Spirit Empress in Merge Tactics: Is She the Hidden GOAT?

Spirit Empress Merge Cycling Guide

Spirit Empress is one of the strangest Rulers in Merge Tactics because she does not ask you to win fights early: she asks you to Merge. Every merge pushes her orb progress, and those orbs pay you back in Elixir and equipment that can snowball a board out of control. Ricky Royale has been playing her constantly since hitting Diamond, and across three games the results swing between absurd and brutally punished.

This guide follows Ricky Royale's three-game Spirit Empress test run in high Diamond, where he was sitting inside the top 1,000. It covers how her merge-counting payoff works, which Modifiers supercharge her, the Goblin, Clan and four Boss lines that showed up, a stage-by-stage plan, and the single unit he calls her counter.

How Spirit Empress Works

Spirit Empress rewards your total Merge count. Instead of playing for round wins, Ricky Royale plays for orb milestones: the faster you stack merges, the faster the orbs land, and the orbs are what pay you back in Elixir and equipment.

Cycle relentlessly: The core loop is rolling the shop and buying everything you can to force merges. He says it plainly in the video: get as much Elixir as possible and cycle your heart out.
Losing round one is fine: He openly accepts dropping the first round because reaching orbs quickly matters more than early tempo. Health is a resource you spend to build the engine.
Milestones are the clock: He wants 60 merges out of the way as early as possible, then keeps rolling past it, finishing games at 68 and 71 merges.
Team size is the real prize: At 45 merges he notes he is still short of 60 and needs that extra team size if he wants to beat boards like Ronin.
Elixir piles up: His games ended with 69, 83 and even 108 Elixir banked, at one point so much that he admits he literally cannot spend it.

Key insight: the merge counter is the real scoreboard for Spirit Empress. If you are not cycling, you are not playing her.

Best Modifiers For Empress

Modifiers decide how explosive a Spirit Empress game gets, and Ricky Royale ran into all three extremes.

Merge Mini: He calls it a "pretty good" Modifier for Empress. It handed him an early maxed Mini P.E.K.K.A, 33 merges almost immediately, and an insane 71 merges on round three.
Merge Bonus: The game-two Modifier, which he takes as a challenge. It still delivered 71 merges and 108 Elixir banked, though he jokes that "merge bonus ain't what it used to be" now that Mini P.E.K.K.A is in the pool.
Domination: The game-three Modifier, with no merge acceleration attached. He fell back on normal cycling plus forcing for Goblins, and the run ended when a Ronin snipe cleared his board.

Pro tip: under Merge Mini, Ricky Royale believes every player is guaranteed a boss unit. He was genuinely surprised when an opponent never played their P.E.K.K.A, so track which boss piece your rivals should have.

Core Units And Synergies

The boards that came out of these games were built on cheap merge fuel up front and one oversized carry in the middle.

Mini P.E.K.K.A: The standout. He four-stars it by round three and at one point fields two four-star Mini P.E.K.K.As. With the P.E.K.K.A's blade on it, damage hit 1,080, and he instantly stopped considering moving the blade elsewhere.
Goblins: His go-to Trait for extra eco. He plays them as early as the shop allows and keeps stacking them all game. A four-star Spear Goblin read 438 damage.
Dark Goblin: Flagged as "really underrated" and a strong upgrade target. He positions him so the poison starts charging immediately instead of wasting time walking.
Monk and the Clan trait: In game two he cuts the Musketeer to slot in any Clan unit and get the synergy online, then lands a four-star Monk.
Four Boss: Mid-game he commits to the Boss breakpoint, and that board produced a four-star Mega Knight he calls "actually insane".
Valkyrie and Demolisher: A four-star Valkyrie put out 507 damage, and the Demolisher, another unit he rates as underrated, should rush straight to the back, where it immediately removes the enemy Elixir Collector.

⚠️ He admits that selling the Goblins he was picking up early was "probably a bad idea": keep your merge fuel instead of binning it.

Game Plan By Stage

Early Rounds

Accept losses. Spend everything on rolling and buying to rush merges and orb progress.
Get Goblins down as early as the shop allows for the extra economy.
Snap up any Mini P.E.K.K.A that appears, even if you have to force for it: he takes it "any day of the week".

Mid Game

Clear your bench so nothing blocks a merge, and check the back for three-star and four-star units you already own without realising.
Pick a direction once the board is stable: four Boss, or lean harder into Goblins and Clan.
Put equipment on your true carry. The P.E.K.K.A's blade stayed on Mini P.E.K.K.A for a reason.

Late Game

Keep cycling past your milestones, because the extra team size is what lets you match the lobby's best boards.
Deny enemy Ruler orbs: he points out that if their units get no kills, they get zero orb progress, leaving them behind on both Elixir and equipment.

Pro tip: he feels melee units are weak this season and actively hunts ranged pieces, saying he will take "anything ranged" over another melee body.

Strengths And Weaknesses

Strengths

✅ Insane snowball: Four-star units by round three and triple-digit Elixir banked are hard to match when the cycling lands.

✅ Modifier scaling: Merge Mini and Merge Bonus push her from good into absurd.

✅ Equipment access: Rolling that hard kept good equipment flowing, including the P.E.K.K.A's blade and a rare Golden Knight dash.

✅ Flexible lines: Goblins, Clan and four Boss all showed up as workable directions across the run.

Weaknesses

❌ Ronin hard-counters her: He says it outright, "Ronin is the Spirit Empress's counter", after one well-placed bamboo snipe wiped his board and ended game three.

❌ Positioning gets neglected: He apologises for sloppy placements more than once because his attention is on cycling, and blames his losses partly on it.

❌ Dead Elixir: Late in game one he hits a wall where he "literally can't do anything" with 83 Elixir, so income does not always convert into board power.

❌ Big boards still beat the engine: A four-star Inferno Tower plus a Musketeer turned a comfortable game one into a second place finish.

⚠️ Her engine does not care about fights, so if your board stalls before the orbs pay off, you die with a full bank.

Is She Actually Good?

Across three high Diamond games, Spirit Empress produced a second place in game one, a huge merge game in game two that still fell short against a Ronin board, and a game-three loss to another Ronin. Ricky Royale's own read after the opener is that "Empress is obviously still good in some way" given the gameplay she enables.

Ceiling: Extremely high. Two four-star Mini P.E.K.K.As on round three is not something most Rulers can threaten.
Floor: Shaky. Loose placement or a Ronin across the board can erase everything you built.
Skill expression: She rewards fast hands and shop discipline more than clever layouts, which is exactly where she also punishes you.

Bottom line from the video: she is a hidden-gem Ruler who lives and dies on how many merges you can force before the lobby's best board comes online.

Key Units & Traits

Spirit Empress: The Ruler built around total Merge count: cycle hard to rush orbs, Elixir and equipment.
Mini P.E.K.K.A: The main carry. Four-star it fast and keep the P.E.K.K.A's blade on it for huge damage.
Dark Goblin: Underrated upgrade target. Place him so the poison charges instantly instead of walking.
Spear Goblin: Cheap Goblin merge fuel that still hits hard at four stars.
Monk: Clan unit worth forcing for the synergy, strong once four-starred.
Mega Knight: Piece in the four Boss line and a monster at four stars.
Demolisher: Send it to the back, where it removes the enemy Elixir Collector immediately.
Ronin: The hard counter. One bamboo snipe can wipe an Empress board, so respect its placement.

TL;DR

✅ Spirit Empress pays off Merge count: cycle the shop relentlessly and treat merges as your scoreboard.
✅ Losing round one is fine if it gets you to your orbs faster, as Ricky Royale demonstrates.
✅ Hit the 60 merge milestone early, then keep rolling for the extra team size.
✅ Merge Mini and Merge Bonus are her best Modifiers, enabling four-star units by round three.
✅ Build around Mini P.E.K.K.A with the P.E.K.K.A's blade, backed by Goblins for eco plus Clan or four Boss for synergy.
✅ Starve enemy Rulers of kills to stall their orb progress and leave them behind on Elixir and equipment.
⚠️ Ronin is her counter and lazy positioning costs games: do not let the cycling distract you from your board layout.

Spirit Empress looks like a genuine hidden gem in Merge Tactics rather than a trap pick: Ricky Royale's high Diamond run shows her producing four-star units on round three and banking over 100 Elixir, a snowball almost no other Ruler matches. The catch is that she is all engine and no safety net, so a Ronin across the board or a few careless placements undo everything, which is exactly how his run played out: a second place, a monster merge game that still lost out to Ronin, and a game-three wipe from a single bamboo snipe. Play her if you enjoy fast shop cycling and are happy to eat early round losses to get paid later: if you prefer stable, fight-by-fight boards, she will feel frustratingly swingy.