NIKKE Pilgrim/Pioneer Deck List and Guide – UNION ARENA
While the Pilgrim/Inherit deck featuring Dorothy may get the most attention, there is another purple NIKKE UNION ARENA deck to pay attention to, and that is this Pilgrim/Pioneer deck featuring Snow White and Modernia.
Below, we’ll be looking at my custom build for this deck, and diving into the ins-and-outs of what makes this sleeper pick a good counter-meta choice.
Pilgrim/Pioneer and BP reduction
The Pilgrim Pioneer deck is primarily all about reducing opposing characters’ BP to either make it easier to remove them, or to force them to resting. You have two key Raid characters that play strongly into this strategy: Modernia and Rapunzel.
Rapunzel Raid
Rapunzel has two solid abilities that make her worth running in this deck. For starters, she has a powerful “When Played” effect that lets you bring back any character card from your sideline to your hand, effectively extending the resources you have available to you at any given time to almost your entire sideline.
While this is more of an advantage from a resource management standpoint, she also does offer something on the offensive side, too. Her “When Attacking” lets you switch an opposing character with 2000 BP or less to resting – an excellent way to get chump blockers out of the way or even stronger defenders who you have managed to reduce the BP on.
Rapunzel also benefits from having this fantastic three-cost raid target who lets you search your top three cards for a Pioneer affinity card, granting additional search to the deck.
Modernia and removal
Modernia, meanwhile, tackles the bigger removal problem, although she doesn’t have a draw or resource-improving effect built in the way Rapunzel does. Instead she lets you reduce the BP of a character on your opponent’s front line by 3000 BP. The only cost to using this effect is to discard the cards in your hand. However, as you’ll see in a moment, this deck likes to function with you having minimal cards in your hand.
As Modernia’s “When Played” will be your main removal effect, you’ll look to extend its reach via several other critical cards.
First, two-cost Modernia doubles as a raid target and as further BP reduction. Having all of those combined with an Active trigger at just two-cost is pretty great, although it would be even better if she had just a little more BP.
The other handy BP reduction tool at your disposal is also just a very well-rounded card in general, and that is the three-cost Scarlet.
Not only does she reduce the BP of an opposing character by 1000 BP When Attacking, she also has two energy-gen, and potentially 4000 BP making her a must-have in this deck. And don’t forget the Active trigger on this card, as well, bringing this deck’s active trigger count up to a very solid 12.
When not necessary to have her on the back line, you’ll be using Scarlet to attack and finish off any character who might not have been sideline via your Raid Modernia.
Snow White and ability shut-off
Pilgrim/Pioneer’s color trigger is the formidable Snow White. While you’ll be playing her raidless to your front line most of the time, her activate main can be used the very same turn you play her, making her a powerful counter to many decks in the meta. By paying the cost of discarding two cards, you can use Snow White to shut off the abilities on one opposing character until the start of your next turn.
At the same time, she will reward you for having less cards in hand by letting you draw a card when she attacks (as long as you have less than three cards in your hand).
This ability is noteworthy by the fact it is not limited to characters on the opposing front line the similar Red Asta is. You can choose a character on the energy line if you want, which would be a great way to shut down key plays into the likes of Red Kenshin that relies heavily on support characters. Alternatively, you can use this powerful effect to shut down meddlesome effects from Roy Mustang or Yellow Modernia that can remove your characters turn-after-turn.
The powerhouse Scarlet play
Finally, there’s this Scarlet card. Scarlet is so strong I’ve had to read her effect several times ever since she was revealed via the NIKKE English card list. A raidless character that comes in active, has a base BP of 4000 and then boosts to a 5000 BP character with Double Attack while letting you draw a card with each attack, and the only cost is discarding three cards?
That’s an insane character right there well worth the two-AP cost. Of course, the cost of discarding up to three cards is going to be a lot tougher in this deck than in others because you’ll have to contend with the fact that many of your card effects have you discard cards. However, manage to hit that magic three card number and you’ll be inflicting a ton of pain into your foe.
Helpful low-cost draw
Finally, there are two handy characters that are very easy to overlook but ones that help you see the cards you need faster regardless. These two cards are the zero-cost Modernia and the one cost Harran.
Both characters have the same “When Played” effect that lets you draw-one-sideline-one, but that’s still massively helpful, especially given the fact that Modernia is an excellent raid target for your four-cost and Haran is a one-cost 2500 BP character, making her an ideal character to play on the frontline early to block incoming attacks.
While Pilgrim/Pioneer may not be the strongest NIKKE deck of them all, it’s still a solid one. With the right pilot it could certainly take down tournaments with its combo of reliable removal, ability shutoff, and high-end power via Scarlet.
