Ready to brandish your swords, polish your Bankai, and see who the greatest Soul Reaper/Quincey of them all is?

Then you should be stoked to find out BLEACH UNION ARENA Rare Battles are coming back alongside BLEACH: Thousand Year Blood War Vol. 2. This time around, Purple BLEACH has plenty of competition. Giselle from Yellow BLEACH is keen to fill the field with mindless zombies and overwhelm Ichigo and his roster of Squad Zero characters. Meanwhile, don’t underestimate the seriously buffed Kenpachi whose Raid target deflects BP reducing effects.

Below, we’ll be looking at each BLEACH deck to look out for in the Rare Battle format and break down the pros and cons of each deck pick. Knowledge is power, after all, and backed by this knowledge you should be prepared to challenge the format and bag the glorious Rukia UNION RARE winner card!

Purple BLEACH is still the deck to beat

I did two BLEACH Rare Battles the first time around and placed first and second at them. Both times the top two decks were Purple BLEACH. While Vol. 2 has added tremendous support to decks outside of the Purple energy color, Purple BLEACH is still without a doubt the deck to beat.

The problem is planning for it. There are just so many different ways to build Purple BLEACH now. However, there are two that are arguably the most popular: the Squad Zero/Ichigo build and the Ichigo/Rukia build.

At the moment, the Squad Zero build appears to be the most popular, and you can bet you’ll find this one showing up at your own Rare Battle, even if you aren’t planning on building it yourself.

Below is a very solid list from a large tournament that took place recently.

Squad Zero/Ichigo pros

Incredible draw support.
Powerful removal via Ichigo and Senjumaru.
Solid filtering via Nimaiya and Ichibe.
Insane, high-end power thanks to four-cost, Raidless Ichigo.

Squad Zero/Ichigo cons

While all of the above is true, I do have my own qualms with the above deck, hence the reason why I build Purple BLEACH differently. While pairing the Ichigo with Squad Zero does have its benefits, and that mostly being solid draw support and the Raidless Ichigo at full power, the strategy itself is also somewhat contradictory.

The main problem is the focus on directly removing cards to use Senjumaru’s removal as well as your special. By sending cards directly into your removal area, you make it much less likely to hit the numbers you need to remove cards via five-cost Ichigo.

It’s also less likely thanks to the removal area focus of this deck that you’ll be able to activate four-cost Starter Deck Ichigo’s Impact effect which also requires you to have cards in the sideline.

The Rukia/Ichigo build, on the other hand, goes all in on your sideline, producing effects that make your sideline full and ready to start removing opposing characters. Which deck you choose to build and play is ultimately up to you. However, the Squad Zero build will likely be the most popular deck of all at Rare Battles.

Yellow BLEACH is a serious Rare Battle contender

Last round of BLEACH Rare Battles I was very happy to get paired against a Yellow BLEACH deck. Back then, that deck simply didn’t have the legs to compete with a powerhouse like Purple BLEACH. Now, however, it’s got considerably more tricks up its sleeve to make it a strong contender in the Rare Battle format.

Let’s look at this deck built by Jeremy Eggers that he used to win a store tournament and dive into some of this decks strengths and weaknesses in the one anime battle rules.

Yellow BLEACH pros and cons

From my experience both piloting this deck and playing against it, its strength and weaknesses rest on a single linchpin: Giselle.

Giselle is both this deck’s greatest card and biggest weakness. While you absolutely can pull off shenanigans without him around, this deck gets much, much weaker without his ability to bring your powerful zombies back from the sideline.

This might not be such a weakness if he weren’t so relatively hard to play. Being a two-AP character, however, means you are taking up a significant amount of bandwidth each turn just to field this guy.

While the natural argument here is that even though he is two-AP you are essentially playing another character thanks to his effect, that’s not entirely the case as you will also need to sideline a character to bring a zombie back. This means building up a board presence can be an issue. And while Zombie cards are a solid tool to use against Purple BLEACH as they aren’t prime removal targets, Purple BLEACH players will likely just throw their firepower at Giselle the moment it hits the board instead.

With all of that being said, if you manage to get your board set up you can absolutely overwhelm the competition, and Yellow BLEACH feels like a much greater threat in the Rare Battle format than it does in the regular one. Against every other top BLEACH deck other than Purple, it also can do insanely well as the other decks won’t have the removal tools to reliably shut its insane combos down before they can become a problem.

Green Kenpachi – an anti-meta pick

Before I realized how popular the Squad Zero/Ichigo build was going to be post Vol. 2, I felt like Kenpachi was an obvious choice for the Rare Battle given his powerful anti-BP reduction skills. Now, however, I’m not so sure. While the anti-BP reduction might not come into play in a meta dominated by Squad Zero, Kenpachi still has plenty of tricks up his sleeve, and at least he won’t be an easy target for the likes of five-cost Ichigo.

Find yourself in the midst of a heavily Ichigo/Rukia or Byakuya dominated local meta, however, and the tide could quickly turn in your favor with this gutsy build.

Ultimately, Green BLEACH feels like the most balanced pick going into the Rare Battle format and could be good for players looking for something reliable and consistent to edge out those tough wins.

Blue BLEACH

Don’t overlook Blue BLEACH! While this deck has yet to shine in the regular store tournament format, it won the first BLEACH Vol. 2 Large Scale Rare Battle, proving its effectiveness under pressure.

Although the Rukia Toolbox Blue BLEACH build got most of the upfront attention when BLEACH Vol. 2 came out, I’m liking what this deck is doing. Whereas Rukia feels like a less powerful version of Toshiro, Blue Ichigo is doing something entirely different – dismantling your opponent’s field, drawing a ton of cards, and going for the jugular via cards like two-cost Ichigo that are hard to block.

This deck’s speed, aggression, and powerful draw engine could be a huge differentiator in a Rare Battle format more focused on removal and control on the field, and can certainly edge out a few wins for players brave enough to give it a spin.

Which deck should you pick for your BLEACH Rare Battle?

While there are still many more viable and powerful BLEACH decks to choose from, the above four decks are most likely to be the big contenders in the Rare Battle format. To summarize the above information and to help you pick the right deck for you, here are a few thoughts:

Go with Purple BLEACH for the strongest removal deck in the format despite the high odds of many mirror matches.
Go with Blue BLEACH for an aggressive approach to a meta that’s otherwise not as fast as it.
Go with Green Kenpachi for the most well-rounded and consistent deck, and one that goes very well into Ichigo/Rukia and Byakuya
Go with Yellow BLEACH if you love combos and want a decent matchup against everything other than Purple BLEACH.

Hope that helps and good luck with your own BLEACH Rare Battle format!

UNION ARENA: BLEACH Rare Battle Guide (Vol 2)