Completed my first red stakes run in balatro. Figured I may as well get the hardest deck out of the way so I did it with black deck
If anyone attempts this, if you don't get a good tag on the first blind, you may as well restart the run. There's absolutely no point in playing the first blind at all as you won't earn any money and 4 bucks isn't enough to do all that much in the first shop so skipping is your best bet to get some sort of advantage so you want a great first tag. I was fortunate enough to get 2 really good tags right off the bat, one that gave me 25 bucks after defeating the first boss and another that gave me a free polychrome joker. Thankfully the joker that got polychromed was decent and I was able to build around it. With my money situation being decent, I was able to buy some more jokers and vouchers to help me along. I ended up going for a pairs build as one of the jokers I got added a stone card every blind and those just give you 50 chips per card and are always scored (though they don't contribute to the hand themselves). Probably the highlight of the run was when I was facing the boss blind that draws your initial hand face down. I discarded 5 of the cards and saw I had a pair so I decided to play that plus 3 facedowns just to get rid of them, little did I know I had inadvertently played a full house! Wasn't planned at all but I was very much happy for it! After another few antes, it became clear that the final boss blind was going to be an issue if something didn't give so I desperately brought buffoon packs and rerolled in hopes of getting a strong joker. Thankfully on the final ante I was able to get driver's license which gave me the boost I desperately needed. The final boss blind was verdant leaf which given by that point I was done with the joker that generates stone cards I sold that and beat the run. It was certainly a nail biter towards the end but overall I am very happy with how things turned out
Now to beat red stakes with all the other decks
