Boss Blind Concepts

[shrewd heart]

The Crab
×2 base score, Ante 6+
If you don't play [your least played poker hand] by end of round, set money to $0

The Cull
×2 base score, Ante 4+
After scoring a card, debuff all cards of its rank

The Crowd
×2 base score, Ante 3+
Your rightmost Joker is debuffed

The Hound
×2 base score, Ante 2+
Cards that start in the bottom half of your deck are debuffed

The Smoke
×2 base score, Ante 3+
Do not gain base chips of scored cards

The Spine
×2 base score, Ante 3+
All enhanced cards are debuffed

Pallid Ring
×2 base score, Ante 8
You can play up to 6 cards, 1 random played card is discarded before scoring

Onyx Crown
×2 base score, Ante 8
7 5 random ranks are drawn facedown

Tried my hand at some boss blinds, I was surprised nothing like The Crowd exists, seems like a fun little challenge to figure out what Joker you don't need for the Blind

[deft kiln]

Smoke does basically nothing

[lapis harness]

the crab would be an instant loss for most runs, as it'd likely be straight flush.
the crowd wouldn't really work as you could control which joker is debuffed by moving them

[deft kiln]

The hound feels like it has way too much overlap with the other face-down boss blinds

[shrewd heart]

The Crowd is on purpose, you're just down a joker, which might be bad for stencil kinda builds

[lapis harness]

stencil is about joker slots so debuffing wouldnt really do anything

[deft kiln]

Onyx crown feels extremely annoying and unfun to play

[lapis harness]

unless you mean specifically 'very few joker' runs, and so only good jokers get debuffed

in which case, far too niche

[shrewd heart]

It's basically just a scaled down Crimson Heart, where some part of your build can't contribute, but you decide which

[shrewd heart]

How so?

[deft kiln]

The one that makes it so cards draw face down after each hand played (forgot the name) basically does this effect already

[lapis harness]

debuffing an entire half of your deck in almost all scenarios seems a bit too much for a non-finisher blind

[shrewd heart]

They're debuffed not drawn facedown?

[lapis harness]

it would probably be better if it was that your first drawn hand is debuffed

[deft kiln]

Oh I didn't see debuffed my bad

That makes it so much more annoying then

[lapis harness]

especially for ante 2+

[shrewd heart]

The idea is that you need to be less selective about the hands you play

Or you'll run out of playable cards

Doing the math, you only really run into it with a small deck or if you discard a LOT

[deft kiln]

idk that feels super unfun, it already feels bad not being able to draw a specific hand type, having half my deck debuffed and being literally impossible in several cases feels super bad

[spark creek]

i have an idea for a new crab:
if you don't play [your most played poker hand] exactly once, set money to $0

[lapis harness]

opposite of ox could be an interesting one. though it would probably have to be that 'first played hand must be [most played hand]' to actually be scary

[shrewd heart]

That's workable

[shrewd heart]

But then you can just do your most played hand with no downside?

[lapis harness]

the problem is that you cant guarantee you get your most played hand

its also ante 2+ not a finisher blind

[shrewd heart]

You usually can when you have all your discards

[lapis harness]

youre just balancing around the blinds but not when they can appear

[shrewd heart]

Ok but. It can appear Ante 7

And then you just ignore it

[lapis harness]

you can ignore a lot of blinds

doesnt mean you always can

thats the whole reason why its important to pay attention

and why most people die to boss blinds

[shrewd heart]

Ok

It feels a bit uh-- unfair of you to say that some of my ideas are too niche, but your idea is fine if you can ignore it?

I'll drop the crab, sure

[lapis harness]

not all blinds are supposed to be unbeatable in a specific scenario, but there should still be a scenario where if you didnt pay attention it is scary

[deft kiln]

I don't like the blinds where it's just 'less money', those ones feel a bit annoying and rarely impact a run

[pulsar yacht]

the crowd was actually old cerulean bell iirc

which was a counterpart to old crimson heart

[shrewd heart]

Yeah, the finisher definitely should force random jokers to be debuffed, but this one you can choose what you're going without. I can up it to "when blind starts, debuff the rightmost joker" so you can't move your build around after

That seems like a good change

[deft kiln]

That doesn't change anything, just move it on the blind select screen

[shrewd heart]

• The rightmost joker is always debuffed means you can move around what is debuffed, don't use card shark turn 1 and then swap it in turn 2
• If it selects the card when you start the Blind, that Joker is going to be the one you can't use, no cheeky swaps

Does that make sense?

[lapis harness]

the problem is that crimson heart isnt that scary to begin with, and this is just a much weaker version of crimson heart where the player can control which one gets disabled

[deft kiln]

ima be honest I just don't like most of these ideas tbh, they feel like retreads of already existing bosses without adding much more depth

[shrewd heart]

It's supposed to be weaker bc it isn't a finishing blind

[deft kiln]

Or they just seem really annoying to play around, like I don't want Onyx Crown to have a 50% chance of killing any run where I prefer a specific rank like 5oak builds

[shrewd heart]

The idea is that you can sus out what ranks are facedown, and then play around that. I can adjust it to be 5 ranks instead of 7

[lapis harness]

5 ranks is still a lot

thats a potential straight gone

[shrewd heart]

Hmm, Pallid Ring does obliterate Straights unless you have shortcut

That needs adjusting

[deft kiln]

A lot of these also favor high card so much more

Pallid Ring: high card
Onyx Crown: high card
The Hound: high card
The Crowd: does basically nothing
The Cull: high card

[shrewd heart]

High Card is kind of uh-- hard to counter? It's the optimal strategy for a lot of bosses that already exist

I can try to make blinds to counter it, but like-- the game already isn't doing a great job at that

[deft kiln]

I'd personally prefer if new content like bosses were to be added, they'd do something unique to actually counter things like that. I just don't see much depth added from a lot of these blinds. (Pallid Ring is a cool idea though and it's my favorite of these, but it would just kill straights)

[shrewd heart]

I just adjusted Pallid in my notes to discard either leftmost or rightmost card, so you need extra long straights/flushes to guarantee safety

[lapis harness]

would be fun to have a boss blind that lets you only play 4 cards, as an example

[shrewd heart]

Or you take the 50/50

[lapis harness]

but then high card is just... eh

must play at least 2 scoring cards

[shrewd heart]

There's the 5 card played, but you don't need to score 5

Yea!

I was thinking that, but then it's just a flat "don't play high card" blind, which also feels annoying

[deft kiln]

Idea based on this: Each hand must contain a different amount of scoring cards

[shrewd heart]

Similar to the "must play different hands" blind

[deft kiln]

Yeah it is a bit similar tbf, I agree

[pulsar yacht]

that’s the reworked OG old arm boss blind (Must play less than 5 cards) but more restrictive

reworked cuz (obviously) killed 100% of 5 card reliant strategies

which is a majority

[deft kiln]

This might be a dumb idea, but boss blind that has 2x chips and balances, just like Plasma Deck? (Wouldn't show up on plasma of course)

[lapis harness]

plasma blind would mess up a lot of people probably

[pulsar yacht]

i mean it’s basically “x4 base, balance chips and mult”

aka a weaker wall

cuz you don’t lose score in anyway through the balance

[shrewd heart]

The Cull
×2 base score, Ante 4+
If played hand contains 2 cards of a given rank, debuff all cards of that rank

The Flood
×2 base score, Ante 4+
If played hand contains 3 cards of a given suit, debuff all cards of that suit

Pallid Ring
×2 base score, Ante 8
You can play up to 6 cards, though 1 card of the most common rank is discarded before scoring

---

Some changes to help straights, though it doesn't necessarily block high card

[bitter ivy]

i like cull crowd and hound

[shrewd heart]

Thanks!

I think Hound and Crowd are neat playstyles

[deft kiln]

Flood is pretty interesting

It does unfairly debuff Flush, but so do 4 of the current blinds lol

[shrewd heart]

It lets you do 4 flushes, but they need to be different suits

Which means you can still get your 1 good flush off to start, which could win you the blind outright

I think it's fair, and Flush kinda has enough love already

Just wanted a counterpart to Cull

Should I cut Spine? It might be a bit too boring but idk

Like, you should be enhancing your cards and building up your deck, and this punishes you for relying on enhancements/having too many, but the game wants you to have enhancements

This has given me some good feedback

Thanks for the help

[jade tree]

i imagine it'd tie with other stuff that are 0 or the same value

not necessarily a straight flush needed

[lapis harness]

i said likely, which means a lot of the time you'd lose a run just because you couldnt fish for a straight flush

[jade tree]

or it could choose the lowest "value" hand

[jade tree]

I don't think you understood my point

straight flush at 0 pair at 0, get away with playing pair

[shrewd heart]

That was the intent, yeah