Two Resources, One Deck: Why Regent Demands a Commitment
Picture floor 4. Your reward screen offers The Smith, 1 energy plus 4 Stars for Forge 30, next to Venerate, 1 energy for 2 Stars. One card spends your Stars to permanently empower the Sovereign Blade, a weapon you then have to build an entire second deck around. The other banks Stars for the payoff cards this guide is actually about. Take both, because both look efficient, and by Act 2 half your draws are feeding a resource track the other half never spends. That silent split is how Regent runs die, and the character page does not soft-pedal it: never mix Star and Forge cards in one deck. Our common mistakes list repeats it verbatim as one of the eight classic blunders.
This is the committed Star route, sometimes called Star Burst, and the builds page rates it A tier with a difficulty of 4 out of 5, the hardest of the three character-specific archetypes covered on this site. The difficulty is honest. Sly Discard is hard because it needs specific pieces; Star Burst is hard because it is a budgeting deck. You are running a second currency alongside energy, deciding every turn how much to deposit, how much to withdraw and what floor to keep in reserve, and the game gives you no interest for sitting on a balance. Misplay the budget and your hand fills with 7-Star finishers you cannot pay for.
What you get for the discipline is the most controllable burst in the game. The glossary defines Stars as Regent's second resource, persisting between turns with no cap. Every other resource in StS2 evaporates: energy burns at end of turn, Souls exhaust on play, potions sit in three slots. Stars stay until you spend them, which means the deck can save up across a whole fight phase and detonate precisely inside the one window an enemy's fixed loop hands you.
Version anchor for everything below: v0.111 beta. Regent entered Early Access rough and has been climbing since, with patch notes recording Regent buffs in v0.101 that lifted the character toward A tier and sweeping Regent buffs again in v0.103.2. The starter relic, Divine Right, grants 3 Stars at combat start, and those free 3 Stars shape every opening this deck makes, starting with the next section.
Stars Are a Bank Account: No Cap, No Decay, Your Timing
The glossary entry is five words of rules text that define the whole archetype: Stars persist between turns with no cap. Persist means your unspent Stars carry over turn to turn within a fight. No cap means the account never refuses a deposit; bank 20 Stars and 20 sit there waiting. And because Divine Right grants 3 fresh Stars at every combat start, you also know the balance resets per fight, which tells you the correct mental model: each combat is its own budget cycle, and you open every cycle with 3 Stars prepaid.
The builds page adds the constraint that actually drives deckbuilding: your Star income per shuffle dictates how many Star-spenders the deck supports. A shuffle is one full pass through your draw pile. Count the income cards inside that pass, Venerate at 2 Stars, Solar Strike at 1, whatever Genesis has accrued that turn, and that sum is your budget for the cycle. A deck generating 5 Stars per shuffle can sustainably run one cheap spender per cycle or save toward a Seven Stars every cycle and a half. Draft three spenders into that income and you will draw hands where two of them sit unplayable, and a card that cannot be played is a card that does not exist.
Banking is the second skill. Because Stars neither decay nor expire, the correct default play on safe turns is deposit, hold, and let the balance climb toward the next spend window. The floor rule keeps this safe: never spend below 3 Stars unless the spend wins the fight or saves your life, because Astral Pulse costs exactly 3 and it is your emergency answer to a board suddenly going wide, Entomancer's bees, Ovicopter eggs hatching next turn, the Wrigglers that spawn when Phrog Parasite dies. A Regent caught at 0 Stars with a wide board has to burn a whole turn on income first.
Contrast the two failure personalities and you will see why the difficulty is rated 4. Spend everything the moment you can afford it and you have no reserve for emergencies and no burst for windows. Bank everything and you die with 15 Stars unspent, the most Regent-specific way to lose a run in this game. The budget mindset is the archetype, and every section after this one is about executing it.
Venerate, Solar Strike and Genesis: Counting Your Income
Venerate is the baseline: a 1-cost basic Skill that gains 2 Stars, 3 upgraded. Its text calls it exactly that, the baseline Star generator of the archetype, and it is the card your early turns are made of. On paper it looks like a loss, one energy and one card for a number in the corner of the screen, and against Nibbit on floor 1 it is. The point of Venerate is that the number it deposits outlives the fight's early turns, and every deposit makes your later turn, the one inside the kill window, dramatically bigger.
Solar Strike is the income card that costs you nothing: a 1-cost common Attack dealing 9 damage, 10 upgraded, that gains 1 Star, 2 upgraded. Damage and deposit in the same play. Early Act 1 this is the pick that lets the deck develop its economy without bleeding tempo, and it stays good forever because an attack that pays you never rotates out of a deck that needs attacks for Vulnerable windows.
Genesis is the rare that defines the run: a 2-cost Power granting 2 Stars at the start of each turn, 3 upgraded, and the card text says outright that seeing it defines the Star archetype. It is compounding in its purest form. One upgraded Genesis is 3 Stars per turn for a single card and 2 energy paid once, and unlike Venerate it never needs to be drawn again to keep paying. Over a five-turn boss fight that single card generates 15 Stars, on top of Divine Right's opening 3 and everything Venerate and Solar Strike add from the deck itself.
Run the honest arithmetic on a realistic mid-game list, one Venerate upgraded, one Solar Strike upgraded, one Genesis upgraded, Divine Right. Opening balance 3, Genesis deposits 3 per turn, the two income cards contribute about 5 per shuffle. Across a six-turn fight with two shuffles that is roughly 3 plus 18 plus 10, about 31 Stars. That funds four Astral Pulses at 12, or two Seven Stars at 14 with 3 held as the emergency floor, or any mix in between. When you see what one Genesis did to the budget, the upgrade priority writes itself: Genesis first, then Venerate, then Solar Strike, and a run that finds Genesis by early Act 2 supports a genuinely greedy spender count.
Astral Pulse, Seven Stars and Alignment: The Spending Rules
Astral Pulse is 3 Stars for 14 damage to all enemies, a common, and the database calls it one of the strongest commons in the game. It is the drip spender: cheap enough to cast on income alone, wide enough to matter, and at 3 Stars it matches your Divine Right opening exactly, so turn one of every fight already has one paid for. Against the act's wide fights, Entomancer's continuous bee summons, Ovicopter's eggs hatching within a turn or two, Pulse is the pacing tool that keeps small boards from snowballing while the bank refills.
Seven Stars is the signature: a rare Attack that spends 7 Stars for 49 damage to all enemies. Exactly 7 damage per Star, delivered everywhere at once. It is the card the budget exists to fund, and its identity is the window card, held until the moment it ends a phase or a fight. The multiplier detail that newer Regent players miss: Falling Star applies 1 Vulnerable, which per the glossary is plus 50 percent attack damage taken, and Seven Stars is an attack. A Falling Star before your Seven Stars turns 49 into roughly 73 against every enemy on the field, so the correct order of a burst turn is debuff first, detonate second.
Alignment is the converter: a 0-cost uncommon Skill that converts Stars into 2 energy, 3 upgraded, and the card text calls it the heart of the Star engine. It is how the deck turns a fat Star balance into a normal turn: funding a Prophesize, casting a second spender in one turn, or paying for Block cards on a turn you did not plan for. The discipline is remembering that Alignment is a withdrawal, not income. Converting 3 Stars into 3 energy to play cards that generate 2 Stars is a leak, and the deck dies by a thousand small leaks more often than by one big mistake.
The spending rules in short. One: spend into windows, not into turns, meaning fire Seven Stars when Vulnerable is up, when an enemy is stunned or defending, or when a phase break is coming, not merely because you can afford it. Two: keep the 3-Star floor for Astral Pulse emergencies unless the spend ends the fight. Three: in multi-body fights prefer the AoE spenders, and note the Kaiser Crab entry explicitly says AoE hits both claws, which is worth real money in that fight. Four: Alignment only when the converted energy is buying more than the Stars would have bought, a finisher found, a block survived, a Genesis landed.
Prophesize and Falling Star: The Glue That Holds the Deck Together
Prophesize is a 2-cost uncommon Skill that draws 6 cards, 9 upgraded, and the database's instruction is blunt: one of the strongest draw cards in the game, take on sight. Every deck wants draw, but explain why this deck wants it most. Spenders in this archetype are conditional cards: Seven Stars is a dead draw at 4 banked Stars, Alignment is pointless at a high balance with nothing to fund, Genesis is a dead draw the second time you see it in a fight. The deck's hands are swingy by construction, full of cards that are either exactly right or exactly nothing depending on a number in the corner. A card that draws 6 to 9 is the shock absorber for that variance: it crosses most of your deck in one play and dramatically raises the odds that the income card and the spender it pays for arrive in the same turn. That is the difference between casting Seven Stars this turn and casting it next shuffle.
Falling Star is your starter, a 0-cost basic Attack dealing 8 damage, 12 upgraded, and applying 1 Weak plus 1 Vulnerable, and the database rates it the strongest starter Strike in the game. Treat it as a reward rather than a chore. Zero cost means it never competes for the energy that Venerate and Solar Strike want. Vulnerable is plus 50 percent on every attack damage in the glossary, which amplifies Falling Star itself, Solar Strike, Astral Pulse and, most importantly, Seven Stars. Weak is minus 25 percent enemy damage, which turns a Soul Nexus opening Soul Burn 29 into roughly 22 and takes the edge off Verdict turns and Dive turns all run long.
Two practical notes on keeping the glue. First, Falling Stars are the wrong removal target: the beginner guide is right that starter Strike removal is usually the best gold sink in the game, and this deck is the named exception, because a free card that debuffs on cue is engine, not chaff. Remove Strike-equivalents from other sources instead, or Defends if your block count is comfortable. Second, upgrade Falling Star early and cheaply where you can: 8 to 12 damage plus both debuffs off a free card is the kind of quiet upgrade that pays out twenty times a run, and the Bellows relic upgrading your first hand each combat effectively delivers it for free.
Void Form: The Endgame Engine and Its Timing Tax
Void Form is a 3-cost rare Power with two lines of text that rewrite your turn structure: when you play it, you end your turn, and afterwards your first 2 cards each turn cost 0. It is Ethereal, and the database both calls it the core of Void burst engines and repeats the archetype's prime directive: never mix with Forge cards. Understand what you are buying. Two free cards per turn, every turn, for the rest of the fight, on a deck whose real cards cost 2 and 3 energy, is several energy per turn of pure profit. In a deck where Alignment exists specifically to manufacture energy, Void Form is the permanent version of that effect, bought once.
How to exploit it: build your turns so your two most expensive energy cards lead. Prophesize at 2 and Genesis at 2 become free, and the discount lands on whatever you lead with, so the opening two cards of each turn should be chosen for their price tags. What the free plays do to Star economics is the quieter win: energy you were spending on income cards is now free to bank, and Genesis deposits keep landing while your mana funds Block or a spender. By late Act 3, a Void Form plus Genesis Regent is playing four and five card turns in a deck built for two and three.
Now the taxes, because a card this strong charges twice. The first is printed on the card: playing it ends your turn immediately. You do not get Void Form plus a burst in the same turn, ever. It is therefore a setup-turn play, and the speed to find setup turns is a real skill: Bygone Effigy asleep, Lagavulin Matriarch asleep and getting worse the longer you wait, Owl Magistrate's Ascend, any telegraphed low-damage turn. Casting Void Form into a turn you were only going to block on converts a dead turn into an engine install, which is the whole art of the card.
The second tax is Ethereal. Per the game's convention, spelled out on the Spectral Knight's aura, Ethereal cards in your hand are discarded at end of turn if unplayed. Draw Void Form on a turn you must spend entirely on staying alive and the copy is simply gone, 3 energy of rare Power evaporating. So track it: once you have seen it this shuffle, either hold a block-light hand that can afford its turn-ending cast, or accept the loss and plan around the next copy. Upgrading it is a mid-tier priority, behind Genesis, and the correct habit is to play it the same turn you draw it whenever the loop allows.
Why Forge Cards Break the Deck: The Dilution Arithmetic
The Smith is the card that tempts every new Regent player, and reading it honestly is the fastest way to understand the no-Forge rule. It costs 1 energy plus 4 Stars for Forge 30, and the database calls it the big Forge pay-off. Now read it a second time as a Star spender, which is what it is inside this deck: it consumes 4 of the 7 Stars a Seven Stars wants, and what it produces is not damage, not block and not Stars. It charges the Forge track that permanently empowers the Sovereign Blade, a payoff that only matters if you are also attacking with the Blade, which means drafting Blade support, which means more cards serving the other archetype. One Smith is a misdraft. Two Smiths is a deck trying to be two decks.
The arithmetic that makes it fatal rather than merely awkward is the income constraint from the builds page: your Star income per shuffle dictates how many Star-spenders the deck supports. Income does not care what you drafted the spenders to do. A list generating about 5 to 8 Stars per shuffle supports roughly one heavy spender or two light ones. Every Forge card you add occupies one of those spender slots, pays a resource this deck's payoffs cannot use, and requires its own support package to convert into anything at all. You are not diversifying, you are running the same budget with a leak in it.
The bestiary supplies the strategic kicker for why the pure Star route is also the better fighter of the two. Skulking Colony caps the damage it takes per hit, hard-countering single-big-hit decks like the Sovereign Blade, and the site's counter note explains that only multi-hit and damage-over-time get through. The Forge route's entire thesis is making one weapon's hits enormous, which is the exact shape the Colony taxes. The Star route, for all its big single AoE numbers, at least has pacing tools, cheap Pulses, free Falling Stars, banking, and does not need the Blade's damage to function. Full honesty: Seven Stars' one 49-hit also gets capped there, so treat the Colony as a hard matchup for everyone and win it with Weak, chips and patience rather than burst.
So the rule stands without exceptions worth making: zero Forge cards in a Star deck, full stop, and the reverse for a Forge deck. The decision point is early Act 2, covered in the pivot section at the end: if the draft has handed you Smiths and Blade support while Genesis, Alignment and Seven Stars refuse to appear, the correct move is to commit fully the other way rather than split.
Assembly and the Windows: Act by Act Burst Planning
Act 1 assembly. Take Astral Pulse and Solar Strike on sight; both are commons, both are efficient, and Pulse is among the strongest commons in the game per the database. Take Venerate early, one or two, because turn-one deposits compound all fight. Prophesize is take-on-sight whenever it appears, uncommon or not. Skip The Smith every time, per the dilution rule. Your Falling Star upgrades are the best cheap early campfire spends. Act 1 elites teach the archetype's core habit, finding setup turns: Bygone Effigy cycles asleep and awakened, and the sleep phase is a free banking window, Venerate into a growing balance, then spend on the wake-up turn. Byrdonis alternates Dive and Peck, so Weak the Peck turns and race. The Phantasmal Gardener fight flatters this deck: four bodies with Skittish 6, where the first hit each turn grants them Block and punishes multi-hit decks, while your handful of large single hits is the right shape, one kill per turn in the site's recommended order, whichever gardener is closest to its Enlarge turn.
Act 2 assembly is the Genesis hunt. Priority order: Genesis, Alignment, Prophesize copies, a second Solar Strike. The Infested Prism at 200 HP is the act's litmus test for whether the engine is online, and if it is not, take the safe path and upgrade. Entomancer summons bees all fight and Ovicopter hatches eggs within a turn or two, and both are Astral Pulse showcases: the 3-Star floor exists precisely for these boards. Against Kaiser Crab you are Surrounded and hits from the claw you face away from deal 50 percent more, while AoE hits both claws; the Rocket claw's 31 Laser is the lethal move, so focus it and try to kill both within a turn or two of each other, exactly the shape a banked Seven Stars provides.
Act 3 assembly wants Void Form and the defensive floor. Plan windows boss by boss. Frog Knight cycles a 13 tongue lash, a 21 smite and a war cry, and below half HP fires a one-time 35 beetle charge, so kill from above half or hold 35 Block. Owl Magistrate runs a fixed loop where Ascend is the defensive step: dump your bank there and block 33 plus on Verdict. The Queen lets only one Bound card per turn while mid-turn draw stays unrestricted, so Prophesize mid-turn is the unlock, kill the Torch Head Amalgam first or her Enrage Execution loop takes over, and Artifact answers the 99-stack debuff turn if you have it. Test Subject #C10 alternates Intangible in phase 3: bank through the Intangible turns, strike only on the vulnerable ones, exactly the discipline this deck trains from floor 1.
Relics, Hard Counters and the Forge Pivot
Energy relics top the list, and our synergy page already made the argument for Star Burst specifically: Stars only pay for Star-spenders, so extra energy funds everything else, Alignment hands, card draw, Block. Ectoplasm's flat plus 1 energy per turn is the strongest version and its gold lock is survivable on a deck whose key cards are commons. Ice Cream is underrated here because Regent turns are lumpy: conserving energy across a banking turn makes the next window turn a real burst instead of a half-measure. Lantern's first-turn energy accelerates Venerate or Genesis by a full turn, which compounds all fight.
Draw and setup relics smooth the deck's swingy hands. Bag of Preparation, two extra cards on turn one, raises the odds Genesis lands turn one instead of turn four. Fiddle, draw 2 extra at turn start but no more draws that turn, is acceptable here even though flood decks hate it, because this is a few-big-cards deck and finding Alignment early is worth the clause. Brilliant Scarf, the 5th card each turn free, mostly discounts your glue. Bellows upgrading your first hand each combat quietly upgrades Genesis and Venerate every single fight. Razor Tooth, upgrading Attacks and Skills as you play them, grows Falling Star and Solar Strike mid-fight, and Pantograph's 25 HP at boss start plus Akabeko's 8 Vigor opener round out the generic package. Black Star, elites dropping an additional relic, is the snowball pick: the earlier it arrives, the harder it compounds.
The hard counters. Skulking Colony's per-hit damage cap taxes your biggest numbers, so that fight is pacing, Weak and patience, not burst. Knowledge Demon's escalating card and energy caps shrink exactly the multi-card Alignment hands this deck wants to build late, so race it before the caps bite and bank early. And the deck's own variance is a counter: all spenders with no income is a dead hand, which is why the 3-Star floor rule, Prophesize and never cutting Falling Stars all appear twice in this guide. Diamond Diadem, halving damage taken if you play 2 or fewer cards, actively conflicts with setup turns, so weigh it as a defensive crutch rather than a synergy.
The pivot. If by early Act 2 the draft has offered The Smith and Blade support while Genesis, Alignment and Seven Stars have never appeared, stop waiting: strip the Star spenders you can, commit fully to Forge with The Smith as the pay-off, and apply the identical no-mixing rule in reverse. In co-op, the role guide casts Regent as the burst DPS banking Stars across turns while the Ironclad tanks and a Necrobinder's Osty soaks, and that party frame is where this archetype is most comfortable: your teammates buy you the turns, and the banked balance cashes them.