I took my brand new, custom Kenpachi/Toshiro deck built from the cards in the special BLEACH binder new card selection – which essentially acts as a soft volume 3 for the UNION ARENA: BLEACH Thousand Year Blood War expansion – to a large (20+ player) case tournament and went X-1, tying for second place and landing in the top five after tie-breakers that went all the way to opponent’s opponent’s win average. It was a fantastic, unofficial event that shows just how strong the grassroots movement for UNION ARENA is – one of the best TCGs in the world right now that shows no signs of slowing down.

Below, I’ll be sharing my deck list that I piloted to top the event, as well as breaking down the matches and interactions that I faced along the way.

Kenpachi/Toshiro Green BLEACH Deck List (Vol 3)

I’ve written deck guides and shared many lists by now focused on Green BLEACH and the powerful Kenpachi. Toshiro has also been something of a rogue staple in the meta – not always considered absolutely top tier but often in contention at big events for a top placement.

With that in mind, I won’t go over every single card in the deck (I’ve done that when the original Green BLEACH deck came out and again for BLEACH Vol. 2). However, we do need to talk about the new cards available to Green BLEACH and what they add to the deck that makes this strategy so much stronger and reliable than it ever has been before.

Three-cost Toshiro

First, let’s look at Toshiro. While it can be tempting to focus primarily on your powerful attackers and raid characters, a strong raid cannot function on its own. It needs a plethora of supporting characters and cards to make it viable.

As it turns out, one of the strongest cards a deck can have is a fully functioning, two-energy generating raid target. This is something Toshiro simply did not have, and instead it had a relatively banal two-cost character with the Green Color trigger, one which almost hurt to include in your deck because of how little functionality it added to your strategy.

The three-cost Toshiro, however, comes complete with a Color Trigger, lets you draw a card when played (something Green BLEACH desperately needed), and most importantly lets you easily curve into this deck’s most powerful raid.

Three-cost (in hand) Kenpachi

While the three-cost Toshiro is arguably the more well-rounded two-energy gen character we get in the New Card Selection, the four-cost (three-cost in hand) Kenpachi is your strongest Raid target offensively. Instead of having to awkwardly play a four-cost Kenpachi out onto your front line (which should be used as an attacker in-and-of itself) and then raid ontop of it to gain the full effect of your Raid Kenpachi, you can easily curve into that four-cost Kenpachi Raid by plopping this guy onto your back line, Raid over it, and then swing at your opponent with a Damage 2 Impact 1 character who isn’t affected by BP reducing effects. Oh, and you can keep his raid source around if you want by simply discarding a card.

While Raid Kenpachi was once a relatively scenario-specific strategy in regards to using his full effects, now it’s commonplace to have this guy swinging scary offensive attacks into your opponent. And this is a good thing for Kenpachi/Toshiro players.

Kyoraku addes incredible consistency

While not nearly as core to this deck’s strategy as the two above new cards, don’t underestimate Kyaroku’s efficacy in the new Green BLEACH build. Indeed, being able to search your top three cards for that necessary Kenpachi Raid or Toshiro target feels scary strong in this deck, especially given how limited both draw and search were in this deck before the soft volume 3.

Topping the Halloween case tournament

Before diving deeper into the matchups I want to mention the tournament itself in brief. Grassroots, larger scale tournaments like these are still somewhat less common in UNION ARENA, although we could quickly see that change as the game continues to grow with each new expansion and IP.

This tournament was a special Halloween themed event that drew a strong crowd (seen in pictures below) for a chance to win the majority of a case’s worth of prizes. Also a special shoutout to Jeremy (pictured with me below) for letting me borrow his BLEACH New Card selection cards to complete my deck (I literally put them into my deck a few minutes before the tournament started).

The event was a huge success thanks largely to the initiative of Tayxia who is a friend that organized the event and made sure enough players knew about it. Not only was there plenty of opportunity to battle it out in the arena, I even managed to swipe a few of the BLEACH Binders I was missing from players who won them in raffles that ran during the event.

Kenpachi/Toshiro matchups from the tournament

I only faced down meta decks during the event, making it an excellent source of information for matchup specifics. In all honesty, this was the very first time I ever played Kenpachi/Toshiro in its upgraded version (meaning including the cards in the New Card Selection). Luckily I have plenty of experience playing the deck before the new cards and found the play lines only to be a little bit different – mostly because of having a lot more options at your disposal.

Most of the time in the past with Green BLEACH – due to how little draw/search the deck had access to – players had very few options to choose from each turn. Now, in any given turn you have sequencing decisions to make (such as playing three-cost Toshiro before anything else) and even which of your two raids to prioritize setting up and when.

With that being said let’s dive into each of my battles and how they went down.

Round 1 win versus Renji Rush

Renji Rush is a proven UNION ARENA meta deck with consistent results at top tournaments, and it’s also a deck that can move very fast without much effort. That being said, into this particular match I was able to move much faster with Kenpachi, sidelining a four-cost raidless Ichigo on the front line with Nazorashi before raiding Kenpachi over the four-cost two-energy gen raid target on my energy line.

This produced a double damage attack paired with an Ikaku to do three damage in a single turn very early in the game.

Apart from being able to move just as aggressively as Renji Rush, you do have an inherent advantage here because your Kenpachi characters aren’t affected by BP reduction, making their five-cost Ichigo in particular much less effective.

Round 2 win versus Yellow Kaiju No. 8

Yellow Kaiju No. 8 is the strongest deck in that set, and likely to be a top tier deck in the English meta. And I can see why – the deck moves very quickly and can be a huge threat if you aren’t prepared for it. Luckily, I prioritized aggression into this matchup, with the hardest choice I had to make being sending a fully powered up (but forced into resting via Mina) Raid Kenpachi to the removal area in order to free up room for more attacks. By doing this I was able to apply incredible pressure. The final move that won me the game was a double Kenpachi Raid onto four-cost Kenpachi’s for a double Impact assault.

Round three win versus Lancelot

Lancelot is well established as a top tier deck in UNION ARENA, and it didn’t help that this particular pilot is one of the strongest Lancelot users around – Jeremy Eggers who landed a spot with Lancelot in the top 32 at the immensely competitive Los Angeles Regionals.

This battle was by far the most exhilarating of the night, with neither player giving an inch in strategy or error to the other, eventually forcing each other down to just one life each – an insanely close game.

A few plays in particular dictated the course of this game above the others – first was a very wise two-AP Kenpachi play into Jeremy’s one-cost Euphemia he had played onto the front line in order to defend his Lancelots against unwanted event cards.

I know the two-AP Kenpachi removal into Euphemia is one of the strongest counters into that defensive play at your disposal in Green BLEACH, however, thanks to extensive practice into that deck. Indeed, it’s an ideal move to use against that deck as it avoids you wasting one of your own specials into Euphemia (something which Green BLEACH really can’t afford) and makes use of Kenpachi’s lesser removal capabilities early in the game before you’ve built up a board strong enough to take out 4000 BP characters.

The second play that could potentially have shut down my opponent’s strategy was wisely choosing to freeze down a six-cost Lancelot that was raided over a three-cost Suzaku. I had a special in hand and could have used it to take out the strongest character on the board but chose not to in order to deny my opponent access to a card that could potentially rebuild his energy line to enable an Air Cavalry play.

As it turns out this almost stopped my opponent in his tracks but for a lucky top deck into a two-cost Nunnally that made an energy-line rebuild into an Air Cavalry possible and created a devastating turn that saw one character removed via Lancelot, and another removal via essentially a forced block to defend my low life.

It was an immensely powerful play that really could have lost me the game – and I knew my only way out of this was to somehow draw into a Raid Kenpachi that could swing for Impact and win me the game (assuming my opponent did not have a Final trigger).

Armed with a two energy generating Kenpachi (again, coming in clutch as one of the best cards in the deck now), a special, and a Raid Kenpachi that I did luckily top deck, I was able to swing for game into my opponent’s otherwise solidly built-up board.

Round four loss versus Kenshin

My only loss of the night also came from the deck that should be getting a nerf soon – Red Kenshin. The deck is so fast and strong into the meta right now that it’s been making up an absurd play share in high level tournaments. The UNION ARENA Global Producer has announced that her team is looking into the deck’s overwhelming supremacy in the meta, and many (myself included) have taken this to mean some sort of a restriction will be hitting Red Kenshin soon.

I’m only saying all of that to paint the picture that this deck really isn’t fair to minimize the impact of my loss which was – truth be told – utterly devastating. I did not have a fabulous hand to start with but enough low-cost characters to get things going. Things got worse, however, when I didn’t manage to hit a two-energy gen character, forcing me to leave my little guys on the backline while my opponent swung away at my life with a Yahiko and a Double Attack Kenshin that utterly wrecked my life.

A slow start against an incredibly fast one on the Kenshin’s player’s behalf solidified his decisive victory.

Ultimately, Kenpachi/Toshiro is an incredibly strong and reliable deck that should be getting plenty of attention now that it finally feels like the deck it was supposed to be all along.

Kenpachi/Toshiro Green BLEACH Deck List (Vol. 3)