Top 10 Balatro Spectral Cards

You've definitely interacted with tarot cards in Balatro before. But have you heard of spectral cards? These types of consumables function like tarot cards, only they're less common and break the game in quite wacky ways.

The Top Ten

  1. The Soul

    Probably the best consumable you can get in the whole game. These cards are only found in arcana packs but are super hard to come by.

    Using this card will give you one of five legendary jokers in this game, with abilities envied by every other joker. They include:

    - Canio: Adds X1 mult for every destroyed face card

    - Triboulet: Gives X2 mult to scored Kings and Queens

    - Yorrick: Gives X1 mult for every 23 cards discarded

    - Chicot: Disables the effects of all boss blinds

    - Perkeo: The best out of the whole bunch, creates a negative copy of a random consumable in your slot.

  2. Cryptid

    The best spectral card found in Spectral packs, this one creates two copies of a selected card in your hand. I love creating copies of Red Seal Steel Kings with this card and having multiple copies of it thanks to Perkeo.

  3. Ankh

    I ranked this above Hex because creating a copy of a Joker at the expense of your others is so elusive to me. The best Joker to copy with this is Blueprint because you can have a Joker's ability trigger three times, and it can be any Joker you want. That beats Ankh copying Jokers with only one ability.

  4. Ectoplasm

    Adds negative to one of your Jokers at the expense of one hand size (two if used a second time). Very useful with Juggler, Palette, and Troubadour. Though not so much if you have Stuntman, and the reduced hand size doesn't wear off when you sell the Joker.

  5. Deja Vu

    Red Seals are the best seals in Balatro, and here's why: they retrigger scored cards as well as the abilities of held-in-hand cards. In the case of Deja Vu, they add Red Seals to any selected card in your hand, and it's best you use them on your Steel Kings.

  6. Black Hole

    The other spectral card you can't get regularly, only this time they're contained in Celestial packs. Using one of these bad boys upgrades all of your poker hands by one level, and this is very useful early in the game when you go up against challenging Boss Blinds.

  7. Wrath

    The spectral card version of Judgement, only this time all of the jokers created are Rare, at the expense of your money being set to zero.

    One of my best Wrath pulls while playing Balatro was a holographic Blueprint, and setting your money to $0 even clears the debt you accumulated through Credit Card. Though it's a little annoying losing your hundreds of dollars to Obelisk.

  8. Aura

    Adds foil, holographic, or polychrome to a selected card in your hand. Wheel of Fortune, but the chances are almost always in your favor.

  9. Familiar

    This spectral card destroys five cards in your hand but gives you $20 in return.

    Now why does a joker that destroys your build get so much praise? Do you want a way to scale Canio quickly? Are you in need of some fast cash? Did I mention destroyed glass cards count towards Glass Joker's X mult? Well, there you go.

  10. Hex

    A quick and guaranteed way to add polychrome to a random joker in your hand, though it's at the expense of all other jokers you picked up.

    When you play the game with Ghost Deck, it's the one spectral card you start with, and it can be used on the first cool joker you acquire. Later in the game, your best bet is to find an Ankh, sell your non-polychrome jokers, and use it to have two polychrome jokers while you find other useful ones. The risk and reward is a little underwhelming compared to Ankh, so that explains why it's low on this list.

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