9 Kings: How to Scale the Buffed King of Nothing in Endless Mode

To maintain an endless run with the buffed King of Nothing in 9 Kings, aggressively decline filler card drafts, leave open space on your grid, and concentrate multiplicative buffs onto a compact frontline. Because the King of Nothing converts lean board states and skipped picks into compounding combat power, fielding a small, heavily boosted army outperforms wide swarms that cause grid congestion and die to late-game area-of-effect damage.

Card Drafting Priorities

Every draft pick you skip or purge strengthens the monarch’s passive scaling and keeps your redraw pool focused. Only take cards that directly preserve your frontline or multiply their existing stats.

Card Category	Examples	Drafting Priority	Strategic Purpose
Core Frontline Carries	Knight, Iron Soldier	High (Early Years)	Forms an immovable barrier to absorb incoming enemy burst.
Aura & Support Buildings	Shrine, Beacon	High (Mid-to-Late Years)	Multiplies carry stats without taking up frontline combat tiles.
High-Impact Ranged DPS	Archer, Wizard	Medium	Provides targeted burst to eliminate clustered enemy waves.
Swarm Units	Peasants, Rats	Avoid	Blocks movement lanes and dilutes single-target buffs.
Situational Spells & Flat Perks	Minor flat damage cards	Skip	Skips preserve monarch scaling and prevent deck dilution.

Defensive Grid Layout and Unit Placement

The Castle is your primary failure point. Because the King of Nothing lacks panic defensive crutches, your board layout must funnel enemies into controlled chokepoints while shielding infrastructure from area damage.

Deploy frontliners ahead of the Castle: Place heavy melee units, such as Knights or Iron Soldiers, several tiles forward at lane entry thresholds. This locks enemy waves in combat well before they reach your primary structures.
Nest ranged DPS directly behind the line: Position Archers or Wizards immediately behind your frontliners so their attack ranges cover the frontline engagement zone without exposing them to melee cleave.
Offset support structures laterally: Do not place Shrines and Beacons adjacent to your frontline. Position them along lateral tiles where their area-of-effect envelopes the defenders while remaining out of range of enemy boss attacks and stray projectiles.
Leave clear movement corridors: Maintain empty tiles between lanes so surviving enemies path directly into defender range rather than spilling around your perimeter.

Multiplicative Aura Stacking and Perks

Flat stat increases fall off quickly against high-year health scaling. You must build compounding multiplier loops using support structures and high-tier perks.

The Shrine and Beacon engine: Build a Beacon adjacent to a high-tier Shrine. The Beacon captures the Shrine's stat bonuses and radiates them across its operational radius. Station your core Knights or Iron Soldiers inside overlapping Beacon fields to multiply their health, defense, and attack speed at the same time.
Rainbow cards and percentage perks: Prioritize Rainbow-tier picks, lifesteal, attack speed acceleration, and percentage-based modifiers such as Surge. A concentrated frontline ensures that every percentage multiplier lands on an active combat carry.

Surviving High-Year Waves (Year 50+)

Pushing past Year 50 requires disciplined maintenance rather than adding more units to the board. Introducing unbuffed units in late years disrupts aura targeting and creates movement friction.

Refuse panic drafts: When facing difficult waves, resist drafting unvetted melee units. Unbuffed units die immediately in late waves and lower your overall board efficiency.
Prevent support clutter: Do not draft redundant production buildings that occupy grid tiles needed for Beacon coverage.
Counter siege threats: If enemy compositions field long-range artillery units that shell your Castle from outside your carries' reach, adjust your defender line forward to intercept them at spawn thresholds.
Conduct annual audits: Check that your primary defenders remain fully covered by active Beacon auras and that wave clear times remain fast. If your frontline clears waves without threatening the Castle, continue skipping non-essential draft picks.