9 Kings: Best cards for the King of Blood

The King of Blood unifies fantasy tropes like the demon king and necromancy in his abilities and cards, but no run of 9 Kings is won by relying on a single faction’s strength. To overcome all the other kings, you must make their weapons your own and add them to your arsenal in a way that complements your strengths or masks your weaknesses.

This strategy guide will show you the best cards for the King of Blood, so be sure to keep an eye out for them during your runs, as you want to make picking them up a priority.

Best King of Blood strategy in 9 Kings

The King of Blood’s core strategy relies on summoning Demon Lords, powerful single-entity units that can eventually eat entire armies for breakfast.

To reach that power level, however, they need to be fattened up first. Whenever an allied unit dies in battle, a Demon Altar’s summons gain 0.5% in every stat for the next battle, so Demon Lords grow stronger the longer a run goes on.

Naturally, this means that you’ll want to place down Demon Altars as early as possible — one unlockable perk even allows you to start off with some. If you pull extra Demon Altars early on, you’ll want to place them into an empty plot instead of upgrading your existing ones, as you’ll have access to more Demon Lords in the future that way.

Since you’ll want to feed as many of your own units as possible into the Moloch, you should favor units with a high number of troops.

Best King of Blood cards in 9 Kings

Buildings:

• Demon Altar (King of Blood): Summons additional Demon Lords and upgrades their stats over time. You’ll want to place these down as early as possible and upgrade them later.
• Cemetery (King of Blood): Resurrects adjacent dead units as Imps. Bringing your dead troops back to life not only helps win battles, but allows them to die a second time during combat, offering an additional stat boost to your Demon Lords.
• Farm (King of Nothing): Adds troops to adjacent units. Getting more troops online means having more sacrifices for the Demon Altars.
• Converter (King of Progress): Turns enemies into Lab Rats. Making enemies into friends that can die for you is fantastic, because dead friends make for chonky Demon Lords.
• Spire (King of Spells): Heals units during battle. Having a Spire will help you keep your valuable Demon Lords alive later in the game, allowing them to deal more damage.

Units:

• Imp (King of Blood): Imps come in large unit sizes, making them ideal for the swarm tactics you want to employ.
• Bomber (King of Blood): Bombers blow themselves up to attack, guaranteeing their death and therefore becoming a snack for the Demon Lord.
• Lab Rat (King of Progress): Similar to Imps, Lab Rats come in large numbers and fall relatively easily, making them ideal sacrificial lambs.
• Soldier (King of Nothing): Though less prone to dying than Imps and Lab Rats, Soldiers still come in big enough units to be perfect fodder.
• Thief (King of Greed): Thieves are glass cannons that can clear enemy backlines and then die very easily, so they fit into the picture very well.

Upgrades:

• Wildcard (King of Nothing): A flexible card you can use to upgrade Demon Altars, since you’ll probably want to place down actual Demon Altar cards you pull.
• Carnage (King of Blood): An upgrade that allows units to explode upon death, dealing additional damage — perfect to complement your swarm tactics.
• Clone (King of Nature): An excellent card in any situation. For the King of Blood, the card is fantastic to build more Demon Altars or upgrade them.
• Procreate (King of Nature): Adding additional troops to a unit is always great. For the King of Blood, it primarily ensures that you have additional meat for the grinder.
• Earthworks (King of Stone): Expanding the number of available plots is necessary to build enough Demon Altars and ensure that you have enough space to build a strong army at the same time.

Following this general strategy and keeping an eye out for the cards above should enable you to reliably win runs as the King of Blood.