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Dungeons & Degenerate Gamblersdoesn’t hide the influence of other roguelike deckbuilders in its design, but approaching it with the same attitude as Balatro or Slay The Spire can lead you to forming poor strategic habits. Neither can you treat it like a normal game of Blackjack once you start adding weird stuff to your deck.
Working out how to build your deck, which level path to follow and whether you should hit on that 13 are all challenges you need to resolve in order to get to the end of the dungeon. With the right approach, you’ll be able to score blackjack with nearly every hand.
You Can Exploit Enemy Cards
Its important to read the card text on not only your own deck but your adversary.Exploit effects can be used on any card currently in play by you or your opponent.A good example is the Decromancer, whose cards can have their value randomised by spending advantage. Doing this after they’ve stood for the turn lets you change their score after they’re no longer able to act.
The AI generated card can be exploited to add a copy of itself to the opponent. If you have a way of generated infinite advantage, you can fill their deck with nonsense cards.
Ones Aren’t Aces
It’s a pretty tempting plan when given the option to shift cards up and down in value, to try and turn all your twos and threes into aces. This will sadly not work, and you’ll instead have rather useless cards with a value of one, and an empty supply of chips. This applies to effects that permanently alter a number, like the counterfeiter event, and to cards that temporarily change a cards value.
The same applies to face cards.Increasing a ten card by one won’t turn it into a jack,and can leave you with a rather unwieldy 11 point card. Another outcome of this is thatface cards might not have a value of ten. All face cards start with ten points but can change up or down without losing their face status.
Stalling For Time Normally Benefits You
Normally the house’s edge will work against you if you play a long game in blackjack. Holding on a 12 versus the dealer’s 17 in traditional blackjack will have you lose, but hereit can negate most of the damage you’d take from a turn.That’s a much better benefit than trying for a marginal boost and getting in one or two damage, or going bust and taking massive damage.
The AI will generally struggle with stalling tactics: It follows fixed rules for when it hits and stands, meaning it will go bust more regularly and open itself up to attacks. Most AIs have no counter to slow strategies, such as deleting their cards, adding junk to their deck or cloning your best cards.
There is a stalling mechanism that will kick in eventually to prevent infinite loops or farming resources. Claw cards with infinite scaling will be added to both decks each turn.
Scan Both Decks Before Playing
You have access to perfect information on what cards remain in both your deck and your opponents. Its easy to forget this in the moment, but if your deck has only one card left in it, and you’re about to hit you can check exactly what card you’re about to draw and if it’ll take you over.
Reading your opponents' decks is less about gauging the odds of them going bust butunderstanding their core strategy.Taking agood look on turn one will give you an idea of what to expect, from gimmick cards you need to watch for to the number ratios that make them more likely to score blackjack than you’d otherwise expect.
Lots of enemies have a single card their entire strategy is built around. If you have a targeted way of locking, burning or stealing it, they’ll often be unable to do anything to you.
Remember Who Plays What Deck
You’re given some control of which path you take and who you face along the way. If youhave silver bulletsthat can instantly defeat certain strategies, you’llwant to prioritise thoseeasy wins.
The Receptionist uses a deck entirely based around copying a single gimmick card.Any card that burns or transforms face cards(like King Of The World) can delete her entire deck. The Bouncer’s 21 point card becomes an instant bust if you use leg sweep or another card toreduce their point limit to 20.
Stolen Cards Stay Stolen
Pretty much every game has its own rules for how stealing cards work. Most trading card games that let you steal a card on the field will still have it go to the graveyard or hand of its original owner when removed. Here, if you steal a card,it is yours for the match.
This gives tremendous value to targeted steal and swap abilities but also makes them vulnerable. If your opponent has nothing worth stealing, you’ve just taken a bad card out of their deck and potentially traded something better to do it.
Cards generated by effects alsoremain for an entire match. Playing a four-mana-seven-seven can win you a hand but it also clogs up your deck with fours as the match continues. It’s roughly symmetrical by clogging the enemy deck by the same amount.
Locked cards are especially effective targets for steal effects. If the boss has a unique mechanic it’ll often be represented by a locked card that stays on their field.
You Can’t Unstand
Once you hit the stand buttonyou lose all ability to interactfor that hand. If the enemy steals your highest value card after that, you can’t change your mind and start hitting again.
The same applies in reverse: Once an enemy has chosen to stand you can make more aggressive plays against their hand. If you lock cards that puts them above their stand value,they will pass all future turns.A good enemy for learning this is the poker-playing casino dog which has a stand value of two, and a deck composed entirely of twos and 21s.
Effect Timings Let You Reuse ‘Single-Use’ Cards
Lots of cards that are intended to be single use have an on-play effect and then burn when discarded. This meansany effect whichremoves it before the discard phase lets you reuse it,such as by returning it to your deck or quick-discarding it.
The rat deck’s cue card is a good way of achieving this, putting any card from the table onto the bottom of your deck. Repeatedly bouncing a removal card like Gerald From Reveira can let you burn an enemy’s entire deck.
Copy Techniques Used By The AI
Cards you encounter used by an enemy are available for you toadd to your own deck. The rival gamblers you face will often have finely tuned decks themed around specific playstyles. Some can be easily imitated by the player, while others are less viable: Decks that rely on spending hitpoints are much less effective when you retain damage between matches.
Playing against these AI decks can also teach you their vulnerabilities for when you make your own versions.
Some of the simpler decks used by enemies will appear as unlockable starting decks.The Wizard and Rat decks both havevery low card counts and good deck manipulation optionsthat let them reuse or clone key cards found in early loot. They also have fewer than 21 points in their starting deck, letting them play their entire deck each turn and potentially add new cards that add up exactly to blackjack.
Flexible And Rounding Cards Are Deceptively Strong
The strongest card in the game among purely numbered cards is probably the half. It has the option to score either zero or one point, meaningyou’ll never go bust from drawing them. If you’re able to duplicate several of them you can reliably round out your hands for blackjacks with much lower risk.
Negative flexible cards are also especially strong, since they can balance you in the other direction. A negative Ace can drop your score by ten the moment you would otherwise go bust.
Flexible cards will change automatically, making them one of the strongest ways to protect your hand after hitting the stand button: if your opponent then interferes with your score, the flexible cards can adapt.
Prioritise Gaining Handy Cards
The handy trait is the most versatile ability you can have on a card because of the versatility it provides. You have fine control over when it gets used rather than relying purely on the next card from the top of your deck.You can never go bust from drawing a handy card, letting you add them to your deck without fear.
This additionally means you don’t need to worry about the more situational cards clogging up your deck: Keep them in hand and remember them as they become relevant. Foil versions of cards can be thought of as a side-deck that are only added to your deck after you choose to play them from your hand.
This makes Booster Packs (and cards which generate them) very powerful: They instantly give you five hand cards for the current game. Negative scoring hand cards can unbust you if you go over 21.
Blackjacks Effects Require Careful Management
The blackjack effects aren’t based around getting exactly 21 but instead fromgetting the maximum number of pointswithout going bust. This distinction starts to matter when you gain abilities that modify this limit. A leg sweep card increases your limit to 22, which makes it slightly harder to go bust but also makes it much harder to score blackjack: You can no longer combine an ace and a ten for maximum score.
Enemies will also play cards to change these limits. If your max score is reduced to 20 you’ll be able to get blackjacks quite easily but will never be able to win against an enemy hand that scores above 20.
Final bosses are immune to cards that would lower their score limit, meaning you’ll want some way of beating or matching 22 point hands.
