UNION ARENA Rare Battle season is once again upon us! This time for the November-December 2025 Rare Battles we have an incredible lineup of four different titles: Kaiju No. 8, Yu Yu Hakusho, Rurouni Kenshin, and Hunter x Hunter Vol. 2. Here, however, we’re most concerned with the Rare Battle I was most excited about – the Kaiju No. 8 Rare Battle!

Below, we’ll be looking at the Yellow Mina deck I used to win my first ever Kaiju No. 8 Rare Battle, some of the preparation that went into preparing for the tournament, as well as some of the matchups and how they went down.

*Me with the Kaiju No. 8 UNION RARE Winner Card*

Prepping the deck

Of course, the best way to prepare for a tournament is to get some real world experience. With that in mind, I dove into a 12-player tournament a little less than a week before the Rare Battles started playing Mina for my first time competitively. I piloted the deck to a first place finish despite having some definite difficulties along the way made worse by inexperience.

However, this competitive experience paid off massively for me to get a strong feel for what aspects of my deck worked really well, and what aspects definitely fell short. Here’s the deck I won the 12-player tournament with.

Yellow Mina first draft – 1st of 12 at store tournament

While my first attempt at Yellow Mina was pretty good, I was hampered by the fact that I actually only had two Reno Raids in hand. While I would go on to buy one and pull one to complete the play set, for the tournament I made do with Soshiro.

That being said, Reno was one of the reasons I was actually able to win the tournament at all, enabling a very fast aggro play into a Blue Mustang that otherwise likely would have been a problem.

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Despite really liking the pressure Raid Soshiro can apply (as well as the two-cost that can switch characters to resting so that you can freeze them down with Mina), it’s undeniable that Reno is the prime character to pair with Mina. The aggro plays he unlocks early game can straight up win matches for you. This happened into the Blue Mustang during the store tournament and then would happen again into the Kiroku deck I faced in the Kaiju No 8 Rare Battle I won. But more on that later.

Heading into the Kaiju No. 8 Rare Battle, I doubled down on Reno for the early game plays, and kept the two four-cost Bakko for the added protection to Mina as well as to more easily unlock Impact. In the final battle of the 12-player tournament not having a Bakko on the front line almost cost me the game. As such, I knew to prioritize having it on the front line when possible even if upping to four in my deck wasn’t very feasible.

Kaiju No. 8 Rare Battle winning Yellow Mina deck

Now for the deck list that won the Rare Battle for me. While I’ve gone over the Reno in detail, the other card that certainly came in clutch was upping the four-cost Mina to four copies instead of two. This totally won my final match into the mirror against a powerful player, letting me dig deep enough to find a Mina to win the game. With all of that being said, let’s get into the play-by-play of how each match went.

Round one versus Mina/Kikoru hybrid

One thing about a Rare Battle taking place one week after a set officially launches is that not everyone always has all of the cards they need to complete a deck. This was my opponent’s situation despite doing his best to form a Mina/Kikoru hybrid. The deck had merits, and actually started to work very well once his board got set up. However, Reno all but crippled him over the course of two turns very early on.

First, Reno moved up turn two to attack. Turn three, Bakko came out with a Reno Raid, allowing me to push up a huge amount of attacks that dwindled his life down to three.

All the hyper aggression followed up by nothing to fully rebuild my board did stall me for a turn during which time my opponent was able to whittle my front line down with specials and attacks. However, then my own Mina characters came on line and two rests into another line of full frontal attacks closed out the game.

Round two versus Kaiju No. 8/Soshiro Hybrid

Another situation of a player not having what felt like a full list despite being a strong player – the Soshiro/Kaiju No. 8 hybrid actually had some impressive syngery, with two-cost Soshiro giving my opponent a target for two-cost Reno. Switch Soshiro to resting, it comes active via its effect, and you gain added energy gen on the back line.

Despite having a solid start I actually managed to brick on two different turns. The first was very early on after I had already pushed up a Reno. This early push up saved me in the long run as my opponent was too busy building up his energy line to do anything to stop my Reno from swinging in twice on his own, unblocked.

However, I had to take an AP draw on the third turn after bricking – something which was a pretty bummer brick given where we were at in the game. But the two consecutive attacks from Reno did enough to help keep me in the game, and the following turn I used two AP extends to come back.

Still, regardless of a powerful turn using a Special and a Mina freeze, I still only barely scraped by with the win. I’ve long felt that Green Kaiju No. 8 was one of the stronger Kaiju No. 8 decks, and I wasn’t disappointed with what that deck can pull off – especially the six-cost Raid Kaiju. While an eight-cost Kaiju never hit the board, Raid Kaiju felt scary enough, and as it turns out Raid Kaiju acts as a counter to Mina. Not only is it sidelining your chump blockers which Mina/Reno populates the board with with ease, it actually can switch itself back to active during your turn – a move which is a total work around to Mina’s freezing that only works to block the character from restand the next time it would switch to active.

Although my opponent had fallen down to just two life, I somehow managed to brick yet again, failing to find the energy generating characters I needed to Raid up the two Mina and one Soshiro Raid characters that were in my hand. A second stall into his rapidly growing board (and a powerful turn that manged to remove the majority of characters from my front line via a special and two Raids via AP-extend) almost was enough to lose me the game. However, after forcing my opponent down by one more life I was able to swing for the win with a Bakko I drew off of a draw trigger and then two fully Raided Mina’s complete with Impact.

It was a close game due to the bricking, but otherwise would have been a decisive victory.

Final round versus the mirror

Finally, the moment that was destined to arrive: Mina vs Mina. The funny thing about this match was not just the fact we were playing mostly the same deck – it was that our decks decided to function in much the same way, denying each of us access to the majority of our Raids for the battle.

That being said, I got off instantly to the stronger start largely thanks to a better starting hand complete with a Mina raid to slow down my opponent while opening up his defenses, as well as a Bakko play with the AP extend on turn two to unlock some solid aggro.

The name of the game from that point on was simply to stay ahead in the damage race, which I was able to do for the most part, despite not seeing much that could help in the form of Raids.

One very wise decision I made, however, was to prioritize playing out a four-cost Bakko onto my front line. Not only did this help give me leverage during the several rounds of back-to-back attrition I faced where my opponent largely had under 4000 BP attackers that I could easily block, it ensured I would have Impact to close out the game.

The very last play was a tough one, and I had two choices: my opponent had just one life left and I had a two-AP Mina in hand, as well as a one-cost Mina I could use to dig a little deeper for a Raid Mina. Despite largely being in control of the battle the whole time, I had only seen one Mina Raid, and my opponent had just launched a devastating turn into me via a wave of 4000 BP attackers. I would certainly not survive another such wave of attacks, and because I had depleted my front line in defending my life, I couldn’t rely on the two-AP Mina to get in a last attack from the energy line.

I had to dig for the Raid Mina. I’d only seen one the entire game and my life was very low, so odds were fairly solid I would find yet another Mina. In this situation, you’re looking to “thin out your deck” or just draw as much as you possibly can before dropping the one-cost Mina that enables the search. Doing so will give you the optimal odds of finding the Raid Mina which I desperately needed to close out the game via Impact.

Off of the AP-draw, however, I got an AP-Extend, meaning I could then play a Soshiro zero-cost and draw one to thin out my deck more. Finally, I played the one-cost Mina and saw not one but two Mina Raids to choose from.

Again, upping the one-cost Mina pre Rare Battle came in clutch here, and I really didn’t miss the two-cost Soshiro at all.

It was another insanely close battle, but in the end I managed to bag the win.