9 Kings

Coverage: November 9, 2026 — PC Early Access. This section covers standard single-player runs in 9 Kings. Quests and multiplayer have their own rules.

Your army flattened the last few waves. Then year 33 arrives, and that missing upgrade is still apparently on royal vacation. Start preparing before the final hand: find what nearly broke in the last battle, then spend your remaining choices fixing that weakness. A kingdom that wins early fights can still lack the damage or staying power for the finale.

Know what ends the run

A standard run starts with three lives. Normally, an enemy unit reaching your base costs a life; running out ends the run. The King of Nomads has no permanent base, so enemies threaten his life statues instead.

Year 33 is the standard-run Final Battle. The enemy army includes a champion. Losing a life here ends the entire run, even if you entered with spare lives. Treat the last approach to your base—or Nomad statues—as the failure point you must prevent.

There is also a hand-rule change. During normal years, playing or discarding down to two cards starts the battle. Before the finale, you must play or discard every remaining card. Finish your checks before clearing that hand. You cannot keep a useful card tucked away for after the fight.

Use the calendar to prepare

Scheduled events give you planning windows. They do not guarantee a particular card, rival or result. These are useful anchors in the normal sequence:

Time-changing effects can disrupt that normal sequence. The King of Time's Portal, for example, can send you to an earlier year while keeping your kingdom's progress. After using such an effect, check the displayed year again before planning around the next event.

Find the weak link before spending

Use the last battle as your starting point. After combat, the damage numbers over your plots—the spaces holding your cards—show which positions dealt damage. Pair those numbers with what you saw: who died first, what stayed alive too long, and where enemies slipped through. These checks apply across kings; the best fix depends on your cards and chosen difficulty.

• Damage: If your army survives but enemies linger, improve a damage source already doing useful work. Check whether an offered upgrade or effect suits its target and attack pattern. A low damage total can also mean a troop died before it could attack.
• Durability: If your main attackers vanish early, look for health, protection, healing or tougher troops among the available offers. Keeping your strongest damage source alive longer may help more than adding another fragile attacker.
• Positioning: Before placing a new card, check which plots its support effect can reach. Adjacency means the neighboring plots specified by the effect. Make sure the intended recipient qualifies. Existing cards need an appropriate movement effect, such as Migration, to change plots; inspect its destination rules before using it.
• Scaling: Scaling means gaining strength as years, battles or repeated triggers pass. Read when each growth effect activates and what it improves. A support card needs both a valid target and enough remaining triggers to help.

The fun is making those pieces feed each other: support strengthens your best attacker, protection keeps it fighting, and that tiny kingdom starts punching far above its acreage. For year 33, though, fix the part that fails first.

Shop for a job, with fallback choices ready

Rival kings help shape your rewards. Winning normally offers cards from the defeated king's deck; surviving a lost battle gives choices from your own king's deck. Diplomat events change whom you fight, which also changes your reward opportunities. Reward rerolls usually stay within the same king's pool, so repeatedly rerolling cannot reliably fetch a card from an unrelated ruler.

Merchants offer cards from across the kings' decks. You can reroll their stock, and the button below the merchant's name lets you reroll the shop type. Jack of Arms focuses on troops, Jack of Structures on buildings and towers, and Jack of Magic on tomes and enchantments. Tomes apply their stated effect to a target plot; enchantments add effects to troops.

Before each paid reroll, name the problem the next offer must solve. Consider buying a useful card already on sale before replacing the offers, and keep enough gold to afford a helpful result. Spending the upgrade budget on empty searches can leave the board weak. If you use Mercenaries, be extra careful: their troop count depends on the gold you hold, so spending can also shrink that force.

Clear the final hand with a plan

1. Move the pointer near the right edge of the map to check the approaching king's icon.
2. Identify your main damage source and what protects it.
3. Read the remaining cards for target restrictions, adjacency and trigger timing.
4. Play useful cards in an order that preserves their required targets and support relationships.
5. Discard cards that cannot help, then resolve the last card only when preparation is complete.

Winning year 33 completes the standard run. You may stop or continue into endless play, where enemies keep getting stronger. That victory proves your kingdom cleared this finale. Lasting survival still needs growth that can keep pace, so check your scaling again before sending the crown into overtime.