Boss Blinds

Boss Blinds are Blinds that appear at the end of every ante. They are usually special Blinds that have double the score of the small blind and an effect you need to work around. There are also 5 Boss Blinds that can only appear at the end of every 8th ante. They are meant to act as final bosses on an ante 8 run. Some boss blind only appear after certain antes where as others can be in the rotation right out of the gate

Each of the effects have effective way to play around them or even avoid the debuffs that they can have. Here is a list of every way I would get around each of them.

Blind Name	Effect	Starts Appearing Ante	How to play around it
Small Blind	No special effects	1	One of the 2 most basic blinds, if you keep increasing your score then you should be fine.
Big Blind	No special effects	1	One of the 2 most basic blinds, has a higher score than the small blind but shouldn’t be too bad either as long as you keep your score going up.
The Hook	Discard 2 random cards per hand played	1	Better to play moderate hands or hands that are easy enough to draw. Trying to dig for bigger hands types by playing hands can lead to the cards you need for that hand being drawn and discarded cause you still needed to dig.
The Ox	Playing a (most played hand) sets money to $0	6	Playing other hands that are part of you build may help to save your money from all getting taken, especially on money builds. Alternatively, you can waste all your money in the shop previous and have nothing going in, making the effect redundant. Having negative money on this boss is also a buff as setting your money to $0 gets rid of all debt.
The House	First hand is drawn face down	2	Discarding the top 4, bottom 4 or ever even or odd card to be able to guess what you have is fine enough. You can still order by suit and rank to guess what cards ae face down.
The Wall	Extra large blind	2	Die jr
The Wheel	1 in 7 cards get drawn face down	2	Most of your card shouldn’t be flipped down unless you have Oops all 6s or get really unlucky. If they do, you can use guess work with sorting by rank or suits to figure out what rank and suit it belongs to.
The Arm	Decrease level of played poker hand	2	Avoiding playing your most played poker hand by using other hands that work with your build or have lots of blue seals to making losing levels not sting as much
The Club	All Club cards are debuffed	1	Isn’t too much of a hassle, just be mindfully that the suit is debuffed and avoid Club Flushes.
The Fish	Cards drawn face down after each hand played	2	Using discards to get rid of the face down cards is a strategy but sorting by rank and suit is still an option to figure out what is what. Smaller hands shouldn’t need to worry but if you be mindful of discards, they can get by.
The Psychic	Must play 5 cards	1	If your build is based around hands that take less than 5 cards to make, then dumping an extra card in a Two Pair or 3 extra cards in Pairs will allow the hand to score no problem.
The Goad	All Spades cards are debuffed	1	Isn’t too much of a hassle, just be mindfully that the suit is debuffed and avoid Spade Flushes.
The Water	Start with 0 discards	2	Discards are so powerful and have 0 of them from the get go is such a shot to the head for bigger hands. Playing builds that don’t require you to discard or use something like Burglar however make this boss a gust of wind compared to to hurricane it can be for hands like 4 of a Kind.
The Window	All Diamonds cards are debuffed	1	Isn’t too much of a hassle, just be mindfully that the suit is debuffed and avoid Diamond Flushes.
The Manacle	-1 hand size	1	Bigger hands or having a naturally small hand size for whatever reason can lead to making bigger hands harder to come by. If it is early, it can be a bit of a pain but only really become a problem later when the build has been figured out.
The Eye	No repeat hand types this round	3	Saving your main hand for the end and building up score with other hands can work early in a run, later though, it make become a hassle is the build has you playing multiple of the same hand. Best bet is to try get some extra support on scoring with glass and/or steel.
The Mouth	Play only 1 hand type this round	2	Avoid playing hands that aren’t you main hand for that build. If you need to dig for that hand type with hands after not getting it, you’ll either have to pivot to another hand with similar scoring potential or get better at deck fixing for the next time you have that boss.
The Plant	All Face cards are debuffed	4	Face card builds will die instantly at the sight of this thing. If you have any means to play something similar to get score then do. If you are running Hanging Chad in particular, then get a Justice and pop it on something you will play to help get closer to, or just straight up beat the blind.
The Serpent	After play or discard, always draw 3 cards	5	Probably the only boss that’s a straight buff. There are rarely points where it actively hinders you. You discard or play 1 card and go over your hand size limit, allowing for more potential with steel cards, blue seals, gold cards and getting bigger hands. The only time it make hurt you is if you are running Raised Fist for drawing lots of low values and Blackboard for Hearts and Diamonds. However even if they come up, you can just play more that what you draw.
The Pillar	Cards played previously this Ante are debuffed	1	Skipping straight to the boss basically means the boss become a complete pushover because the effect doesn’t matter.
The Needle	Play only 1 hand	2	Good to get early, a pain to get late and especially when struggling. Builds based on playing multiple of the same hand get nuked. Bringing glass, planet levels, high X Mult and Steel are ways that you can get around it.
The Head	All Heart cards are debuffed	1	Isn’t too much of a hassle, just be mindfully that the suit is debuffed and avoid Heart Flushes.
The Tooth	Lose $1 per card played	3	Try playing little cards if possible, whether this be through dumping hands to dig or tossing cards on your important hands. Bigger hands like Flushes and Straights suffer majorly and there’s no way to get around losing the money and Matador isn’t compatible so you can’t make a gain of $3.
The Flint	Base Chips and Mult are halved	2	Having low hand levels will already knee cap your score. It is important to always level up your hands and this boss is one reason why. scoring from Jokers an not the hand however are not effected so if the majority of your scoring comes there, then you should be fine
The Mark	All face cards are drawn face down	2	Harder to guess the cards compared to the other “drawn face down” bosses. A cheesy way of figuring out the values is by playing the cards and backing out before the game can confirm the hand has been played. Effects from Baron, Mail in Rebate, Shoot the Moon and Hit the Road still work and can even tell you what values are flipped over.
Amber Acorn	Flips and shuffles all Jokers	8	If you have a single X Mult, holding the Joker while the boss shuffles it can allow you to circumvent the effect. There are also additional methods like slowing down the game, seeing what triggers, and reordering based off of what triggers.
Verdant Leaf	All cards debuffed until 1 Joker sold	8	If your score come mainly from Jokers that don’t work off cards like Green Joker and Card Sharp, then you don’t need to sell anything. If not then sell your least useful Joker, a Econ Joker if you have one or if you have a free slot, take one into the blind and sell it.
Violet Vessel	Very large blind	8	Die
Crimson Heart	One random Joker disabled every hand	8	If a build require all of the Jokers in your slots, you are going to crash and burn. Learning to make builds that only have 3 or 2 important Jokers for higher stakes will make it more manageable as you can have Jokers that are there purely to protect your important Jokers from being disabled.
Cerulean Bell	Force 1 card to always be selected	8	As long as you aren’t playing a 5 card hand type like Flushes or Straights, you’ll have one card per hand to spare. You can get around the effect by using Hanged Man and Death Tarots to negate this effect if you are playing a 5 card hand.