The Purple Progressive deck is one of the Sword Art Online Vol. 2 decks that’s looking the most attractive right now. With an aggressive and powerful offensive strategy, this deck has a lot going for it, especially when you consider how control-heavy the UNION ARENA meta is looking.

Below we’ll be looking at my custom Purple SAO Progressive deck.

The Asuna Raid Package

One of the most appealing things about the Purple Progressive deck is how strong both Asuna and her Raid line is. Let’s break down the key advantages Asuna provides:

First, Asuna has a powerful “When Played” that sees her boost to a 5000 BP Impact 1 character. This will be massively helpful in swinging through high BP defenders as well as for closing out the game.
Her even more powerful effect, however, is her When Attacking ability. While you will have to have used one of your other BP reducing effects the turn she attacks, assuming you have and you can switch one of your other Progressive characters to active.

While the first point is fairly straightforward, the second point requires a lot more strategy to optimize plays around. Most obviously, you can use this “switch to active” effect to get multiple attacks off in a turn. However, you can also use this effect to attack with the powerful two AP-cost Kirito the turn he is played, letting you get off a Damage 2 attacker fairly easily.

Protect your Raid Asuna with the Pendant of Aniorite

Asuna is so vital to being successful with the Purple Progressive deck that she also presents something of a weakness: she’s an easy target for your opponent’s removal effects, and even triggers off of life. Because you will often want to attack with another character first before attacking with her, she suffers from also being an easy target from specials or yellow color triggers off of life.

To help protect her from this weakness, you do have a very powerful countermeasure thanks to the Pendant of Aniorite. I see this Event card as essentially vital to the deck strategy given how crucial Raid Asuna is to your strategy. Use this card to protect her during your attacking turn and your opponent’s attack phase – all while not even having to spend an AP on it as long as you use it on Asuna. The Pendant provides complete protection for Asuna with the only way around it being a forced block or a Snipe attack.

Asuna has a very solid line of Raid targets

Looking at these three Asuna Raid targets gives you a solid idea of what makes Purple Progressive so strong. Indeed, almost everything you could want is built into Asuna’s Raid line, with the only thing missing being a two energy-gen character. Zero-cost Asuna provides your draw-one-sideline-one, one-cost Asuna provides filtering, and two-cost Asuna provides draw.

It’s among the more solid Raid lines of any character in the game, making it a shoe-in for the upper-tiers of UNION ARENA.

The Mito Raid package

Asuna’s powerful Raid package and strategy isn’t the only thing at your disposal in this deck, however: Mito plays a vital supporting role as well. She adds a high degree of utility to this deck, fulfilling several key roles all in one card. Let’s look at each of these vital attributes before tying her in with your broader core strategy.

First, she can’t be blocked by 2000 or less BP characters. Given how capable this deck is at reducing the BP of opposing characters, you could use this as a way to either force your opponent to block with their stronger characters, or avoid being blocked altogether.
Second, Mito afford you with a strong choice when she is played: you can either play an Asuna with two-or-less AP set to resting on your field, or draw a card. Which you will choose will depend on the situation you are in. But still, cards that have multiple options letting you adapt to the game state you are in are usually strong additions.
Finally, Mito plays an indispensable role in reducing the BP of opposing characters – an effect that you will combo with various other cards to your advantage. At the very least, it’s a solid way to enable your Asuna’s When Attacking effect.

Mito’s Raid line

Again, Mito also benefits from having a pretty stellar line of Raid targets. I’ll go over all three of her Raid targets in detail, despite only including two of them in my list.

The zero cost Misumi (also counts as Mito) is a no-brainer add to this deck. You don’t have any other zero cost that you’d rather run and she has the Get Trigger while also acting as a Raid target for Mito.

Three-cost Mito is also pretty vital, acting as energy generation for this deck and doubling as a Raid target while also delivering a powerful When Played that prevents your opponent from blocking your attacks. You’ll be using this effect to force your opponent to make bad choices when blocking, or from not being able to block altogether.

Finally, there is the one-cost Mito that is admittedly strong. However, she does only have 1500 BP which isn’t fantastic for a one-cost, and I certainly prefer Asuna’s one-cost that lets you filter. That being said, having another BP reducing effect in your deck is pretty solid, so you could play around with including this card in your deck.

The three-cost Argo play

Another thing I really like about the Purple Progressive deck is how much utility is baked into each of its cards. Argo is yet another example of a character that provides multiple advantages – all baked into the same card.

For the most part, Argo is here because she is your color trigger, energy gen, and search character all baked into one. And while that would make her a must-have in any deck, she has yet another powerful effect that is more niche but still helpful. Her Activate: Main enables her to potentially close out the game later on, assuming your opponent has walled up with a bunch of 4000 BP+ characters.

This is especially relevant in the current metagame with the likes of Evangelion’s Gaius deck running amok – a deck that loves to overwhelm the opposition with high BP bodies.

Going into the post SAO Vol. 2 and Evangelion UNION ARENA meta, I’m very much eying the Purple Progressive deck. It’s got the right mix of power, consistency, and aggression to hold up in the more control heavy format we find ourselves in. This could be the sleeper Sword Art Online Vol. 2 deck, and has a lot of potential to do well even at the highest level of competition.

Sword Art Online Purple Progressive Deck