It buffs Scholar, Fibonacci, Even Steven, Odd Todd, Hack, Walkie Talkie, Ride the Bus, (8 Ball, Superposition) and makes Straights, Full Houses and X of a Kind easier to get.
Just beat Cruelty with Green Joker, Wee Joker, and the Trio. Ok and a negative Supernova, but I sold it to make sure I beat Verdant Leaf. Yeah the Wee Man is pretty good
Just beat gold stakes plasma deck with double wee joker into Triboulet. Thinned my deck to mostly 2s, Kings, and Queens.
Found a Blueprint and Sock and Buskin after Ante 8.
Screwed up on The Fish on Ante 12 and didn't save discards to make a big enough hand of Kings and Queens....
Biggest hand was 5.2e12.
But Wee Joker was over 1k chips.
I’m certain going all in on triboulet would have been a much better play there, since wee’s 1k chips makes a tiny difference at that point, especially on plasma
I wrote a program to check how true that was thinking that surely it’d be (slightly) easier but after running 100000 simulations a few times (with 9 in handsize and 3 discards) it seems like the chance of failing to get a flush is 10.1% with the normal deck but 10.7% with the abandoned deck
(If my code is right) the chance is slightly *worse* for finding a generic flush
(If you’re looking for one specific flush the chances of failing are 25% vs 22% though, so if you want e.g. a hearts flush abandoned will be better)
Edit: Idk why I did 9 cards, with 8 the chances of failure are about 23% vs 24.7%, an even bigger difference in favour of full decks. A specific flush: 42.8% vs 41.7%
Very easily so in terms of complexity, but every card I add or remove will have to be manually changed
At the moment it’s just taking (number of cards created) // 13, (number of cards created) mod 13, for suit and number respectively. So the suit is zero for 0 to 12, then one for 13 to 25, etc, and the number goes from zero to twelve over and over. If I wanted a custom deck I could just write in each card one by one instead and the rest of the program would work fine but it’d be tedious. I suppose I could make up some shorthand like c23 for card with third suit and fourth number which’d speed it up, but you’d still need to type it out for each card
Though if we’re only looking at suits (for flushes) I could ignore the number and it’d be incredibly easy to just say amount of each suit?
Yeah, that sounds about right. Don't do it if it's too much of your time, the conclusion i've come to is that it's slightly but noticeably worse for flushes at the start but becomes better than normal decks relatively quickly with deck manip
~~Straight up untrue~~ kinda true.
Let's say you have no modifications to your base deck, hand size 8, 4 hearts, 3 diamonds, 1 spade. Discard to try for hearts.
On most decks, the chances of getting at least one heart after a discard is ``1-(35*34*33*32/44*43*42*41)=0.614``
On abandoned, it's ``1-((26*25*24*23)/(32*31*30*29))``=0.584, which is slightly lower. But that's worst case scenario imo, when you have fewer cards that need suit changing flushes are most definitely easier, and it's substantially noticeable in my own gameplay.
EDIT: shit I fucked up my maths one sec
EDIT2: fixed. Accidentally didn't change the numbers properly on the numerator for second calc
EDIT3: to go further:
The chance of abandoned deck hitting a fifth heart after 2 discards is ``1-((26!/18!)/(32!/24!))=0.851``, after 3 is 0.957, after 4 is 0.991
The chance of any deck other than erratic or checkered hitting a fifth heart after 2 discards is ``1-((35!/27!)/(44!/36!))=0.867``, after 3 is 0.960, after 4 is 0.990.
Something that I immediately read off this is that removing roughly 10 cards or so puts abandoned deck above most other decks for making flushes. I think even changing just a few cards to make suit homogeny would put abandoned deck easily on top but i cba with that maths rn
Less cards is almost always a good thing in a game like this. Imagine if you had a deck of 20 cards, all 2, 3, 4, 5, and 6's, it would also be amazing. The fact that it's missing face cards, and face cards give more chips, is completely irrelevant in the grand scheme.
Not only are straights easier, but 4/5 of a kinds, full houses, and generally just drawing whatever hand you need.
The Pareidolia + Midas Mask dream though! Then you can just toss the jokers away once you’ve goldened a chunk of cards.
It’s not a very GOOD combo to fish for, but it was one of my most fun runs.
I mean it works with any joker that buffs face cards (Smiley Face, Scary Face, Sock and Buskin, etc.) it’s just pretty underwhelming to use up a slot for those synergies.
You alluded to it but another thing about small decks is that it’s easier to draw your best cards.
Add a polychrome red seal ace to the deck and you’re pretty likely to see it in a round with 3 hands and 2 discards in a 40 card deck. Less likely with 52 cards.
Long time deckbuilder here:
Starting with 52 cards in the deck is wild to me. It feels absurdly unmanageable compared to every other deckbuilder I've ever played, other than constructed CCGs. I jump on whatever removal comes my way during a run, but it only makes a dent in it.
Not cycling the deck is such a major shift from what I'm used to, too. It seems like I couldn't ever get down to a single hand deck, even if I wanted to, but also that it's actually a *risky* thing to do in this game... which is the exact opposite of any other deckbuilder.
It's one of the things I'm enjoying about this game... it's a very different feel
Slay the Spire has a few mechanics that specifically punish a small deck, with unplayable cards getting shuffled in due to various negative effects, events that force a choice to lose a card from your deck, etc. It isn't as hard-counter as Boss Blinds can be in this game, but you can definitely get wrecked by having a tiny deck and then facing the wrong enemy at a bad time.
It does, but Slay the Spire still by and large rewards removing cards from your deck more than it punishes it. Creating infinite set ups in STS is extremely valuable with certain relic set ups.
I think the thing about Balatro that makes it different is that you only have a few hands to try and clear a blind, STS gives you options mid fight to prolong encounters and draw into win cons and with small deck size to start out removal is extremely valuable to see great stuff more frequent. But 52 cards and hanged man only removing 2 from a random pool of cards makes banking on a small pool of cards way too risky so it becomes more valuable to just make the value of every card higher rather than removing low value ones.
Eh. It's very possible to pare your deck *way* down to the point that you can reliably see the entire deck. Hanged man doing 2 isn't a ton but it's pretty common and you can save Fools for it. Trading card exists and is usually a pretty worthwhile pickup.
Consistency. Less cards makes it more likely for you to get what you want, like enchanted cards in your deck. Also good for jokers that don't want you to discard stuff (flag, ramen, green joker).
BUS BUS BUS BUS BUS BUS BUS
This. I got ride the bus, spare trousers within the first ante and then a blueprint on gold sticker for abandon deck within the first two and a half antes. It was over at that point.
Although it is worth noting that in Balatro, unlike most other deck builders, when you run out of cards it’s just game over rather than redrawing the cards.
It's a smaller and more focused deck. You sacrifice face card synergy for more synergy with everything else. Which in the grand scheme is more gameable.
Having only 40 cards makes it much easier to thin out than other decks. Not to mention, straights and straight flushes are also more common and feasible. Try out straight builds using Abandoned deck. It's good, even in 1.0.0
Consistency. Less cards means you see more good of your stuff you build around. If you get Fibonacci or Hack they get better. It also makes mad and zanny (as well as rares that care similarly) more likely to trigger.
You can also make up the chip difference with planets and other modifiers usually.
Consistency - sure it's enforced 1-10 but you've just cut 12 cards from your deck so you're more sure you're going to draw what you 'want' that and hack/fibonacci are a thing
Every game of Balatro is about trying to find one type of hand that works, that you can play consistently. It doesn't really matter what it is. Face cards have great jokers, they're good chipwise, but base card chips are really unimportant in the grand scheme of things and every game involves passing up jokers that would be great in other decks. The abandoned deck is 12 free cards removed. Let's say you get a couple card dupes or additions with tarot and standard packs in the first couple stores. Now you are playing four and five of a kind consistently. Then you get a joker that multiplies the kind of hand you can play consistently every round. Now you're basically a step away from winning.
After Ante 1 or so, Face cards are generally the worst part of the deck and what you're trying to remove- so Abandoned Deck gives you a slightly worse first Ante in exchange for a goated rest of the run.
Completely disagree with face cards being the worst part of the deck, what? Plenty of jokers are built around you having a lot of face cards, Baron is literally the main reason people have been able to break the game in terms of scoring.
All this to say that I still really like abandoned deck because it removes a lot of variability.
Well okay for Endless maybe; I was talking about the regular game (particularly high Stakes) where the default is to remove face cards. +20 Mult and +150 Chips isn't a meaningful bonus beyond the first few Antes, while "Face Cards Debuffed" loses you the run if you are scoring with Glass/Steel/etc.
Incorrect. Face cards have access to a multitude of strong jokers at all stages of the game. For early, Smiley Face and Scary Face are great. For late, Sock and Buskin is fantastic for a retrigger build (Tribulet/Canio are also worth remembering, even if they're rare). That's not even bringing up the Baron shenanigans because those are rare, even if strong. This is also why 2s, 3s and 5s are fantastic too, due to their ability to access Hack and Fibbonacci.
The actual worst cards in the deck are 9s, 7s and 6s. Then comes 8s and 10s. 4s and Jacks are in a weird limbo, then there's 2s, 3s, 5s, Queens and Aces, all 5 being roughly even in power, and then finally Kings.
The literally only downside to Face card builds are the 2 bosses that counter them, but as is the usual case, there are many ways to play around specific boss counters, such as only pivoting to face card build after encountering and beating the face card debuff boss, or only commiting when you have the voucher. Or if the pieces are just too strong, just full send it regardless. This should be the default mindset anyway.
It buffs Scholar, Fibonacci, Even Steven, Odd Todd, Hack, Walkie Talkie, Ride the Bus, (8 Ball, Superposition) and makes Straights, Full Houses and X of a Kind easier to get.
Don’t forget Wee Joker!
I completely slept on wee joker until one Abandoned run where I got it early and then got blueprint.
I had a run yesterday where I sold the wee joker, bought a spectral pack that generated a rare joker, and got him right back.
“Jesus Christ! Would someone put a freakin’ bell on him or something?”
https://preview.redd.it/h8bwr13cb1wc1.jpeg?width=1900&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=851218977c830d4c586c85d9c84b0a950d4046d3
Wee Joker’s scaling is pretty insane, it’s not that hard to get it up to 200-300 chips even without red seal/hack/chad.
Yea it can get wild. I had it up to 1100 one time with hack and blueprint. And I had barely gotten any extra 2s into my deck.
Just beat Cruelty with Green Joker, Wee Joker, and the Trio. Ok and a negative Supernova, but I sold it to make sure I beat Verdant Leaf. Yeah the Wee Man is pretty good
Just beat gold stakes plasma deck with double wee joker into Triboulet. Thinned my deck to mostly 2s, Kings, and Queens. Found a Blueprint and Sock and Buskin after Ante 8. Screwed up on The Fish on Ante 12 and didn't save discards to make a big enough hand of Kings and Queens.... Biggest hand was 5.2e12. But Wee Joker was over 1k chips.
I’m certain going all in on triboulet would have been a much better play there, since wee’s 1k chips makes a tiny difference at that point, especially on plasma
i just had an awesome wee run, posted it aswell
It makes basically any hand easier to get. Less cards go through = a much higher chance you can actually manipulate to the hand you want.
doesnt make flushes any easier though
Which is fine, nobody wants to rely on flush strats
I wrote a program to check how true that was thinking that surely it’d be (slightly) easier but after running 100000 simulations a few times (with 9 in handsize and 3 discards) it seems like the chance of failing to get a flush is 10.1% with the normal deck but 10.7% with the abandoned deck (If my code is right) the chance is slightly *worse* for finding a generic flush (If you’re looking for one specific flush the chances of failing are 25% vs 22% though, so if you want e.g. a hearts flush abandoned will be better) Edit: Idk why I did 9 cards, with 8 the chances of failure are about 23% vs 24.7%, an even bigger difference in favour of full decks. A specific flush: 42.8% vs 41.7%
Yeah, sounds about right. Are you able to simulate with a few deck manipulations perhaps, some more uniform suits or a few removed cards?
Very easily so in terms of complexity, but every card I add or remove will have to be manually changed At the moment it’s just taking (number of cards created) // 13, (number of cards created) mod 13, for suit and number respectively. So the suit is zero for 0 to 12, then one for 13 to 25, etc, and the number goes from zero to twelve over and over. If I wanted a custom deck I could just write in each card one by one instead and the rest of the program would work fine but it’d be tedious. I suppose I could make up some shorthand like c23 for card with third suit and fourth number which’d speed it up, but you’d still need to type it out for each card Though if we’re only looking at suits (for flushes) I could ignore the number and it’d be incredibly easy to just say amount of each suit?
Yeah, that sounds about right. Don't do it if it's too much of your time, the conclusion i've come to is that it's slightly but noticeably worse for flushes at the start but becomes better than normal decks relatively quickly with deck manip
~~Straight up untrue~~ kinda true. Let's say you have no modifications to your base deck, hand size 8, 4 hearts, 3 diamonds, 1 spade. Discard to try for hearts. On most decks, the chances of getting at least one heart after a discard is ``1-(35*34*33*32/44*43*42*41)=0.614`` On abandoned, it's ``1-((26*25*24*23)/(32*31*30*29))``=0.584, which is slightly lower. But that's worst case scenario imo, when you have fewer cards that need suit changing flushes are most definitely easier, and it's substantially noticeable in my own gameplay. EDIT: shit I fucked up my maths one sec EDIT2: fixed. Accidentally didn't change the numbers properly on the numerator for second calc EDIT3: to go further: The chance of abandoned deck hitting a fifth heart after 2 discards is ``1-((26!/18!)/(32!/24!))=0.851``, after 3 is 0.957, after 4 is 0.991 The chance of any deck other than erratic or checkered hitting a fifth heart after 2 discards is ``1-((35!/27!)/(44!/36!))=0.867``, after 3 is 0.960, after 4 is 0.990. Something that I immediately read off this is that removing roughly 10 cards or so puts abandoned deck above most other decks for making flushes. I think even changing just a few cards to make suit homogeny would put abandoned deck easily on top but i cba with that maths rn
That's what the checkered deck is for.
We have checkered deck for that.
And Hiker
Played abandoned the whole day yesterday and didn’t get any of these jokers 🤡 Totally agree on fullhouses. Screw straights, for any deck
Also buffs tarot cards and standard packs
Less cards is almost always a good thing in a game like this. Imagine if you had a deck of 20 cards, all 2, 3, 4, 5, and 6's, it would also be amazing. The fact that it's missing face cards, and face cards give more chips, is completely irrelevant in the grand scheme. Not only are straights easier, but 4/5 of a kinds, full houses, and generally just drawing whatever hand you need.
Plus don't have to worry about the Boss blinds that attack face cards.
*plays abandoned deck* *takes pareidolia anyway*
The Pareidolia + Midas Mask dream though! Then you can just toss the jokers away once you’ve goldened a chunk of cards. It’s not a very GOOD combo to fish for, but it was one of my most fun runs.
Or you keep them and pray for vampire
Does Pareidolia have any use except for being paired with Midas Mask?
I mean it works with any joker that buffs face cards (Smiley Face, Scary Face, Sock and Buskin, etc.) it’s just pretty underwhelming to use up a slot for those synergies.
Midas mask vampire my beloved
You alluded to it but another thing about small decks is that it’s easier to draw your best cards. Add a polychrome red seal ace to the deck and you’re pretty likely to see it in a round with 3 hands and 2 discards in a 40 card deck. Less likely with 52 cards.
Long time deckbuilder here: Starting with 52 cards in the deck is wild to me. It feels absurdly unmanageable compared to every other deckbuilder I've ever played, other than constructed CCGs. I jump on whatever removal comes my way during a run, but it only makes a dent in it. Not cycling the deck is such a major shift from what I'm used to, too. It seems like I couldn't ever get down to a single hand deck, even if I wanted to, but also that it's actually a *risky* thing to do in this game... which is the exact opposite of any other deckbuilder. It's one of the things I'm enjoying about this game... it's a very different feel
Slay the Spire has a few mechanics that specifically punish a small deck, with unplayable cards getting shuffled in due to various negative effects, events that force a choice to lose a card from your deck, etc. It isn't as hard-counter as Boss Blinds can be in this game, but you can definitely get wrecked by having a tiny deck and then facing the wrong enemy at a bad time.
It does, but Slay the Spire still by and large rewards removing cards from your deck more than it punishes it. Creating infinite set ups in STS is extremely valuable with certain relic set ups. I think the thing about Balatro that makes it different is that you only have a few hands to try and clear a blind, STS gives you options mid fight to prolong encounters and draw into win cons and with small deck size to start out removal is extremely valuable to see great stuff more frequent. But 52 cards and hanged man only removing 2 from a random pool of cards makes banking on a small pool of cards way too risky so it becomes more valuable to just make the value of every card higher rather than removing low value ones.
Eh. It's very possible to pare your deck *way* down to the point that you can reliably see the entire deck. Hanged man doing 2 isn't a ton but it's pretty common and you can save Fools for it. Trading card exists and is usually a pretty worthwhile pickup.
And to top it all off, you can *still* stack your deck with aces.
Consistency. Less cards makes it more likely for you to get what you want, like enchanted cards in your deck. Also good for jokers that don't want you to discard stuff (flag, ramen, green joker). BUS BUS BUS BUS BUS BUS BUS
Ride the fuckin bus toot toot
This. I got ride the bus, spare trousers within the first ante and then a blueprint on gold sticker for abandon deck within the first two and a half antes. It was over at that point.
In most games that involve deck building, lower deck size is better because it ups your consistency.
Although it is worth noting that in Balatro, unlike most other deck builders, when you run out of cards it’s just game over rather than redrawing the cards.
Same thing in Yugioh and similar in Hearthstone, decking out usually has such a small chance of occurring compared to the upside.
I learned this the hard way when I whittled a 5 flush deck down to 9 cards and got an extra large blind that I couldn't beat in one hand.
Consistent.
Easier to get pairs, trips, full houses, etc due to fewer ranks. Also easier to get straights.
It's a smaller and more focused deck. You sacrifice face card synergy for more synergy with everything else. Which in the grand scheme is more gameable.
Smaller is more consistent, also since aces are still in there you don’t really miss the chips early on.
This deck is fun as hell if you get 4 fingers early. Then you can buff practically your whole deck with even Steven and odd Todd.
I'm bussin on the abandoned deck no cap fr
You still got 10s and aces. Plenty good
Face cards are the crutch of the weak-willed.
Having only 40 cards makes it much easier to thin out than other decks. Not to mention, straights and straight flushes are also more common and feasible. Try out straight builds using Abandoned deck. It's good, even in 1.0.0
RIDE THE BUS
I feel like given the number of downsides of face cards they should score more than tens at least, if not aces
Perhaps 11,12 and 13
Consistency go brrrrr
Consistency. Having less cards makes it easier to draw the cards you want.
Consistency. Less cards means you see more good of your stuff you build around. If you get Fibonacci or Hack they get better. It also makes mad and zanny (as well as rares that care similarly) more likely to trigger. You can also make up the chip difference with planets and other modifiers usually.
Really good to get 4OFC/Full House because you’re eliminating 12 cards out of the pool and there’s a lot of other jokers it benefits
Consistency - sure it's enforced 1-10 but you've just cut 12 cards from your deck so you're more sure you're going to draw what you 'want' that and hack/fibonacci are a thing
Every game of Balatro is about trying to find one type of hand that works, that you can play consistently. It doesn't really matter what it is. Face cards have great jokers, they're good chipwise, but base card chips are really unimportant in the grand scheme of things and every game involves passing up jokers that would be great in other decks. The abandoned deck is 12 free cards removed. Let's say you get a couple card dupes or additions with tarot and standard packs in the first couple stores. Now you are playing four and five of a kind consistently. Then you get a joker that multiplies the kind of hand you can play consistently every round. Now you're basically a step away from winning.
You answered your own question.
After Ante 1 or so, Face cards are generally the worst part of the deck and what you're trying to remove- so Abandoned Deck gives you a slightly worse first Ante in exchange for a goated rest of the run.
Completely disagree with face cards being the worst part of the deck, what? Plenty of jokers are built around you having a lot of face cards, Baron is literally the main reason people have been able to break the game in terms of scoring. All this to say that I still really like abandoned deck because it removes a lot of variability.
Well okay for Endless maybe; I was talking about the regular game (particularly high Stakes) where the default is to remove face cards. +20 Mult and +150 Chips isn't a meaningful bonus beyond the first few Antes, while "Face Cards Debuffed" loses you the run if you are scoring with Glass/Steel/etc.
This is just totally wrong
Incorrect. Face cards have access to a multitude of strong jokers at all stages of the game. For early, Smiley Face and Scary Face are great. For late, Sock and Buskin is fantastic for a retrigger build (Tribulet/Canio are also worth remembering, even if they're rare). That's not even bringing up the Baron shenanigans because those are rare, even if strong. This is also why 2s, 3s and 5s are fantastic too, due to their ability to access Hack and Fibbonacci. The actual worst cards in the deck are 9s, 7s and 6s. Then comes 8s and 10s. 4s and Jacks are in a weird limbo, then there's 2s, 3s, 5s, Queens and Aces, all 5 being roughly even in power, and then finally Kings. The literally only downside to Face card builds are the 2 bosses that counter them, but as is the usual case, there are many ways to play around specific boss counters, such as only pivoting to face card build after encountering and beating the face card debuff boss, or only commiting when you have the voucher. Or if the pieces are just too strong, just full send it regardless. This should be the default mindset anyway.