. You'll have like 102030 of these things all happening together and it's all about trying to synergize those together which is the strategy of any deck builder. Ah, cool strategy for this game though is ah Aaron you can probably talk on this too. A lot of strategy and a lot of deck builders involves trimming down your deck to get like the shitty cards out and only get in like this repeating loop of. 25:46.37 Aaron Oh yeah. 25:53.19 Dave I'm only drawing my best cards all the time and I havent found that to be the case in Balatro like you start with 52 cards and a lot of my best runs will have like 60 or 70 cards in it by the end of it. 26:08.10 Aaron I guess it depends on what kind of deck you're going for. I had this one really really stupid run not to get 2 in depth. But basically I had 1 joker that man. It's so if my first hand only has 1 card. Um, it's like the card that I played is destroyed so I just use that to get rid of cards. 26:11.60 Dave That's true. 26:25.50 Aaron And then I would just keep using Tarot cards and spectral cards to make every card into either like this suit or that suit and then yeah, there's all sorts of really goofy stupid ways to rig your deck almost and and also um, after. 26:38.14 Dave Yeah. 26:45.25 Aaron You know? Yeah, but I guess before and after yeah before or after you pick up blind. You can also skip a blind to get a tag which gives you a free pack or lets you get a double tag which doubles the next tag you get or something. Ah. 27:01.53 Dave Yeah, there's um, like you you need to do most of those fights because they give you money at the end. That's how you get money. But sometimes the bonus for skipping that fight will be good enough that it's in your best interest to not do that like ah. 27:16.30 Aaron Yeah. 27:19.50 Dave At the end of each ante there is a boss fight basically and the boss fights have a big target scores and they all have a debuff that they throw on you. So for example, they'll say like okay in this fight spades are worth nothing so you can play spade but it'll be a complete waste. Um, sometimes if you skip something earlier, you might be able to like reroll what that boss is and like get yourself out of a really bad situation so taking on or like being aware of like everything that's going on is something that took a little bit because it's a little overwhelming when you first start playing. The amount of not like the amount of things on screen but just knowing what everything is knowing where to look for all that information. It took me maybe about an hour before I felt really comfortable with all that. But once you are in it. And you're able to like know where to look for what do these jokers do um, where do I look to find the reward for skipping this this fight or something like that. I need to stop saying fight because it's not a combat game. It's a it's a a high score challenge. Basically so knowing where to look for all of that once you get that then everything is presented to you really clearly it just takes a little bit to like get in the zone. 28:47.54 Matt Yeah, well and reading is really important. Reading is fundamental. Um, it's really important because like I've screwed myself over because so when you what? so Dave mentioned earlier that the Antes are essentially the rounds and there are 8 of them. Each round you see all 3 blinds the small big and boss their numbers and their detail like what the boss blind does at the beginning of every ante and if you're not careful if you don't read you could end up at a boss blind that has a debuff that. 29:12.12 Dave Yeah. 29:20.94 Matt Completely shuts you down like say you have an engine built on using Diamonds. There's a boss blind that disables Diamonds. You don't get scores from them If you're not paying attention or shifting your strategy on the way to that boss you get completely demolished and it would end your run and so I had ah had many plays where. I wasn't really paying that close attention I'd get into but the boss blind saw the debuff and it completely shut down my strategy and I just have to lose because there's no way out of it and so it's not only reading that. Reading is important to understand it but also to plan things you can't just. 29:47.40 Dave Yeah. 29:57.50 Matt Put together a slap dash strategy and win not easily anyway because you could just screw yourself over if you're not paying attention. 30:02.85 Dave Yeah that's it's actually 1 of my bigger criticisms for the game itself is that I feel like more often than in another deck builder of that type. It's not that I didn't build a good engine. It's just that. I hit just some really shitty rng that just makes it impossible to win and so like sometimes you'll make a really good synergy and you're just demolishing everything and then you'll run into the boss that is the perfect counter for your strategy. But sometimes you don't get an ability to alter what you're doing in an effective way or alter what that boss is doing and it's just you lose out of pure r and g which sucks if you get later in these runs like I had one on the stream where I got. Really deep and I was just crushing everything and I lost because of the exact situation. You talked about ah but I had no opportunity to really alter it because let's say you get to the beginning of a new ante and you see the boss upcoming is the perfect counter for what you're doing. You have 2 visits to the shop to change your entire strategy which I don't feel like is feasible unless you have tons of money. Basically so sometimes I feel like you just get fucked by r and g more often than I would like to see or very early. 31:21.68 Matt Yeah. Right. 31:38.32 Dave In the run which hurts less but it still feels bad to do literally the first fight and you just get the shittiest draws and you can't get 300 points because you you just keep playing like queen high cards over and over again because that's all that's coming up that feels bad but it hurts way less than you know. Losing this perpetual motion machine that you've built this beautiful engine because a random boss blind came up that is the perfect counter and you can't adjust because you were never given the opportunity to really adjust you know. 32:15.39 Aaron Yeah that's fair. That's ah the game kind of almost kind of gives you like a little bit of an ability to do like ah like a plan b kind of ah how the fuck do I explain? Ah I guess like. Whenever you go and buy like planet packs if if I didn't get like my specific planet card that I wanted I would just be like okay wait I'll just fucking set that aside for a rainy day just in case I do get one of those those dickhead boss blinds where it's like oh no spades or like it's. Op you your hand has to have 5 cards or it doesn't count. Um, yeah, it's good to just toss one of those like other hands aside just in case, it's like a plan b but ah you you don't. 32:59.86 Matt I mean. 33:00.93 Dave Yeah, and you can discard cards. We haven't mentioned that yet. But you have very limited discards depending on there's different decks that have different rule sets. Um so you can discard cards if you like you know draw a shitty hand you can get out of that. But 33:18.88 Dave Eventually, you're going to. I feel like you're going to make a fairly specific strategy on a very successful run and you're going to keep drawing and discarding cards to try to set up specific types of hands in my experience and. If you just draw Shitty cards which is always a factor in Deck builders for sure. But if you just draw Shitty cards or if you get a boss that debuffs Exactly what you are trying to do then sometimes I feel like. You lose through no fault of your own which never feels good. 33:56.58 Matt Yeah I mean I think Aaron does bring up a good point though that you so we didn't mention you have storage of 2 cards either planet through our planet card a specter card I believe and you can choose to use them immediately in some cases. 34:01.11 Dave Yeah. 34:13.71 Matt But often you'll hold them because they only affect an active hand or a certain blind or whatever and those can be helpful to pivot but only like it's very fine tuned right? I think the R and G can make it so like you just hit a dead end and that's it I think Strategy will always help and so someone. 34:27.41 Dave Um, yeah. 34:32.51 Matt Like Aaron who's a true sicko of the sickest sickos might be able to pivot on that in a way that maybe me and Dave cant because we're either not thinking that far ahead or like for me honestly most of my ante's that I've played I'm barreling forward picking up any Joker I can any arcana or planet I can. Sometimes a strategy will emerge that I'll lean into but often it's like I'm throwing spaghetti at the wall and hoping it sticks and and sometimes it does and then sometimes it just falls on the dog. 34:57.88 Aaron Spaghetti. 35:02.82 Dave Yeah, speaking of ah my other big criticism for the way this all plays out is that the cadence for unlocking new jokers and new tarot cards and New Specter Cards and new vouchers which is another. Ah, like 1 time purchase. You can buy in the shop that does cool stuff. Ah you unlock those things as you go and the cadence is quite slow for unlocking new stuff like if you play the first like four or five hours you'll unlock a bunch. But. I played this for 3 or 4 hours today and didn't unlock a single thing. I was playing with a new deck that I'd never played before and still didn't unlock anything and I see on some of the Youtube videos where people have billion point hands or whatever. They're playing Joker Cards that I don't have access to and I would like to unlock a new joker card every time I play a run or like get somewhat deep into a run you know like I think in a game like this a rogue like that is built around unlocking. Better jokers than the starting set because I don't think you're going to win a run on your first hand, you just don't have the good shit unlocked yet. So I think that it feels kind of bad to play for multiple hours and not unlock anything new. 36:16.30 Matt Yeah. 36:24.82 Matt Yeah, it can be tough I mean I feel like again my with roguelike deck big specifically. My knowledge is limited slay the spire is the biggest one and like I know that unlocking the classes I think it's pretty quick in the beginning and then it slows down a little bit until you have the mall. 36:25.17 Aaron Yeah. 36:44.18 Matt Um, but I I can see that I mean also part of the problem. I Think here with this game and unlocking stuff is like there's a lot to unlock. But once you've hit the majority of it like any other randomness. Like the smaller the smallest bits towards the end are the hardest to hit kind of a thing. 37:00.12 Dave Yeah, and it's a the unlocks are based on achievements kind of like beat this. Let's beat this level with this deck and then you unlock a new Joker or. 37:13.80 Matt Yeah, yeah. 37:16.72 Dave Ah, maybe this joker will show up in the shop and you have to buy it in order to like quote discover it? Um, but like if that Joker doesn't fit in my run I'm not going to buy it I'm not going to buy something that doesn't fit in my strategy just for the sake of maybe unlocking it later like. 37:35.45 Dave I think that a lot of those other ones were like you rack up some kind of experience points as you go and that is what determines when you unlock stuff. Um is just ah, ah it feels a little bit better like. It kind of takes the edge off of losing 5 or 6 runs in a row when you are unlocking stuff as you go if that makes sense. 37:53.94 Matt Yeah, totally. 37:55.10 Aaron Yeah, yeah, that absolutely would. That's why like monster train and slay the spire I forget I'm pretty sure slay the spire had something like that where like when you you like fill up a bar. Basically then you unlock new relics or new cards. But a monster train. Especially. 38:10.57 Dave Um, yeah. 38:11.36 Matt Um, yeah. 38:14.83 Aaron Those are really cool ways to alleviate the sting of of losing a run that you spent like maybe 2 hours on was you'd unlock like a bunch of stuff or like upgrade your starting thing or whatever 38:35.94 Aaron There is a lot of stuff to unlock in this game. It's it's insane like you can push I think it's like ah I'm doing the switch buttons because I'm chaotic as fuck but you can press like minus or plus and. Bring up like the unlock screen and there's so much shit. It's kind of overwhelming. But um, there's also a surprising amount of like dumb hidden stuff you can do too, like if you buy the blank voucher 5 times you unlock a cool new voucher if you play a royal flush. 39:08.95 Aaron Ah, you unlock a cool joker that way which is just like ah a straight flush but with like a Ace King Queen I don't remember what the hell it is but um, yeah, there's a surprising amount of of stuff to unlock in this game way way more than in god damn wild frost. That's that for sure. 39:23.66 Dave Yeah, yeah, just like hearing that makes it feel kind of even worse to know that I played for 4 hours today and didn't unlock anything at all. I would just like you know, like to keep that drip feed of new stuff incoming and you know if it's my fault for not buying. Those undiscovered jokers in the shop whenever I see them then that's my fault but I don't I don't really love that? Yeah yeah, yeah, that's what I like to hear, it's not me. It's not me. Ok, so um. 39:49.58 Aaron That's absolutely not your fault if they don't fit your bill. No, no need to waste your money man. It's not you, it's not you. It's definitely not. 40:03.33 Dave Yeah, so that is like the basic introduction to how Balatro works and then a couple of criticisms that I personally have before we get into like wrapping this up and then getting into the shop talk. I do want to shout out the aesthetic of this game which is really really Nice. Visually. It has this very cool CRT. But like a spacey CRT almost like you're playing a poker machine when you're drunk kind of ah, kind of vibe to it. Um, it's pixel art. Yeah yeah, exactly with that and then. 40:28.19 Aaron Yeah, like the earthbound like lava lamp background shit to. 40:29.67 Matt Yeah. 40:39.25 Dave Um, you mentioned how many jokers there are. Matt the Joker designs are very good. There's an Ama that the developer did on Reddit where someone asked, "Did you get tired of drawing clowns and they were like yeah I did actually because there are so many jokers they all have unique designs to them. 40:42.56 Matt Um, yeah. 40:58.76 Dave Ah, so visually, it's a very very cool looking game. 41:01.50 Matt Yeah, totally. Also it sounds awesome. I mean I am a big music nerd and the composer is Lewis F who is back basically unlisted like I couldn't find anything else that Lewis F has done but the music like you have in your notes here. Dave is kind of low key. 41:05.62 Dave Yeah, yeah. 41:19.45 Matt The same song thematically with a bunch of variations like there's a mood and like this is the ideal podcast or album listening game like you could listen to music or listen to a podcast while playing this I often have. 41:24.77 Dave Um, yeah. 41:34.92 Matt But I also do like just listening to the music from the game because even though it's repetitive. It's not bad like it's kind of a vibe and I and I like that kind of stuff. Yeah, yeah, and like. 41:38.64 Dave No, then you say and listen to this for 6 hours straight . It's fine like it's not grading at all. It's very pleasant. Yeah. 41:43.69 Aaron Absolutely it fits the bill perfectly to it's just a chill chill tune for chill game. That's awesome. 41:53.11 Matt Yeah, and like it fits the Cr T vibe too like it feels very like low like low grade synth is not the right word but like that vibe like it's like it's no one's playing this on the highest performance Keyboard you've ever heard. It's like someone's got a kind of well worn keyboard that they're just kind of winding away at. 41:59.00 Aaron It's 0 42:12.42 Matt While you're playing it just fits that kind of old schoolish kind of trippy vibe. 42:12.78 Dave Ah. 42:15.67 Dave Yeah, and it fits yeah that that kind of trippy vibe with the music fits in with kind of the spacey wacey visual aesthetic to it too. So. 42:28.12 Matt Um, if you've played Earthbound or watched Doctor Who you know what we mean. 42:30.36 Aaron Oh yeah, yep. 42:33.11 Dave But yeah, the ah the earthbound ish like lava lamp backgrounds is definitely happening in this game like Aaron said. 42:39.16 Aaron I Love it so much. Dude it. It sends me every single time. 42:43.77 Dave Yeah, so ah, safe to say that we would recommend Balatro to basically anyone who likes card games like that unless you are violently opposed to playing a card game. This is a very easy recommendation. There are people out there who are just like that. I just hate cards. I won't play anything with cards. So I mean my heart goes out to those people but those are the only people that I would say don't play this because even if you don't like poker. It's really not poker. So it's easy to to say give it a shot and it's like twenty bucks full price 43:19.40 Aaron Yeah, Hella bang for your buck. So much bang for your buck. 43:21.74 Dave Very quickly. Yeah, yeah, very quickly like whatever metric you put on a game being worth it I feel like this meets all of them pretty easily. 43:32.75 Matt Yeah, and I think this is like and honestly even if you don't if you think you don't like roguelike Deck builders or don't like card games but you're open to trying if you're if you're someone who staunchly hates them then so be it on your way I guess but. 43:33.26 Aaron Absolutely. 43:49.36 Matt Like if you're someone who is open to the idea of trying a new game even if you typically don't like these kinds of games I think this is the best starting point you will ever find. It's just built so easily and it's so approachable like there's a button you can press during play that just shows you the poker hands. 43:58.35 Aaron Oh yeah, yeah. 44:07.83 Matt And how much they're all worth currently like they lay it out for you. It's very easy to get into I think I would say it's the cliche easy to learn hard to master kind of game and if you're interested in card games at all whether you love them or you're curious but have not really played them I I easily. 44:26.36 Matt Can recommend this game for sure. 44:28.68 Aaron And it's just so chill. It's just like I can't count. I can't even try to keep count of how many times I've just been profusely sweating playing some like monster train or ah or like wild frost or something I'm thinking. Like 5 turns ahead trying to pick out like the best strategy just rack in my brain for a straight hour trying to make like the perfect move. But this game like no, you just you just discarded to to get maybe like 2 3 3 s and like two twos and. And you just play it and then it's just like the big numbers go but and then boom you're it's over It's just it's just it's. 45:04.67 Dave Yeah, another ah nice visual touch is ah first of all, you can speed up the animations for when cards and multipliers and all of that is going off like if you wanted to kind of fire off more quickly. You can. 45:05.70 Matt Big numbers make the brain Go burr. 45:16.71 Aaron Oh yeah. 45:22.95 Dave But a nice visual touch that we didn't mention that I just want to give a quick shout out to is when you get like a really good score on a hand going on and it starts it will like individually tick like plus chips for this card plus chips for this card multiplier for this Joker. And it will keep going and if you get a big enough thing. It will go in flames. Basically and that's when you know all we're cooking now this is good. 45:44.43 Matt Yeah, yeah, there's gonna be some overkill point wise. 45:46.74 Aaron Yeah, dude ah you know you've basically assembled all 5 pieces of Exodia baby you win that one when it's on fire you win. 45:58.10 Dave Yeah, so good stuff. 45:58.41 Matt Ah, yeah, yeah, the animations are great. We didn't actually talk about it that much but like all the jokers are animated and like during the tutorial the basic Joker like talks to you and has like a word bubble and like it's just all of the the design elements. Individuals like the cards are also really great I think in sicko mode. We'll go into more detail but like there is a ton of artistry here for this pixel based game. 46:15.40 Dave Oh. 46:22.90 Dave Speaking of a quick shout out to the high contrast cards option which will make the clubs blue the spades black the diamonds Yellow and the hearts red instead of having those similar suits be the same color. Ah. 46:23.28 Aaron Um, oh. 46:25.85 Matt Yeah. 46:40.15 Dave Highly recommend you turn those on just for you know, no mistakes because nothing worse than thinking that you're going to play a great hand and then being like ah that was a spade not a club whoops. So. 46:48.73 Matt Yeah. 46:52.90 Aaron Also I don't know if we mentioned this but like cards can also be different ah like you can have like what foil polychrome holographic and stuff like that that also affects their ah not just like the regular cards but the jokers as well too that'll affect like the. The multiplier and the amount of chips they give and stuff like that. Um and like the different other modifications like I think no I think Matt kind of touched on that like the gold cards and like lucky cards and stuff like that. Yeah. 47:17.96 Dave Yeah, those are all cool visually too though like the lucky card is like Warren like it's been in. Someone's pocket for a long time and stuff so good. Ah, good stuff there. So oh yeah. 47:23.15 Aaron You shout out to the scuba Joker. I love the scuba joker. 47:33.97 Dave So ah, before we get into that shop talk Balatro sicko zone I do want to throw it to you both to ah plug your podcasts before maybe some people jump out so Aaron it's been a while since you were on the show tell people about super pod saga. 47:48.39 Aaron Oh yeah, okay, it's a super pod saga it's ah the most like casual laid back podcast you might ever listen to all and I don't know Matt man day they're all they're all everybody's pretty chilling there I don't know whatever super pod saga it's I bring on some guests and we talk about a different video game topic each week and we cover a whole big old smorgasbord a big old lasagna of different topics all the damn time different lasagni of different guests too I suppose too. But ah yeah is just a Lucy Goosey freeform discussion. It'll be like our favorite hidden gems or we'll talk about ah we've got another. Episode coming out next week is all about the fourth gen consoles. That's gonna be fun and we have fun little ad breaks where we make up ah goofier episode sponsors and we just like to have fun at super pod saga but if anybody and if anybody at all is interested. It's going to superpodsaga.com money web browser of choice and all of the episodes are there on our blog that we haven't touched in two months ah or socials I like to add lots of Gifs to the website to make it clunky and stupid. 49:05.51 Aaron It's there. Check it out. 49:05.93 Dave Yeah, and I've been on the show a couple times Matt's been on the show several times so different groups of guests every time. Always a good time when I was on the show talking about roguelikes which I feel like if balatro was out when we did that episode. We probably would have talked about it then. 49:11.12 Aaron Oh yeah. 49:25.30 Dave Um, and then I was on for another episode. I think it was about the playstation if I remember right? Yeah, the whole line of playstations all 5 of them and like I said Matt's been on there several times so go check out super pod saga and Matt. 49:29.79 Aaron Yep, the whole whole line of playstation. Yeah. 49:42.78 Dave It has not been that long since you were on the show but now I can't keep coming back but tell people about your podcasts. 49:45.39 Matt No, you can't get rid of me, sure. Ah, really quick if you want to check out my superpod episodes because I looked them up earlier. Um I was on solo with the gang talking about favorite multiplayer games I was on with my co-host Jeff from funding games. Talking about games that lived up to the hype and then I was on most recently with jar from super gros radio talking about video game characters. We'd like to have a drink with them and they're all a blast. Really fun stuff and incredibly stupid half the time too in the best way I mean that with the highest of. 50:11.25 Dave Yeah. 50:11.43 Aaron Yeah. 50:19.12 Aaron Rip Slip rip slippy yep that's right. 50:20.27 Dave Oh yeah, best. Ah, best ad breaks in the business. 50:20.68 Matt Rip Slip that's true. Ah, as for my podcast I'll try and keep this as quick as possible as we're already running longer than I think we plan. I do 3 podcasts I mentioned before. They also edit for the game informer show, which is a great pod that has been around forever. You should definitely go check that out, but my shows are. But the video game related ones are funny games which the main show is topic based not to dissimilarly from super pod. Ah, but we also do retrospectives and interviews. We've interviewed developers and composers. Um, we do live events like ah by the time you're hearing this. Either soon or shortly after our pax east 2024 episode will be out Jeff and I get a ton of developer interviews and talk about our experience on the show floor that kind of stuff and then there are shorter form episodes that both Aaron and Dave have done called side quests where each episode of different hosts talk about a game they love and why they love it. Ah, Dave has a never ending list of games. He's going to cover. Um, Aaron's done and I'm going to have him come back. You did a steam world dig. So many steam world games. Yeah, you might as well just run the whole series right? um. 51:18.36 Dave That's right. 51:22.89 Aaron Steamworld heist all others do the whole steam world series. You see? yeah. 51:28.20 Dave Um. 51:29.48 Matt But they're great because I bring on not only podcasters like these fine folks but fans of the show folks who've never podcasted before comedians and composers. Whoever wants to talk about a game for like 15 to 20 minutes and why they love it unjudged. It's true. 1 of my favorite things I make because it just kind of shares the joy of individual games while recommending them and that's a blast. The other video game show I do is called reignite started as a mass effect podcast. We did the whole trilogy and then andromeda and after that we shrugged and said I guess dragon age now and so we're currently a dragon age origins podcast. We are just about as of when we're recording done with the awakening dlc which if you've played is the longest dlc in the history of video games. Ah, and then we will jump to dragon age 2 and 3 and beyond. But I do that with my incredible co-host Frankie Bradley lestrange and then I do ah currently on hiatus. But I do a Tv movie podcast called screen Snark Dave has guested on before it's me and my co Rachel talking about um, what we watched most recently and then kind of also interviewing our guest that'll hopefully be back this summer right now. Both of our schedules are just not allowing us to work. Cord very much but there's a huge backlog. Um, also because I didn't before I should shout out my co-host Jeff Moonan who has also been a guest on this very podcast and is my co-host over on fun and games I think that's everything and then like I dj and do other stuff too. I don't know go to djstormageddon.com. It's all there I've talked too much. 53:00.61 Dave Yeah, ah so lot of podcasts and if you stay tuned on fun and games. You'll hear me in a couple different forms on fun and games in the future and I've done a couple episodes in the past side Quest episodes about Disco elysium and rain world. 53:08.58 Matt Yes. 53:16.59 Matt Yes, correct. 53:16.80 Dave And chained echoes I think and a regular episode of the show where we talked about emergent gameplay before. So um, I'm all over the place too. Can't get rid of me either. So everyone while I'm talking about myself for the next minute or so. Can go down in the show notes check out the links for everything that Matt and Aaron do and check out their shows. It's always quality. Material. So before we take our break I would like to give the call to action to leave a rating and review for this podcast if you've enjoyed this episode It's really helpful. People are going to be in their podcast apps searching for episodes about Balatro. Ah, maybe I missed the train, who knows but you can do your part by leaving a rating and review that will help joy that will help juice the algorithm for me in this episode and help people find it. It's also ah, very helpful for my ah mood will say that sounds like I get mad if I don't get reviews but when I see one. It makes my day and I give my dog a treat. It's a whole thing. We got a whole ah a whole procedure over here. Also. 54:30.37 Dave Do another podcast called a top 3 podcast which is a dumb good time. It is a comedy show. We do top 3 lists so you can check that show out. You can join the discord server where at the time of recording we have a Balatro channel where people are sharing their winning runs talking about their heartbreaking defeats. Talking about their strategies and all of that we would love to have you come in and talk about that as well as talk about other video games you're playing life movies other media. It's a great group of people that hang out in there. So I highly recommend joining. There's an invite link down in the show notes. And finally if you want to support the show monetarily. You can do that at patreon.com/real Dave Jackson for as little as $2 per month. You can get a bunch of treats related to this podcast. So with all that being said, we're going to take a break when we come back. It is sicko time for Balatro. All right? So I want to get this sicko shop talk section started by just giving some tips for new people who are just starting the game or maybe somebody who has played a little bit. But is struggling to get runs off the ground because I do think there are some things that are really important in this game that the game doesn't necessarily teach you. So I think I'll just start with one of them which is that the order of the cards matters when you play them both in your hand. 56:01.41 Aaron Oh yeah. 56:04.91 Dave Ah, cards play from left to right and the order of your jokers seems to matter now that one I'm less confident in. But yeah. 56:13.56 Aaron It does it does matter, especially if you have like ones that trigger for certain. Yeah, it does matter. 56:19.14 Dave Yeah I just haven't been able to like super pins down the best way the way I do it right now with the jokers is jokers that give extra chips go on the left, jokers that add Plus Multiplier go in the middle and jokers that do times Multiplier go on the right. 56:39.13 Dave That's all I got though. Okay, that's nice. So. 56:41.62 Aaron I'm not an expert but like that's also that's also what I do because it just makes sense. Yeah. 56:48.46 Dave Ok, ok I suppose we didn't say earlier but ah I have only won one run completed one time Er and I assume you've had multiples. 57:01.49 Aaron Ah I've on the switch I've I've beaten the game with the ah the the first 3 decks and on the xbox i've. Beaten the game with the first 2 decks might be the other way around. But I guess that's 5. 57:16.90 Dave Okay, cool. 57:17.20 Matt And I have not completed a run yet. I've gotten close the highest I got was to anti 7 and on the first. Not even the boss line on this like one of the small blind I just couldn't hit the point total I just. 57:30.21 Dave Yeah. 57:32.34 Matt My strategy that worked for the lower numbers wasn't working for the higher numbers. 57:34.74 Dave Yeah I had so I had 1 winning run and I've had 2 that I lost to the boss of anti number 8 and 1 of them was in a heartbreaking fashion. I was like a hundred points short which sucks. But anyway. 57:43.40 Matt God. Um, yeah. 57:53.19 Dave Um, back to the order of the cards. So a tip for new people is a lot of times you'll get jokers that will say like the first face card you play will do this, etc, etc and what that means is the card on the left. That's the first one that plays. Not necessarily the highest 1 or you can say like it will say like ah the first card that you play in a hand will trigger twice so it doesn't necessarily have to be like the highest card as in like Ace or king or queen or something if you have a 4 that has a bunch of cool shit attached to it and you want it to trigger twice. You need to put that card all the way on the left. It will not affect your hand like if you're playing a full house. You don't have to group all of those things together. You can split them up and the game will still understand that you're playing a full house. So. That's the biggest thing that I kind of figured out but then I think it was Ryan from listoff who gave me the real tip that was like hey make sure you pay attention to what order you're playing the things and you might have to drag stuff around to make sure of that. Things are triggering in the order you want them to. 59:08.65 Matt Yeah I mean I think and the tip to add onto that is like you can reorder your hand. Ah you're the cards in your hand before you play any of them so there are 2 options to just sort them by like value order or suit type. That's like automatic you just tap the button that does it and then you can also manually drag them around. So if you're a visual learner which I often am I just pull groups of cards together to look and say wait. Do I really have nothing or do I have something I think also something on top of that like something I didn't do for a long time. 59:28.15 Dave Yeah. 59:42.55 Matt And the first couple of hours were discard cards. You get a certain amount of likes and discards different decks augment it. But I think the default is 3 discards is that right? and then it goes up from there and so you can discard 3 times and like if you have nothing you can really focus like all right. 59:52.61 Aaron I Think so. 59:52.94 Dave I Think so. 01:00:02.45 Matt I have 4 diamonds and I have nothing so in theory if I get rid of the rest of my cards I'll get 1 diamond out of all those draws you don't always but like you can use that kind of logic by reordering and using your discards strategically there are also like upgrades and jokers that. Give you bonuses if you have no discards left if you haven't used your discards so like they are an active part of the play. They're not just a thing you have just in case you get stuck. 01:00:30.19 Dave Yeah, also to add on to discarding um a tip shout out to John from gaming the wild for helping me out with this on the stream. Let's say you're playing a 2 pair ah you can play up to 5 cards. But you're playing a 2 pair and that's only 4 cards. 01:00:43.74 Aaron Oh yeah. 01:00:45.26 Dave You can throw in an unrelated fifth card and that's like a free discard. Basically it will not affect your 2 pairs at all. It won't be scored, but let's say you play your 2 pairs and then you have like the beginnings of another hand for the next time. 01:00:48.15 Matt Right. 01:01:03.24 Dave And you have this other card That's just in the way and you would like to get another crack at getting a better card. You can just throw that trash card in and it's like it doesn't count as a discard. It's a free thing. 01:01:13.90 Matt Yeah. 01:01:15.78 Aaron Yeah, that's a good one. Hell yeah I Ah I can't think of anything else that you guys haven't already said um I Guess yeah, just ah. You don't need to buy everything that you come across in the shop though. That's I Guess that's for sure that's for true like just ah, like especially if like say you have a good thing going on with the jokers that you have and the shop only has like say just a bunch of like tarot card packs something like that. 01:01:35.10 Dave Um, yeah. 01:01:49.81 Aaron Don't you don't have to waste your money on those if you already got a good thing going, save your money and just skip the shop. No need to waste it, save it for a rainy day. 01:01:55.91 Dave Um, yeah. 01:01:58.00 Matt Yeah I think also um, try and start from one point like it's very easy to look at a bunch of jokers go well like and get ahead of yourself I'm like well if I stack this with that or if I get that try and build off of something simple First. It can get more complicated but as when you're first starting out if there's a joker like gives you extra multi multiplier if you have only clubs pick that and maybe start converting your cards to clubs using the arcana or you know things like that because those stack really? Well. Or if you notice that you get a lot of pairs or pairs. You're easy for you to find or you lean towards that because it's a strategy that works then boost your pairs like I think focusing on a thing that you understand in the beginning will give you the groundwork to then build the more complicated strategies because. They're not always super present when you're just staring at what you can buy. But as you continue to build them they stack on each other pretty well even with the r and g. 01:02:56.68 Dave Yeah, um, at a certain point I would say probably in ah shit what is the anti number one you can beat the first two blinds with just the cards in your hand. 01:03:11.70 Matt Yeah. 01:03:11.57 Aaron Oh yeah. 01:03:13.24 Dave But to beat the boss and then in order to beat anything in anti 2 and beyond you're going to need to start juicing the multiplier or getting bonus chips or something like that. So often. Ah I will just pick one or both of them like the first jokers I see. Just to get something going because I'll have a chance later to sell those if they're no longer relevant but you do need to like getting that ball rolling early. Um and then my other like final tip that I wrote down for either new players or people who've played a couple hours in like they said struggling to get runs off the ground There's 3 ways that you can juice your score you can get extra chips. You can get what's called the plus multiplier and then you can get the multiplier multiplier and it's usually like 1.5 times or 2 times multiplier. But. Getting a run that goes really deep will need you to do all 3 of those things in your hands. You can't just focus on the multiplier like the plus multiplier because you can get like you know plus 30 or 40 or eighty multiplier. But if it's multiplying like 30 chips then that's bullshit. It's not going to be that much so you need to get like you need to focus on all 3 of those. So. There's a couple jokers that I really like for just making one of those really easy. 01:04:45.42 Dave Ah, one of the jokers I really like there's 2 of them. Ah, one of them I think is just called the blue joker and I can't remember which it does but there's 2 they do similar things. 1 of them gives you plus 2 chips for every card left in your hand. So. It's like that. It's like. 90 to 100 free chips every hand and then the other one that I really like is the one that gives you plus forty chips for every remaining discard and I don't discard a ton when I play anyway, I only discard in the boss fights. Basically so those are just free chips all the time. 01:05:22.24 Dave And then in the boss fight they start to get less and less useful. But if I need to discard that many times I'm in trouble anyway. So like I don't feel like those are the reason I lose in a lot of those ah those fights. So the tip I got really hung up on was okay. Multipliers are better than chips. So I'm putting all my effort into getting a higher multiplier but then like I said it's like what's you know, 15 times 200 is still a really low score so you need to get those chips in there too. You can't abandon that. 01:05:57.27 Matt Yeah, that's a good point. 01:05:57.40 Aaron Yeah, that's fair. Yeah. 01:06:03.83 Dave So um, if we don't have any more tips for new players then let's just open it up and talk about things like our strategies for deck building or good synergies that we've found. So Aaron you've had a bunch of winning runs. Ah, so tell us about like what What's your mindset when you're building out a run will say. 01:06:28.88 Aaron Ah, man I guess I just like when I'm starting out I'll be on the lookout for jokers that affect a certain type of hand or like I guess maybe a certain way I've been playing if I get maybe like. Say the banana joker where it's like add plus twenty multiplier one in 4 chance that this car is destroyed or something stupid like I'll still pick that up. But ah yeah, eventually yeah, just just focus on the 1 hand type is what I'll usually do you'll beef it up with planets. Ah if i. If it's like ah what is if I'm building a deck for like flushes or like um, 2 pairs or something like that use the tarot cards to like the the death tarot card where it's like ah pick two cards the left 1 becomes the right one or something like that use those a bunch to manipulate your deck. Um. 01:07:24.91 Aaron My bucket 1 of my favorite decks ever was ah ah the one I mentioned earlier where like so 1 joker was like if if was oh was it. It was um the first card you play or if your first first hand is one card, destroy it. So I would use that to get rid of all my hearts and then ah I had this other card that made it so like any face card automatically becomes a gold card and then I had another choker that made it. So like if I play any augmented cards. It would remove the augmentation and then give me time or plus plus like. Ah point two five to my times multiplier. So I just keep using that and I got it pretty early to like beef up this like maybe 4 times multiplier constant and ah yeah, it's ah, just focus on the one I guess kind of. 01:08:21.82 Aaron Hand or strategy doesn't need to be specifically like 1 hand I guess it just depends on what the RAndG feeds you like yeah does that make sense like it doesn't need to be that need to focus on 1 hand and specific just like whatever works best for whatever jokers. 01:08:33.81 Dave Um, yeah, yeah. 01:08:41.35 Dave Yeah, the ones that I avoid like that are like there's jokers that sound really good, but it's like you know you get a really awesome bonus if you can get it if you play straight but like I get. 01:08:41.55 Aaron You have at the time. Yeah. 01:08:56.51 Aaron Um, yeah. 01:08:59.44 Dave Ah, straight like once every ante basically like it's it's kind of hard to pull that off so I usually avoid stuff like that. Um, the one run that I had that actually won I got a joker that was like every time you play a pair ad. Point Zero two multiplied to this and so I just played pairs over and over again and by the end it was like some ridiculous times 8 multiplier or some shit and it just wrecked everything in my path. Ah, but. 01:09:27.20 Aaron Um, yeah. 01:09:33.77 Dave That's kind of what I like about it is that I think I've done like a straight flush once in my whole time playing this and it's like that's you're playing poker like that's that's what you want but in Balatro it's like no, you can just play pairs single pairs and just wreck the entire thing if you get the right? jokers. 01:09:52.22 Aaron Yeah. 01:09:53.60 Dave So I think the strategy is like letting those early jokers dictate where you go and then kind of adjusting along the way. That's the way to play. Ah the times when I've picked up 1 of those early jokers and thought like oh there's 2 other jokers this would synergize with. I hope I get those runs don't go too well because sometimes I just don't get those other ones like if that Joker is not good enough by itself. But there's enough jokers that I feel like everything will synergize with a couple other things so you'll find something that. The meshes together. 01:10:32.65 Matt Um, yeah I will go far. 01:10:32.75 Aaron Yeah, and if good I was gonna say if it's if I if you kind of think ahead a little bit. Yeah yeah, just don't Ah, don't put all your ducks into one basket I Guess I don't know it'll snowball if you build it like it. I Guess in in a a good way Era I Fuck what sort I'm looking for in a I I don't know cut this out man go ahead. I don't know what the hell I'm trying to say. 01:10:59.61 Matt Um I was just gonna say also I think Dave has a good point because like building off of 1 joker to start at least is a lot simpler and I think I mentioned that earlier also for example, my favorite joker still to this day every time I see it I get it is the misprint. 01:11:13.78 Aaron Oh yeah. 01:11:14.49 Dave Oh yeah. 01:11:15.10 Matt Because the misprint it's a shifting card that you get a random mult every time it scores from 0 to 23 and on the downside there have been boss battles where a boss blinds where I get 3 zeros in a row and. You know it sinks me but then there've also been like boss blinds where I get a 23 and sink it in 1 hand. Um, and I think those kinds of strategies really work early on and then you can swap stuff out and sell stuff. Um, ah, there's a fibonacci. Cards that ah each ah Ace 2 3 5 and 8 give you a plus eight malt when scored which is kind of random but really useful. There's odd Todd and even Stephen which give you chips based on the even or odd number cards which are really good together. 01:12:05.61 Dave Ah, yeah. 01:12:08.37 Matt Like those kinds of basic strategies are good starting points and then like Dave and Aaron said using the other stuff to supplement. It is how you can really get stuff going if you focus on 1 kind of hand you can use it but the simpler the hand the better like 2 pair or pair. 01:12:22.57 Dave Yeah. 01:12:25.27 Aaron Yeah. 01:12:25.78 Matt 3 of a kind like the ones that require less cards because you're more likely to get them or similar suits things like that. 01:12:30.58 Dave Yeah I think on that run where I had the joker that like upgraded every time I got a pair I also just used a ton of those planet cards and got the pair itself up to like plus 15 or some ridiculous shit. So. 01:12:33.14 Aaron That's true. 01:12:50.34 Dave Ah, it. It worked out really well and like that's the other side So like I criticized the RAndG earlier for like I feel like being the reason you lose a lot of times. Um, but sometimes you will luck into just these super overpowered combinations. That just wreck everything in your path. So. 01:13:14.88 Aaron Yeah, and also yeah I'll ah don't be afraid to sell Jokers like ah the the one that Matt mentioned earlier the fibonacci like later on once you. So once you do start to find more jokers that kind of benefit you I guess. 01:13:31.28 Aaron Ah, more directly like you you have a much better time focusing on like I don't know say it doesn't work for your hand later on sell it like if it's not working for you right now or like you it doesn't benefit you in every single blind or every single battle or whatever sell it like ah. 01:13:46.10 Dave Yeah. 01:13:49.23 Aaron It'll help you on the early run sure but toward the mid or like late run if it's not doing anything for you Every single battle sell that shit. 01:13:57.52 Dave Yeah, exactly like you you might have like a combo of like 4 or 5 jokers that is wrecking everything early on but like if you start to notice the matches getting closer and closer as like the Antes get higher and higher. Um. Yeah, you might have to like you might have to sell one of those jokers that was they got you to the point where you're at, but it's not going to get you all the way through and there is usually a better joker that you'll find somewhere along the way. Um. 01:14:23.55 Aaron Yeah, yeah. 01:14:32.90 Dave Sometimes you have to take a leap of faith where it's like I'll pick this joker up and it's only going to be good if I find this other joker. But then if you do it will break the whole thing wide open. So ah yeah, it's fun. 01:14:44.99 Aaron Like the baseball Joker I love that guy the baseball Joker it's ah it makes it so like each you get an extra times 1.5 multiplier for every uncommon joker you have and that. 01:15:01.66 Dave Okay, nice. Yeah because if you can get that like a times multiplier like above 2 or 3 and then just you know, score a bunch of points. Otherwise you can start getting into ridiculous stuff and like. 01:15:04.57 Aaron Fucking bricks to you. 01:15:21.31 Dave That's why I like the steel cards. I like to make the really low ones like Twos and threes. I like to make them into steel cards and just kind of hang on to them. Um, yeah, that stuff is great. Any other ah you know. Tips or um, you know Broken busted combos that we've had before. 01:15:48.40 Aaron That's ah. 01:15:48.15 Matt It's funny I haven't really gotten any combos that are super broken. Ah like again I think the misprint works really early on but like you guys said I think most of my strategies have fallen apart because I haven't really found those connectors yet. Ah so I at least haven't. Like in the early game. There's always like a couple of multiplier cars that you're getting like a thousand for like a 300 blind and you feel like a god and then much later on that's less and less. 01:16:15.12 Dave Yeah, yeah, early on you'll find those cards where those jokers that's like plus it's plus four multipliers for every spade or something and that's like amazing in the early rounds and then like later on that's. 01:16:21.68 Aaron That's what. 01:16:33.26 Dave That's small potatoes compared to what you need to have to build up so I had a good one earlier today that I had there's a joker that's like plus it's like a times 1.5 multiplier for every card of this suit and the suit changes every round. 01:16:51.18 Aaron Yeah. 01:16:53.60 Dave Ah, but I also had one of those like plus four multipliers for every spade jokers and then like so once every 2 or 3 battles. They would be the same suit and it would just wreck everything if I could get a flush you'd win in 1 hand basically um, but it's not super reliable because it's only. You know one in every 3 or 4 battles so that run didn't win but I had a good time fucking up the boss of like Ante number 3 so um, yeah. 01:17:33.65 Aaron Before before we go fuck the arm. The arm is like my most hated boss. It's like it's like minus one to the hand that you play like it or a minus one. The level of the hand that you play. 01:17:38.68 Dave Remind me what that one does. 01:17:50.41 Aaron And it's permanent too. So like if you build up fucking ah like a level ten two pair for every 2 pair you play it'll it'll decrease it by 1 level permanently fuck that boss. It's the worst. 01:17:59.68 Dave Oh that sucks. 01:17:59.84 Matt Yeah, for my least favorite boss blind is the I which is every hand played this round must be a different type. 01:18:10.22 Aaron Ah, those socks too. Ah. 01:18:10.30 Dave Oh yeah, the ah the one that's been fucking me over a lot recently is the one that debuffs every card that you've played previously in that ante which like if you've won the previous matches in 1 hand. It's not a big deal. But if you're like you know. 01:18:18.10 Matt Yeah. 01:18:18.80 Aaron Oh yeah, oh yeah. 01:18:27.99 Dave Trying to set something up or if you're just getting a couple of shit draws then you might get into that round and just be like this is useless. Everything is useless. I had the run that I had on stream I just remembered. Ah. That was like crushing everything if I had like 4 jokers that enhanced face cards and then one joker that made everything a face card so it was like every single card I played was the best card possible and then. The boss was all face cards are debuffed and it's like you get 0 points fuck you go home which is when I learned like you said Aaron not to put all my eggs in 1 basket like that. 01:19:15.12 Aaron Um, fuck I'm sorry Dave oh but that's rough. 01:19:18.10 Dave It was brutal . I was scoring like hundreds of thousands of points every hand just laughing my way. Ah, you can watch it on stream you can watch the replay of me getting really cocky and then seeing what the boss did and just being like. Oh well I guess this is what I get for talking all that shit. 01:19:35.66 Aaron Oh that's good. The fuck the the Curb your enthusiasm theme comes on as soon as like the boss blind starts. 01:19:39.40 Matt Yeah, yeah. 01:19:42.41 Dave Oh yeah. 01:19:47.99 Dave Ah, yeah, absolutely oh man, all right? Let's ah, let's get out of here. We've all got Balatro to play right? I appreciate you both coming on and talking about it with me for this special bonus episode of the show. 01:20:00.24 Matt Um, thanks for having me. I'm always happy to come back. 01:20:03.85 Aaron I don't use that word often. But I'll give you 1 right now exactly. 01:20:08.10 Dave only on special occasions. Awesome. So thank you everybody for listening. I hope you enjoy your next run in Balatro. I hope it is fruitful and I hope you go check out super pod saga fun in games reignite and screen Snark. And of course as always tune in next time tune in next time for the next game to come out of the backlog.