How to Play The Regent in Slay the Spire 2

Look out above! The world of Slay The Spire 2 has been invaded by a curious cosmic character known as The Regent, and he’s here to take names and chill on his throne.

Introduced alongside the Necrobinder, the Regent brings a whole host of new relics, cards and mechanics for roguelike players to experiment with. But don’t expect this to be easy! Unlike his counterparts, the Regent requires quite a lot more planning to get his decks working. Of course, when the right cards and relics line up, he’s a force to be reckoned with!

Let’s take a look at this new hero and how to get the most out of him.

Class Identity

The first thing you’ll notice when you play the Regent for the first time is the extra energy symbol near your normal energy. This is called a Star, which works as a separate fuel reserve to play your cards.

However, this star energy works independently. Certain cards may require 0 energy and 2 Stars to play, or they might even require you to have both. Unfortunately, Star energy doesn't actually regenerate on its own like normal energy, so if you want more Stars, you’re going to need to find cards to give you more Stars, or a Power card that allows you to passively regenerate Stars. These star-based cards can be extremely powerful, though, so always be on the lookout.

Most of the time, these star cards won’t form a deck on their own; they are more to supplement other decks, and make them stronger.

Apart from Stars, you might have noticed the Regent being carried about by little orange minions. This is another theme with the Regent. You can use minions to do all sorts of things, from defending you to attacking on their own. In addition, once you factor in the new Forge Keyword, you’ll start to notice that the Regent would much rather have others do his work for him.

Build Variants

Forge your Destiny

One of my new favourite builds that I’ve been experimenting a lot with is the new Forge mechanic. When you use a card with the Forge Keyword for the first time, you’ll add a Sovereign Blade into your hand. In addition, forging will add extra damage to this blade, which lasts throughout that specific combat encounter.

This is a pretty simple build that works well for those who love hitting big numbers. You can use multiple copies of Summon Forth to constantly bring back the Sovereign Blade, using it multiple times in a turn if you have enough energy. And if you don’t, luckily, the blade has Retain, so you can save it for when you really need it.

Combine The Smith with cards that inflict Vulnerable, like Falling Star or Know Thy Place, and you can get some pretty crazy damage. However, if you’re struggling with multiple targets, look out for Seeking Edge or Sword Sage, as these will allow you to spread out that damage.

There are multiple ways you can build with this specific mechanic, so experiment with different cards and work out how you like it.

Written in the Stars

Just because the Stars mechanic is more complimentary, doesn’t mean you can’t build a deck around it in a pinch.

If you find yourself with a lot of cards that require you to use stars, you’ll need to find a good way of generating them so you don’t get a bunch of dead cards in your hand. Cards like Genesis and Shining Strike are amazing for this.

Once you’ve discovered your Star engine, you can start focusing on cards that require a lot of stars to play, like Royal Gamble, Decisions, Decisions, and Seven Stars. You can either choose to focus on Skills or Attacks, or have a bit of both, and get some pretty ridiculous results.

However, this deck is heavily reliant on finding that Star Engine and getting it running as quickly as possible. If you don’t have reliable star generation by Act 3, everything falls apart rather quickly.

Go, my Faithful Minions!

While this build might not have as much support as the previous 2, it’s a good little package to fit into an existing deck.

The theme of these cards is transforming cards you already have into minion cards that all cost 0 energy to play. You can combo this with stuff that gives you Debris like Crash Landing, making those status cards actually useful. Or you can use cards like Make It So and Beat Into Shape, which benefit greatly from playing a bunch of cards in the same turn.

While having high energy isn’t as useful here, you really need a good Draw Engine to sustain your hands, or later on, you’re going to have a lot of dead turns.

The Colourless Creator

There’s another mechanic buried here somewhere. The Regent has a weird number of cards that create and generate colourless cards. Again, this is not so much its own deck as much as it is an engine to slot into another deck.

Colourless cards can be pretty broken in the right deck, especially when they’re upgraded. If you can get yourself a reliable way to generate a lot of energy, you can play a huge number of colourless cards in one turn. This is a bit like playing the lottery, as sometimes you’ll have incredible turns, and sometimes you’ll get unplayable cards that might even lose you the game.

But that’s the fun of it! If you like a good gamble, then this kind of deck is right up your street!

Regent Relics

There are quite a few relics that every Regent player is going to want to look out for in their runs. While every single relic isn’t going to work for every deck, they can quite cleverly complement certain playstyles.

Here we have some unique relics that only work for the Regent:

• Galactic Dust
• Lunar Pastry
• Vitruvian Minion

If you ever see these in a shop, they're certainly worth picking up. In terms of normal relics, the Regent benefits heavily from anything that gives him extra energy regeneration and bonus card draw. Strength and Dexterity are important, but perhaps less so than for other characters.