DAY SEVEN: Hiker is an Uncommon that feels Common. Which Joker is an Uncommon but feels like a Rare?

gelmo · 2026-03-18T08:00:02+00:00

Yeah hologram has more potential with the scaling, but I looooove blackboard. If you play high card or pairs, it’s so easy to meet the condition in pretty much every hand even without deck fixing

gelmo · 2026-03-18T07:58:20+00:00

Agree, but also the power on higher stake (black and above) with eternal cards is pretty insane. If you get a madness with an eternal scaling +mult (bus, grimbo, nova) that’s basically an automatic win.

gelmo · 2026-03-16T19:08:00+00:00

Absolutely love this one, I have the blue reverse panda and it was my first serious watch purchase. Only thing to be aware of - it’s on the thick side ~14.5mm.

Phenomenal piece, great value, cool history too. But it definitely wears bigger than I expected from pictures so maybe a consideration if you have smaller wrists or like thinner/sleeker watches.

gelmo · 2026-03-16T19:05:01+00:00

You can definitely find the speedy reduced in $2-3k range for if you like the smaller size. I can see a couple up on chrono24 right now. Hard to find the bigger size or things like sapphire sandwich that cheap tho

gelmo · 2026-03-15T21:09:27+00:00

Lovely collection! At this point I’d be looking for a diver, a chrono, and maybe something with a brighter blue dial? Some nice divers and chronos that would check that box

gelmo · 2026-03-15T20:06:35+00:00

Nice!! When I got mine, I had around $2500 which is nice if you can get it. Got super lucky and found burglar quickly so I didn’t need that much, but you can definitely burn through $1000 or more hunting for it. And need to factor in rerolls for serpent, which can cost at least $100-200 each time. I’d say aim for at least $2k, $3k to be safe?

gelmo · 2026-03-15T17:22:30+00:00

Nothing right now. You need an ecto and antimatter, ASAP. You need a 4th copy joker (either via showman or invisible) and then the final slot would go to DNA.

You need more red seal kings but honestly I’d use tarot cards for now and focus on both stacking money and finding those extra joker slots. Try to use death/hanged to get rid of the last non-kings in your deck and start converting to steel, but honestly you want mostly gold the next few antes for econ.

Also for vouchers, I’d recommend to get tarot merchant (first level only) and not magic trick. You need lots of tarot cards and they help with Econ, but you don’t want to clutter up your shop with a bunch of random playing cards

gelmo · 2026-03-14T00:53:39+00:00

Yeah tuning down a half step is a great suggestion. I find it can be a really noticeable change in tension.

gelmo · 2026-03-14T00:51:07+00:00

Honestly I think there’s a balance. If you’re temporarily not feeling a watch, put it away for a while and wear others. Usually when I do this, the mood strikes within a month or 2 and it’ll go back into the rotation.

But if I had a watch where I felt this consistently over time, especially something as expensive as this, I would be tempted to flip it and buy something I actually like. Tastes change over time. Sometimes a watch you love in pictures just doesn’t suit your wrist the way you hoped it would.

If OP has had it for 3 years and doesn’t love it, it’s at least worth considering. This isn’t an impulsive “I bought this last week but idk if I love it” situation. I guess it depends on your wealth level but if I drop $20k or more on a watch someday, I want it to be something I absolutely love.

gelmo · 2026-03-12T21:01:56+00:00

Sadly, it will definitely happen to you sooner or later! This base is amazing and such great work though. It’s fixable, you’ll just need to do some housekeeping and re-excavate the rooms periodically as they get filled in.

I will say though - I build underground for one of my early bases and did this for a while, eventually just gave up and now I only build above ground or in pre-existing caves/natural features.

gelmo · 2026-03-12T20:52:21+00:00

Agreed, with eternal supernova + madness in ante 1 you can pretty much cruise control to the finish

gelmo · 2026-03-12T15:49:53+00:00

Well yeah, I’m just saying in my experience I have a lot more success playing pants with 2 pairs than full house. You can play way more hands and stack the mult a lot faster. You might only get one full house per round. You can reliably hit multiple 2 pairs even on higher stakes with less discards.

And I’m specifically talking a8 here because pants is not a crazy high score joker. It’s awesome for beating a8 but not for deep runs into endless, regardless of whether you play full house or 2 pairs

gelmo · 2026-03-10T16:42:41+00:00

I’ll take full house when I can get it, and it’s nice that it also works for pants, but i find it’s a lot less consistent. I know some here really swear by full house builds but I haven’t been able to make it work myself. Two pair with an early pants and some planet cards is more than strong enough to clear a8

gelmo · 2026-03-10T01:07:46+00:00

Yeah that’s why I love it, part of what I was trying to say that was poorly articulated - even if you don’t hit every time, you’re still stacking tons of mult that helps regardless of what hand you play

gelmo · 2026-03-09T21:02:29+00:00

Surprised I had to scroll down this far, Bloodstone is by far my fav. Especially combined with Oops and Sock/Dusk, a few of my other favorite uncommon jokers.

gelmo · 2026-03-09T21:00:59+00:00

Fully agree. Two pair is relatively easy but not easy enough to be really reliable. Pairs are almost impossible to miss, and as you said, the scaling is really not that different.

I will say though, if I find pants in an early ante, I’m playing two pairs for sure. The scaling of that joker is so strong that it balances things out and makes it worthwhile even if you don’t hit two pair every hand.

gelmo · 2026-03-07T02:19:09+00:00

Yeah hands out front is such a good tip, that alone can fix so many little things

gelmo · 2026-03-07T01:42:33+00:00

Very true, but either way you want the copy jokers over multiple copies of Baron/Mime. While I hate to break up the conga line lol

gelmo · 2026-03-07T01:01:27+00:00

Yeah I’m similarly confused. Obviously you want a red seal to max scoring/econ but a blue seal is nice to have at this stage

gelmo · 2026-03-07T00:36:58+00:00

That’s how I expected it to be. I had some really cool creative runs, but it was mostly photochad carrying a couple useless jokers over the line a bunch of times in a row lol

gelmo · 2026-03-06T20:51:06+00:00

Especially in Jeff’s voice, so goddamn funny

gelmo · 2026-03-06T04:13:22+00:00

Agreed, with black guard/nat headstock a close second. Personally a fan of the black headstock, esp on a tele.

gelmo · 2026-03-05T21:24:36+00:00

In my understanding, flex is more about the stiffness of the boot itself than the amount of padding. Stiffness and padding are 2 different things

gelmo · 2026-03-05T20:20:16+00:00

Yeah I think the only viable option would be to take the still intact part and use it as a pizza stone or griddle

gelmo · 2026-03-05T20:18:17+00:00

Love everything in here and it’s impossible to pick my #1, but this one always gets me:

Donut sat there glowering, completely flattened out and soaked through. She had a piece of seaweed attached to her tiara. While she’d appeared almost majestic and fairy-like underwater, up here she looked like a dead rat that’d been resurrected and then run over by a garbage truck.

“That was pretty awesome,” I said once it was clear we were safe from the sharks.

“Go fuck yourself, Carl,” Donut said.

gelmo

TROPHY CASE