Hi folks! I saw c/Balatro is moving here so I thought I’d try to help get the ball rolling. What is your strategy for getting past the early game with the black deck. Normally I try to get as many jokers as fast as possible until I can build an AC type but it doesn’t seem to be working for me on orange stake.
New run until you get a polychrome juggler, then it becomes a normal deck with an advantage of x1.5 and no drawbacks
I don’t have an answer, just wanted to say I’m getting my last stakes and black is the one I’ve been putting off.
Time for pain!
l’m trying to do black first and get it over with.
Black deck I feel doesn’t really have any early ante unique strategies to utilize, it’s just more difficult. In my opinion the hardest thing to get rolling on black deck is econ (-1 hand, -$1), so I found it even more necessary to reset for a small blind skip like coupon tag or investment tag. Until you nab some jokers which will determine your new path, you’re forced to play big hands like flush, which sucks that much more with one fewer hand to round out the RNG. The millisecond the game gives you an out on big hands, take it and run!
I wish I could say I did much more than “retry a bunch and go with what the game gave me,” but that’s basically all that happened. Took me like three hours to do black deck on gold stake because I got hard countered without a boss reroll in two other candidate runs, but it’s just how it goes sometimes.



