9 Kings Bombardier Build Guide: Reaching Year 135

To reach Year 135 in 9 Kings, transition your defense into a backline Bombardier artillery battery focused on attack speed, splash radius, and frontline stall units. Standard melee lines collapse under late-game enemy stat scaling, making screen-clearing area-of-effect (AoE) damage the most reliable way to clear massive incoming waves before they reach your castle.

Core Bombardier Mechanics

Bombardiers fire high-damage explosive shells that scale simultaneously with base attack, area-of-effect blast radius, and projectile travel speed. Unlike direct-fire archers or single-target spellcasters that get swarmed by dense hordes, explosive shells deliver quadratic value: every additional enemy packed into the blast footprint multiplies the net damage dealt by a single hit.

Because late-game waves feature fast-moving rushers, artillery volleys must land before enemies cross the board. Reducing reload intervals and boosting projectile flight speed turns slow catapult lobs into a constant barrage. Once blast radiuses expand across multiple tiles, overlapping detonations wipe advancing columns continuously regardless of minor targeting delays.

Drafting Priorities and Deck Thinning

During card draft rounds, prioritize modifiers that enhance projectile coverage and firing frequency rather than raw flat attack power. An artillery unit that attacks twice as fast with a 50 percent larger blast footprint clears swarms far more reliably than one with doubled base damage.

Upgrade Priority	Mechanical Focus	Strategic Value Past Year 100
Attack Speed Multipliers	Firing interval reduction	Closes timing gaps between volleys so sprint units cannot slip through
Blast Radius Amplifiers	AoE grid tile expansion	Overlaps blast zones across lanes to eliminate trailing enemy ranks
Duplicate Unit Cards	Battery unit count	Multiplies the total number of simultaneous shells launched per cycle
Projectile Velocity Buffs	Shell flight time acceleration	Ensures long-range volleys impact before mobile rushers reach safety

Remove low-tier utility cards and unneeded melee units as the run progresses. Trimming filler cards keeps your draw pool focused on key artillery upgrades, unit duplicates, and defensive crowd control.

Board Positioning and Frontline Setup

Place Bombardiers along the deepest rear tiles of your territory. Artillery units feature long attack startup animations and minimum arming ranges, meaning enemies that reach the midfield can trap them in close-quarters combat where they cannot fire.

Split Your Batteries: Avoid grouping all Bombardiers into a single cluster. Stagger units across opposite rear corners to establish intersecting crossfire lanes across the board.
Anchor the Vanguard: Position resilient blockers, barricades, or recurring summons in front of your batteries. These units do not need high damage output; their role is to hold enemy vanguards in place for three to four seconds directly beneath incoming shells.

Year Progression Milestones

Surviving deep into endless mode requires shifting from reactive defense to spawn-point suppression before Year 100.

Years 1–40 (Battery Assembly): Draft your core Bombardier cards, establish basic frontline blockers, and stabilize gold income to fund recurring upgrades.
Years 41–80 (Radius and Speed Acceleration): Focus drafting on blast radius increases, attack frequency buffs, and deck trimming to remove early-game filler.
Years 81–110 (Full-Map Transition): Extend artillery range so volleys target enemies immediately upon spawning, wiping waves before they split across lanes.
Years 111–135 (Continuous Saturation): Stack duplicate battery cards and shell velocity upgrades to eliminate all downtime between blast impacts.

Countering Late-Game Rushers

High-speed rushers and elite commanders with dash mechanics pose the greatest danger to an artillery build. If an enemy slips past the bombardment and enters the minimum firing distance, Bombardiers cannot defend themselves.

Supplement your artillery with passive slowing fields, freeze cards, or knockback abilities. Movement penalties pin mobile threats inside the primary blast zones long enough for heavy shells to connect, preserving your backline through Year 135.