How I Topped My First Solo Leveling UNION ARENA Rare Battle
UNION ARENA Rare Battles are once again upon us. Only this time, they look a little different than they have before. For starters, Solo Leveling is one of the anime-locked tournaments. Second, Rare Battles suddenly feel a lot harder to get into. With tournaments capped at eight players at only select, upper-tier Bandai retailers, you can’t so easily drop-in like you once did. And finally, gone are the top four UNION RARE promos. Instead, UNION RARE cards only go to first and second place, with first place still getting the stamped “Winner” card and second getting the regular UNION RARE.
However, the fun was all the same. For my Solo Leveling Rare Battle, I chose to take the deck I’ve liked best from the set all along: Purple Jinwoo/Cha Mill. I’m not disappointed that I did either as my end result was second place top that landed me the UNION RARE.
Below, I’ll walk you through my custom Purple Solo Leveling Mill deck build, my thought process behind building it the way that I did, and how it fared in three rounds against the biggest baddest deck in the format: Shadow Army.
Solo Leveling Rare Battle Topping Purple Jinwoo/Cha Mill deck list
My matchups were entirely against Shadow Army. And while I knew Shadow Army would be a big one to beat, I didn’t necessarily think I would be going against three Shadow Army decks. Still, I wanted to have plenty of rushing power in this deck, which is why you’ll notice I am running a high number of zero-cost/fake zero-cost characters (14 in total).
The idea here was simply to get plenty of attacks through early on before Shadow Army builds up to its full strength. And in the two battles I won into Shadow Army, this is exactly how I did it: attacking with strong/semi strong low BP characters that can be boosted via different abilities to swing at life.
The zero-cost Cha is excellent at rushing
To ensure I had plenty of early game aggression while building up to the 20 cards in sideline, I knew I had to include this zero-cost Cha. Being only a zero-cost character that easily buffs to 3000 BP while also fueling your sideline just feels so good. I would run four of her if I could, but you also have plenty of other strong characters, too. In a pinch, you can use your two-cost Song-yi’s BP boosting or zero-cost Song-yi to even make this zero-cost Cha a 4000 BP character.
Zero-cost Esil was supremely helpful when she came up
While Esil isn’t necessarily a must in this deck, she is a helpful early game body. In the second battle against Shadow Army, Esil gave me a free block that let me draw a card, and then came back off a Purple Color Trigger to provide yet another block/draw advantage.
Two-cost Mom fulfills multiple roles
Lastly, Sung Jinwoo’s mommy was very helpful in my games. Despite Purple Mill’s Triggerless card count being largely set in stone because of the vital one-cost Esil and three-cost Jinwoo, I worked in an additional two Triggerless two-cost Park Kyunghye to help especially with the Shadow Army matchup.
Essentially, Park acts as a free-play to the Energy Line only, while also letting you further fuel your sideline. This is an excellent play when you are wanting to get more aggressive but don’t necessarily have the stable energy line to pull it off otherwise. Raid a five-cost Jinwoo, then free play his mom to the energy line.
Solo Leveling Rare Battle play-by-play
Now let’s get to the fun part: how did the tournament go. Well, the first two battles went largely the same: my aggressive, low-to-the-ground build did most of the work for me. Because of the extra zero-cost characters, the free draw/block off of Esil, and even the handy two-cost Park tech, I was able to cut my foes’ life down to just four within the first opening turns.
Afterwards, a few well-placed five-cost Jinwoo Raids and specials helped massively in both rounds, clearing up a 12-cost Jinwoo in both battles while then cleaning up with the five-cost forced block.
The third battle – finals round vs Shadow Army
The final round did end in a loss, but not by much. While in both opening rounds my aggressive build worked wonders, in the third round I had a very awkward opening hand that I kept to be safe rather than taking a mulligan. Essentially, I had one zero-cost character and one searching Esil. The rest were four-cost and five-cost characters.
Keeping this hand was a gamble, and looking back it would have likely been a more strategic risk to mulligan it away in favor of something more rushy. You don’t want to go the distance against Shadow Army if you can help it as that deck just gets so strong later on.
However, with the one-cost Esil I figured I could salvage it by searching out a Jinwoo. I did manage to do so, but at the cost of using an Arise to just catch up after an AP-draw, as well as loss of the early game aggro play that had won me my first two battles.
Sideline stalling and a battle of attrition
My attacks weren’t the only thing that felt slow: fueling my sideline was taking too long, as well. I didn’t see a Demon’s Castle – a card which was immensely helpful in both my testing and in the first two rounds. What did work well, however, was my four-cost Jinwoo keeping the pressure on and essentially forcing blocks by just how many 4000 BP attacks I was getting through each turn.
I kept the five-cost in hand for much of the game, hoping to find a way to close out the game before my opponent did with the 12-cost Jinwoo. While many advocate using the forced-block early, in this game it was unnecessary: my opponent sacrificed many, many characters to defend his life against my onslaught of attacks via four-cost Jinwoo and Cha. Had my early game been a little faster, and my sideline fueling a little stronger, or my triggers off of life not been three non triggers, I might have had the game.
As it was, my opponent got the power move first. After several rounds of attrition, it was enough to close out the game.
Ultimately, the Solo Leveling Rare Battle was immensely fun. The prizing difference definitely lent a different vibe to the event. Players were more on edge, nervous about whether or not they would get first or second place. Regardless, the tournament wasn’t any less difficult or fun because of it, and I highly recommend attending one yourself. Just watch out for Shadow Army!
