haha, i had a pretty ugly win today for my 3rd as well. i was playing the gold deck and was able to invest in some ramp early on, in particular i got the one that levels up the first hand you discard each blind...for some reason i decided to focus on 2 pair, which did work out, but in retrospect...that's a high card setup if i've ever seen one. and then around ante 2 i got the oujia spectral card and turned a ton of cards in my deck into 6s, and immediately afterward the "play a single 6 as your first hand, it trades for a spectral card" joker appeared, so...i decided to let this run turn into total chaos, which only deepened after i ran into the boss who makes you pay money to play cards and almost went into debt (which i assume kills you, unless you have the credit card, in which case you die at -$21 instead?). of course in all that i got the spectral that polychromes one of your jokers at the cost of all the others, and obviously using that implies selling your setup and pivoting again...which i did after i got enough money, and managed to bag a supernova for good measure. at that point my deck had distorted enough that some combination of pairs of k, 10, 6, and 2 (all cards i had extras of, at the cost of 1-3 of most other ranks) could get me there as long as i had a queen in hand. especially my steel one. but i still wasn't confident going into the last hand so i did one final shift and decided that 8 was probably going to be the end of the line, buying campfire and spending money pretty hard to seal the ante 8. of course, the next voucher was discount finally, so i was able to day trade through ante 9 before trying to save money too much to survive the small on ante 10.
was a fun game, and a hugely educational one for a win since i ended up trying so many jokers and little combos i never had before, and got way more seals than i've ever run with before to see the kind of power you get out of that, on top of the fully risky pivot midway through. got a much better idea of scope and what i can get away with, lol...