Balatro: Best Cards To Unlock

Summary

• Balatro offers addictive gameplay with unique card enhancements, unlockable cards, and combo possibilities.
• Players can strategize with Jokers like Triboulet, Blueprint, and The Family for high-scoring combos.
• Unlock powerful Jokers like the Wee Joker, Smeared Joker, and Burnt Joker to enhance gameplay experiences.

Balatro exploded into the video game world with flying colors, delivering a simplistic poker-like experience, combined with addictive rogue-like elements to keep players hooked for hours on end. Each seed brings something new, and each run feels distinct as the shop offerings vary and more and more cards are unlocked to combo into the millions.

With over 100 unlockable cards, picking between spectral card generators and insane multipliers can be a difficult task; as the numbers go higher, it’s hard to decide between playing the long game or trying to scrape over the finish line using every last one of the discards and hands.

10

Triboulet

Fit For Kings And Queens

• Played Kings and Queens each give x2 multi when scored
• Synergizes extremely well with Sock and Buskin

When going for the higher score, face cards are an assured way of hitting them. Triboulet is the perfect card for a face-card deck, adding seemingly small multiplier that can scale up quickly when played in face-oriented decks.

Players can access this powerful joker right out of the box, but being legendary, it is hidden behind the wall of the soul, making it difficult to find but extremely powerful if players can find it.

9

Blueprint

Unmatched Flexibility

• Copies the ability of the Joker to the right
• Works well in almost any deck, with a few incompatible exceptions

Ever found an insane deck with a powerful Joker, only wishing for more? Blueprint gives players exactly that, duplicating a specific effect that can turn a multiplier from a few digits into astronomical high scores.

The best part is that unlocking it is as simple as winning a single run, then afterward, every run can be turned into calculator-breaking insanity thanks to the simplistic power of the blueprint.

8

The Family

Three’s A Crowd, So Four’s A Riot

• x4 multiplier if the played hand contains four of a kind
• Works with five-of-a-kind and flush five

Being a family is great. Sticking and working together is always better and leads to the best outcome for everyone. So it makes sense that playing a close-knit hand of all the same cards ends up with insane multiplication potential and some added incentive to hold onto the lower-scoring numbers.

Much like the others in this set, the unlock requirement is to win a run without playing a four-of-a-kind, a pretty easy requirement that leads to wielding a potentially game-winning Joker. While it does lack slightly in terms of flexibility, with the right deck and team of matching Jokers, victory is all but guaranteed.

7

Burnt Joker

Sacrifices Must Be Made

• Upgrade the level of the first discarded poker hand each round
• Works well with small hand types that can be played often

Burn it all to the ground. Having a burnt Joker in the deck is flexible, it scales, and it provides constant value throughout a run that very few others can match. Selling 50 cards is all it takes to unlock, so it should appear in the collection with little to no effort.

It’s also a card that players do not have to overthink and put all the eggs into, as a deck can be constructed around a specific theme or set of common Jokers, as the burnt Joker slowly builds up, and by the end of each ante, a two-of-a-kind can turn from a throwaway hand to a monstrous scorer.

6

Wee Joker

Small But Mighty

• Gains +8 chips when each 2 is scored
• Retriggers count towards the counter, allowing it to scale into the 100s or even 1000s

It starts out slow but soon becomes ridiculous. Wee Joker is the gift that keeps on giving. When acquired early on, players can start ramping up the effect with strong hands like four of a kind, and by the eighth ante, triple and quadruple-digit chip additions are assured.

Very few Jokers can reach even similar levels, and when played in decks like the abandoned, 2s are abundant and easy to come by. Winning a run in 18 or fewer rounds is the condition for unlocking this Joker that rivals the levels of insanity that even modded runs struggle to keep up with.

5

Smeared Joker

Blur All The Lines

• Hearts and Diamonds count as the same suit, and Spades and Clubs count as the same suit
• Perfect for creating flush hands

It doesn’t look pretty, but it sure packs a punch. One of the best Jokers out there, being able to have a semi-homogenous set of cards that can be played all together makes building flushes almost a guarantee, and when paired with Joker like the tribe, the numbers go flying.

It makes sense that the unlock requirement is to have three or more wild cards in a deck, as those act as any suit for a single card, while this Joker goes above and beyond, transforming the entire deck into a smudged mess of instant high scores.

4

Throwback

Straightforward High Scaling Multiplier

• x0.25 for each blind skipped this run
• Retroactive so counts previous skips
• Great with flat multiplying Jokers like cavendish

Sometimes, it’s fine to skip. And, when this Joker rewards the player for doing so, it seems like a no-brainer. By ramping up the multiplier with each skip, it gives the opportunity to collect reward tags along the way and have a strong multiplier by the time ante 8 rolls around.

The unlock could not be easier: continue a run from the main menu. Then, it’s off to the races, giving a very consistent scaling choice that doesn’t require careful decision-making and can pair excellently with chip-generating Jokers and simple multipliers.

3

Hanging Chad

Triple The Value

• Retrigger first played card used in scoring two additional times
• Great with card modifiers as those are triggered twice

A buff’s best friend, the hanging Chad Joker offers a crazy single-card effect that can make a modified ace hand hit seven digits with little to no help. It has great synergy with a lot of other common Jokers like the photograph, changing the x8 multiplier into x24 all thanks to this card.

Beating a boss blind with a high card can be a tricky requirement, but it shouldn’t take too many attempts to accomplish, and it’s more than worth it. Just be sure to re-order the hand, making the left-most the target for this insane effect.

2

Stuntman

It’s A Bird, It’s A Plane

• +250 Chips, -2 hand size
• High payoff for low-scoring hands like pairs

All good things come with a price. And this is a really good thing. The downside does appear scary at first, but there are plenty of Jokers that can offset the negative, like the juggler, but with such a strong upside, players will hardly even notice the reduced hand size.

Low scorers are the key. High card, pair, and three of a kind become nuclear-sized chip scores and can clear entire antes with little to no help. The requirement is heft, hitting at least 100 million chips in a single hand, so it’s a later unlock but something to look forward to.

1

Brainstorm

Blueprint’s Long-Lost Brother

• Copies the ability of the leftmost Joker
• Good with multiplier and chip addition cards

If the blueprint isn’t to the player’s tastes, then maybe a brainstorm can kick things into gear. Duplicating effects is incredibly powerful when used correctly, so pairing this Joker’s effect with mid-round generates, like mail-in rebate or scaling ones like erosion, can lead to some insane combinations and endless possibilities.

Discarding a royal flush can feel like a knife in the gut, but it’s a one-time requirement for a full-blown run-defining monster. Once the pain has subsided, there are plenty of copying strategies that players can find and discover that break runs in half and topple the chip high scores.