1st Place Sword Art Online Yellow Goddesses Deck | UNION ARENA
In this guide, I’m going to be talking about one of my absolute favorite UNION ARENA decks of all: The Yellow Goddesses Sword Art Online deck.
I’ve played countless battles with this deck, won two different Sword Art Online Rare Battles, and also achieved an impressive five tournament win streak totally undefeated playing this very deck.
Given my broad experience with this deck, I’m going to be giving my original Goddesses deck guide a complete overhaul. Not only will this up-to-date guide include a more optimal list, it will also be looking at the current UNION ARENA meta to help you know how to deal with anything you face.
Sword Art Online Yellow Goddesses Deck List
SAO Yellow Goddess Deck – Quick Start Guide
Yellow Goddesses has the potential to dominate the meta, with several key advantages that are unlike anything else we’ve seen to date. We’ll get into all of this in more depth below. However, if you’re just looking for a few quick pointers on how to get started, see below.
Promote chump blockers/attackers early game while preserving your strongest characters for when you have four life or less.
Take advantage of one-cost Asuna to block incoming attacks and get through your opponent’s early defenses.
Use a combination of three-cost Asuna and Lisbeth to fuel your energy line while finding the cards you need.
Remove your own life with three-cost Asuna and four-cost Leafa to get closer to your ideal number of life: four.
Use Asuna raid to disrupt your opponent’s field and create openings in their defenses.
Defend your life once you get to four left with your two Leafa with Nullify Impact.
Use Raid Sinon to close the game out with her devastating combo of Snipe/Impact at two life.
The Goddess mindset
One of my friends put it this way: playing Goddesses is a mindset. And I couldn’t agree with that statement more. Although seeing initial success, Goddesses has almost entirely faded away to the background in favor of the latest decks, and volume 2 fueled powerhouses. That being said, this deck absolutely can still keep up with the meta. And while it’s more challenging today than when it first came out, I’m still topping tournaments regularly playing my own Goddess deck.
However, there are a few key things to keep in mind when piloting this deck. After looking through these top tips for playin Goddesses, you might also agree: playing Goddesses is a mindset.
Play for the late game
The trickiest aspect for me to grasp with this deck at first was the fact that it’s actually a late game deck despite being only a four-energy cost deck. Unlike other four-energy cost decks that like to move quickly and damage your opponent into submission before they can respond, Goddesses often has to wait a bit before playing its strongest cards.
That’s not because of the energy in this case, but because your two strongest raid characters should not be played unless there’s no other way around it until you have at least four life remaining.
In the first month of testing this deck, I consistently tried to play this deck like a rush style deck that simply got stronger as the game progressed. I would play my Asuna raid early and often, and just let the cards fall where they may. However, you cannot win that way. Instead, you must preserve your strongest characters until you’ve hit that four life or less.
Key cards
With that mindset, you can better understand how the flow of the game works. Before getting into more detail about how this deck runs, however, let’s dive deep into your key cards.
Asuna (Stacia, the Goddess of Creation)
In many ways, four-cost Raid Asuna is the backbone of the Goddesses strategy. Asuna has a very unique “When Played” effect that makes her highly effective in the current meta. Essentially, you use her to swap one of your opponent’s characters on the front line with a character on the energy line. They both get switched to resting which opens up a huge hole in their defenses. The best part is, however, if you have four life or less you are able to force them to not move the following turn. This can be used offensively to poke holes in your opponent’s defenses, or as a defensive measure – preventing your opponent from promoting up the following turn to go for a lethal strike.
It also acts as an excellent way to lock down a really strong character on your opponent’s back line – such as a 10000 BP Saitama or a 5000 BP Lancelot – and preventing them from being used in combat the following turn.
However, it’s worth noting that this doesn’t only prevent them from attacking you the following turn: it also prevents them from defending, essentially taking them out of the game for two whole turns. It’s truly one of the strongest offensive and defensive plays in the game.
When should you play your Asuna Raid?
It’s taken a lot of trial and error to figure out the optimal time to field the Asuna Raid. At first, I would play her early and often. As time has passed, I’ve switched to reserving her for the late game. The only time you would want to play her before you’ve hit your four-life-left threshold is when a) you need the added rush to sneak out a win against a disadvantaged player (i.e. bricked up) or when you want to pull up an energy generating character that has yet to meet its two energy threshold (i.e. Euphie from Code Geass Green).
If playing her early means damaging your opponent’s energy line beyond repair, it’s worth doing so. The rest of the time, you’ll want to take advantage of the locking down effect to take opposing characters out of the game.
Sinon (Sun Goddess, Solus)
While Asuna acts as a tool to create openings in your opponent’s defenses, Sinon is your late game powerhouse capable of removal via Snipe and Impact. The only problem with this Sinon raid is that you really aren’t going to want to use her until you have at least four life or less, limiting her usefulness early game when compared to Asuna who at least has some usefulness early on into certain matchups.
However, she becomes rapidly more dangeour the less life you have, capping out at two life remaining with 4000 BP, Snipe, and Impact.
When should you play Sinon?
While at first it may seem that you would wait until two-life-left to play Sinon so that she is at full power, that’s really not always the case. There are plenty of reasons you might want to play her earlier on. For example, at four life remaining she may only have 3500 BP, but she does gain Snipe, making her a solid play into lower BP characters on the opposing field. Meanwhile, at three-life-left she is capable of removing 4000 BP characters from the board.
Typically you won’t want to Raid her as a defensive Raid (something which Asuna is great at for slowing your opponent down). However, you can do so in dire situations.
Use three-cost Asuna to drain you own life and gain resources
While this Yellow Goddess deck is not at all afraid of taking hits to life, you can accelerate the rate at which you reach four or less by playing a few key cards. One of them is this three-cost Asuna card. She lets you add a card from your life to your hand and draw a card. Because the card added to your hand from your life in this way becomes part of your hand, you can essentially think of this “When Played” as an effect that lets you draw two cards – a very rare ability in UA in general and quite effective.
While normally adding a card from your life to your hand might be seen as a disadvantage, your strongest characters (listed above) gain tremendous power from having less life in your pool, making this card jus straight-up deadly.
As if that weren’t enough, Asuna also has:
3000 BP
Two energy generation
Yellow Color Trigger
She is an absolute must as a four-of in deck.
When should you play two-energy gen Asuna?
Asuna is best played early in the game when your opponent hasn’t had a very aggressive start. If your opponent has already removed several of your characters or is playing very aggressively, you might want to think twice about using her effect (although she still makes a solid energy gen character/raid target without effect). If, however, your opponent hasn’t been overly threatening or has failed to take multiple life cards early, you’re safe to play her.
Once you hit four life, however, you really need to assess the situation before using her effect. Here are a few good things to think about before activating her effect at four-life-left
Do you really need more cards?
Do you need to reduce life further to boost Sinon?
Are you in danger of losing the following turn given current board state?
If yes to the first or second or both, and no to the third, then you are fine using her effect. Otherwise, don’t.
Leafa (Earth Goddess, Terraria)
While the other two goddesses that make up this deck are primarily offensive characters, Leafa is your defensive line. Indeed, she may just be one of the single most effective Raidless characters in the game up to this point.
Four energy cost makes her easy to play.
4000 base BP makes her an excellent attacker.
Nullify Impact helps defend your life late game.
Activer Trigger is always solid, helping grant additional BP your characters need to survive until the next turn.
While all of these base stats are insane enough, it gets better. Leafa’s “When Played” enables her to gain 2000 BP and prevents her from being chosen by your opponent’s abilities. This gives her insane staying power, and ties in with her regenerative abilities in the show that prevent her from being defeated by any enemy.
Play her and you are virtually guaranteed to have her around the following turn to dismantle your opponent with. Watch out, however: Leafa’s When Played does not stop Snipe effects so characters with that keyword and strong enough BP can still remove her, limiting her effectiveness against those decks.
Lisbeth
Lisbeth turns out to be a pretty phenomenal card in this deck. You really need your key goddess cards to win with this deck, and Lisbeth makes finding them much, much easier. Not to mention she’s got the handy draw trigger, as well as two-energy gen. I’ll often play more than one of her to the field simply to take advantage of her top deck search ability. Late game she can be the single search card you need to win the game – pulling a clutch Asuna or Sinon from the top three cards of your deck.
Situationally effective cards
In addition to the above key cards, this deck offers unique strategies that can be very effective in certain situations. First, let’s talk about a card that stands out as one-of-a-kind and that is this one: Unlimited Landscape Manipulation Ability.
Unlimited Landscape Manipulation Ability
While the first effect listed above is essentially the same effect as raid Asuna minus the “can’t move” buff you get at 4 cards or less, the second effect is pretty insane, letting you straight-up remove a site from play. This can be an excellent tech to stop powerful cards like Malevolent Shrine or the super popular Royal Palace from being used against you or to buff up your opponent’s resources.
Late game, the switching to resting can also be a powerful way to punch additional holes in your opponent’s defenses.
Zero-cost Leafa is handy throughout the game
The reason I made space for this zero-cost Leafa at a four count is simple: she has Nullify Impact. While you already have four copies of Nullify Impact characters in your deck thanks to four-cost Leafa, I find having plenty of Nullify Impact on hand to be effective. Since you’ll be removing so much of your own life throughout the game, it’s important to stop your opponent from taking cheap shots against you via things like Impact once you’re down to four life.
I don’t think this zero-cost Leafa is absolutely mandatory. However, she’s a huge boon to your strategy and makes more sense in this deck than any other of the zero cost characters besides Sinon and Asuna.
Radiant Light is the strongest Special in the game
I’ve played Goddesses enough at this point to be convinced of one thing: Radiant Light is the strongest special in the game. The strongest thing about this card is that you can play it for only the cost of three. When played you can switch a character to resting and freeze them the next time it would switch to active. That’s a handy effect to be able to use at anytime for just a three cost.
Meanwhile, if you have four or less life you just get to sideline a character instead. Given how easy it is to get to four or less life in this deck that makes it insanely effective.
Yellow Goddesses mulligan guide
Although the mulligan in UNION ARENA isn’t particularly complicated, let’s look through a few different scenarios to get a better idea of when you would mulligen with this deck versus when you would keep your starting hand. We’ll simulate this via EXBURST’s mulligan test feature.
Starting hand – keep or mulligan?
Question: Looking at the above mulligan, would you keep it or mulligan it?
In reality, there’s a lot going for this hand. First of all, you have several of your key cards that you are going to want later on. The two Asuna Raid, the Special, Final and even your three-cost Asuna – which is an ideal card to build up your energy line with early on – are all excellent cards.
However, what’s missing is a clearly defined path to a curve upon which you can build later plays. Going from one zero-cost character to a three-cost double energy generating character is a big step, and one that you will not necessarily get – regardless of how solid the rest of this hand looks.
You can hope to pull the cards you need on your first or second draw, but odds are decent you won’t get what you need in time to keep up with your opponent.
Answer: choosing to mulligan this hand would be the right course of action given an unstable energy line curve.
Mulligan hand – good or bad?
Now that we’ve chosen to mulligan our opening hand (which was strong in power cards but lacked a solid energy line curve), let’s look at what we drew instead.
Although not exactly ideal, this starting hand is much better than the one we chose to mulligan. We still have a bevy of powerful cards such as the four-cost Sinon, the Leafa, and a Radiant Light as well as an Unlimited Landscape Manipulation. However, it’s not at the expense of a clear energy line. We can play our Asuna’s out and our Sinon without needing anything else, and from there it’s highly likely we will find another character to play.
Yellow Goddesses matchup guide
Beyond being a powerful deck with no characters over four energy, Yellow Goddesses has a pretty solid matchup spread in the English UNION ARENA meta. While that matchup is not as advantageous as it was when SAO first came out, it’s still good enough to make Goddesses top tier as long as it’s being piloted by a skilled enough player.
Vs. Yellow Saitama
Against, Yellow Saitama, you can easily take two AP Saitama out of the game, locking him down for two whole turns. That massively removes their main advantage, making Yellow Goddesses a powerful counter to that deck. If this deck ends up being as popular as I think it could be, it could take Yellow Saitama out of the running for top decks.
Vs. Green Saitama
Green Saitama has proven itself to be a popular pick in the English meta as well as a late game powerhouse if you play your cards right. While some decks struggle against this deck’s removal and blocking power, Yellow Goddesses has several key advantages against it.
For starters, Yellow Goddesses is a very rushable deck, making it easy to take plenty of life early on without worrying much about your energy line.
Second, Asuna’s switching is effective here, letting you strategically move strong blockers like Silver Fang off the front line and becoming far less effective locked down on the back line.
The only issue you will run into with Green Saitama is that it doesn’t attack much, making it harder to reduce your own life. However, it’s not a huge issue as you’ll just have more fuel for your effects that target your own life.
In some ways, the fact you aren’t being attacked by Green Saitama often only enhances your strategy as you can remove your own life and gain powerful effects without fear of getting behind.
Lastly, Leafa is the strongest counter in the game to Green Saitama. She can’t be removed via Green two-AP Saitama’s When Attacking effect, and she has nullify Impact, thereby shutting that play down entirely.
Vs. Code Geass Purple
Your strongest play against Code Geass Purple is to use Asuna to bring zero-cost C.C. to the front line. When played at the right time, this could essentially shut their strategy down. Otherwise, use your life-taking effects sparingly as Geass Purple will have no trouble knocking your life down to size. And don’t forget Leafa – that’s an insane counter to both powerful Guren’s your opponent has to use against you.
Vs. Purple BLEACH (Vol. 2)
Purple BLEACH is a fairly neutral matchup. Versus the Zero Squad Hybrid build your ability to remove sites is going to come massively in handy. Otherwise your biggest advantage in this matchup is going to be your Sinon with Snipe/Impact. Save her till when she’s fully powered up to edge out a very close matchup. Your biggest weakness into this matchup? Them clearing an early aggro play and taking too much life too early.
Vs. Roy Mustang
A new and powerful deck to enter the Arena, Mustang isn’t a terribly awful matchup for Goddesses, although there are some key considerations to keep in mind. For starters, playing an early game Leafa can be hugely effective against this deck, giving their Roy nothing to sideline and no way to cut through it. After that, just make sure to never target Mustang with Raid Asuna’s effect. He can always come back swinging later and cause harmful removals. Instead, focus on pushing Hawkeye to the back, eliminating her handy “when on the front line” effect, and save your removal tools of the Flame Alchemist himself.
Vs Nanami/Sukuna (Vol. 2)
Godesses goes surprisingly well into Nanami/Sukuna thanks to the fact you won’t have to sideline their one-cost Nanami all the time. Instead, you can switch him to the back line and slow down their ability to hit 15 cards or less. Otherwise, use Sinon’s two-cost version to strategically take snipes against Yuji raid targets when possible, and save your Unlimited Lanscape Manipulation for any Malevolent Shrines they might be hiding.
Sword Art Online’s Yellow Asuna Goddess deck is the strongest Sword Art Online deck. It has effective matchups against many of the top meta decks, and remains relevant months after its release. It’s far from the easiest deck to pilot. But with a little practice, you can certainly ride on the wings of Asuna to victory!
