The Best UNION ARENA TCG Decks Right Now (2025)
Looking for the best UNION ARENA deck to take with you to your next store tournament and get your favorite winner card? I’ve compiled a list of the most meta relevant decks right now, starting with the current best decks in the format.
UNION ARENA currently boasts a surprisingly wide array of competitive decks. That being said, thanks to the latest releases of BLEACH: Thousand Year Blood War Volume 2, the meta has had a fairly profound shake up.
Perhaps the biggest change is a new contender for best UNION ARENA deck in the English format. That’s right – Purple BLEACH is back on top! However, close on its heels are proven heavyweights Purple Code Geass and Blue Sukuna.
We’ll get into all of these decks and more below in the current UNION ARENA meta rundown.
#1 Purple BLEACH is the best UNION ARENA deck
Purple Ichigo Vol 2. Anto – 4th place at Haven Summer Showdown: 36 players
Bandai feared the power of Purple BLEACH so much that they decided to cut the zero cost Rukia from its lineup altogether. The result? Players are shying away from the pure Ichigo/Rukia build and doing something different – combining the powerful five-cost Ichigo and its raid targets with Squad Zero – a deck that excels at unlocking tons of card draw.
Essentially, this is more of a Squad Zero deck than an Ichigo one – leveraging solid removal via Senjumaru, and eventually buffing up to play Purple BLEACH’s new and most deadly card: four-cost Ichigo with Nullify Impact, Damage 2, and Impact 2.
Another of this decks’ key cards is its “Special”: one that lets you remove any character on the field with relative ease, fuel your removal area to unlock those powerful effects, and even draw more cards to replace the ones your remove from hand.
Finally, we have to talk about the underrated Royal Palace site – a card that is pretty broken and unmatched in its ability to let you draw a card each turn (assuming a Squad Zero character is on top of your deck).
While there are many different ways to build this deck – and I still think the Ichigo/Rukia build is vastly overlooked right now – early signs point to the Ichigo/Squad zero build being the most popular, and one to look out for whether you are wanting to play it competitively or learn how to play against it.
#2 Code Geass Purple
1st place Egman tournament by Shawn Brophy
When I first got my hands on Code Geass Purple I was blown away by its potential. This deck’s strongest card is the powerful Guren Mk-II which forces your opponent to block while also granting Impact. That combined with a plethora of powerful BP reduction cards creates one of the strongest decks in the format still topping local tournaments and larger events.
Today, however, Code Geass Purple’s title is contested by Purple BLEACH. Although Purple Code Geass until recently bested its rival to the throne for greatest purple deck in the game, it’s having more trouble keeping up with some of the new mechanics granted BLEACH in its second volume.
Still, there’s a lot going for this deck: Code Geass Purple is a fun to play, powerful, and has the tools it needs to stay meta relevant for a long time to come.
Not only is Code Geass a powerhouse, it’s got a strong matchup spread and ways to deal with just about every other meta-relevant deck. Going up against a Lancelot? No problem – drop that BP by 1000 via Gawain or two-cost Lelouch. Need to clear your opponent’s board? No problem: raid a Guren and force them to block.
Really the only drawback of this deck is the fact that you can easily exhaust your energy line if you aren’t careful because of how many five-cost raids you have and the fact that your Special is a two AP cost in hand.
Read my guide to Code Geass Purple for more info on this deck.
#3 Blue Sukuna
1st place Bandai Card Game Fest tournament by Robin SwaN
Blue Sukuna was a pretty hyped deck even before it came out with the official JJK release, bringing with it a fun new mechanic into the UNION ARENA TCG meta, one that is focused on hunting for specific cards (Sukuna’s Finger) and getting said cards into the sideline. However, it’s morphed over time into two distinct decks: one focused on Nanami and another purely on Sukuna leveraging the devastating Malevolent Shrine.
As a non-Blue Sukuna player, I have to say this is one of the decks I fear facing the most. It’s just so good and it only gets stronger as the game progresses. The inclusion of Nanami and the Ratio special is a brilliant choice as Nanami frustrates and slows down your opponent while threatening huge moves if your deck hits that 15 or less number that grants him both Impact and Damage 2. Meanwhile, the Ratio Special is arguably the best one in the game as it denies decks like Purple BLEACH fuel to their sideline.
This deck is the one I see most commonly played at store tournaments, and you are likely to either play it or play against it wherever you go in the UA world.
For more info on how to pilot the formidable Blue Sukuna deck, read my guide.
#4 Green BLEACH
Of all the BLEACH decks besides Squad Zero/Ichigo, Green BLEACH feels like the one to get the single largest buff in Vol. 2. The deck really gets scary good with the additional emphasis placed on Kenpachi. While Toshiro was the defining character of BLEACH Green in sets past, the deck now feels more like a Kenpachi one, with Toshiro playing support – especially for specific matchups where removal is a challenge like against Saitama.
With a combination of deadly stunning effects, solid removal, Impact attackers and Kenpachi’s singular anti-BP reduction effects, you’re looking at a real threat to the meta. And that’s not even counting the fact that Raid Kenpachi gets scary good when bolstered by one-cost Yachiru.
Does this deck have the juice to dominate the meta in the same way Purple BLEACH is right now? Certainly not. But it has the weight and versatility to do a lot, and will be one of the most popular green decks in the format for a while.
#5 Yellow Saitama
Corey Encinas – 2nd Place Egman Quad SAO Box Tournament
One Punch Man is a unique set in the UNION ARENA lineup as it is the first set to get a simultaneous release between the English version and Japan. Although most of the decks in that set revolve around the 1.5/2 tiers, Yellow Saitama feels like something in a league of its own.
Saitama is the first character to enter the game with over 5000 BP. Additionally, he can’t be removed from abilities, which means you can’t get rid of him with your specials from your hand or even from life.
Saitama
As if that weren’t enough, he’s a powerful attacker in his own right with the potential of reaching Impact 1 and Damage 2 in the same card, assuming you are able to discard a Saitama from your hand.
While Yellow Saitama had an initial outsized impact on the meta – warping the way the game was played in order to deal with it – that impact has largely died down as players adapted to deal better with an anti-removal deck. Still, it’s prowess remains relevant in an ever-shifting meta, and will likely continue to pull out wins as decks get greedier with their heavy reliance on outright removal as opposed to the finesse required to deal with this big guy.
Learn how to build and play the Yellow Saitama One Punch man deck.
#6 Code Geass Green Lancelot
I’ve played a lot of Lancelot and it’s certainly a deck that’s quite strong – when it works. If you manage to hit your curve, this deck is absolutely deadly and capable of decimating life in a few turns like none other.
It makes sense why Green Code Geass Lancelot deck has held something of a monopoly on the green energy color since it came out, acting as a gatekeeper for high energy decks in general. If you’re going to invest in playing anything with six energy or more, Lancelot is the deck you compare it against.
While the Air Cavalry Lancelot is the card that catches your eye the quickest, it’s actually the six-cost Lancelot raid that is this deck’s most reliable card. It’s very easy to hit six energy in a deck so focused on energy generation, and the six-cost Lancelot is an absolute beast complete with Damage Two and a “when played effect” that bolsters its BP for an entire two turns.
Eight-cost Lancelot, meanwhile, is your closer and if you can manage to get two of these onto the field, it’s highly probable you’ll just flat out win. It’s among the strongest cards in the game with a powerful removal effect, Damage 2 and Impact, meaning no matter what happens in the battle you’re taking some life.
Learn how to build and play this Lancelot deck via Jeremy’s guide.
#7 SAO Yellow Goddesses
Last but certainly not least is the powerful Asuna Goddess deck from SAO. This deck truly is unlike anything we’ve seen to date, with a pretty incredible combination of gameplay mechanics that are as unprecedented in the English version of the game as they are powerful.
At its core, Goddesses focuses on using strong effects that use up your own life cards to get you down to four life. Once there, you can then unlock even more powerful effects to defeat your opponent in a few turns.
Your strongest card is the Asuna Goddess character.
Asuna (Stacia, the Goddess of Creation)
Asuna is deceptively good if you’ve played her with four life or less. Assuming that’s the case, you can swap one character on your front line with one on your energy line, switch them to resting, and prevent them from moving the following turn – an insane combination of effects that essentially takes the moved character out of the game for two turns.
Beyond Asuna, Landscape Manipulation is a powerful tech against the current meta letting you get around the likes of Saitama and Malevolent shrine, while Raid Sinon with her combination of Snipe and Impact at only four energy cost is one of the strongest late game closers in the game.
#8 Blue SAO Aincrad
12th place at the Draw 3! Grand Opening Tournament by Popito
For now, Blue SAO Aincrad has taken the top spot for strongest multi-attack deck in the meta. Filled to the absolute brim with powerful switching cards, deadly Double Attack, and plenty of Impact to make your head spin, Blue SAO Aincrad is a deck that can absolutely make your head spin if it gets its combos off.
The challenging part about it? It’s consistency – or lack thereof. Manage to shut down some of this deck’s key pieces early on and it’s hard for it to come back. That being said, it’s handily shoved the other decks focused on multi-attack as their core strategy out of the running for top UA deck – an impressive feat for a deck with virtually no removal outside of its Special.
#9 Red Asta
Red Asta will be a popular choice for competitive players, and is the strongest Black Clover deck by a mile. As a strategy, it feels like something we haven’t really seen in the game before. Sure, Asta is a somewhat prototypical five-cost removal tool which is almost always popular with players. But there’s strategic depth to this deck well below the surface of that outright aggression.
In four-cost Asta, for example, we have a character capable of removing “all base abilities” of opposing characters – an effect which will cause a few heads to be scratched as they try to interpret that meaning. However, at its core this effect has the ability to shut down even the powers of Saitama’s anti-removal mechanism, leaving him wide open to effects that sideline via triggers.
Noelle Silva, on the other hand, feels like a pumped-up Guren Mk-II, forcing blocks and taking names as long as you have the right number of Events in your sideline.
This deck is going to be an absolute chore to deal with for those not running it and a delight for those who are. Either way, Black Clover only further proves Bandai’s commitment to innovating UNION ARENA’s core mechanics that make the game so fun, without undermining its varied and balanced gameplay.
These are the strongest decks in the game right now you should know about, but stay tuned as I will be updating this list with even more strategies you can use to compete at your next UA store tournament!
