Ronin Bamboo Guide: The Most Underrated Ruler in Merge Tactics

Ronin Bamboo Orb Strategy

The Ronin might be the most underrated Ruler in the current Merge Tactics season, and almost nobody is talking about him. His whole identity is the bamboo: a trap you drop on the board that needs time to charge and then deletes whatever walks into it. That one mechanic turns troop pathing into a win condition, and it quietly snowballs your orbs, your Elixir and your entire comp.

This guide is based on Ricky Royale's video on the Ronin, where he plays three lobbies live and talks through every placement. It covers how the bamboo actually works, how to place it to bait kills, why orb farming is the real payoff, the Traits and units that pair best with him, a stage-by-stage game plan, and the matchups where the Ronin falls apart.

How The Ronin Works

The Ronin places a bamboo trap on the board. The goal is simple to describe and hard to execute: get enemy Troops to walk into it. Ricky Royale is blunt about it: the way you play Ronin is you always try to get the enemies to walk into your bamboo.

The catch is timing. The bamboo needs time to charge before it can kill anything, which changes everything about where you put it.

Do not place it directly in front of an enemy unit. He avoids this on purpose, because a trap that gets reached instantly will not land the kill. It needs charge time first.
Think in terms of travel distance. The ideal spot is somewhere an enemy arrives at after the trap has had time to prime, which is why the middle of the board becomes his default.
Tanky baits are your friend. In one round he baits out the Mega Knight and counts on a tanky Knight walking in to buy enough charge time, and it lands exactly as planned.

Pro tip: The Ronin is one of the only tools that can flat out delete an enemy boss unit. Ricky Royale points out that late game boss mirrors get weird because bosses just scare each other, so a trap kill is a clean answer.

This is also what makes the Ruler feel different to pilot. He calls it genuinely refreshing and intuitive: a Ruler where you actually have to think about placements and troop pathing instead of just stacking stats.

Bamboo Placement Fundamentals

Placement is the entire skill ceiling of the Ronin. Ricky Royale misplaces the bamboo several times on camera and still wins rounds, which tells you how forgiving the Ruler is, but the rounds he drops are almost always rounds where nothing stepped on the trap.

Placement rules that worked

Default to the middle. He repeatedly settles on the center of the board and calls middle placement lowkey the best option, especially against opponents loaded with melee units.
Pull your own board backwards. Moving your units deeper forces enemy Troops to walk further, which means more charge time and more chances to cross the trap.
Use invisibility to scramble pathing. He puts the Cloak on the Queen and parks her in the middle next to the bamboo: she goes invisible, the trap keeps charging, and enemy pathing gets messed up. He says he likes this setup because it buys charge time and confuses the walk.
Reposition last second. He slides the Musketeer to the other flank at the last moment, both to protect her and to change which lane the enemy commits to.
Bench a unit on purpose. When your board is too strong you kill everything before it reaches the trap. He admits he should have benched a few Troops to guarantee a bamboo kill and bank his last orb.

Placement mistakes to avoid

❌ Dropping the trap where an enemy arrives instantly, before it can charge.
❌ Failing to adapt when the opponent hides everything in the back: against a fully stacked backline there is simply nothing to bait.
⚠️ Watch the abyss tile. He loses a unit to it in game three and later panics thinking he had placed his own Queen on one.
⚠️ Do not get distracted. He drops a round after rushing a placement and admits he got too distracted yapping to lock in the bamboo spot.

Orb Farming Is The Real Payoff

The headline strategy is not just killing things with bamboo, it is what those kills give you. Ricky Royale sums the whole plan up in one line: farm your orbs early by getting kills with the bamboo, and everything else falls into place.

Every bamboo kill pushes your orb progress. The first trap kill banks an early orb, the next one banks a second, and the rewards stack from there.
The rewards snowball the comp. One orb in game one hands him a Legendary Lance, which he calls disgusting because it lets him snipe whatever he wants. A Baby Dragon holding it is, in his words, just GGs.
It fixes your economy. He notes you ironically end up with a lot of Elixir on the Ronin purely because of the orbs, which funds extra rolls and merges.
Upgrades come fast. With the extra resources he lands a three-star Queen in game one and a three-star Mini P.E.K.K.A. in game two, and starts eyeing a four-star.

Key insight: On Ronin you are not just trying to win rounds, you are trying to win rounds with trap kills. A round you win cleanly without triggering the bamboo is a missed opportunity, and he says exactly that after losing an orb chance while sitting on 10 HP.

Best Traits And Units

The Ronin does not demand a rigid comp, but the video is consistent about which Traits support him.

Clan is the standout. Ricky Royale says he was told Clan is a solid combo for Ronin and leans on it in all three games, buying the Queen on sight to lock a strong unit and the Trait.
Forest is the other recommended pairing. He says he has heard both Clan and Forest are very good with Ronin, and notes mid game that he should probably pick up a Forest unit.
Stack boss units. His rule for the season: always try to get as many boss units as you possibly can. That is why he buys the Monk and later the P.E.K.K.A. even out of an awkward shop.
Mini P.E.K.K.A. is the merge target. He keeps and slowly upgrades it across a whole game, taking it to three-star and calling a four-star realistic with enough copies.
Baby Dragon scales terrifyingly with items. Once it holds the Legendary Lance he treats the board as effectively over.
Musketeer and Tesla round out the backline. The Musketeer also does real work stunning a Mortar so she does not just get clipped by it.

Items matter more than usual here because orbs feed you so many of them. He puts the Cloak on the Queen for the invisibility bait, the Dragon Scale on the Mini P.E.K.K.A., and the Axe on the Queen in a later game.

Denial is a tool too: he holds a P.E.K.K.A. in hand specifically so the opponent cannot three-star theirs.

Stage By Stage Game Plan

Early rounds

Accept that round one bamboo placement is close to a coin flip. Hard-to-read units like a lone Barbarian are, in his words, just hard to predict.
Take cheap value and early merges. He recycles a Barbarian, plays the Bomber or Musketeer, and banks free rounds where the opponent fields nothing.
Start hunting your first orb immediately: early trap kills are what fund the rest of the game.

Mid game

Lock in on placement. After dropping a round he says it plainly: now let's really lock in on bamboo placement.
Buy the Queen for Clan and add boss units like the Monk.
Corner placement is a legitimate tool. In one round he stacks everything in the corner purely to lead a Mini P.E.K.K.A. into the trap, and it gets the kill.

Late game

Use the bamboo as boss removal. Against a Warden running four out of four boss units he notes he cannot win on sheer power, so the trap has to be aimed at the biggest threat.
Chase the final orb even if the round is already won, benching units if that is what it takes.
Items plus three-star units close games out: with a Legendary Lance on board you can snipe whatever matters.

Strengths And Weaknesses

Strengths

✅ Deletes anything, including bosses. A charged bamboo removes units nothing else in your comp can answer.
✅ Free economy. Orb rewards hand you Elixir, items and the copies you need for three-star units.
✅ Forgiving. He wins rounds repeatedly while openly admitting his placements were not the best spots.
✅ Comp flexible. Clan and Forest both work, and stacking boss units is always a safe default.
✅ Fun and skill expressive. Pathing manipulation rewards practice in a way he says is very refreshing to play.

Weaknesses

❌ Builder is a bad matchup. Ricky Royale says Ronin is really weak against builder and that he got destroyed by one in an off camera game, even though his strong board did beat a builder in game one.
❌ Ranged comps break the plan. Predicting the pathing of ranged units parked in the back while also charging the bamboo is, in his words, so hard to pull off.
❌ Opponents hiding units in the back leave you nothing to bait at all.
⚠️ Your own strength can sabotage you. If your board kills everything before it reaches the trap, you lose orb progress.
⚠️ High attention cost. One sloppy placement or an abyss tile misstep can cost a round outright.

Key Units & Traits

Ronin: The Ruler of the strategy: place the bamboo so enemies walk into it and farm orbs off the kills.
Clan: The Trait he was told is a solid combo for Ronin, usually opened by buying the Queen.
Forest: The other Trait Ricky Royale says he has heard is very good alongside Ronin.
Queen: Easy Clan enabler and the Cloak holder for the invisibility pathing bait.
Mini P.E.K.K.A.: The main merge target: slowly upgraded to three-star across a game.
Monk: Boss unit he buys on sight, since stacking bosses is his season default.
Baby Dragon: Scales brutally with orb items: with the Legendary Lance he calls it GGs.
Musketeer: Backline damage and a stun tool against threats like a four-star Mortar.

TL;DR

✅ Ronin's bamboo is the whole gameplan: bait enemy Troops into it instead of trying to win on raw stats.
✅ Never place the trap right in front of a unit: it needs charge time, so the middle of the board is the safe default.
✅ Farm orbs early. Bamboo kills bank Elixir, items like the Legendary Lance, and the copies for three-star units.
✅ Run Clan or Forest and stack as many boss units as you can, with Mini P.E.K.K.A. as your merge target.
✅ Cloak on the Queen next to the bamboo scrambles pathing while the trap charges.
⚠️ Bench a unit if your board kills everything before it reaches the trap: no trap kill means no orb.
⚠️ Avoid Builder and heavy ranged comps. Backline units are nearly impossible to path into the bamboo.

The Ronin is a badly underrated Ruler, and Ricky Royale's bottom line after three lobbies is that he is pretty solid once you learn troop pathing. Game one ends in a top two after beating a builder and then running into a Warden with four boss units and his own Legendary Lance, a middle game gets shut down by a four-star Mortar comp, and the last game ends at 1 HP with him admitting he could have played his economy better. The ceiling is high because orb farming compounds into Elixir, items and three-star units, but the floor depends entirely on your placement reads, and builder or ranged-heavy lobbies will punish you hard. Pick him up if you enjoy thinking about pathing and board manipulation rather than merging on autopilot.