7 Jokers That Absolutely Ruined My Balatro Build

Balatro is a game about building the perfect deck and feeling like a genius, right up until one badly picked Joker absolutely tanks your entire run. Some Jokers sound like clever power plays or fun little experiments, but end up being the card-based equivalent of stepping on a LEGO. 

Whether they bait you with shiny bonuses or sneak in hidden drawbacks, these are the Jokers that had me confidently planning my win one round and spiraling the next. I’m not saying they’re all objectively bad, but I am saying they ruined my builds, and I’m still salty about it. 

1) Banner 

Banner feels like a good idea. On paper, +30 Chips for each remaining discard sounds like a decent reward for holding back. But in practice, it turns every decision into a standoff. You end up hoarding discards like a gremlin, terrified to actually use them to improve your hand. 

One bad draw, and suddenly you’re sitting on a garbage flush just to keep your Chip bonus intact. It’s especially punishing in the early game, when discards can make or break a round. Banner punishes smart plays in favor of cautious ones, and in Balatro, caution is how you lose. Discards are meant to be spent, not locked in a vault like retirement savings.

2) Marble Joker

Marble Joker is one of those cards that lures you in with subtle promises: it’s just one little Stone card! What harm could it do? Well, a lot. At first, it’s manageable, but then you pick another Blind. And another. And suddenly, your deck is 80 percent Stone cards, and every draw feels like shoveling through rubble. 

There’s nothing worse than having a full hand of unscorable trash when you’re staring down a big blind. Even if you’re building a Stone synergy deck, Marble Joker can quickly flood your deck and choke out your win conditions. It’s a slow descent into stone-based madness. It’s not a synergy, it’s a sedimentary tragedy.

3) Gros Michel 

Ah, Gros Michel. It’s the Joker equivalent of trusting a banana that you know is too ripe. The +15 Mult is tempting, especially early on when you’re trying to build momentum, but the 1-in-6 destruction chance looms like a ticking time bomb. And it always explodes at the worst possible moment. 

I’ve had this card vanish right before a huge boss Blind, taking my whole scoring engine with it. It’s like playing Russian roulette with your Multiplier. Sure, it might work for a few rounds. But sooner or later, you’re going to get Banana’d, and it’ll be just when you thought you were safe. The banana giveth, and the banana taketh away.

4) Ride The Bus 

RELATED: 7 Most Difficult Boss Blinds in Balatro

Ride The Bus offers a cool challenge: score hands without any face cards, and it rewards you with a growing Mult. Easy enough… until it isn’t. Eventually, the only viable way to make a solid hand is by tossing in a Jack or Queen, and when that happens, your carefully stacked Mult evaporates in one cruel misplay. 

It’s a Joker that punishes you for adapting mid-run, which is the opposite of how Balatro is meant to be played. In a game about building clever synergies, Ride the Bus demands you lock yourself into a rigid path, and punishes you the second you swerve. Miss Frizzle would not approve of this field trip.

5) Card Sharp 

At first glance, Card Sharp looks like a strategic jackpot. X3 Mult if you repeat hand types in the same round? Sign me up. The problem is Balatro loves to throw curveballs, and nothing kills this Joker harder than The Eye Tarot, which forbids repeating hand types in a round. Suddenly, your entire plan is dead in the water. 

Even outside of that, it requires rigid planning to repeat the same hand multiple times in a round, which isn’t always possible. It’s a fantastic card until it isn’t, and the moment you get locked out of it, you realize you built your whole deck around a ghost.

6) Throwback 

Throwback is a gambler’s Joker as it offers big rewards if you skip Blinds early and often. The problem is that skipping too many Blinds can absolutely snowball. You fall behind in money, in cards, in everything. And then you have to skip more Blinds just to survive. It becomes a vicious cycle: you’re too weak to win, so you skip, but skipping makes you weaker. 

Even worse, Throwback does nothing unless you’ve already committed to this risky playstyle. It asks for sacrifices up front, before you’ve even built a solid strategy. Skipping Blinds is fun until you skip your way off a cliff.

7) Wee Joker 

Wee Joker sounds fun. A little boost that gives +8 Chips for every scored 2? Adorable. But trying to consistently score 2s in Balatro is an exercise in frustration. They’re low value, hard to chain, and require support cards to become remotely viable. Unless you luck into duplication effects or specific synergies, playing 2s often means giving up better hands just to feed one Joker. 

It turns your deck into a circus act where the star attraction is a number no one cares about. Cute idea, terrible payoff. Wee Joker might be fun in theory, but in most runs, it’s just… wee-k.