Best Ruler in Merge Tactics: Lung vs Dagger Duchess vs Empress

Testing The Three Ladder Rulers

Push far enough in Merge Tactics and the same three faces keep showing up in your lobbies: Spirit Empress, Lung and the Dagger Duchess. That raises the obvious question: which of them actually converts into consistent top finishes when trophies are on the line?

This guide is based on Ricky Royale's video, where he plays one ladder game with each of the three Rulers back to back. Below we break down how each run played out, the comps and items that carried them, and which Ruler looked like the safest ladder pick.

The Test: Three Rulers, Three Games

Ricky Royale keeps the experiment simple: one ladder game each with Lung, the Dagger Duchess and the Spirit Empress, played in his normal push lobbies rather than a controlled environment. Real opponents, real contests, real variance.

Lung: the first run, and the one that snowballed into a full board of traits.
Dagger Duchess: hands you a dagger item to slap straight onto a carry.
Spirit Empress: saved for last, and drawn into the sweatiest lobby of the three.

Key context: three games is a sample, not a statistic. What matters is how each Ruler felt to pilot and how much of the result came from the Ruler versus the board Ricky Royale built around it.

Lung: Every Round Won, Three Orbs Banked

The Lung game snowballed harder than anything else in the video. Ricky Royale opens by grabbing a Queen early even though Noble was already covered, then builds around a Ram Rider while running Clan, Noble and rider synergies at the same time.

Orbs off round wins: orbs spawn as you take rounds, so a clean streak compounds. He won every single round and banked three orbs, which he calls rare on Lung.
Ram Rider as the engine: the Ram Rider charges through and buffs the Queen, and a mage wand on it turned the unit into the run's win condition.
Insurance policy: in the Hog Rider matchup, the item he was holding stopped the enemy earthquake from going off. He calls it an insurance policy and says the round was lost without it.
Economy discipline: on a round he was already confident in, he bought cheap filler instead of exhausting resources, then sold it the next round.
Item placement thinking: he even put the Battle Healer's Blessing on a dummy unit that was going to die fast, just to get value out of it.

The payoff was an eight team size board with eight active traits, a three-star Queen, a maxed Giant and a two-star Boss Bandit, with Forest added on top of the Clan core. He later sold the Queen to free merges for bigger units and repositioned his carries at the last second to dodge an enemy four-star Goblin Cage.

Pro tip: last-second repositioning is free. Moving the Queen and Ram Rider away from that Goblin Cage right before lock-in saved the fight.

Dagger Duchess And The Hog Rider

Game two is the cleanest run of the three. The Dagger Duchess opens with the wormhole tile and a Hog Rider, and the plan writes itself: put the dagger on the Hog Rider and let him delete boards.

Dagger on the carry: the dagger goes on the Hog Rider immediately, and he later buys another Hog Rider copy specifically because it makes securing orbs far more reliable.
Wormhole tile abuse: he wormholes the Queen to bypass an enemy stun, it works, and repeating that placement becomes the core of every round.
Blocking the stun: on one round he blocks the enemy prince at the last second so his Hog Rider can start swinging without getting stunned.
Superstar Ring: the ring off orb two let the Queen fire two abilities right off the bat, exactly what he wants to see.

He also picks up a Musketeer and a Baby Dragon, adds a Knight for Noble, and closes the game out even after missing the final orb. Two Rulers in, two first places.

Spirit Empress: The One That Missed

The Spirit Empress run is the only loss, and it lands in the hardest lobby of the three with a known top player, Mars, in the game.

Slow start: Ricky Royale notes Champions feel weak right now, and losing an early round with his Queen cost HP he could not afford later.
Clan again: he pivots into Clan with a Ram Rider, Valkyrie, Giant and Boss Bandit, picks up an Assassin's Blade, and three-stars the Ram Rider, Giant, Valkyrie and a Barbarian.
Missing pieces: the Giant Skeleton bomb he kept rolling for never showed up, and he never got near the merge count he wanted.
Out-scaled by Undead: Mars ran Undead with Skeleton King and Witch that had ramped far harder, and Ricky Royale credits the trait choice rather than blaming his Ruler.

⚠️ He is explicit that this is not a clean verdict on the Spirit Empress: the loss came against a pro-level opponent, and he leaves the final call to the viewer.

Strengths And Weaknesses

Strengths

✅ Lung turned a perfect win streak into three orbs, and those orbs became the items and team size that ran away with game one.
✅ Dagger Duchess is the most straightforward: the dagger goes on a carry like the Hog Rider and works immediately with zero setup.
✅ Both winning games leaned on Clan and Noble cores, so these Rulers slot into comps you already know how to build.
✅ Item denial and last-second placement swung more rounds than raw Ruler power did.

Weaknesses

❌ Lung's ceiling in this run came from winning every round: drop fights and the orbs stop stacking.
❌ The Dagger Duchess game leaned on the wormhole tile and a strong carry to point the dagger at.
❌ Spirit Empress was the only Ruler that could not keep pace with a ramped Undead board.
⚠️ Getting contested for your key units, as Ricky Royale was in game two, can flatten any of these Rulers.

Which Ruler To Play

On the evidence in the video, Lung and the Dagger Duchess both converted into firsts while the Spirit Empress did not. His own read after game one is that Lung is genuinely good this season, and after game two he is just as happy with the Dagger Duchess.

Play Lung if you can win early and keep the streak alive for orbs, then convert them into team size and items on a Ram Rider style carry.
Play Dagger Duchess if you want the simplest line: dagger on a strong carry, secure orbs, close rounds fast.
Play Spirit Empress knowing it is still a common ladder pick, but note that his single test with it ended against a top player on Undead.

Bottom line from the video: two Rulers, two first places, one loss in the hardest lobby. Consistency went to Lung and the Dagger Duchess.

Key Units & Traits

Lung: Ruler that ran away with game one: every round won, three orbs banked, eight team size and eight traits.
Dagger Duchess: Ruler that hands you a dagger for a carry, the simplest and most reliable of the three tested.
Spirit Empress: Ruler saved for last and the only one that lost, against a pro on Undead.
Ram Rider: Core carry of the Lung run: charges through, buffs the Queen and scales hard with a mage wand.
Hog Rider: Dagger holder for the Duchess: deletes boards and makes securing orbs far more reliable.
Queen: Three-starred in the Lung game, and boosted to double abilities by the Superstar Ring under the Duchess.
Baby Dragon: Picked up across games purely for its board value, per Ricky Royale's earlier video.
Clan (Trait): The backbone trait in the Lung and Empress runs, stacked alongside Noble for extra breakpoints.

TL;DR

✅ Lung and the Dagger Duchess each took a first place in Ricky Royale's back-to-back ladder test.
✅ Lung won every round for three orbs, ending on eight team size with eight active traits.
✅ Dagger Duchess is the easiest plan: dagger on the Hog Rider, wormhole the Queen, close rounds fast.
✅ Item denial mattered hugely: one item shut off an enemy Hog Rider earthquake and saved a lost round.
✅ Last-second repositioning dodged a four-star Goblin Cage and won a fight outright.
❌ Spirit Empress was the only loss, out-scaled by an Undead board with Skeleton King and Witch.
⚠️ One game per Ruler is a small sample, and the Spirit Empress run came against a top-tier opponent.

Based on Ricky Royale's three-game test, Lung and the Dagger Duchess look like the safer ladder picks right now: both converted into firsts, and both did it through repeatable plans rather than lucky rolls. Lung is the higher ceiling option if you can hold a win streak and turn orbs into items and team size around a Ram Rider carry, while the Dagger Duchess gives you the cleanest line in the game: dagger on a Hog Rider, wormhole the Queen, end fights fast. The Spirit Empress is not written off here, since its one loss came in the hardest lobby of the three against a pro on a ramped Undead board, and Ricky Royale himself leaves that call open. If you are pushing trophies and want consistency, start with the Dagger Duchess and move to Lung once you trust yourself to keep the streak alive.