9 Kings: King of Nothing Guide

The King of Nothing is the first king you play and the first I won at King difficult.
You also get a nice congratulations at that level.
Someone posted a question about this and my reply was going to be so long-winded I decided to tuck it away here instead.
Enjoy a long analysis that will probably obsolete when a new patch comes out.

Here are some terms I’ll be using throughout the guide. I’ll explain what I mean first before diving into the details.
You can break down units in 3 categories.

Frontline – These are the melee units. They need to run into contact with the enemy before they do damage. They are also the first targets of all enemy units (with a few exception)

Rearline – These units stay put at their maximum range. They are usually only get targeted once all the frontline units are gone.

Turrets – Squares in your city that apply damage. These are never targets and your AI opponent never uses these. One big difference between turrets and rearline is that your rearline can get enchants, but your towers never die or lose effectiveness.

At the end of a fight, you get nice (hopefully) big number telling you how much damage you’ve done. This is a nice statistic, but it’s not the whole story. When evaluating your performance, you also need to consider how long your units stay alive. The enemy will rush to your castle the moment all your units are dead. The longer your troops stay on the field, the more time you have to apply that damage. In effect, your units staying power is the equivalent of your life bar, so don’t neglect it for pure damage.

When I play, my goal is to build a frontline that lasts long enough to allow your rearline and turrets (and sometimes frontline) to apply enough damage to destroy all units. Simple enough. But king difficulty scales damage very quickly, so every turn counts. Because of the random nature of the cards you get, you need to pick and choose the right tools for the job and do it fast.

When you start, you get a choice of your own cards as an initial force. There’s a perk that gives you even more of these cards. You should take that perk.

Castle
Go big or go home. Only once was I able to bring a castle to level 9 and use it to win. Unless you’re trying this specific build variant, ignore your castle. It can’t scale fast enough. (Castles got update in the latest patch, I haven’t played with it yet).

Soldier
This unit can be cultivated as a frontline if you play it right. Given a choice, I’d prefer paladins, but they can do the job, because they’re initially higher damage and more numerous at the cost of staying power. Note you can
also combine them with paladins for a more aggressive frontline.

Paladin
This is the ideal choice for your frontline line. They are awfully slow, so you shouldn’t count on them providing much damage. That’s fine, they just need to stand there.

Archer
Mediocre unless you put a lot of work into them. If you have no choice but to pick them, know you will need to quickly find another unit to frontline but the enemy will tear them to shreds.
Their attacks are too weak to be converted to scary AOE damage. They’re too slow to apply vast stacks of poison. Not the best rearline unit by far.

Scout Tower
Good constant damage application. Level it up to get multishot. Note that multishot isn’t an AOE effect, so this isn’t that effective when there’s a hundred plus enemy units. If your battles are turning into turrets vs castle rushers, you’re on the path of losing. Beef up your frontline.

Farm
The King of Nothing best card. This scales your units slowly but surely, letting you outpace the AI’s scaling. Unlike some other buff cards, this one only affects one unit at a time, so you may want multiple farms or dedicate your
only farm to your fronline instead of dividing the benefits.

Wildcard
Another great card. This gives you flexibility and let’s you effectively rank cards from other kings too. It’s also a very quick simple mechanism.

Blacksmith
Slowly but surely build up your units. Note that between levelling a unit or placing down a blacksmith, you should always level first. +2% is nice, but levelling is a much bigger improvement.

Steel Coat
More of a midgame asset. Make your tanks survive a little longer. Give your rearline a chance to survive those damn ballistas.

Time to talk about what you’ll be facing. Enemy waves are always identical formations, they only thing that changes is the number of units and their individual stats. The behavior remains unchanged. You will have to adapt your playstyle

King of Spells

A big tanky frontline with a numerous rearline. Not only that, but both lines are constantly being buffed. Not only only that, but the frontline does AOE damage. This is a bad combo for any frontline, so you need to either eliminate the frontline fast enough with lots of damage or destrup the rearline. And none of your own units can do that by the midgame, so you’ll need to use more enemy cards in your army. Spells, Blood, Stone.

King Of Greed

Oh, those thieves. They’ll jump right into the rearline. Half of your frontline will chase after them, the other half faces the mercenaries. Net result, dead frontline, half effective frontline. Yikes. So, what do you do when facing Greed? Don’t have a rearline. You’ll need a turret only strategy

King of Blood

The king of melee rush. He tries to overwhelm your frontline with units, but completely ignores your rearline.

King of Nature

Probably the most similar to your own forces.

King of Stone

Even worse than thieves, ballistas are ridiculously overpowered. They’ll decide your balled up melee frontline and your rearline in one volley. One bright side, they’re probably the only units that can be killed off by turrets alone before they reach your castle. Meanwhile, the trappers are numerous fast tough little buggers. Probably the best way to tackle these guys is AOE on the frontline, since they like to cluster in tight balls, or building up your units to survive that first ballista volleys.

King of Progress
Defenders are an annoying retaliation frontline that will hurt all targets. Weak attack paladins or your own defenders can keep them at bay and turrets take no damage.

As shown, each enemy requires a different approach, especially for the king of nothing. What works for one king will backfire on another. Fortunately, you know exactly what you’re facing and should pick your units accordingly.
There is no perfect formula, build your frontline and rearline in consequence to what you’re up against.

An interesting 9 Kings concept is you get the cards of the enemy you’re facing.

A lot of tools here to help you face the king of spells and others.

Wizard
Can work as a rearline. Combine with combustion and library

Warlock
A good choice for a frontline unit. Pairs well with Shamans and blacksmiths.

Static
Might be useful with a fast attack unit flanked by a library, but nothing more than that.

Offering
Got a useless card? Trade it for 3 cards in two turns. Risk vs reward

Combustion
Got a heavy hitter rearline? You need this too. Wizards and ballistas especially. Even warlocks. Not archers though.

Shaman
Best with warlocks. Note that they buff units randomly, so, the more units you have, the less directed the effect.

Library
Situational. Archers with steelcoat get staying power. Frontline with inferno get explodier.

Spire
Makes your frontline last even longer. Also, it’s a turret, so it scales with blacksmith (and beacon I think). If you have nothing else, you’ll need this to keep fighting the King of Spells.

Not too many good picks. You need gold to get the most out of them, and you are the king of nothing after all. Probably the worst king to be facing/recruiting from.

Beacon
Great for turrets. And archers if you unlucky to have them.

Vault
Meh

Dispenser
It can work. If you get it early, and if you get some gold policies, they might be good. But that’s a lot of ifs and it usually doesn’t pan out that way.

Midas Touch
Meh

Mortgage
Meh, you need levels from useless units, not gold

Over-Invest
Too much gold and nothing else to play, use this.

Mercenary
If you play like I do, you’ll never have that much gold to make these a good frontline. Completely ignores the effects of farms. Avoid.

Thief
This is a card worth considering. Jump right into those annoying ballistas, elves and shamans. They do die easily to other kings, so don’t rely on them as your primary damage dealer. But make they still scale if you going to use them.

Frankly, King of Blood have some of the best cards for your army.

Bomber
Terrible at the start, scale these guys right and they’ll deliver massive damage to the enemy frontline in one shot. A great supplement to your tanks. Note the bomber vs ballista doesn’t work too well, as they usually get killed before reaching their target.

Imps
These are great as cemetery, sacrifice fodder. Lots of cheap units quickly. Try not to scale them with farms, it’s a waste.

Carnage
Turns your slow frontline into bombs! This is probably one of the best cards to use once you get a tanky frontline and can easily make it your primary damage dealer. Just make sure you have some units to clean up the mess afterwards

Sacrifice
A great way of levelling your early kingdom. Center an imp, sacrifice, poof, 4 levels. Try not to get too clever doing these combos though.

Vampirism
Play it if you got nothing else, but this card is a bit lackluster.

Mangler
No, just no.

Cemetery
Another great card. Every time your enemy kills something, they got another annoying imp to deal with. This delays them a bit longer and give you more time to kill with them. Works also well on rearline units, every death bolsters your frontline for a bit.

Demon’s Altar
Good if used early and allowed to scale. It’s too late to use by midgame though.

Most of the units do what you do, but differently. But king of nature still have some great picks.

Mycelium
Early on, and you can build a decent turret that targets many more enemies than a scout tower at a roughly similar damage rate.

Clone
It’s almost like Wildcard, but better, since you create a unit in a new square as well. Top pick.

Elf
Tankier harder hitting archers, same drawbacks.

Boar
Probably the weakest tank selection. Requires a lot of investment to get its gimmick worthwhile and you have better options.

Orchard
Three traps? Against 100 units? No thanks

Procreate
This card is basically 3 turns of level 3 farms in one shot. Great for boosting your frontline even more or giving some farmless unit some love.

Forest
Great for tanks. Even better for tanks with Carnage.

Poison VialIt could work with a fast hitting unit complemented by a early library. You’re not going to see this card enough to make it worthwhile otherwise.

Do you want a ballista build or not?

Cauldron
I’ve really only see this shine with a fast dispenser, a flametower or archers. And I don’t run those too often.

Trebuchet
Maybe it’s just me, but I’ve never seen this do enough damage. Doesn’t fit well with King of Nothing

Quarry
Decent way of upgrading your turrets in an out of the way square

Earthworks
Make more space and remove an unit. Don’t use these on upgradeable units though. You’ll lose all the effect of the farms/smith

Ballista
The ridiculous game winning card. The only thing ballistas fear are thieves and to some degree elves.

Trapper
Honestly, if you’re relying on traps to win, you’re on the path to losing

Wallmaker
This has to be the worst card in the game at King difficulty

Flametower
Combined with poison, this can be a decent supplement in clearing out the frontline with aoe damage. But it’s just decent.

Some good choices.

Executioner
I think the idea is to combine the peashooter with enchantments like poison.

Defender
Good choice for the frontline. The retaliation can even humble ballista. Note that a poison on a defender affects any units that hit it, even ranged.

Lab Rat
Just play king of progress if you want infinite rats.

Concabulator
Yes, you can level everything up. But it takes three cards. That’s a lot of time of you not improving your units.

Reinforce
Not really levelling that much to be worthwhile.

Precision
Nice with ballistas.

Converter
It helps out a little, but it would need more speed to be truly effective.

Overhaul
Also a great use for unwanted cards, if a bit random. Might level up your castle and that always feels bad. On the plus side, it scales more level as you use it.

Get the Hoarder perk for more card, which means more turns to build up.
Get more rerolls to mitigate RNG.
Get nurturer for a tougher frontline.
If you want to try big castle, obviously get the perk to get it to 9 levels.

More gold and more rerolls are nice at the start.
Faster turrets is preferable to stronger turrets and units.
If you rely heavily on a tanking frontline, double HP is great. Poison on hit is also nice.

When you start, you see the two kings you’ll be facing. This will determine how you build.
Greed? No rearline units
Stone? Those ballistas need to be dealt with.
Spells or Blood? Plan for a lot of damage hitting your frontline

Primary objective
Park your castle in the corner and never look at it again.
You get five cards of which you play three. You took hoarder right?
Your immediate goal is to get a level 3 unit, preferably a tank.
If you don’t have a level 3 unit by turn 5, you lost. It’s that simple
Do not build multiple units planning to level them. That level 3 is the only thing that can hold on long enough by turn 5.

What if you get three archer cards and are facing Greed? Well, you probably lost. Have fun doing it and try to figure out if there’s a way to win. I’m still trying to figure out how to tackle that scenario.

Of course, that game RNG might not play nice and you might not be able to get your initial unit to level 3. Try getting any unit from the first battles to level 3. Focusing on the frontline.
That’s what all the rerolls are for. Remember Nature, Blood and Progress have cute level tricks that can help if you’re facing them. A lucky Offering can also work.

Your next immediate goal is a farm for your level 3. Again, if you don’t get the farm, you lose, maybe by turn 8. Levelling up said farm is less urgent but still important. Nature Procreate or a cemetery can help bolster up your frontline numbers while you set it up.

You also need to consider your damage sources. If the stone gives you ballistas, great. But don’t waste your rerolls at this point for them. There’s many possible choices as long as your frontline holds.
Just make sure to grab units that can handle what your enemy king will dish out.

At this point of the game, you should avoid playing scalers (with the exception of farms). At the very least, keep them at level 1. You need to Level 3 all your fighting units whenever possible. Forests and blacksmiths can wait. A notable exception might be a library to build up more stacks of enchantments. And some enchantments can be really powerful.

Remember, be flexible and capitalize on what the RNG hands you.

Still alive? Good. Time to pick a third king to fight. You can reroll and your army should have a specific formation so choose one that fits your strength. Don’t go picking Stone or Greed if you have a big rearline.
The best choices for King of Nothing is either Blood or Nature. They complement a heavy frontline strategy quite well.
Now is when you play and level up all those scalers and expand to scale more.

Which unit to prioritize?
Is the frontline looking decimated after a fight? Make them tougher.
Think you need more damage? It’s best to repeatedly boost the unit giving you the biggest damage numbers to get even bigger numbers than to spread it evenly.

Take note on the final champion fight, they hit on another level. If your rearline is doing ok against a regular green attack, their champion will completely destroy it. I’ve had a few surprise losses that way when things were going swimmingly until turn 32.

Classic Paladin frontline with many Scout Towers

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Blood and Spells synergy
Enchanted Inferno Soldiers and Combustion Wizards, supplemented by Imps

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Blood and Spells synergy 2
Inferno Paladins supported by Templars and Shamans.

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Enchanted horde of Archers
Supported by tanky Defenders with heals.

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The rare level 9 Castle win.