Can I get Nine Asuna UNION ARENA Winner cards?
Welcome to the 2026 edition of “can Joseph Writer Anderson collect nine winner cards?” Starting all the way back in Vol. 2 of 2025, I started my now tradition of attempting to collect nine of a given chase Winner card per each UNION ARENA Store Tournament series. Since then, I’ve been able to do it for each series. Will I be able to do it for the 2026 Winner Series and collect all nine Asuna Sword Art Online Winner cards before time runs out? So far, I’m off to a great start!
My first Asuna winner card after first place at an incredibly tough tournament
Of course, as a massive Sword Art Online fan I was very much looking forward to the 2026 tournament series ever since the UNION ARENA Vol. 1 2026 Winner cards were revealed in November. With Christmas and New Years (as well as the busiest season for the website), honestly this tournament series really snuck up on me by the time I went to my first tournament for it on Friday January 2nd.
After a somewhat painful loss by an awkward start, however, Asuna eluded me by one placement. I got top four and the gorgeous Tokito Winner card, but my first attempt at Asuna faltered.
Joseph Writer Anderson’s top four winner card from first tournament of 2026
I’ve been playing a ton of Yellow Mina from the fantastic Kaiju No. 8 set and it’s worked really, really well for me. However, Mina is one of those odd UNION ARENA decks that actually can be built and played in a vast variety of ways (as evidenced by the tournament I won the Asuna from which I’ll talk about in a moment). After losing the tournament mostly due to a faulty start that failed to produce a Reno Raid early on, I spent the entire night – literally I was awake deck testing until 7 in the morning – rebuilding Mina and testing it to be more effective at hitting the Reno Raid and two-hit combo early on. The end result was a much faster Mina build than I had before, as well as winning first place at a very competitive tournament with strong players.
Three Mina decks in the top four
Good thing I had reconfigured Mina to be faster and more reliable: the top players at this competitive 10-player event were also running Mina, albeit different versions. My first opponent was fielding a Kikoru/Mina hybrid build – one that has seen success in the Asia tournament scene. Despite hitting an incredible two specials and one color trigger out of his life, I was still able to barely secure the win that relied on a perfect sequencing play to see as many cards as possible before dropping the one-cost Mina for a game winning Raid Mina/rest attack final life play.
The second player I faced wasn’t running Mina but another Kaiju Yellow deck – the aggressive Kikoru deck and was piloted by a powerful player and personal friend, Edgar who had come to the tournament with me. As expertly and flawlessly as my opponent played, Mina does have the advantage in this matchup as long as you can survive until your Mina Raid’s start coming on-line, as Mina provides more board control than anything at Kikoru’s disposal.
Finally, it was a mirror match: Mina vs. Mina in the final. Despite my opponent being obviously a skilled player (and the guy his local crew looks up to for rulings etc), this was the only game that really didn’t feel very close – I just had a much stronger start via Reno into the Bako early that kept me ahead for the majority of the game.
Joseph Writer and friend, Edgar, after first successful Asuna winner card claimed
The end result from my second tournament of the year was bagging the prized Asuna Winner Card. Complete with Asuna’s outfit from the Progressive films, it’s a gorgeous card and one of my favorite Asuna cards to date.
Stay tuned! I’ll be updating this article with more tournament wins as I make my way to that coveted nine UNION ARENA Store Tournament 2026 Vol. 1 Asuna Winner cards!
