The King of Progress is the roster's take on a tech tree. His cards feed each other: upgrades trigger upgrades, which trigger more upgrades, until a kingdom that limped through year 10 is unstoppable by year 40. Community consensus is consistent about the trade: the hardest king to survive the opening with, and one of the strongest if you get there.
The deck: nine cards
| Card | Type | What it does |
|---|---|---|
| Mothership | Base | A flying base that marches at the enemy and can be steered mid-battle |
| Concabulator | Building | When it reaches level 3, it upgrades every plot in your kingdom |
| Converter | Tower | Transforms enemies into rats that fight for you, inheriting the Converter's stats |
| Executioner | Troop | Ranged unit that always targets the lowest-health enemy |
| Defender | Troop | A pacifist tank that reflects all damage it takes |
| Lab Rat | Troop | A one-time melee unit that levels up alongside adjacent plots, with no level cap |
| Reinforce | Enchantment | Any plot levelling up grants your units bonus damage |
| Precision | Enchantment | A unit's first attack in a battle is a guaranteed critical hit |
| Overhaul | Tome | Destroys a target plot to upgrade random ones, one more each time it is used |
Patch 0.9.5 (July 2026) worked this deck over: a new Recycler card, a Junkyard decree that floods your hand with scrap, and a reworked Futurism decree that lets troops climb to level 99. The same patch notes admit that Precision was the least-used card in the game and describe its rework. The Converter is the deck's celebrity: community lore claims it one-shots bosses by converting them, but that claim has no backing in the wiki's card data, so treat it as a rumor worth testing, not a fact.
How a Progress run plays
- Survive the opening. The deck's payoff cards need levels, and levels need years. The first decade is about cheap troops and not dying.
- Start the machine. One Concabulator hitting level 3 upgrades your whole kingdom; Reinforce converts each of those events into raw damage.
- Snowball. From there every year compounds: more plots upgraded, more damage, more Lab Rat levels, an army that out-scales the yearly curve.
The unlock task fits the theme: the community wiki records it as levelling up 299 plots across your runs. Among the nine kings he is the clearest "earn it" pick. If the snowball fantasy appeals but the opening keeps killing you, the difficulty ladder page explains how the lower titles soften the early curve, and the builds page collects starting patterns that survive it.
FAQ
How do you unlock the King of Progress?
Level up 299 plots, per the community wiki's task list. The task is visible on his locked card in the king selection screen.
What does the Converter do in 9 Kings?
It converts enemy units into rats that fight for you, inheriting the Converter's stats. The community story about it instantly killing bosses has no support in the documented card data.
Is King of Progress hard to play?
Yes, especially early. His payoff cards need time to come online, and the game's yearly scaling does not wait. Players usually learn on the King of Nothing first.