Blinds + Boss Blinds

The round structure. Each Ante is three Blinds: Small, Big, and Boss. Score thresholds escalate; the Boss Blind adds a run-warping modifier; the run is 8 Antes (24 Blinds total) to win.

The Boss Blind catalogue is the run's anti-build layer — 30 named modifiers that selectively punish whatever the player is leaning on.

The Ante progression chart. Numbers stop being readable as integers at Ante 12. Endless mode is a leaderboard surface, not a finite-difficulty curve. Source: Game UI Database.

The score escalator

Each Ante's Small Blind = base; Big Blind = 1.5× base; Boss Blind = 2× base. So Ante 1 plays:

• Small: 300 chips
• Big: 450 chips
• Boss: 600 chips

Ante 8 plays:

• Small: 50,000
• Big: 75,000
• Boss: 100,000

Endless (Ante 9+) is exponential; the rate of growth approximately doubles per Ante.

Boss Blinds — the catalogue

There are 30 named Boss Blinds, each with a unique debuff. The Boss Blind is rolled at the start of each Ante (the player can see which Boss is coming). Examples:

Boss	Debuff
The Hook	Discards 2 random cards from your hand at end of each round
The Wall	4× chips required (this is additive to the 2× base)
The Wheel	1 in 7 cards drawn flipped face down
The Window	All Spade cards debuffed (give no chips, no mult)
The Manacle	-1 hand size for the round
The Eye	No repeats — no playing the same hand type twice this round
The Mouth	Only one hand type can be played this round
The Plant	All face cards debuffed
The Fish	All cards drawn face down until played
The Goad	All Spades debuffed
The Water	Start with 0 discards (the canonical "lock the player out of their primary tool" boss)
The Tooth	$1 lost per card played
The Needle	Play only 1 hand
The Pillar	Cards previously played this round are debuffed
The Ox	Playing your most-played hand this round sets money to $0
The Club	All Clubs debuffed
The Psychic	Must play 5 cards
The Wheel of Fortune	Random Joker is debuffed for the round
The Verdant Leaf	All cards debuffed until 1 Joker is sold
The Violet Vessel	6× chips required
The Cerulean Bell	Forced random cards selected for play

The full list is ~30 entries. Some bosses (The Wall, The Violet Vessel) crank the score requirement; others (The Hook, The Manacle) reduce the player's resources; others (The Goad, The Plant, The Window, The Club) selectively debuff card categories.

The Water boss tooltip. The single-line debuff "Start with 0 discards" is enough to break most discard-dependent builds for one round. Players have to commit to one good hand. Source: Game UI Database.

Why selective debuffs work

The boss-blind catalogue's structural cleverness: each boss attacks one specific build axis.

• A Spade-heavy build dreads The Goad / The Window.
• A discard-heavy build dies to The Water.
• A high-base-score build can shrug off The Wall.
• A Joker-stack build trembles at The Verdant Leaf (sell a Joker to release the debuff).

So the player's run is continuously stress-tested against axis-specific debuffs. A "perfect build" doesn't exist; even Sega's most-stacked engine has at least one boss that hits its weak point.

This is cumulative-modifier-staircase operating as an anti-build layer — the difficulty doesn't get harder uniformly; it gets targeted at the player's specific build.

The pre-Ante reveal

Crucially, the Boss Blind for the upcoming Ante is shown before you enter the Small Blind. Players see "Ante 3 Boss = The Water" while still on Ante 2's Big Blind, and can plan: this Ante I should bank cards for one big hand (since I'll have 0 discards on the Boss).

Without the reveal, players would adapt only after seeing the boss debuff. With the reveal, the entire 3-Blind sequence is shaped by the Boss's threat. Players will:

• Hoard Spectral consumables before The Water.
• Skip the shop reroll to bank dollars.
• Buy a specific Tarot to thin the deck before The Plant (face card debuff).

The reveal turns the Boss Blind into a planning constraint, not a surprise.

Skip option

Each Blind (Small, Big, Boss) can be skipped. Skipping forfeits the dollar reward and the shop visit, but progresses the Ante. Skipping pays a small bonus (a tag — see Tags below).

So a player with a strong build can skip the Small Blind to grab the Boss Blind reward without grinding through the Small/Big sequence.

The skip-tag interaction creates a sub-strategy: certain runs benefit from skipping aggressively (Tag-stacking builds), some from never skipping (interest-banking builds).

What this teaches

• Pre-revealing the threat changes the game from reactive to planned. Boss Blinds work because the player sees them coming. Hidden bosses would feel arbitrary; revealed bosses feel like puzzles.
• Selective debuffs are the right anti-build layer. Targeting build axes (suit, rank, hand type, joker count) instead of raw stat scaling produces continuous build stress-testing. No build is perfect; every Ante is a re-evaluation.
• A 30-boss catalogue is a lot, but the count earns it. Different bosses on different runs means even an experienced player still encounters fresh threats at run #50+. The boss roll is the variety axis.
• Score escalators don't need to stay realistic. Endless mode crosses 10²⁰ at Ante 16. The numbers are decorative at that scale; what matters is the percent of base the player can hit. Once you're ×100,000+ over base, the threshold is just decoration.

Patterns this exemplifies

• cumulative-modifier-staircase — base score doubles per Ante, plus boss multipliers stacked on top. The clearest score-escalator pattern in the knowledge base.
• bonus-with-drawback — every Boss Blind is a forced negative modifier. Some can be partially mitigated; none fully avoided. The Verdant Leaf forces the player to sell a Joker to release the debuff — a real opportunity-cost trade.