UNION ARENA 3v3: How I Won My First Team Tournament
UNION ARENA 3v3 events have been gaining traction lately. Always eager to check out what’s new and hot with the game, I attended my first ever 3v3 event hosted by the incredible Constellation Collective card shop in Sacramento, CA.
My experience surprised me: although 3v3 sounds a little too casual for my more competitive taste in UNION ARENA, it absolutely can be an incredibly competitive and fun experience.
How UNION ARENA 3v3 Tournaments work
UNION ARENA 3v3 tournaments sound complex, but actually, they’re pretty simple. From a tournament scoring standpoint, think of your team as a single player.
The bracket and rounds work the same way they do at a regular tournament, only with your team of three instead of a single player.
To understand how rounds are won, think about a best of three format. Your three battles work like that: win two out of the three games, and your team gets the points!
There are different ways to run UNION ARENA 3v3
There are other peculiarities to the 3v3 tournament, however. Our tournament was comprised of 12 teams, with three players per team, meaning a combined total of more than 30 players were competing for the first place prize (as well as a generous amount of additional prizes).
What was really unique about the format we were playing, however, were two rules:
Each player in a team must play a deck from a different IP.
Only player 2 (the middle player) is able to give advice.
I really don’t know where these rules came from, but they made for a pretty exhilarating (if not necessarily optimal) playing experience. The first rule I think is inspired: while official Bandai 3v3 format rules only stipulate each player must play a different deck in a team, limiting decks to a single IP makes for a vastly varied experience you are unlikely to get in any other format.
For example, under the current tournament rules, each team could only have one player piloting the current behemoth of the UNION ARENA format: Shadow Army. And while every team we faced (including our team) had this deck, at least not every deck you faced was this overwhelming busted deck (that has a scheduled ban coming up soon).
Team coaching made for an interesting playing experience
The rule that wasn’t so good, however, was the one that allowed the middle player – essentially the team captain – to coach the players to his left, and to his right.
What’s funny is I took this crucial middle role in our team (player 2) not because I wanted to be the official team captain (even though I did recruit my team for this event) but because I felt like it would just be more comfy to be the middle player.
However, the smartest teams used this role to their benefit, placing their most knowledgeable player in the middle, so that he or she could coach, instruct, or at times even play through the player on either side of them.
Socially I’m a pretty chill guy and I really dislike telling people what to do so for the majority of the tournament I did not use the powers imbued in me by whatever format rules we were playing by. That is, until the end of the tournament when our strongest foes yet relied heavily on the loophole to put up an almost indomitable fight against our team (more on that later). Only then did I step in and take on the mantle.
Bandai prohibits this sort of behavior in official 3v3 events, however. And that’s smart: each player should be playing to the best of their abilities: one strong player should not be using their teammates as puppets to do their plays.
And while I think Bandai’s official rules work best here, I won’t lie and say that the ability to heavily coach your teammates didn’t add to the drama of the final round.
My UNION ARENA 3v3 tournament – setting up the team
Typically when I go to a larger tournament, whether it’s a case tournament or a regional, a lot of thought goes into what deck I’m going to play. For the 3v3, however, I gave what deck I would play relatively little thought. Instead, more work went into coordinating between players, and ensuring we would have a team with which to compete.
One of my first picks was Vexsten – a strong player who I’ve been playing UNION ARENA with since the game first came out. Our natural third, however, had other plans and couldn’t join, meaning we would need to look for another player willing to travel out of their way to try out this unique format.
After none of our regular players agreed to go, we had to rely on connection with another friend to find a solid player who was already wanting to go, but who didn’t have a team yet.
Enter Chompy. Little did I know at the time of recruiting him, however, that Chompy would play a critical role in the course of our 3v3 tournament.
Picking the deck
My teammates pretty much stuck with their choices for the tournament from the start. It was always Red Chainsaw Man for Chompy, Shadow Army for Vexsten. I, however, was wishy washy (as I typically am for deck choices). At the time of signing up for the tournament I was playing a lot of Yellow Emilia. However, I would eventually drop that in favor of my current favorite and arguably strongest deck: Mother’s Rosario from Sword Art Online.
Unlike the previous case tournament that I attended where I purposefully chose a deck that would counter the meta, the 3v3 was all about experiencing a new format, and so I last minute went with my favorite deck for that reason alone.
Of course, I pregamed for the event by listening to my favorite light novel on the way over to put me mentally in the right headspace for the tournament.
My Mother’s Rosario deck list
Mother’s Rosario is the deck I’ve been playing the most over the last several months – when I’m not testing out new decks from the latest sets. As I’ve played it, I’ve become more and more aware of how strong it actually is. And as such, I’ve relied more on its core engine rather than trying to force it to do everything.
With powerful early game draw, filter, and search, and solid built in recursion/free play via the two different Yuuki (two-cost and Raid), as well as powerhouse late game attackers and tons of removal, I absolutely love Mother’s Rosario.
With all that said, it’s an absolute beast of a deck to learn how to play well. And that’s probably why it’s so low down on the UNION ARENA tier list for so many: because of its high learning curve rather than its maximum optimal power-level.
My teammates’ deck lists
Meanwhile, my teammates went with more established decks for the tournament, and that worked well for us.
As you’ll see in a moment, Red Chainsaw Man, Shadow Army, and Mother’s Rosario would make for a killer combo. Here’s how our matches went.
UNION ARENA 3v3 Round 1 Matchups
JWA (right) against first round opponents, Saber and Vincent.
Round one was my toughest fight of the night. I was playing against a friend of mine, and he was not taking any chances. He was running one of the strongest and most reliable decks around: the Yellow Sakamoto Hybrid deck.
Taro Sakamoto (026)
UE19BT: SAKAMOTO DAYS • Super Rare
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The one thing that I had going for me this game was a really strong start. My opponent focused more on a strong setup rather than fielding characters to the front line early, giving me plenty of room to put on the pressure. That combined with mid game removal via a Raided Yuuki and a Mother’s Rosario put me in a strong enough spot to then close it out with Raid Asuna and her “can’t be blocked by 3000 BP or less” Damage 2 attack.
All of that sounds really good, but in reality I won by a single life. It was such a tough, nail-biter of a match that I had to go buy some Cola afterwards to wake my brain up for the rest of the night.
Meanwhile, Chompy fell in battle to Shadow Army, while Vexsten pulled off a decisive victory against Yellow Rem/Ram.
Round 2 Matchups
The second round saw the two team leaders facing off – my Mother’s Rosario versus my opponent’s Red Evangelion. While I’ve played the Mother’s Rosario/Sakamoto matchup many times and know how it generally goes, I was less experienced into Evangelion, and wasn’t sure what to expect. However, an early game aggressive wave met with little resistance, and I was able to stay ahead of my opponent the whole game.
My most decisive play was to use a Mother’s Rosario to bounce an opposing four-cost Rei back into the hand. Typically, you don’t want to use this Special until you have three named cards in the sideline. However, in this case, it was critical as it stopped my opponent from drawing more cards and free-playing yet another Rei.
It was in round two that Chompy started to really shine. In a tough fight against the brand new Purple Red Hood deck from the Nikke Precious Booster, Chompy retained composure to pull off a narrow victory, at one point choosing to forgo a Power/Chainsaw Man play in favor of a special, and then bumping up for a close the next turn when his opponent would have less of a board presence than him.
With Vexsten having lost his mirror match against Shadow Army (we established that Shadow Army players really do have an ego and all ended up choosing Player 1 as their designation), and me having won my second battle in a row, it was all on Chompy’s shoulders to carry us through. And that pressure seemed to fit well on his shoulders as he ruthlessly counterattacked into his opponent’s life in an all-or-nothing scramble to secure us our spot in the finals.
It was a little bittersweet as the friend who had suggested we add Chompy to the team in the first place was the Red Hood player – falling on his own noble sword, as it were.
Round 3 is where things got crazy
Remember how I told you letting players “coach” teammates during the 3v3 might not be the best idea? Well, Round 3 is the thing that proved that to me, while also providing intense entertainment. We were facing down three gallant and powerful players this round, and more than anyone else they fought like a team. Instead of relying on their solo prowess to win, their team leader was a Lionel Messi of UNION ARENA: helping his teammates take the right shot, at the right time.
As the inadvertent team leader of my squad, I had to face him down. I was instantly nervous to find he was fielding Red Kenshin: a known bad matchup for Mother’s Rosario, as Mother’s Rosario relies on having cards in sideline to activate strong abilities. That’s harder to achieve when your opponent cares more about pushing characters to the energy line rather than the sideline. Still, I was able to overcome and won decisively via a slow burn that led to fielding two fully powered-up Raid Asuna’s in a single turn.
Asuna (071) (SR*)
UE07BT: Sword Art Online • Super Rare 1-Star
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Into this matchup it was key to prioritize having a spot open on the back line, and always a character on the front line to block opposing attacks for essentially free thanks to Kenshin’s passive that pushes defeated characters to the energy line rather than sideline.
Meanwhile, Vexsten took the hit from yet another Shadow Army Player 1, while Chompy had the fight of his life taking on a powerful Toshiro player – a known advantageous matchup into Red Chainsaw Man.
Chompy’s greatest moment
Final battle to decide it all.
While Chompy might have shown pluck in round 2 when backed into a corner by the bodacious Red Hood, it was nothing compared to the sheer grit required to overcome his opponent in round 3. By now, all 30 players were watching the match, eager for the results for the game that was taking quite a while as the opposing team’s team leader was eagerly instructing his teammate on the exact lines needed to overcome Denji and Power.
It’s no wonder these guys were in the finals: as a team their ability to flow as one was unmatched. However, as the coaching grew more direct, I didn’t want Chompy left alone without someone in his corner. Although he needed no instruction – his instincts were already strong and honed by the intense focus and adrenaline of the moment – I worked as a proper boxing instructor, backing up his decisions, and checking for blindspots he might otherwise miss.
In the end, even a Toshiro Raid out of life wasn’t enough to save our opponent who had no target to Raid over, landing us our third and final victory over 12 total teams.
To the victor go the spoils
After three rounds, I was undefeated. But more importantly, my team was undefeated. Vexsten used Shadow Army to win when it mattered most, and Chompy fought through immense pressure undaunted to secure our win. It was an epic night that made me realize one thing perhaps more than any other: 3v3 UNION ARENA should absolutely be a thing. And not just at local case tournaments like this – but maybe even at the regional level as another major event to compete in.
While I doubt we’ll get that, I think it would be cool if it were to happen. While competing on your own is great, competing on a team adds a camaraderie that solo play can’t always have. Rarely are you ever rooting for someone to win even harder than your own self. But in the final moments of a 3v3, you might find yourself rooting for the guy next to you twice as hard.
Of course, the prizing was pretty solid, too. Each of us on the winning team took home a box-and-a-half from the two latest UNION ARENA sets (other than NIKKE). Of course, I pulled the SR** from the case, as well as a bunch of other nice hits, too.
Who knew group/team UNION ARENA could be so competitive? Anyway, that’s my first 3v3 UNION ARENA experience: I hope you get to try it out for yourself sometime. If you do, drop me a comment below or share with me on X!
