9 Kings is a card-drafting roguelike autobattler from Brazilian studio Sad Socket, published by Hooded Horse and Sidekick Publishing. You choose a king, draft a card each year, and place it on a small grid of plots before rival monarchs throw siegesiege. A timed, large-scale attack on a settlement — attackers try to destroy it, defenders try to hold it. waves at your capital. Every ruler ships with its own starting deck, its own decrees and its own perk pool, and only the King of Nothing is unlocked at first — the rest open up as you clear quests, per the wiki’s Kings page.
The game is also about to change shape. 9 Kings entered early access on May 23, 2025, and it leaves early access with version 1.0 on November 12, 2026, per the store page and the publisher’s announcement. So this is explicitly a tier list for the current build, 0.9.8 — the patch that, in Sad Socket’s own words, “sets the stage for 1.0 next month.”
What this covers: A tier list for all nine kings on build 0.9.8, reasoned from each deck’s sourced mechanics rather than from win rates — no first-party win-rate data for the current build has been published. Why it matters: The two published tier lists we fetched disagree on four of the eight kings they share, so “the community consensus” is not a thing you can currently look up. Who should pick this: Anyone deciding which king to unlock next, which difficulty to climb with, or which deck to trust for an Endless run.
The nine kings and what each deck actually does
Nine is now the real number: the King of Time arrived as the ninth ruler, in what Sad Socket called “our most ambitious (dare I say reckless) update yet.” Before that the roster shipped in waves — Nomads was the eighth king, Time the ninth.
| King | Deck focus | Signature cards | What the sources describe |
|---|---|---|---|
| King of Nothing | Balanced, low-complexity | Soldier, Paladin, Wildcard, Blacksmith | Wiki: “considered the best deck for newcomers due to its simple mechanics and lack of reliance on specialized strategies” |
| King of Spells | Enchantments and magic | Wizard, Warlock, Citadel, Offering | Wiki: versatile, but “needs support from other King’s cards to flourish” |
| King of Greed | Gold scaling | Dispenser, Mercenary, Vault, Overinvest | Wiki: “very strong in the late game, but struggles early to high enemy counts or speed” |
| King of Blood | Sacrifice and summons | Oblation, Mangler, Cemetery, Pagoda | Wiki: “features the widest range of summon effects among all decks” |
| King of Nature | HP and troop counts | Procreate, Clone, Mycelium, Forest | Wiki: “thrives in drawn-out games where it can build momentum through growth” |
| King of Nomads | Movement and plot shuffling | Warlord, Mob, Raptor, Dragon Den, Migration | Wiki: “quite powerful in all stages of the game” |
| King of Stone | Towers and fortification | Flametower, Trapper, Earthworks, Wallmaker | Wiki: “with few (if any) viable unit-based strategies, this king relies on wearing enemies down” |
| King of Progress | Upgrades and development | Recycler, Reinforce, Converter, Lab Rat | Wiki: “boasts both amazing early and late game potential but relies heavily on the right cards, in the right order” |
| King of Time | Timing and time travel | Portal, Hourglass, Bastion, Warper, Amplifier, Orbiter | Patch notes: “some cards reward you for being fast, some cards reward you for being slow” |
How this tier list is built
Three rules, all of them checkable against the sources above.
First, self-sufficiency: how much of a winning run the deck provides on its own. You can loot cards from kings you defeat, so every deck can be patched — but a king whose own plan only works afterwards starts worse, and the wiki’s note that the King of Spells “needs support from other King’s cards to flourish” is a cost, not a compliment.
Second, how the first years go. Sad Socket deliberately flattened the early curve: the King of Time patch made “the first years of a run … easier on all difficulties” so that “more openers will be viable,” while raising the enemy cap later. A deck that survives without a lucky hand gets a bump.
The method is the one we used for the Hades II aspect tier list: rank on mechanics a source states, and name the patch a placement was written against.
Third, how the patch line moved it. The largest changes since release are Patch #29 (a deck rework across Blood, Progress, Stone, Greed and the Rainbow pool, aimed at removing “any F-tier cards/decrees”), Patch #30 (a perk rework plus new Rainbow cards) and Patch #31 (balancing and fixes). A tier from August 2025 is describing a different game.
The tier list for build 0.9.8
Tiers here mean one thing: how reliably the deck converts a run into a win at a given difficulty. They are not a ranking of ceiling — the highest-ceiling deck on this page is in the bottom tier.
| Tier | Kings | The sourced reason |
|---|---|---|
| S — closes runs on its own | King of Stone, King of Nomads | Both got direct buffs in the recent rework passes, and both have a default plan that works before the deck is complete |
| A — high ceiling, one visible cost | King of Nature, King of Blood, King of Spells, King of Time | Strong payoffs with a stated weakness: unit-count variance, a risky early game, situational cards, or a deck only one patch old |
| B — pays only if you plan ahead | King of Greed, King of Nothing, King of Progress | Sources agree these depend on card order, a gold curve, or a jack-of-all-trades pool with no standout card |
S tier: decks that close runs before the deck is finished
The King of Stone is the clearest example of a deck that got quietly better while the tier lists weren’t looking. Patch #29 made Trebuchet projectiles deal AoE damage, which Sad Socket described as “making it substantially stronger”; gave Cauldron three stacks of poison per level instead of one; and gave Wallmaker “+10% HP every year its on the field.” Patch #30 then handed Trapper traps a stun effect, with duration scaling per level. The wiki’s summary — towers, structures, almost no viable units — is the shape a defensive autobattler win takes, and Treyex Gaming’s January 2026 guide also puts Stone near the top.
The King of Nomads is the tempo answer to the same question. Its base card, Warlord, is a troop that also serves as your capital — Sad Socket called it “something we wanted in the game from day 1.” Migration moves plots, Dragon Den “thrives on destruction” and got its “attack area and damage … substantially increased” in Patch #29, and the wiki notes it is strong at every stage because Swords and Shields are linear early but “exponential once you hit certain thresholds.” Treyex’s guide describes the loop that makes it work at high difficulty: place a Cemetery between unit plots, then move the Warlord away and back with Migration, which “doubles the Mob count each time.”
A tier: real power, one stated weakness each
The King of Spells is the offensive pick, and Pro Game Guides ranks it S with the note “offensive powerhouse — limited defensive options.” Its best-known interaction, Wizard plus the Static buff, has been buffed twice: Patch #15 doubled Static’s stack damage, and Patch #30 raised Electric from “+1 damage” to “+3 damage.” The cost is the wiki’s: many cards are “situational and require a strong understanding of timing and synergy.” One warning about older advice — Pro Game Guides tells readers to prioritise the Ruthless perk, but Patch #11 states plainly that “Ruthless can no longer insta-kill bosses.”
The King of Blood has been the most reworked deck of the lot. Patch #29 replaced Vampirism with Oblation (“when you throw this tome into the pit, all your troops get +1 unit”), made Mangler summon living meat trolls, and turned Cemetery’s battle effect into a passive that raises a Skeleton plot where an adjacent troop plot is destroyed. Patch #30 raised Diabolical from +3 to +9 summoned Ghosts. The wiki’s caveat — “the early game can be quite risky,” yet the deck “can rapidly snowball with the right synergies” — puts it in A rather than S.
The King of Nature is the swarm and HP deck: the wiki points to “exponential HP scaling” and a powerful base tower, while Pro Game Guides warns it “lacks melee units.” Patch #15 buffed its Fertility decree from 3 to 5 Procreate cards, and Patch #30 raised Elven from +10% to +20% Elf damage. Treyex’s guide flags the risk: “RNG plays a large role here — especially if you rely heavily on Procreate cards.”
The King of Time is provisional, and the patch history says why. Time travel through the Portal card, the Banisher rainbow perk that removes a rival king from a run, and Hourglass’s reward for long battles all arrived in one update. Patch #31 then had to fix “a critical bug when playing King of Time with the perk Wise and Amplifiers that caused troops to freeze in battle,” plus a soft lock from “breaking the time continuum after traveling 33 years.” Strong, and unfinished — A, with a caveat.
B tier: good decks that want a plan first
The King of Greed is the clearest example of a deck whose position depends on the patch. The wiki says it “struggles early to high enemy counts or speed”; Patch #29 cut Mercenaries to 9 gold per unit from 15 while nerfing their base stats, and made Vault level up automatically every year. Treyex’s guide recommends one central Mob unit to multiply the swarm; Mejoress’s July 2025 guide warns against hoarding above 20 gold. Pro Game Guides frames the deck as binary: “if you have money, you have power — if you’re short on money, you’re done.”
The King of Nothing is the newcomer deck, not the strongest one, and the developers know it. The wiki calls it consistent and credits its Soldiers and Paladins with “unique damage scaling mechanics”; Patch #14 gave Soldier “+1% damage for every unit added to the troop” and Paladin an HP boost per damage boost, adding: “We hope you’ll stop ranking one of our fav kings in the lowest tiers now.” Pro Game Guides’ complaint still stands — “almost every King of Nothing card has a stronger counterpart from another factionfaction. An in-game group or nation players can align with or fight against, with its own goals and reputation system.” — though Patch #30 raised its Archers to +50% range from +20%.
The King of Progress has the highest ceiling here and the most demanding entry; the wiki’s phrasing is precise — it “relies heavily on the right cards, in the right order.” Patch #29 removed Precision, “the least used card in the game,” replaced it with Recycler, and rebuilt Reinforce into “+2% HP per second during battle.” Treyex recommends surviving on the Feast decree, Defenders and Temples with about four early Defender upgrades, and notes that a Converter Tower, which normally turns enemies into rats, “inflicts massive direct damage” on bosses instead.
Where the published tier lists disagree
Neither of the two full tier lists we fetched matches the other, and one predates five major patches.
| King | Pro Game Guides (updated Aug 2025) | Treyex Gaming (Jan 2026) | This list |
|---|---|---|---|
| King of Spells | S | A–S | A |
| King of Nature | S | D–F | A |
| King of Nomads | A | A–S | S |
| King of Greed | A | D–F | B |
| King of Stone | A | A–S | S |
| King of Blood | B | A–S | A |
| King of Nothing | B | D–F | B |
| King of Progress | C | D–F | B |
Read the columns against the patch dates and the disagreements stop looking like contradictions: Pro Game Guides last updated in August 2025, before the Blood, Progress, Stone and Greed deck rework, and Treyex’s guide is an Endless-mode piece that lumps four kings into one “A-S” tier and four into “D-F.” For a second opinion, prefer the more recent one — and check its patch.
What 1.0 does to all of this
The 1.0 update arrives on November 12, 2026, and its headline feature is custom deck creation: mixing “cards from all of the Kings to build a unique starting deck,” plus rule modifiers. The publisher also lists a daily quest system, more Rainbow cards and over 27 new decrees; the developers’ own 1.0 breakdown counts four modes (singleplayer, multiplayer, quest, and the new Joker custom mode), 130-plus cards, 140-plus decrees and 110-plus perks.
That matters for this list specifically. Multiplayer already rotates its decree pool each season — Patch #31 set it at 18 universal decrees, 6 rainbow and 6 per king — with the stated goal of avoiding “stale metas.” Once a starting deck can be built from another king’s cards, “which king is best” stops being one question, because the king is only the opening hand of a larger plan.
Until then, the practical advice is boring and reliable: pick S or A if you want to climb, pick B if you want to study the game, and if you are choosing between two tier lists, check the date before the tier.