Walkie Talkie is a Common Joker that uniquely gives a boost to Chips and Additive Mult simultaneously. Whenever a 10 or a 4 is scored, this Joker will give an immediate +10 Chips and +4 Mult; if the 10 or 4 is retriggered either by a Joker effect or its own Red Seal, the effect of Walkie Talkie will activate again on that same card.
Even without additional assistance, this Joker represents a +50 Chips and +20 Mult bonus on a hand full of scoring 10s and 4s. For reference, a Level 1 Full House (10 10 10 4 4) would normally yield 312 score; this Joker increases it to a whopping 3,072 all by itself. The score increase is even higher on hands that allow for high amounts of 10s and 4s to score while having even higher base Chips and Mult.
With the amount of Deck manipulation present in the game thanks to the presence of certain Tarot Cards and Spectral Cards, Walkie Talkie is especially appetizing for its rarity and is definitely worth building around if acquired early, as it can allow for pivots into the very strong secret hands.
Synergies[]
Decks[]
Any Deck synergizes well with Walkie Talkie due to its versatility. However, these have a slightly easier time using it than the others:
Abandoned Deck: Has the highest state of advantage with this Joker, due to having less cards in the Deck overall, thereby making it easier to find 10s and 4s.- Painted Deck: This Joker serves as good role compression, providing Chips and Additive Mult while taking up just 1 of the 4 Joker slots. On top of this, the increased hand size allows easier finding of higher quantities of 10s and 4s.
- Erratic Deck: A seed favoring 10s and 4s would be most optimal, but any seed with a higher-than-average number of either can work well.
- Ghost Deck, Magic Deck, and Zodiac Deck: All these have more overall access to the Deck fixing methods that this Joker loves, but they do not have a distinct consistency advantage right away like the aforementioned ones do.
Poker Hands[]
Focus on these hands in the early game to consistently maximize this Joker's impact:
- Two Pair
- Three of a Kind
- Full House (the best choice, due to having 5 scoring cards while not being substantially harder to find)
As you manipulate your Deck to include more 10s and 4s, pivot towards these hands (note that 3 of these 4 are secret hands, meaning you will not be able to level scale them right away):
Jokers[]
- Retrigger Jokers (except Sock and Buskin) will all work remarkably nicely with this Joker. Hanging Chad is the easiest one to find, guaranteeing an extra +28 Chips and +8 Mult at the very least if a 4 is at the start of the hand. Dusk (retriggering all cards when 0 hands remain), Hack (retriggering all 4s), and Seltzer (temporarily retriggering all cards) have much higher ceilings, but are slightly more conditional.
- Even Steven: Meshes well with this Joker early on, and can do so even later in the presence of a retrigger Joker, essentially doubling the yield of the Additive Mult when scoring.
- Clever Joker, Sly Joker, and Wily Joker: These Chip Jokers can provide a little bit of a boost, mostly in the early game, to the hands one would be aiming to play anyway. A Full House or Flush House would trigger any (and all) of the three.
- Jolly Joker, Mad Joker, and Zany Joker: Similar to the above Jokers, but for Additive Mult. These are even less advisable to keep as the run progresses, as there are far stronger sources of Additive Mult than Chips, but can clear most Blinds early on, especially when combined with this Joker.
- Flower Pot: A Multiplicative Mult card that will give a strong X3 Mult benefit as long as the played hand contains at least 1 each of Hearts, Spades, Diamonds, and Clubs. Hands with multiples of the same rank, like the ones Walkie Talkie builds want to play, are generally easier to fit 1 of each suit in. Consider pairing with Wild Cards or Smeared Joker for extra ease of use.
- Seeing Double: Though easier to trigger than the above card, only needing at least 1 Clubs card and 1 of any other suit, it only gives a middling X2 Mult bonus. It is more useful in the early-to-mid-game, but is a potential take when combined with another Multiplicative Mult source.
- Shortcut: Most Straights starting with a 10 and having at least two gaps can also include a 4 (Q/J 10 8 6 4 also work). Since Saturn has the highest Planet Card scaling of all the non-secret hands (excluding Neptune, which technically also benefits but is much harder to pull off), and the hand also has access to powerful support like The Order, this Joker can pair well with it in a pinch.
- Spare Trousers: This scaling Additive Mult Joker complements Walkie Talkie's power incredibly, gaining +2 Mult whenever a Two Pair, Full House, or Flush House is played - all of which would likely be frequently played anyway. If acquired early, it can build up mid-to-high double digits' worth of Mult, and still be kept even when playing stronger hands like Four/Five of a Kind, as its final result still applies to all played hands.
- The Duo, The Trio, and The Family: As hands containing multiple 10s and 4s are the most optimal to play with this Joker, these are the best Multiplicative Mult cards to pair with it. Of notable importance, Four/Five of a Kind and Flush Five will trigger any (and all) of them.
Trivia[]
- Walkie Talkie is one of only two Jokers to provide both Chips and Mult buff to scored cards, the other being Scholar.
- The affected cards, and score values, are a reference to the phrase "10-4", commonly used by US law enforcement to acknowledge that they have understood a message received over their walkie-talkies. It became more common knowledge among the public around the mid-to-late-1950s, and is now sometimes used in informal conversation in Anglophone countries to show acknowledgement of a statement.
In other languages[]
| Language | Name | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| Chinese (Simplified) | 对讲机 | |
| Chinese (Traditional) | 對講機 | |
| Dutch | Walkietalkie | |
| French | Talkie-walkie | |
| German | Walkie-Talkie | |
| Indonesian | Walkie Talkie | |
| Italian | Walkie-talkie | |
| Japanese | ウォーキートーキー | |
| Korean | 워키토키 | |
| Polish | Krótkofalówka | |
| Portuguese (Brazilian) | Walkie Talkie | |
| Russian | Рация | |
| Spanish (Spain) | Walkie-talkie | |
| Spanish (Latin America) | Walkie-talkie |
