Slay the Spire 2 Regent Card Tier List (Patch v0.102.0)
Stars, Forge, and Sovereign Blade: ranking the cosmic card pool
The entity:regent's card pool is the least-documented of the five characters in v0.102.0. The community wiki has solid coverage of his starter cards and signature mechanics, but the broader card list (Star-cost payoffs, Forge enablers, Royal Skills uncommons) is still being catalogued. This tier list ranks only the cards the wiki can back up and describes the three archetypes at a structural level for the rest. Rankings that rely on incomplete data are worse than no rankings at all.
This page will expand as research matures. If you've played entity:regent at high Ascension and can verify card names and costs, the community wiki is the right place to submit corrections.
Cards We Can Rank
entity:sovereign-blade
entity:sovereign-blade is the entity:regent's run-long scaling hook. Its damage starts modest and climbs across the entire run as you play Forge-tagged cards that permanently upgrade it. By Act 3 a well-maintained entity:sovereign-blade can hit for 40 or more damage per play, on a card that costs no more than your other attacks.
That run-long payoff makes entity:sovereign-blade unusual: it's one of the few cards in any character's pool that is literally better on floor 40 than it was on floor 4. The flip side is that Forge investment only matters if entity:sovereign-blade survives to the end. Deck transformation events and card-removal mechanics interact with the Forge stack in ways the wiki hasn't fully documented yet, so treat Forge investment as a long-term bet rather than a guaranteed one.
Tier: S (Forge Blade archetype), B (any other archetype)
entity:falling-star
entity:falling-star is your Day 1 Star generator. It starts in your opening deck and is the first concrete evidence of how the Stars resource works: cheap to play, produces Stars, and primes bigger turns later. In the early acts it's doing the mechanical equivalent of what a Whirlwind or entity:blade-dance does for their respective characters: establishing the resource flow that everything else feeds from.
It doesn't scale into Act 3 on its own. Once your Star engine is built out, entity:falling-star becomes one of many contributors rather than the main one. That's fine. Starter cards aren't supposed to carry Act 3.
Tier: A (early game), B (late game)
entity:venerate
entity:venerate is the other starter. It's a Skill where entity:falling-star is an Attack. Most entity:regent builds in the community point toward a Skill-trigger subtheme (Royally Approved enchantments in particular reward Skill plays), so entity:venerate pulling double duty as a Star generator and a Skill-type card matters for deck direction.
Its individual impact per play is lower than entity:falling-star's, but its card type makes it more useful in a Royal Skills build where Skill count matters. Pick your starting relic (entity:divine-right or entity:divine-destiny) before deciding how hard to lean on entity:venerate, because the relic choice shapes whether pure Star generation or Skill-trigger synergies are your primary path.
Tier: A (Royal Skills archetype), B (Star Battery / Forge Blade)
Archetypes Where the Card Pool Is Thin
For the entity:regent archetypes below, individual card names beyond the starters are not yet documented in the wiki. The archetype descriptions stand on community-confirmed build patterns. Card-level rankings will follow once the full pool is catalogued.
Star Battery
The Star Battery build stockpiles Stars across the first two turns of a fight, then spends them on a high-cost payoff card on turn three or later. Stars persist between turns. No other resource in the game does that. Once you bank them, they stay banked until you spend them.
Pivot indicator: an early non-starter Star generator that costs 1 energy or less. If you see one in Act 1 rewards, take it and start building around the battery plan.
Win condition: 6+ Stars on turn three, dumped into a single card that deals 40 or more damage or ends the combat. The math requires knowing which payoff cards cost how many Stars, and that data is still incomplete.
Counter: short fights and encounters that kill you before the battery can charge. Burst rooms in Act 1 are hard for this build before you have enough block to survive the ramp turns.
Forge Blade
The Forge Blade build treats entity:sovereign-blade as a persistent investment account. Every Forge-tagged card you play makes a permanent deposit that pays off in every subsequent combat. The identity of this build is run-long accumulation rather than in-fight optimization.
Pivot indicator: a Forge-tagged card in Act 1 rewards alongside Sovereign Blade in your deck. The sooner Forge investment starts, the more combats it compounds across.
Win condition: Sovereign Blade dealing enough per play to close fights without additional cards. Community sources suggest 40 or more damage as the working target for Act 3 boss viability.
Counter: fights where the Blade's single-target damage isn't enough (multi-enemy rooms, enemies with HP too high to single-target down before their third action).
Royal Skills
Royal Skills builds rely on Skills triggering Royally Approved enchantments or equivalent Skill-activated effects. entity:venerate is the only confirmed Skill in the starter deck, so the build requires multiple Skill picks from card rewards to reach critical density.
Pivot indicator: Royally Approved enchantment on a card, or a non-starter Skill with a clear Skill-trigger synergy.
Win condition: a hand full of cheap Skills that each trigger a passive reward (extra Stars, extra block, extra damage), chaining into a turn that generates more value than 3 energy's worth of generic attack cards could.
FAQ
How do Stars differ from Energy?
Energy resets at the start of every turn (back to your base amount, typically 3). Stars do not reset. Any Stars you generate on turn one are still there on turn three. This makes Stars a savings mechanic: you can generate them on low-activity turns and spend the entire stockpile on one high-value turn. Energy can't do that. An unspent energy on turn one is simply gone.
What is Forge and how does it affect Sovereign Blade?
Forge is a run-long progression mechanic. Certain cards are tagged with Forge, and when you play them, Sovereign Blade permanently gains damage or additional effects for the rest of that run. The blade carries its Forge state into every subsequent combat: floor 4 investment shows up in floor 40 damage output. It's closer to how STS1 relics compound across a run than to how in-combat scaling powers work.
Is entity:regent viable at high Ascension?
Community data on Regent at Ascension 10 and above is limited. The current snapshot (v0.102.0) places him in the mid tier below entity:defect, entity:silent, and entity:ironclad. High-Ascension play requires faster access to payoff turns, and the Star ramp is vulnerable to burst encounters early in Act 1 before the engine stabilizes. He's not unviable, but the consensus is that his card pool feels less tuned than the three returning characters at high difficulty.
Which starter relic is better, entity:divine-right or entity:divine-destiny?
entity:divine-right grants 3 Stars at the start of each combat. That's a free half-turn of Star generation before you play a single card. entity:divine-destiny's effect is not yet documented in the wiki with enough precision to compare directly.
Based on available data: entity:divine-right is the safer default. Free Stars at combat start directly accelerate the Star Battery and Forge Blade archetypes. If you know you're building Royal Skills and the Destiny effect synergizes with that plan, revisit the choice. Without clearer text on entity:divine-destiny, Right is the known quantity.
Why are Regent tier lists incomplete compared to entity:ironclad or entity:silent tier lists?
Two reasons. First, Regent is new to the series. The returning characters (entity:ironclad, entity:silent, entity:defect) carried years of STS1 community knowledge into Early Access. Players knew roughly what those cards did before STS2 launched. Regent's entire pool is new, and community research takes time. Second, Regent's card pool is smaller-feeling in Early Access coverage. The wiki currently documents roughly five named cards versus sixty or more for entity:silent and entity:ironclad. Tier lists require data. Until the full pool is catalogued, rankings on unnamed cards would be invented, and invented rankings cost credibility that no site recovers easily.