Of all the decks in Balatro, one of the toughest ones to finish runs with is the Painted Deck. The challenge it offers with a moderate limitation of Joker cards can catch players who are used to the standard five Joker slots off guard, but like other decks in Balatro, adjustment is key.
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Where the Black Deck offers more Joker slots with the detriment of one less hand, the Painted Deck is the opposite, meaning that every Joker matters more. As the stakes increase, the Painted Deck only becomes tougher to complete, but here are some tips to do so.
The Painted Deck, Explained
Here is a quick rundown of how the Painted Deck works. When using this deck, your hand size will increase by two cards, but your Joker slots will decrease by one. This means your starting hand size is ten cards, but your starting Joker slots are only four.
To unlock the Painted Deck, beat any deck on Green Stake.
This means that you have more odds of hitting rare hands because you will see just under a fifth of your deck when you first draw your hand. However, this also means that getting Jokers that work well together is tougher, and that will lead to tougher decisions about which Jokers to keep and which to sell.
Plus, with the scaling stakes that you need to complete to get the true completionist run of Balatro, the challenges only get harder.
How To Win With The Painted Deck On Early Stakes
To start, here are some of the best tips and potential run focuses using the Painted Deck on the earlier stakes. For the sake of this guide, the early stakes of Balatro consist of:
- White Stake (Default)
- Red Stake (Small Blind offers no reward money)
- Green Stake (Score scales faster for each Ante)
These are relatively easy because they don’t change the deck’s strategy too much, instead just slightly adjusting the difficulty of the blinds.
The first thing to focus on using the Painted Deck is what hand you are planning to stick to. The increased hand size that the deck offers allows for big hands like the Straight, Flush, and Full House to be easier, so picking one of those three is usually the best bet for the run as a whole.
Another high-risk high-reward option is to focus on building Straight Flushes, which is easier with the bigger hand you have. However, it is a lot riskier because of how rare it is, and building with a Flush or Straight focus first and then changing your cards into one suit is the best way to run a Straight Flush build.
The best Jokers to find early on are ones that score Mult for individual cards, like the suit-specific Jokers, or popular ones like Gros Michel, Fibonacci, Even Steven, Scholar, and Walkie Talkie. However, the goal as the runs get longer is key synergies between Joker cards that can carry runs on their own.
|
Joker |
Ability Description |
Why? |
|---|---|---|
|
Gros Michel |
Increases your Mult by 15. |
Since you play more cards per hand, a consistent flat +15 Mult bonus per round is valuable, ensuring a steady boost to your hand’s score. |
|
Fibonacci |
Grants +8 Mult for every Ace, 2, 3, 5, or 8 you play. |
With 10 cards in hand, you’ll naturally see more of these numbers and can structure your deck to maximize their presence. More plays = more Mult stacking. |
|
Even Steven |
Playing even-numbered cards adds +4 Mult. |
Half of all numbered ranks are even (2, 4, 6, 8, 10), and with a bigger hand, you’ll play more of them. This makes it easy to rack up a lot of Mult quickly. |
|
Scholar |
Aces provide +20 Chips and +4 Mult when used. |
Since Aces already contribute to Fibonacci’s effect, this stacks well. You can build around Aces for a reliable Chip and Mult boost, especially if you hold multiple. |
|
Walkie Talkie |
Playing a 10 or 4 gives +10 Chips and +4 Mult. |
Similar to Fibonacci, but focusing on 10s and 4s. With a 10-card hand, you increase your odds of playing these cards, leading to a consistent Chip and Mult gain. |
Some examples of what late-game Jokers to look for include The Tribe, Bloodstone, Arrowhead, Smeared Joker, and Ancient Joker for Flush builds. For Straight builds, some of the best include The Order, Runner, Hiker, Four Fingers, Troubadour, and Shortcut. However, all builds should try and get good multiplied multiplier Jokers, like Cavendish, Baseball Card, and Yorick.
|
Joker |
Ability Description |
Why? |
|---|---|---|
|
Flush Build |
||
|
The Tribe |
x2 Mult if the hand has a flush. |
This is a great simple multiplied multiplier card for a Flush build and is flexible. |
|
Bloodstone |
1 in 2 chance for a played Heart card to x1.5 your Mult. |
This works best with a Heart suit Flush build, but it relies on luck unless you have the Oops! All 6s Joker. |
|
Arrowhead |
+50 chips for every scoring Spade card. |
This is a great way to build chips quickly on a Spade Flush build but needs a good Mult Joker alongside it. |
|
Smeared Joker |
Heart cards and Diamond cards count as the same suit, and Spade and Club cards count as the same suit. |
Smeared Joker doesn’t offer any chips or Mult, but it makes both Flushes and Straight Flushes so much easier. |
|
Ancient Joker |
Every card of a random suit triggers x1.5 Mult, but the suit changes every round. |
Unless you manage to whittle down your deck to just one or two suits, this will always rely on luck. However, when active, this Joker is extremely strong and can work wonders with Bloodstone. |
|
Straight Build |
||
|
The Order |
x3 Mult if your hand has a Straight in it. |
Just like The Tribe for Flushes, The Order is great if you commit to playing Straights. |
|
Runner |
Gains +15 chips for each Straight played, starting at zero. |
This combined with The Order is one of the best one-two punch Joker combinations in the game. |
|
Hiker |
Gives every played card a +5 chips boost which remains on the card, even after Hiker is sold. Can stack multiple times. |
This improves your base cards into better versions of themselves and the best part is that selling this card later doesn’t remove the effect. |
|
Four Fingers |
All Flushes and Straight can be completed with only four cards. |
This, while affecting both Flushes and Straights, is so much better for Straight builds due to their increased rarity. Plus, this works great for Straight Flushes. |
|
Troubadour |
+2 hand size, but -1 hands per round. |
This makes your already wide hand size even wider, making Straights even easier to find naturally without discarding. |
|
Shortcut |
Straights can be completed with gaps of one number between each card (like 10, 8, 6, 4, 2). |
This is one of the best ways to make Straight builds easy, and combined with Four Fingers, makes Straights easier than Flushes. |
|
All Builds |
||
|
Cavendish |
x3 Mult, but has a 1 in 1000 chance to go extinct. |
This is the evolved form of Gros Michel, but requires the Gros Michel to go extinct for it to be found in the shop. |
|
Baseball Card |
x1.5 Mult per Uncommon Joker that you have active. |
This is a unique Joker that offers multiplied multiplier entirely based on what rarity Jokers you have alongside it. |
|
Yorick |
Starts at x1 Mult, but upgrades by x1 Mult for each 23 cards discarded. |
Yorick works great for big hand builds due to the need to discard for the ideal hand, which only helps it increase in power over a long run. |
How To Win With The Painted Deck on Mid To Late Stakes
When the stakes get tougher, there are some added tips to be aware of. These stakes include:
- Black Stake (Eternal Jokers are added)
- Blue Stake (-1 discard)
- Purple Stake (Score scales even faster for each Ante)
- Orange Stake (Perishable Jokers are added)
- Gold Stake (Rental Jokers are added)
With these stakes, all the previous tips still apply, but some new ones turn from optional to necessary. The first one revolves around Negative Jokers, which is the only way to improve the key weakness of the deck, as it allows you to add more Jokers than the deck allows.
Not only are getting Negative Jokers key, but the skip that offers a free Negative Joker in your next shop becomes your best friend. Especially if you get a Double Tag from a previous skip or from selling the Diet Cola Joker, skipping to get Double Tags and Negative Jokers is almost always worth it.
Also, when it comes to Vouchers in shops, buying Blank is something you should always do since it unlocks the Antimatter Voucher later in the run, which guarantees an extra Joker slot.
On the highest stakes where Perishable and Rental Jokers are common, there is a chance you can get a Negative Perishable Joker, which is frustrating to say the least. There isn’t any way to guarantee a Negative Joker not being Perishable outside the Ectoplasm Spectral card, which still can be randomized.
Now, at these stakes, Joker cards like Blueprint, Brainstorm, Baron, D.N.A., and Hologram all become crucial. Plus, one thing that these stakes revolve around is improvisation, since Perishable Jokers force you to change plans partway through runs.
|
Joker |
Ability Description |
Why? |
|---|---|---|
|
Blueprint |
Copies the ability of the Joker to its right. |
It can effectively make a copy of most Jokers in the game, and copying a strong Joker only makes the run better. |
|
Brainstorm |
Copies the ability of the leftmost Joker. |
Just like Blueprint, it can make a copy of another strong Joker that you have. Plus, it can copy Blueprint, which copies something else. |
|
Baron |
x1.5 Mult for each King held in hand at the end of a round. |
Making Steel Kings with a Baron card is one of the easiest ways to get a run into the millions. |
|
D.N.A. |
Creates a duplicate card of the first card you play every round, as long as that first hand is one card. |
D.N.A. is one of the strongest non-scoring Jokers in the game, as it can adapt your deck to whatever you want. |
|
Hologram |
Begins at x1 Mult, but increases by x0.25 Mult for each card added to the deck. |
Combined with D.N.A, every round adds a free x0.25 Mult to Hologram, and that doesn’t even account for opening packs with cards in them. |
Overall, especially as you reach the Gold Stake, the ideal outcome is at least two high-quality non-Perishable Jokers that synergize perfectly alongside a bunch of Negative Jokers that can vary in their quality.
The final tip before you head into perfecting the Painted Deck is to not get discouraged. While skill is a factor in Balatro, so is luck, so don’t feel bad if you have to hold R on your keyboard or reset the run in the menu a lot of times at the higher stakes. Even some of the easier decks have that trouble at the highest stakes, and the Painted Deck is one of the tougher decks to complete.
