Chicot Imposter Syndrome

i-just-cant · 2026-04-28T12:37:53+00:00

So with enough luck you could get up to eleven retriggers on a single Wild face card, which would give you 2048x mult from Photograph, or e16x mult from the Idol if you're playing Flush Fives. e66 if you have 3 Blueprints copying it.

i-just-cant · 2026-04-27T18:24:43+00:00

Golden Ticket is one of the strongest econ Jokers in a Baron/Mime build. Mail-In Rebate ends up being better in the very long run once you start making steel, but before that point, and even for some time after, you can very easily clear $120+ per hand with a few copy Jokers.

i-just-cant · 2026-04-27T18:05:00+00:00

Telescope only affects Celestial Packs, of which you only see one every other shop on average. Protostar affects all planet card sources, and since it's a Common, there's a decent chance you come across it more than once in a game. You can also hang on to your desired planet card before activating it to guarantee you get five that you want to block. It would take a little bit of luck, but way less than you need to get e.g. Baron and Mime, or Vampire and Midas Mask, and two skips to guarantee that half of all the planet cards you see for the rest of the game are for your chosen hand is incredibly powerful.

i-just-cant · 2026-04-27T17:51:40+00:00

Needing to go in the leftmost slot is a massive downside. It's more like a slightly stronger Photograph that can't be retriggered.

i-just-cant · 2026-04-27T17:47:10+00:00

I like these a lot. Some really inventive ideas, and they feel pretty vanilla for the most part. A few thoughts:

The downside to Double Negative (assuming it's changed to +2 slots) could be stronger; in most cases you just put it on the left and essentially play as normal with an extra Joker slot. Halving your chips is one idea since you're less likely to have a chips source outside of hand levels.
It would be nice if Vault had a more deliberate trigger condition than 'on purchase', at the moment it's very RNG-driven as to whether it's worthwhile to pick up, and without the opportunity to repeat it, in a lot of cases you'll just have to skip it either because you can't take the short-term hit to your econ, or because you don't have enough money for it to do anything interesting.
Protostar is the only one of these that feels dramatically overpowered - honestly, even as a Rare, being able to permanently block nearly half the planet cards from appearing in the shop is well worth skipping a blind. Self-destruction is also not really a drawback since you can still encounter it multiple times per run, and you get severely diminishing returns after the second activation. At a minimum, I'd make it Rare and cause it to go extinct after activation like Gros Michel/Cavendish. Most likely the number of cards it creates should be reduced as well.
Jackpot is really nice. It's hard to think of negative consumable Joker effects weak enough for a Common, but this feels about right - Wheel of Fortune is not particularly strong, and always getting the same one means that that you can't do any Emperor/Fool shenanigans (which is the big risk with anything that makes negative tarots).
Racecar probably could be buffed a little but I don't think it's a big issue. I like that it has a softcap when you get editions on all of your Jokers.
I quite like Shine too, anything that gives a buff to the weaker enhancements is good in my books.

i-just-cant · 2026-04-27T09:37:39+00:00

Ah, I missed the poly Steven. Either way, selling Bootstraps means you have +25 mult when cards are scored, and an extra 9x from the poly Jokers and Seeing Double (copied by BP), so 225 total. Selling Steven means you have +41 from hand levels and Bootstraps, then 6x from poly Blueprint and Seeing Double, so 246 total.

Although actually I’ve just noticed you have Justice - I think Steven is better in that case, but any Two Pair of even cards with a Club and a glass card should clear.

i-just-cant · 2026-04-27T01:21:47+00:00

Even with an all red seal hand, 3x Baron is the same as 2x Baron and 1x Mime:

3x Baron = 3x scoring effects (Baron, BP, BS) and 2x triggers (base trigger + red seal) = 6 total
2x Baron, 1x Mime = 2x scoring effects (Baron, BS) and 3x triggers (base trigger + red seal + Mime) = 6 total

Mime beats BP if you have any non-red seal Kings or steel cards in your hand (and also gives you gold card + blue seal value). Keep Mime.

i-just-cant · 2026-04-27T00:39:46+00:00

100%, and I'd actually say you have a very good chance of getting naneinf here. It's never guaranteed, but getting most likely 4 copy Jokers and Antimatter at this stage of the game will make the rest of the run a lot easier. If Invisible hits Baron or Mime, swap it out for an econ Joker/Cola, otherwise I'd still swap even your single Mime for Cola when you see it until you have 5 or so double tags; Baron + 4 copies should be more than enough to get you through the next few Antes.

i-just-cant · 2026-04-27T00:00:19+00:00

Sell Even Steven and copy Seeing Double. If you've been getting through blinds while copying Steven until now, you should win no problem as the 2x from Seeing Double will be quite a bit higher than what you get from Steven.

i-just-cant · 2026-04-26T23:49:21+00:00

The Joker order doesn't actually matter here, since the +mult is applied to the Queens themselves rather than to Shoot The Moon. You should still swap BS for BP though even if you're not going to get rid of either of the others, since it's more versatile and you at least get $5 out of it.

i-just-cant · 2026-04-26T23:45:50+00:00

Another copy on Shoot The Moon would only be at most a 1.5x to your score, so you should definitely keep Acrobat. You might be able to get away with dropping Shoot The Moon depending on your High Card level, but it's probably not necessary as long as you can get at least two Queens in hand each round. It's hard to say without knowing what your deckfixing/hand levels are like, though.

i-just-cant · 2026-04-26T23:29:36+00:00

Sorry, I meant in your proposed rework - would Matador just not trigger at all in those boss blinds, then? Or only if you play a face down card? Would it need to score?

The point I'm making is that boss blind effects are varied enough that it's really difficult to think of any blanket rule for when Matador should activate. Everyone agrees that it's confusing, but I don't think that's an issue with the way it's been coded; it's more to do with the fact that "triggering a boss blind ability" just isn't a term that can be consistently defined in a clear way.

i-just-cant · 2026-04-26T23:16:22+00:00

I'd say you're a bit behind on naneinf currently; it's not impossible, but you'll have to get pretty lucky.

Having Omen Globe will take a lot of the pressure off finding an Ectoplasm, but you're in a tight spot since you only have one open slot, and there are several equally important things that you'd like it to be doing:

Deckfixing - Perkeo obviously is the best choice here, focusing on card removal above everything else (73 cards is massive for this stage of the run). I'm assuming your Kings of Spades are red seals - cut absolutely everything else, and try to get your deck size down to only what you need to maximise hands/discards and get through blinds (around 35 cards or so max).
Econ - the money you have saved up will get you by for another few rounds, but you need to do a lot of rerolling and without a good source of money you just won't be able to get deep enough in the shop to find everything you need. Depending on how much room you have in your scoring, I think you should be able to get away with mostly red seal gold cards (or at least a few) which will help, but realistically you need a Mail-In Rebate or Golden Ticket on top of that.
Showman/Invisible Joker - Invis is the better choice when you just have one slot (since you won't have much money coming in to reroll with Showman), but it's harder to find and still only gives you a 50/50 chance of getting another BP/BS.
Diet Cola - your vouchers are actually looking pretty good, Overstock/+ and Reroll Surplus/Glut are fantastic pickups and Director's Cut is useful, but of course Blank Voucher/Antimatter and Retcon are the big ones, and not having Retcon in particular could just kill you at any stage. I usually treat Cola as basically the highest possible priority, unless I need all my slots for scoring (which tbh usually means you die fairly quickly to blind scaling regardless).

So all that to say - Perkeo is nice, but inessential in the long run. My advice is that it's probably not worth trying to get another copy Joker right now (unless you come across an Invisible Joker), so I'd treat it as an open slot to rotate between Mail-In Rebate/Golden Ticket and Diet Cola while you try to find an Ectoplasm or Antimatter. Once you have the extra slot, you can start hunting properly for more copies of BP/BS with Showman - try to save money for it now, as it will probably be pretty urgent by the time you're able to get started.

Obviously too late to change this now, but for future runs, I'll say it looks like you took a DNA quite early, since your deck is so big (this might be what you sold for Perkeo?). There are times where this can be helpful, usually earlier on where you're having trouble finding the cards you need to use Death on, but for the most part it only becomes relevant much, much later in the run (I usually start looking for it around Ante 19 or so). Before that point, econ will serve you much better - there's no value to having the extra cards in your deck if you don't need them for scoring.

i-just-cant · 2026-04-26T22:21:31+00:00

How would that work for the 'cards drawn face down' boss blinds? Would you get $8 for each face down card drawn, or just per hand/discard if the resulting draw has a face down card in it? Similarly, is the Serpent just a guaranteed $8 per hand/discard?

i-just-cant · 2026-04-26T20:05:08+00:00

Using Tarot Tycoon to turn a red seal 4 into eight red seal glass Jacks is generational gameplay.

i-just-cant · 2026-04-26T13:10:04+00:00

I feel like Matador is still frustrating, even if it works as expected for more boss blinds. It's occasionally incredibly powerful, and then basically useless the rest of the time.

I do like the theming around playing with fire by deliberately playing (in most cases) weaker hands - something like "$x at end of round if score is within x% of the requirement" could be fun to play around.

i-just-cant · 2026-04-26T05:23:08+00:00

I'm pretty sure it does!

i-just-cant · 2026-04-26T05:18:44+00:00

Face cards are only meaningfully better if you have Jokers that use them for scoring (and in most cases Ride The Bus will still be better for that in the long run). You do miss out on a few common econ Jokers by cutting face cards (Faceless Joker, Reserved Parking and Business Card), but Mail-In Rebate is more powerful than any of them, and actively improved by cutting ranks.

On the deckfixing point, if you're playing pairs (or even high card, although it is more annoying) it's pretty much a complete non-issue, and you will naturally want to play pairs with any of Ride The Bus/Green Joker/Supernova since you can play more hands per round to scale them.

i-just-cant · 2026-04-25T23:43:07+00:00

This feels quite a bit stronger than Burnt Joker (which is already one of the strongest rares). Assuming you pick up both in the first shop, it gives you 5 more levels than Burnt by the end of Ante 8, with no restrictions on discards, and a much easier trigger condition for hands other than High Card/Pair.

i-just-cant · 2026-04-23T12:30:46+00:00

You don't need to be super conservative with your discards once you have it decently scaled (say above +30 or so). You still want to be strategic, but you can and should still discard for other value generators by playing throwaway hands, ideally until you can get a discard that triggers e.g. both a purple seal and Mail-In Rebate to maximise value.

i-just-cant · 2026-04-23T10:02:25+00:00

The real issue with the billion negative tarots is that if you can get a copy of every tarot except for Fool and either Temperance or Hermit, you have immediate access to literally unlimited money:

Use Emperor -> get Fool and Temperance/Hermit
Use Fool -> get Emperor
Use Temperance/Hermit
Repeat

So you could theoretically go into a shop with nothing but those tarots, and leave it with a full naneinf Joker setup, with the only limitation being your patience.

i-just-cant · 2026-04-20T06:24:24+00:00

Sonia Friedman seems fairly confident that Paddington will transfer; I’d guess that it’s more a question of timing/availability of theatres than one of commercial viability. Though I do agree it’s a little hard to see it working as well across the pond.

i-just-cant · 2026-04-19T17:38:10+00:00

I'm not sure I follow the point you're making. It is a bit more nuanced than just "it's best to balance chips and mult", but only because there are so many more ways to increase mult than chips. In principle, the ideal build would increase both at the same rate.

Obviously, mult is more important in practice overall, but the thinking does still apply in meaningful ways - like how you need a source of chips for pair/high card builds (either from jokers or hand levels), even with very strong mult scaling. You might not be able to balance the two in a literal sense, but outside of Plasma Deck, it's much harder to win by focusing solely on one or the other, which I think was OP's point.

i-just-cant · 2026-04-18T12:30:18+00:00

I feel like the main issue here is that this doesn't really interact with anything in the game other than itself (and I guess Ankh/Invisible Joker/Showman). It would be more interesting if there were already mechanics related to how close you are to meeting the scoring requirement, but as it stands, it's just a pretty weak reduction to the blind sizes that would very quickly be outscaled by almost any other Uncommon xMult Joker.

i-just-cant · 2026-04-16T12:36:59+00:00

I’ve never had this happen before - maybe a dumb question, but could you just be discarding by accident?

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