Just finished a C++ file on Erratic Deck with No Rerolls with 54 wins.
I always thought Erratic Deck was the platonic ideal of Balatro- Get 52 random cards and figure it out. I thought to add to it I would want to reduce my dependency on restarting ante 1 for the Investment Tag and do a no restarts run just and just figure out every seed as I went. Ultimate Balatro challenge right?
I'm pretty disillusioned with that whole idea after doing this. I ended up skipping in Ante 1 far more often than I usually do just to accrue early value. I felt a lot of jokers end up falling into redundant patterns over the course of the game given the variance that Erratic Deck provides. A lot of four of a kind runs, pair runs, and flushes. I guess its cool to get a bunch of a lower value card sometimes and unlocking synergy you don't usually see but it gets samey quickly.
On top of that, the win to joker gold sticker unlocks ratio plummeted later on into the challenge, more than other C++ challenges I've done. It was a real slog to finish up this file and I ended up taking a few weeks off to refresh and wrap it up.
Joker Stats also were pretty underwhelming. I thought it would be a more interesting spread of commonly used jokers but it ended up just being more of the same.
Not really a lot of fun to be honest! I'm happy I saw it through but the whole affair was pretty disappointing. Felt more like a dumbed down C++ file and less of a skill-testing one. I wouldn't recommend it! If you want a challenge go for Black Deck C++, or go for fun go with a Ghost Deck file. I feel like Im mostly done with deck C++es now and am happy to wait for The Update.