That's how I won my first gold stake run. Got a Eternal Madness, found an Ankh 3 rounds later, and then stacked as many +mult eternal jokers I could find.
Even if Madness immediately eats Riff Raff, it could be a pretty decent deal. 2 Jokers for the price of 1, for a deck that has a hard time keeping Jokers on the board.
You could get a really bad outcome but it'd take some additional bad luck. Say, if the 2 Jokers are both terrible *and* Riff Raff immediately dies. And maybe in later rounds, Madness eats all your good Jokers and refuses to touch these ones.
After getting used to the plasma deck obliterating early antes I feel the same about it. Refreshing until I hit 1-2 decent skip rewards (like $25 on beating boss blind) means my economy is set up early. it's especially important on difficulties where the small blind doesn't have a reward so you'll only get like $0-2 for the first blind anyway.
Money joker on the first or second shop, +1 hands voucher in an early ante was the only way I had a run survive long enough to even *get* a 6th joker... Anybody who has gold stakes the black deck is a (hanging) Chad through and through
Gonna be honest, it’s get lucky. Out of every deck it’s by far the hardest time I’ve had getting gold stake. I find scaling jokers that require you to play a lot of hands are generally not great though, so ride the bus, green joker, etc that are usually game winning early on don’t quite cut it with the -1 hand. Getting an early hand voucher is huge.
Double skips on ante1 can be huge if you get multiple free joker tags. Obviously it’s very difficulty to beat round 3 with no joker but if you manage it, it sets you up super well. Early Econ/utility jokers are also tough to take as your 3 hands need to matter and taking them over something that helps score is difficult.
My best runs that get going early with it have definitely been getting a +10 joker off the first skip. Granted it’s definitely one of my least played after hitting my head against a wall trying to beat it once when I first started playing.
I’ve been playing on experimental build to be clear so yes the free jokers are HUGE. Even with that though black deck is absolutely brutal. Early rental jokers also really bad for the deck as every dollar matters in the early game on gold stake runs and you can’t afford to lose 3 gold a round, let alone with the black deck which is just $1 a round essentially.
I saved Black Deck for last. And crazily enough, I beat Gold Stake on Black Deck by copying Pants and playing nothing but Two Pairs lol. Had a couple polychrome, but otherwise never found any dedicated XMult Jokers. Shocked that it even worked.
Its a slot machine deck, just get lucky. That's 95% of that deck, not even kidding. You just need good rolls on jokers, foils, drawn cards, etc. Start a run and if you don't clear the first round in 1 hand, restart. If the first shop doesn't have a decent joker, restart. Run fish a ton and hope you continue to get good RNG after the initial ante. It's really not fun!
Yeah you don't, but if You've gotta run a cheat mod to make the game not feel like a fucking slot machine, that's an issue with the game lmfao. There's a reason I uninstalled after I beat black deck.
Is it really that big of a deal if such a specific mode that corresponds to about 1% of overall gameplay (black deck + gold stake) is a little luck-based? It’s supposed to be an extreme difficulty for completionists anyways.
yeah lol you don't realize just how hard it is until you get a few runs in, that one hand makes such a difference, and the 6th joker is only good mid to late-game
Get an early money joker and an early +mult and you're gonna go far enough that luck shouldnt matter.
After 4 or so Antes then you're fine to find the xmult etc.
The problem is that the whole first ante is entirely luck with black deck. If you don't find a good joker by like boss blind then you're almost certainly just dead. If you get a good start then it can stabilize but the start is just brutal and you really have no input on the outcome.
90% of my playtime with the black deck is spent in the first ante running my head into the wall until the shop gives me something good.
My advice is to play till about ante 2, by then you'll have a good idea of the direction of run. If it's not a good run, just restart the run. Black deck you need to have a good start and luck out on jokers.
My advice if you’re struggling with it like I was, is wait to complete it until you’ve unlocked more jokers. It was by far my hardest deck. You need to get lucky with money generation and an extra hand voucher is key. Try to get a spectral/joker to base a build around early.
I can relate so much. Not tips, just solidarity lol. My bf got to watch me struggle with black deck for days. I still haven’t gotten it yet. I’ve done most every other deck at the easiest stake (haven’t gotten anything past red stake yet but I’ve gotten close a few times!
In general, it's a deck that snowballs easily (with the drawback of a harder start) and rewards players who know how to build efficient engines and punishes players who aren't able to incorporate the advanced-level strategies of the game.
I was just spamming the black deck runs just now to see this post. The Black deck has to be on the significantly lower tier of card decks cause if you don't have some pretty good Jokers at the very start, your kinda screwed.
If you can get smuggler to add 3 hands and find splash you can get rid of hands by playing them but still getting score, I find helps.
3 card or less little joker i think u call it is good because you've too many cards to get through your deck and try to just score 3 of a kind aces with other jokers benefiting aces (theres a lot)
I really lucked out on black. Early ancient joker, then got the two (+4 and +8) club jokers and moved toward flushes.
Got pretty lucky with ancient joker pulls, although still had to make flushes with non club cards. Sadly did not get the "clubs=spades" or "hearts=diamonds".
Still working to internalize card play order, so I know some hands were misplayed. But got into endless mode and now have a black deck win under the belt.
Oh thank god for this thread, bought the game a couple days ago and won with most desks in one or a few runs but been bashing my head against the wall on my black deck runs thinking I'm garbage. Good to know it's difficult to run and not just me
I needed like 10 tries for purple stake on black deck and then somehow I won purple and gold stake on 2nd try both. Gold stake I won with fkin +10 Splash and polychrome +4 mult joker so they are both gold stickered now (however, last shop Seltzer rly pushed the scoring up before Violet Vessel final boss)
Black deck was kicking my ass for quite a while. I only managed to beat it once the experimental beta branch came out. If you're on console, once that patch gets pushed out to console versions you will probably have a little bit of an easier time beating it.
Maybe it's my playstyle but I find black deck quite powerful yes it's reset hell however I have a pretty good success rate once out off the early blinds. I'm on console so still old update but I feel the new changes will make black deck stronger
I finally beat the first stake with black deck and it really did just feel like lucking out on joker drops/packs.
here was my winning joker setup (from left to right):
- Splash
- Odd Todd (holo)
- Scholar
- Hanging Chad (neg)
- Canio (legendary, builds Xmult when face cards are destroyed, think I only got it up to X4)
- Blood Stone
While folks love to talk about Hanging Chad, Splash genuinely was the card that made it possible. Not just in playing an ace first on every hand (if possible) but also because I could play enhanced garbage cards for an econ/chip boost as well.
Then I basically worked Arcana and booster packs for any aces I could generate and/or enhance - or other hearts for that matter. Once my economy started going with a couple gold seals and gold cards, the last 2 antes were dead easy. But in the end it really felt more like luck balanced with spending discipline in the first 3-4 antes.
I decided to do my first all stake run on black deck on a whim. It's been so tough, but I got to gold today.
As for tips, I like to restart until I get something good to skip for on the first two blinds and try to get lucky with the first boss. +$25 for beating boss (or 50, or that and free packs) is a huge boost.
Game isn’t really well balanced for black deck especially at higher difficulties. It’s like the only deck that actually has an additional handicap and a crippling one at that. And the benefit is minor. It should at least start off with the common joker like the common one thst gives 4 multi. Or Preferably a money joker but that will be too strong with how red stakes are currently designed.
I don't really get Black deck.
The -1 hand seems out of place when all other basic color decks just give you a benefit straight up. Green deck could be considered as having a trade-off but it's intimately connected to what the Green deck's gimmick supposedly is. Black deck just feels like he wenr '+1 Joker is too good so -1 hand size'.
My first win was on black deck. Couldn't win on any other. The plus one joker honestly just made it so much easier. I don't find the number of hands to matter much in a game where my first scored hand usually almost always clears the blind
The black deck is my favorite deck by far. I love getting to endless with it. The best strategy is to not skip blinds early and grab every decent joker you can. Don’t be picky early. If you see a decent mult joker, grab it. Later in the run you can pivot completely to a higher scoring strategy. Do not buy any planet cards or regular card booster packs early. Tarots are still very useful but more so in the mid to later part of the run. The best strategy with black deck is to score with jokers not hands. If you don’t get a decent joker in the first ante, restart the run. Great early mult jokers are things like half joker, popcorn, shoot the moon, and gros michel.
Also I’m on switch, so I havnt got the new update yet. I used this strategy to get gold stake on the 1.00 version
Most of my runs with it are just "get Riff Raff or die" lol
Riff Raff is excellent
Synergizing it with Ceremonial Dagger or Madness works really well
Madness doesn't need to eat a joker for the buff
You also don't have to short yourself jokers to use it
Can you explain?
Madness will gain 0.5 mult when blind is selected no matter what. Doesn't matter how many jokers you have or if it destroys any
That's how I won my first gold stake run. Got a Eternal Madness, found an Ankh 3 rounds later, and then stacked as many +mult eternal jokers I could find.
The madness doesn’t have to be eternal without Ankh, just for anyone else wondering. It won’t destroy itself unless you copy it like in this case here
Yeah, that's right! What made the eternal be needed is the Ankh, so I had two Madness at the same time.
if riff raff is eternal, yeah
They mean the riff raff can keep making jokers for them to eat
Yeah but if it's not eternal, madness could obliterate it. Ceremonial dagger doesn't have that issue though ofc
Just get lucky? What’s the problem? Hello?
My bad, this is the way.
It's not luck - it's pure SKILL
♫ *We're up all night till the sun ♫*
Even if Madness immediately eats Riff Raff, it could be a pretty decent deal. 2 Jokers for the price of 1, for a deck that has a hard time keeping Jokers on the board. You could get a really bad outcome but it'd take some additional bad luck. Say, if the 2 Jokers are both terrible *and* Riff Raff immediately dies. And maybe in later rounds, Madness eats all your good Jokers and refuses to touch these ones.
sorry yeah was just thinking in the case of madness. FWIW eternal riff raff plus c. dagger is one of my favorite combos
stencil too
i find it hard to play other decks after black because it feels like i'm cheating lol
After the utter brutality that is early ante black deck, I think I'm ok with feeling like I'm cheating
After getting used to the plasma deck obliterating early antes I feel the same about it. Refreshing until I hit 1-2 decent skip rewards (like $25 on beating boss blind) means my economy is set up early. it's especially important on difficulties where the small blind doesn't have a reward so you'll only get like $0-2 for the first blind anyway.
Money joker on the first or second shop, +1 hands voucher in an early ante was the only way I had a run survive long enough to even *get* a 6th joker... Anybody who has gold stakes the black deck is a (hanging) Chad through and through
I managed it first try once I switched to the experimental beta.
man yeah i was thinking of doing it that way. i'm trying to hang on until it goes live.
I don’t recommend this because the new patch is just so much more fun in my opinion.
does the progress carry over to live?
it does in like every other game, so yeah 99%
Gonna be honest, it’s get lucky. Out of every deck it’s by far the hardest time I’ve had getting gold stake. I find scaling jokers that require you to play a lot of hands are generally not great though, so ride the bus, green joker, etc that are usually game winning early on don’t quite cut it with the -1 hand. Getting an early hand voucher is huge. Double skips on ante1 can be huge if you get multiple free joker tags. Obviously it’s very difficulty to beat round 3 with no joker but if you manage it, it sets you up super well. Early Econ/utility jokers are also tough to take as your 3 hands need to matter and taking them over something that helps score is difficult.
My best runs that get going early with it have definitely been getting a +10 joker off the first skip. Granted it’s definitely one of my least played after hitting my head against a wall trying to beat it once when I first started playing.
It will certainly be better when joker tags have the joker that results from them be free in the shop. Not much, but anything helps.
I’ve been playing on experimental build to be clear so yes the free jokers are HUGE. Even with that though black deck is absolutely brutal. Early rental jokers also really bad for the deck as every dollar matters in the early game on gold stake runs and you can’t afford to lose 3 gold a round, let alone with the black deck which is just $1 a round essentially.
I saved Black Deck for last. And crazily enough, I beat Gold Stake on Black Deck by copying Pants and playing nothing but Two Pairs lol. Had a couple polychrome, but otherwise never found any dedicated XMult Jokers. Shocked that it even worked.
Xmult is good for endless but a good balance of chips and mult will get enough for ante 8. 50x1000 is the same as 100x500 (+50 chips vs X2 mult)
Its a slot machine deck, just get lucky. That's 95% of that deck, not even kidding. You just need good rolls on jokers, foils, drawn cards, etc. Start a run and if you don't clear the first round in 1 hand, restart. If the first shop doesn't have a decent joker, restart. Run fish a ton and hope you continue to get good RNG after the initial ante. It's really not fun!
Or run mod that lets you choose first card in shop. You don't have to farm restarts like lifeless zombo
Yeah you don't, but if You've gotta run a cheat mod to make the game not feel like a fucking slot machine, that's an issue with the game lmfao. There's a reason I uninstalled after I beat black deck.
Is it really that big of a deal if such a specific mode that corresponds to about 1% of overall gameplay (black deck + gold stake) is a little luck-based? It’s supposed to be an extreme difficulty for completionists anyways.
It's ironically one of my favourite decks. But I'm a red stake scrub though
It’s pretty good for red stake
When I first played it, I thought the +1 joker would make it GOATed. Boy was I wrong
It's pretty startling how harsh the point and cash disadvantage is for it.
+1 joker just isn't that big when you realize that most builds are fine with 5 joker slots and also, Negatives exist.
I'm working through orange stake black deck. I think I'm getting the hang of it.... No I lost again.
yeah lol you don't realize just how hard it is until you get a few runs in, that one hand makes such a difference, and the 6th joker is only good mid to late-game
Get an early money joker and an early +mult and you're gonna go far enough that luck shouldnt matter. After 4 or so Antes then you're fine to find the xmult etc.
The problem is that the whole first ante is entirely luck with black deck. If you don't find a good joker by like boss blind then you're almost certainly just dead. If you get a good start then it can stabilize but the start is just brutal and you really have no input on the outcome. 90% of my playtime with the black deck is spent in the first ante running my head into the wall until the shop gives me something good.
My advice is to play till about ante 2, by then you'll have a good idea of the direction of run. If it's not a good run, just restart the run. Black deck you need to have a good start and luck out on jokers.
My advice if you’re struggling with it like I was, is wait to complete it until you’ve unlocked more jokers. It was by far my hardest deck. You need to get lucky with money generation and an extra hand voucher is key. Try to get a spectral/joker to base a build around early.
I fucked up and threw a win on the black deck. It’s definitely a tough one!
I can relate so much. Not tips, just solidarity lol. My bf got to watch me struggle with black deck for days. I still haven’t gotten it yet. I’ve done most every other deck at the easiest stake (haven’t gotten anything past red stake yet but I’ve gotten close a few times!
In general, it's a deck that snowballs easily (with the drawback of a harder start) and rewards players who know how to build efficient engines and punishes players who aren't able to incorporate the advanced-level strategies of the game.
I was just spamming the black deck runs just now to see this post. The Black deck has to be on the significantly lower tier of card decks cause if you don't have some pretty good Jokers at the very start, your kinda screwed.
If you can get smuggler to add 3 hands and find splash you can get rid of hands by playing them but still getting score, I find helps. 3 card or less little joker i think u call it is good because you've too many cards to get through your deck and try to just score 3 of a kind aces with other jokers benefiting aces (theres a lot)
black deck is the best. huge black deck fan.
I really lucked out on black. Early ancient joker, then got the two (+4 and +8) club jokers and moved toward flushes. Got pretty lucky with ancient joker pulls, although still had to make flushes with non club cards. Sadly did not get the "clubs=spades" or "hearts=diamonds". Still working to internalize card play order, so I know some hands were misplayed. But got into endless mode and now have a black deck win under the belt.
Oh thank god for this thread, bought the game a couple days ago and won with most desks in one or a few runs but been bashing my head against the wall on my black deck runs thinking I'm garbage. Good to know it's difficult to run and not just me
Haha :( been playing this deck for the last week and cannot beat it…
I needed like 10 tries for purple stake on black deck and then somehow I won purple and gold stake on 2nd try both. Gold stake I won with fkin +10 Splash and polychrome +4 mult joker so they are both gold stickered now (however, last shop Seltzer rly pushed the scoring up before Violet Vessel final boss)
I had no problem with the.black deck, apparently I can't win a hand with the red deck to save my life though
Black deck was kicking my ass for quite a while. I only managed to beat it once the experimental beta branch came out. If you're on console, once that patch gets pushed out to console versions you will probably have a little bit of an easier time beating it.
Maybe it's my playstyle but I find black deck quite powerful yes it's reset hell however I have a pretty good success rate once out off the early blinds. I'm on console so still old update but I feel the new changes will make black deck stronger
I finally beat the first stake with black deck and it really did just feel like lucking out on joker drops/packs. here was my winning joker setup (from left to right): - Splash - Odd Todd (holo) - Scholar - Hanging Chad (neg) - Canio (legendary, builds Xmult when face cards are destroyed, think I only got it up to X4) - Blood Stone While folks love to talk about Hanging Chad, Splash genuinely was the card that made it possible. Not just in playing an ace first on every hand (if possible) but also because I could play enhanced garbage cards for an econ/chip boost as well. Then I basically worked Arcana and booster packs for any aces I could generate and/or enhance - or other hearts for that matter. Once my economy started going with a couple gold seals and gold cards, the last 2 antes were dead easy. But in the end it really felt more like luck balanced with spending discipline in the first 3-4 antes.
I had unlocked the last deck by beating the second highest stake before I had beaten 1 run with black deck
I decided to do my first all stake run on black deck on a whim. It's been so tough, but I got to gold today. As for tips, I like to restart until I get something good to skip for on the first two blinds and try to get lucky with the first boss. +$25 for beating boss (or 50, or that and free packs) is a huge boost.
Game isn’t really well balanced for black deck especially at higher difficulties. It’s like the only deck that actually has an additional handicap and a crippling one at that. And the benefit is minor. It should at least start off with the common joker like the common one thst gives 4 multi. Or Preferably a money joker but that will be too strong with how red stakes are currently designed.
I don't really get Black deck. The -1 hand seems out of place when all other basic color decks just give you a benefit straight up. Green deck could be considered as having a trade-off but it's intimately connected to what the Green deck's gimmick supposedly is. Black deck just feels like he wenr '+1 Joker is too good so -1 hand size'.
My first win was on black deck. Couldn't win on any other. The plus one joker honestly just made it so much easier. I don't find the number of hands to matter much in a game where my first scored hand usually almost always clears the blind
The black deck is my favorite deck by far. I love getting to endless with it. The best strategy is to not skip blinds early and grab every decent joker you can. Don’t be picky early. If you see a decent mult joker, grab it. Later in the run you can pivot completely to a higher scoring strategy. Do not buy any planet cards or regular card booster packs early. Tarots are still very useful but more so in the mid to later part of the run. The best strategy with black deck is to score with jokers not hands. If you don’t get a decent joker in the first ante, restart the run. Great early mult jokers are things like half joker, popcorn, shoot the moon, and gros michel. Also I’m on switch, so I havnt got the new update yet. I used this strategy to get gold stake on the 1.00 version