Why looting wins reigns
Every king's deck has deliberate gaps. Greed lacks nothing economically but wants battlefield tricks; Spells wants bodies to buff; Nature wants early tempo. Looting is how the game lets you patch those gaps: defeat a rival king and take their cards, folding foreign verbs into your strategy. The most broken builds in the game are all hybrids, and hybrids are built from loot.
Picking your target
Loot for cards, not for pride. Scout rival kingdoms and ask one question: which foreign verb would change my run? A Greed player wants multipliers or mobility; a Spells player wants economy or bodies; an Imp Raiser wants anything that answers area damage. The weakest king holding the cards you need is the correct target. Attacking the strongest king for prestige is how reigns end in the 9 Kings roguelike chronicles section of every forum.
The art of the decisive strike
Looting wars must be decisive. Probe with scouts, commit everything at the moment of maximum advantage, and finish quickly. A grinding war of attrition against a rival bleeds the resources the loot was supposed to provide, and while you are busy, the years keep escalating everywhere else. In the game, if the strike cannot be decisive, it should not happen yet. Build for five more years and reconsider.
Folding stolen cards in
Stolen cards are not automatically good in your deck. Test each looted card against your core loop: does it multiply what you already do, cover a weakness, or enable a new combo family? Keep the multipliers, keep the coverage, cut the merely interesting. The combos guide shows how to evaluate foreign cards by verb, which is faster and more reliable than evaluating by raw power.
Looting mistakes
One: looting too early, before your own kingdom can survive your absence. Two: keeping every stolen card until the deck is diluted soup. Three: ignoring the diplomatic map: rivals you spare remember, and rivals you weaken invite third parties. Four: forgetting that the years escalate during your war. Time every campaign against the calendar, not just the target.
