Green BLEACH Dominates Chainsaw Man UNION ARENA Case Tournament
Wondering what the UNION ARENA meta looks like post Chainsaw Man?
While it’s always fun to theorize about what’s good and what’s not after a major set release, one of the best ways to understand the impact is to go to a large tournament near you.
Last night I attended the Chainsaw Man UNION ARENA Case Tournament at Constellation Collective in Sacramento, CA. It’s the first large tournament I’ve been to in a while (other than store tournaments and rare battles), and it came at the perfect time: right on the heels of Chainsaw Man’s very popular release.
What I saw at the tables actually surprised me – as did the relative dominance of Green BLEACH into the new meta.
Why did I choose Green BLEACH for the Chainsaw Man Case Tournament?
Believe it or not, running Green BLEACH wasn’t originally on my mind for the case tournament. I’ve been winning multiple tournaments lately running different Sword Art Online decks, and so I was really trying to choose between which SAO deck I would play.
Because they all sounded good to me, I asked my X followers which deck I should run at the case tournament, listing my current three favorite decks: Song/Yuna, Mother’s Rosario, and Progressive.
I had literally just won a tournament a few days before into a very meta-heavy playing field running Mother’s Rosario, so I was leaning heavily on playing that deck. Indeed, the deck is a lot better than I had originally thought. It has powerful freeplay effects, insane removal, and once you get over the high skill threshold required to play it effectively, it’s quite good.
My X poll changed my mind
However, my X poll clearly wanted me to play something else. While the majority of votes actually did go with SAO, my joke “not SAO” choice got the highest number of votes in total.
While the poll was largely just for fun, it did get me thinking: what deck would I choose if I really wanted to counter the meta, rather than my typical passion pick?
While looking through the decks most likely to be the top contenders right now, I kept coming back to a deck that I haven’t really played competitively in almost a year back when the BLEACH New Card Selection Binder came out: Green BLEACH.
I had taken Green BLEACH to a case tournament in October of 2025 and done quite well with it into a very different meta (Kaiju No. 8’s UNION ARENA set had just released back then).
However, the more I thought about the matchups I would run into, the more I realized how well Green BLEACH actually counters the current meta.
Into Purple Reze it has a huge advantage as it can’t be affected by BP reducing abilities.
Into Red Chainsaw Man it can lock down key characters like Power in order to stop a lot of the protective plays that deck has.
Into Yellow Sakamoto it can freeze the Nullify Impact Sakamoto that can’t be sidelined, denying them a free block.
Into Shadow Army it can freeze the back line, stopping tricky Kaisel plays as well as denying reinforcements rushing to the front line after the first wave is depleted.
Into Yellow Eva it can shut down the Rei and stop the block-freeplay shenanigans.
That’s a lot of solid advantages into the top decks. Despite my love for SAO, I had to give this deck a try. And I wasn’t disappointed. For the most part.
I wasn’t the only one playing Green BLEACH
My Green BLEACH build
We’ll get into the actual play-by-play in a moment, but one thing that I was not expecting was how many other players would be playing Green BLEACH. There were four Green BLEACH decks in total out of 30 players competing in the case tournament, and of course I faced two of them!
I certainly didn’t pick Green BLEACH expecting 2/5 of my rounds being a mirror match. But all good!
The Chainsaw Man Case tournament meta and play-by-play
Now for the fun part – how did the tournament actually go?
Before getting into the play-by-play, I do want to highlight one more important note on the meta. While I’m talking about Green BLEACH a lot because that’s the deck I played as well as the deck that ended up winning the case tournament, it was not the most dominant deck in terms of play share.
Indeed, the most dominant deck in sheer numbers was Red Chainsaw Man. This is a very telling anecdote that’s really probably more indicative of what you can expect from competitive players: Red Chainsaw Man very much appears to be the “it” deck from the set.
While Reze has done well in Japan and it was my own personal pick for top deck from the set, current market values and player sentiment point to Red Chainsaw Man being the favorited deck.
Why is Red Chainsaw Man so popular?
Chainsaw Man (048)
UE22BT: CHAINSAW MAN • Super Rare
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While personally I find Purple Reze’s combination of removal, optionality, and AP restand/freeplay effects more enticing than Red Chainsaw Man’s brute strength, players are undoubtedly loving the aggressive power the latter affords.
On the secondary market, Red Chainsaw Man’s cards are the most expensive – a clear indicator of where players’ heads are at going into the post Chainsaw Man meta.
With that being said, on to the tournament recap!
Round 1 vs. Red Chainsaw Man (win)
Power (061)
UE22BT: CHAINSAW MAN • Super Rare
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While I was very comfortable with the Purple Reze matchup going into this event, I was less certain about Red Chainsaw Man. While the match started out pretty evenly, it had two critical moments that directed the path of the game.
The first was when I Raided a Green Toshiro and froze a four-cost Chainsaw Man with the Nullify Impact, and my opponent responded with a Raid Power that removed my only body from the front line.
That early removal (combined with a special out of life) made me very concerned that I might not be able to come back for the win.
However, I followed up with a Special into the four-cost Chainsaw Man to deny the Nullify Impact before swinging in with a Damage 2/Impact 1 Kenpachi. This put me comfortably back in the game, and another Toshiro Raid, plus retaining the base Kenpachi when my opponent tried to special him, essentially closed out the game.
One thing to keep in mind during this matchup: Green Kenpachi can freeze down the Pochita, denying your opponent the ability to keep recycling it. This combined with the ability to work around Power’s strategic protection ability is partly what made Green BLEACH such a solid counter pick into this meta.
Round 2 vs Green BLEACH (loss)
Kenpachi Zaraki (067)
UEX01BT: BLEACH: Thousand-Year Blood War Vol.2 • Super Rare
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Round 2 was the only loss of the night for me, and it was against another Green BLEACH player who would go on to win the entire case tournament.
While I had one strong play early on via a Toshiro Raid into a Kenpachi freeze, that was essentially my only good play for the whole game. Indeed, Toshiro was the only Raid I drew the entire game after many turns of bricking into weak characters – the only other Raid was a Kenpachi off of life that came way too late to make a difference.
Meanwhile, my opponent loves to Raid Kenpachi over four-cost Kenpachi characters to take advantage of the Damage 2/Impact. This is particularly deadly into the mirror match as you don’t typically run Nullify Impact in Green BLEACH. My opponent literally swung at me with this deadly combo three turns in a row.
Looking back, I should have sacrificed more of my characters to the Impact rather than take so many Damage 2 hits. But in all honesty, I don’t think even that would have changed the course of the game.
I needed much stronger plays earlier on – like either more Toshiro Raids or my own Kenpachis – to win that match, and I didn’t have the cards this time.
Round 3 vs Red Kagurabachi (win)
Chihiro Rokuhira (060)
UE16BT: KAGURABACHI • Super Rare
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I won’t go into this round too much as it was very short. My opponent had to AP draw one turn, which slowed him down incredibly. While normally that wouldn’t be a dealbreaker, I happened to have a broken start, playing a Bankai, a removal, and a Kenpachi with Damage 2 very early. After that my opponent just couldn’t catch back up, and the game was over in a few turns.
Round 4 vs Song and Dance (win)
Asuna (042)
UEX06BT: Sword Art Online Vol.2 • Super Rare
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Now for arguably the most comical round of the night: I got to face off against my own custom deck, Song and Dance!
Song and Dance is a deck concept I came up with back during my incredibly successful Rare Battle season where I topped every single one of my six SAO Vol 2 Rare Battles, winning four of them outright.
While for the most part Song and Dance works like regular Progressive, it runs a small card count of the Purple Yuna/Song deck to unlock key advantages that are missing from pure Progressive.
It’s a deck I came up with and won a Rare Battle with back in April, and not one I really expected to run into at all in this tournament. What was even funnier was that my opponent seemed to have no idea that the deck build was originated from me: at one point he even tried to fake me out assuming I wouldn’t know what the deck did and make a really dumb mistake.
Of course, I very much know how Song and Dance works so I didn’t fall for the feint and shut down his multi attack.
Additionally, Progressive’s worst matchup is Green BLEACH as not being able to reduce Kenpachi is a huge issue for that deck. I fielded two three-cost Kenpachis to the front line and let them sit there all game until I finally drew into my Raid characters. It took a while despite plenty of search as my Raid characters were either in life or at the bottom of my deck.
It was a tough match largely because of the early game bricking that had plagued me in my loss earlier. But I was able to smartly close it out by choosing to first freeze my opponent with Toshiro while keeping a Kenpachi Raid in hand to close out the game the following turn – a move I would repeat in my final round.
Round 5 vs Green BLEACH with Unohana (win)
Tayxia’s 11th place Green BLEACH deck
The last round of the tournament was also my favorite, and it was against friend and Green BLEACH pro, Tayxia. Tayxia is known for his unique deck builds and expert piloting, so I knew I had to pay close attention into this matchup. I was blessed with a strong starting hand, but my key goal was to hold as many Toshiro and Specials in my hand as possible, wait until he fielded his strongest characters, then blow them away.
This worked great after my opponent raided two Toshiro characters, and played one Raidless, then had only one card in hand. At that point, with three Toshiro Raids still in hand and two Specials, I knew I probably had it.
Then I also had a Kenpachi in hand just like the game before – I kept him in hand for added insurance, fielded all strong BP characters to the front line while leaving my energy line vulnerable (it’s okay, I only would need to play one card the following turn to win).
I closed it out with a Kenpachi Raid with Impact for game.
And as masterful as I make that sound, even with such strong cards in hand and a clear game plan, I still won by a fairly thin margin. It’s the kind of UNION ARENA battle that you love to have to decide who will top the case tournament: one with give-and-take at every point of the game.
The Case Tournament Winning deck: Green BLEACH
I had a very strong performance with Green BLEACH, essentially matching my results from the last case tournament I took the deck to, and getting fifth out of 30 players after a three way tie dropped me down a few rungs based off of opponent’s opponent’s win percentage.
However, it was Ryan and his Green BLEACH build that took first place after a final round into – you guessed it – Red Chainsaw Man!
You might notice a few things that are unique about Ryan’s build, however. I spoke with him a bit about his deck, and this combined with having played him granted me a few insights into his approach to Green BLEACH.
First, he is missing key cards because he only actually bought four of the now very expensive BLEACH New Card Selections. So his deck is essentially not at full power.
New Card Selection: BLEACH: Thousand-Year Blood War
UE01NC: New Card Selection: BLEACH: Thousand-Year Blood War
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Second – and the play style most unique to him that I noticed – was that the dude always wants to Raid his Kenpachi over a four-cost. He hates Raiding over the zero-cost, as you can see from his seven-total four-cost Kenpachi characters.
Into me, this worked really, really well as I had no means to stop it. Into decks with stronger Nullify Impact options, it might not work quite as well. Regardless, for this tournament, it clearly was the right meta call and right build to edge out the win.
Additionally, having two Green BLEACH decks in the top five for a tournament heavily dominated by Chainsaw Man is very telling for just how strong the deck STILL is after all this time. Will it get further support when BLEACH Vol. 3 comes out? Who knows – but if it does it could be considered S-tier once again.
Either way, the UNION ARENA meta is very likely to have a new face at the top tables, and a strong counter ready to take it on.
