i absolutely love balatro modded, the sheer insanity possible with it is a blast (and its my 5th most played game on record)

THAT BEING SAID, THE NEW POKER HANDS THAT THE CRYPTID MOD ADDS ARE ALL KINDA USELES AND ACTIVELY DETRIMENTAL

AHEM

lets begin:

BULWARK - 5 stone cards (or other modded rankless, suitless card)

bulwark is an interesting case, since its the only new hand that doesnt requier any kind of setup outside of getting the cards. it also has a fair amount of scoring. that being said, /rankless and suitless cards have no synergy/. you are actively giving up every single joker that triggers on rank OR suit, and every single enchancement (since rank/suitless is only obtainable thru an enchantment, and reentchanting them loses that). and for WHAT?! stone cards have almost no synergy, and neither do most other modded r/s cards! the best case you could make is using a jewel card (x2 chips) along with it, and praying your jokers can scale well without being able to build up your deck at all.

tangent: card selection increase

cryptid adds a new mechanic wherein you can increase how many cards you can select through a voucher or a single rare joker (at least in base cryptid). every other hand here requires that, so im also judgng them based on the setup of finding those, which can be pretty difficult

also there are TECHNICALLY a few new hands added through ascended hands, ie playing a 6 of a kind or flush 6, but since they use the base mult of the original im not counting it

Ult. Pair - two pair of the same suit, and a second two pair of a different suit

this one is the hardest to explain, but i think i got it. the main issue i have with u.p. is that it both requires a lot of setup to get +3 card selection, and to get enough pairs of certain cards and certain ranks togther. if you want to get synergies from multiple suits/ranks, use wildcards or splash??

Clusterf**k - 8 cards that do not form a Pair, Flush, or Straight

you literally cannot deckbuild towards this, or at least you cant without some serious planning. its a cute hand, i like the swearing, but like unless you get a lot of hand size inceases or are extremely (un)lucky, youre probably not going to play this consistently. and if you are, just deck build towards flush or something?

The Entire F**king Deck - All 52 cards in a deck

no. just no. there is LITERALLY no way you are playing this one unless you are specifically gunning for it. you would need the unlimited deck (infinite card selection), oil lamping the frick out of the card selection jokers (oil lamp increases the values of jokers after every round), AND find some way to draw every card to your deck (efficare or pot of jokers), AAAND make sure you don’t modify or stone card any of them in the meantime because it does check for every single card and if you dont have that 7 of spades, oh boy gee you arent getting a TEFD. at the very least, it has a base chip/mult of 5e29 x 5e28, so it is well worth it IF you can ever play one.

None - 0 cards

yes you read that right. 0 cards. this is the MOST gimmicky of every single hand here, since the only way you can play it is if you go into sapphire stamp (deselects one card before playing) and play one card. then its unlocked on your save file. this one i actually do somewhat like BECAUSE if you get a lot of card in hand joker/effects, you basically get a slightly better highcard build. and it requires no set up outside of doing the above on a save file. still feels a bit pointless, but ey