9 Kings: How to Beat the King of Nature Quest

To beat the King of Nature quest in 9 Kings, draft an early Orchard to secure meat production, anchor central choke lanes with high-health Treants, and layer poison-applying backline units to defeat incoming waves. The quest restricts standard heavy-armor and fortification cards like Knights and Ballistas, requiring you to protect your central shrine using biological summons and attrition damage.

Early Economy: Securing Meat and Orchard Placement

The Nature faction relies on food and meat rather than gold reserves to draft and sustain living units. Unupgraded base income cannot support mid-tier beast costs, making immediate production infrastructure mandatory before higher-tier waves arrive in Year 3.

• Draft an Orchard or Beast Den in opening rounds: Place your primary production building during the earliest draft turns to avoid unit starvation.
• Anchor production in rear grid slots: Deploy economic buildings in the back-row tiles directly behind your King, keeping them out of reach of enemy projectiles and flankers.
• Stall with cheap blockers: Summon low-cost units like wolves or wild scouts solely to delay initial enemy scouts while the Orchard's production cycle comes online.

Frontline Positioning: Treants and Bears

Because the Nature deck replaces armored units with regenerative health pools, frontline units must intercept charging cavalry and footmen before they reach vulnerable tiles.

1. Place Treants in central choke lanes: Treants feature the immense health pools required to halt enemy charges at the board's threshold. Centering them groups incoming attackers into a single point of impact.
2. Flank with Bears: Deploy Bears on tiles adjacent to your Treants. They act as secondary bruisers, soaking split damage and dealing cleave damage to clustered attackers.
3. Maintain a tight perimeter: Avoid scattering tanks across disconnected outer tiles. Clustered defensive lines funnel enemies into concentrated kill zones.

Backline Attrition: Poison and Support Synergies

Beast frontlines lack natural armor penetration, which causes direct physical damage to stall against armored late-game enemies. Backline support units solve this bottleneck by applying poison debuffs that ignore conventional damage reduction.

Position Nature Shamans directly behind your central Treant. This keeps them shielded from direct melee strikes while allowing their poison auras and healing pulses to reach every unit engaged in the central lane.

Managing the Final Wave and Boss

The final wave features an aggressive vanguard commander capable of breaking through frontlines. Overcoming this encounter requires actively maintaining board presence and countering enemy backline units:

• Bank surplus meat: Hold extra meat and reserve summons heading into the final round so you can instantly replace fallen frontline units.
• Cycle replacement tanks: If a central Treant falls, immediately deploy a reserve blocker into the vacated tile to prevent the boss from breaching your backline.
• Deploy Raptors against backline threats: When enemy siege engines or long-range archers target your rear support buildings, drop fast-moving Raptors into outer flanking lanes to eliminate them directly.