Two Powerful Cards Cut from Evangelion UNION ARENA English Version
Releasing in North America on January 30, 2026, Evangelion is one of the most anticipated UNION ARENA sets of all time due to its overwhelming dominance seen in the Japanese UNION ARENA meta. However as already predicted, a few key cards have been cut from the English version to help balance the game out. These two cards are from two of the top tier Evangelion decks: Evangelion Yellow and Evangelion Purple and they are the zero-cost Rei and one-cost Mari. You can see their Japanese versions (translated via Exburst) below.
While losing these two cards from the Evangelion English card list may not seem like a huge deal at first, they should have a powerful impact on the game and slow down these two decks that otherwise could have potential to dominate the game.
Losing zero-cost Asuka is a serious nerf to yellow Evangelion
Right now, Yellow Evangelion is one of the most dominate decks in Japan’s meta – a meta that we are getting closer to reaching but one that is still more advanced than our own. The UNION ARENA developers seem to have recognized the potential disruption such a deck at full power could have on the English meta and have cut the card from the game. And while that may not seem like a big deal at first, when you take into consideration that essentially every top tier deck has a zero-cost draw-one-discard-one card, you start realize this potential impact.
Additionally, losing Asuka means losing one more name to get the special trigger off, as well as one less active trigger to help the Yellow deck gain resistance – all of which will certainly slow this deck down.
Could losing a low-cost draw from its strategy be enough to drop the legendary Yellow Evangelion deck down from the coveted top UNION ARENA tier?
While we will have to wait and see, it definitely feels like the kind of nerf needed to keep the English meta healthy in a post-Evangelion world.
One-cost Mari drops significant search capabilities from Purple Evangelion
While Gaius remains at full power following these cuts, the Purple Wille deck featuring the powerful Evangelions piloted by Mari and Asuka does take a serious hit, losing vital low-cost search capabilities that similar top tier decks like Purple Saito or Yellow Mina rely on to get the job done. It makes sense because when at full power this Purple WILLE deck is pretty scary.
These are not insignificant cuts and certainly show the UNION ARENA development team’s commitment to keeping the game fair and balanced. While it’s not going to be enough to completely derail these two decks, they should be far less dominant in the UNION ARENA meta and likely mean that the Purple Gaius deck focused on Shinji will be the best Evangelion deck initially.
