Best Balatro Decks, Ranked

Summary

• Choose your deck wisely in Balatro; they can alter your starting cards and long-term strategy.
• Unlock additional decks through harder difficulties or unlock all in your profile section.
• Each deck in Balatro offers unique bonuses and challenges; knowing their strengths is crucial for success.

There are a lot of variables that make each run in Balatro unique and exciting, but the most important choice you make when starting a new run is to choose a deck. Decks offer different bonuses, can entirely alter your starting cards, and can affect your long-term game plan.

You can unlock additional decks by winning harder difficulties. However, if you want access to every deck from the beginning, you can forgo achievement hunting and unlock everything in your profile section. Either way, knowing the strengths and weaknesses of each deck can help you decide which ones can get you through the hardest difficulties and grant you those satisfying large numbers.

You can also alter the appearance of cards in each deck. From Balatro’s main menu, you can set each suit to be based on the art and style of various video games. Dave the Diver, Cyberpunk 2077, The Witcher, and many others are included in the options.

Updated on January 2, 2025 by Tom Hopkins: Since Balatro’s first release, the solo developer has updated some of the rules and how the Jokers work. While none of the changes are huge, rarely changing how useful certain tactics are, they do impact how certain decks work and how useful they can be. We have updated the rankings to take those rule changes into account.

15

Yellow Deck

While the extra $10 offered by the Yellow Deck can help jump-start your economy and gain interest from the beginning, it doesn’t offer any long-term benefits or exciting mechanics to your run.

If you get lucky with your early vouchers, tags, and jokers that scale with your economy, this deck can take you through to the endgame. But you can get even better results with such a setup with other decks available to you.

14

Green Deck

Similarly to the previous entry, Green Deck is an economy-focused deck. This deck allows you to earn more money at the end of each round based on your remaining hands and discards, but with the drawback of earning no interest throughout the game.

Playing with the Green Deck makes the Seed Money Voucher useless. The voucher doubles the interest you earn after each round, which doesn’t help when base interest is zero.

With the right vouchers and a strong deck, you can find a good balance to maximize your economy. But, without an optimal setup and no interest gain, it can be awkward to get this deck going, especially in harder difficulties.

13

Erratic Deck

The Erratic Deck is the final deck you can unlock in Balatro, and it offers the most erratic effect among all other decks. It randomizes every rank and suit in your starting 52-card deck, making each run with it truly unique.

If lucky, the Erratic Deck can set you up to go for those rare Flush Five hands consistently, or it can completely let you down with a generic and unreliable deck. It’s fun to strategize and plan with each new deck, but the lack of consistency makes this deck a hard sell in harder difficulties.

12

Magic Deck

The Magic Deck offers a few interesting bonuses that can lead to a memorable run. Firstly, you start with two The Fool cards that create the last tarot or planet card you have played. The power of these bonuses can snowball if you find powerful tarot cards early on.

A hidden benefit of this starting deck is that having a Crystal Ball from the beginning increases your chances of getting the Omen Globe voucher, which allows spectral cards to appear in arcana packs. Spectral cards are the rarest and most powerful consumables in the game, and increasing the chances of finding them is invaluable.

11

Zodiac Deck

While the Magic Deck has a hit-or-miss playstyle that focuses on consumables, the Zodiac Deck offers a more consistent playthrough with the same focus. This deck starts you off with three vouchers that increase the shop’s available slots and the chance of tarot and planet cards appearing.

Starting with these vouchers also allows you to buy their upgraded version later on, making runs with jokers that scale based on your consumables very powerful.

The Fortune Teller Joker increases your Mult for each tarot card used, and the Constellation Joker increases your Mult multiplication for each planet card you use. Having both of these jokers on a Zodiac Deck is the perfect combination.

10

Painted Deck

While jokers can have a huge effect on your overall score, extra hand size can be powerful in the early game, and for pulling off impactful plays in the late game. Painted Deck’s drawback might seem too much at first, but with some practice, it can lead to great results.

Painted Deck requires a more complete collection. You need access to rare jokers and vouchers to overcome the fewer joker slots, but with some planning and a little luck on your side, you can have some of your best runs with this deck.

9

Nebula Deck

One of the worst feelings in Balatro is when you focus your run on a single-hand type, but you keep missing its upgrade in celestial packs. The Telescope voucher makes sure that your most played hand type always appears in celestial packs, and the Nebula Deck allows you to start the run with this voucher available.

Starting with the Telescope voucher means you are more likely to get the upgraded version, Observatory, making your Flush only runs even more powerful.

8

Anaglyph Deck

Tags play an important role in high-difficulty runs where you are more likely to skip small blinds. The Anaglyph Deck gives you a free Double Tag each time you defeat a Boss Blind, doubling the reward you get from skipping small blinds that follow.

Getting unlucky with your early tags while playing this deck can result in quick losses, but the power spike you can get by doubling the effects of better tags in the game is well worth the risk.

7

Abandoned Deck

Face Cards reward the highest base chips next to Aces, making the bonus of the Abandoned deck seem like a negative effect. But, in most roguelike deck builders, having a smaller deck is one of the best bonuses you can get, and Balatro is not the exception.

By removing 12 cards from your deck, you can narrow your play style and draw the cards that you need more consistently. Additionally, some jokers benefit from not playing Face Cards, making them the perfect fit for the Abandoned deck.

6

Black Deck

Jokers are the main way of scaling your chips in Balatro, and the extra Joker slot provided by the Black Deck is a very tempting bonus. The drawback is also as impactful, reducing the number of hands you can play each round by one.

Playing the Black Deck requires a lot of flexibility in the early game. You need to utilize the extra Joker slot as soon as possible and think about optimizing your build while you have stabilized in the mid-game. If you skip too many jokers while searching for the perfect options, you can see the impact of the deck’s negative effect as soon as the second ante.

5

Red Deck

The starting deck in Balatro is very consistent and strong. The Red Deck starts you off with an extra discard per round, allowing you to thin your deck and fish for strong plays more reliably.

The extra discards can actually be beneficial even if you don’t use them. There are strong jokers that scale based on the discards you have remaining, making them even more powerful in the Red Deck.

The Banner, the Delayed Gratification, and the Green Joker are some of the jokers that benefit from not using your discards, giving chips, money, and mult bonuses to your played hands based on your remaining discards. This is a great early to mid-game setup for any deck, specially the Red Deck.

4

Ghost Deck

Spectral cards are some of the rarest and strongest consumable cards in Balatro. They offer unique and powerful effects that alter your gameplay drastically, with some exciting risks that can lead to spectacular rewards.

The Ghost Deck starts your run with two impactful effects. It allows spectral cards to appear in the shop like other consumables, making them much easier to access, and giving you a Hex card, turning one of your jokers into its Holographic version.

3

Checkered Deck

Flushes are one of the most reliable and powerful hand types with any deck. But the Checkered deck is made for going for flushes as you start your run with only two suits in your deck. If you can increase your hand size to nine cards by buying a voucher or a joker, you will always have a playable flush in your hand.

To make the Checkered Deck even better, you can search for two of the most powerful Uncommon jokers in the game, the Bloodstone and the Arrowhead. These two jokers give your hearts and spades cards amazing bonuses, making your flush plays able to clear the highest blinds with one single hand.

2

Plasma Deck

The Plasma Deck’s effect seems unintuitive at first. The deck averages your chip and mult scores before multiplying them together for the final score of your hand, as well as doubling the blind score thresholds.

This deck completely changes how you would approach your build. In a normal run, mult scores and mult multiplications are the most valuable effects you can get on your cards and jokers. But many more jokers increase your chips and with much higher numbers. While playing with the Plasma deck, you can focus more on increasing your chip bonuses, resulting in a higher average score for both chip and mult when you play your hand.

1

Blue Deck

There are many ways to increase your hand’s score in Balatro. But the simplest way to gain more chips in each round is to play more hands. While the Blue Deck might seem less exciting than some other options, it’s the most reliable way to defeat the highest antes and difficulties in the game.

Even when you get a strong build going and defeat early blinds with one or two hands, the extra hands available will go toward your economy, giving you an edge in refining your build for the later stages of your run. If you want to overcome higher difficulties and unlock more decks and jokers for your collection, you can always rely on the Blue Deck.