Maverick didn’t understand the use of Stone Cards when he started out. He does now, but still feels the game does a pretty bad job of explaining it.
How Stone Cards Work
Stone Cards don’t have a rank and a suit, but they score 50 chips whenever played. The game also states as much, but is pretty vague about how you can use these cards to your advantage.
The main advantage of Stone Cards is that they always score when played. Even if they are not part of your scoring hand.
That means Stone Cards boost the score for the following hands:
- High Cards
- One Pair
- Two Pair
- Three of a Kind
- Four of a Kind
How Good Are Stone Cards?
There is nothing wrong with incorporating some Stone Cards in a Two Pair/Spare Trousers Deck, but it requires some balance for so-so gains. The more Stone Cards you have in this type of deck, the less consistent you’ll pull off Two Pair. The boost you’ll get is also not as high as it could be, since you can only use one Stone Card per hand.
For this reason, Stone Cards work best with decks focusing on High Card and One Pair. These can focus on stacking as many Stone Cards as possible in their deck. They can also boost their score with 3 or even 4 Stone Cards per hand.
A lot of new players start out focusing mainly on Flushes. This is not necessarily bad, but one of the best ways to get better in Balatro (and Roguelites in general) is to be flexible. Depending on what the shop offers during a specific run, you’ll want to adjust your deck accordingly.
One way to adjust is to consider focusing on Straights and Full Houses, both which are a lot stronger than Flushes. Another is to focus on One Pair or even High Card. While less powerful per hand, they are a lot more consistent to pull off multiple times per round. These decks can rival decks focusing on 5-card combinations and make Stone Cards shine.
Stone Card Synergy
Here are some examples of cards which synergize well with Stone Cards:
- +Mult Jokers retain their value a lot longer compared to xMult Jokers compared to decks focusing on 5-card combinations
- Steel Cards are a lot less dangerous since you can pull off your hands more consistently. They come into effect before jokers, though, so will need to ramp up through hand level.
- This can happen faster than you think, though, since Blue Seal cards (which create a planet card of the last scoring hand) also work very well in this type of deck.
There are also Joker synergies such as the Marble Joker, which adds a Stone Card each time a Blind is selected. I will not go over them all, since they are quite obvious. I will, however, make a special mention to the Stone Joker. This Joker gives +25 chips for each Stone Card in your deck, which can add up to a significant multiplier of your score.
If you haven’t been using Stone Cards, you may not know it exist. This Joker is one of the few who only show up when you already have a specific card in your deck (in this case, a Stone Card).
Turning a Stone Card Into a Regular Card
A Stone Card is an enhancement. Overriding it with any other enhancement will turn it back into a regular card with a rank and suit.
There is some use to this because of the way Bonus Stacking works in Balatro. If the Stone Card has a seal or edition (Foil, Holographic Polychrome), then it will keep those bonuses even when you remove the Stone Card enhancement. This can be very much worth it in decks that have no use for Stone Cards but do want those bonuses.
You can override it with any enhancement, even those with no apparent use to you (e.g., the less popular Lucky Card). Do note, however, that you will not know in advance which Rank and which Suit your new card will have.