Brainstorm

Effect: Copies the ability of leftmost Joker

Brainstorm in Balatro: Copies the ability of leftmost Joker. Rarity, cost, unlock, synergies, and how to play it.

Cost: $10

Rarity: Rare

Category: Effect Jokers

Unlock requirement: Discard a Royal Flush.

Verdict

Blueprint that reads from the other end of the row. Its real value is that running both lets one keystone joker count three times.

Why it works

Copying the leftmost slot rather than an adjacent one means Brainstorm reaches across the whole row. You can park it in the last slot and still copy your best card.
Blueprint and Brainstorm can both resolve to the same keystone, giving it three triggers. On Baron with five Kings that is 1.5^15 = X438 before any Steel or retriggers.
Like Blueprint, it copies the live scaled value, so it grows automatically with whatever it points at.
Because the two copy jokers read from opposite ends, running both gives you a build that is very hard to disrupt through reordering.

Joker placement

Anywhere. What matters is which joker is LEFTMOST, because that is what Brainstorm copies. Drag your keystone into slot one and leave it there.

How to play

Decide your keystone first, then move it to slot one. Brainstorm is a reason to reorganise the row, not a card you slot in and forget.
To triple a keystone, order the row [keystone] ... [Blueprint][Brainstorm] — Blueprint copies Brainstorm, and Brainstorm copies the keystone.
Audit slot one after every purchase. Buying an economy joker that lands leftmost silently turns Brainstorm off.

Combos

Blueprint

Three copies of one joker for two slots.

Brainstorm resolves to the leftmost joker, and Blueprint placed directly to Brainstorm's left resolves as Brainstorm, therefore also as the leftmost joker. The keystone fires once directly and twice through copies.

Baron + Mime

Five Kings held with Baron leftmost and Brainstorm copying it: 1.5^10 = X57.7, rising to 1.5^15 = X438 once Mime is retriggering both instances.

Each Baron instance evaluates every held King independently, so copies raise the exponent rather than the base.

Traps

Leaving a Credit Card, Golden Joker, or any other economy card in slot one. Brainstorm dutifully copies it and produces nothing.
Unlocking it requires discarding a Royal Flush, so plenty of accounts simply do not have it available yet. Check before you plan around it.
Buying both copy jokers with only one thing worth copying. Two slots spent tripling a mediocre joker loses to one slot holding a genuinely good one.

Benchmarks

Ante 8

Same class of swing as Blueprint — roughly a 10x score increase on a build that already has a real multiplier.

Endless

Running Blueprint and Brainstorm together is close to standard in builds that reach Ante 12.

Try in the calculator

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