UNION ARENA: Every Evangelion Deck, Ranked
Are you ready for the Third Impact?
If not, you might want to study up – Evangelion is a huge UNION ARENA set – arguably the single strongest set introduced into the English Version of the game since it started. In it comes a host of top tier decks that have the potential to vie for dominance in the meta.
However – and as expected – two cards were cut from the Evangelion English Version set. These two cards weren’t small cuts, either. Instead, they were key cuts intended to weaken two of the strongest decks in Evangelion. The result? One deck rises above the others.
In this list we’ll be diving into each and every new deck coming out in Evanglion and I’ll be sharing some example deck lists for you to begin with.
#6 Red Asuka and Mari
Easily the weakest deck in all of Evangelion, Red Asuka and Mari is still a fairly decent, mid-tier deck. Red Asuka/Mari focuses on the same “triggerless” strategy that was originally introduced into the English Version via the Purple Dorothy deck in NIKKE. However, this version of the strategy is much stronger, as everything in Evangelion seems to be.
There are a lot of interesting effects that let you benefit from not running any triggers, and they’re a lot more enticing than the previous deck focused on non-triggers were. For example, the three-cost Mari fits seamlessly into this deck strategy while letting you add triggerless cards into your hand easily.
The Raid Asuka-Evangelion also lets you play a card for free depending on how many trigerless characters you have on the field. Yet it’s really the powerful five-cost Mari-Evangelion that gives this deck it’s edge.
By discarding two cards without triggers from your hand, you can grant her double attack and 3000 BP. That’s pretty insane given her native Damage 2.
Only in a set as stacked as Evangelion would a deck with this kind of power end up dead last in the rankings. yet it does suffer a bit from the very gimmick that gives it its power – we’ll have to wait and see if a deck focused on the trigerless mechanic ever rises to the very top of competition.
#5 Kaworu & Shinji
The Kaworu/Shinji deck is pretty cool and very lore based from the time in Evangelion where the two team up to save the world….kind of…Anyways, this deck is fairly strong, and follows the somewhat standard “build up your sideline for an end game play” strategy the likes of which we’ve seen in other purple decks like Muzan from Demon Slayer and Father from Fullmetal Alchemist.
However, Purple Kaworu/Shinji is admittedly stronger than those. Part of that is just because of how strong the fake two-cost is in this deck.
Doubling as a zero-cost when you have no other cards on the field is reason enough to run this guy in the deck. However, it’s the Activate:Main effect that really makes him strong, letting you add cards facedown under other cards while also acting as a draw engine. All of this is combined with the powerful Active trigger to make for a very solid two-cost character.
Indeed, the only negative thing about this character is that you have to get him from the Evangelion Starter deck which you can get from TCGPlayer.
You also have a host of other powerful effects in this deck that look to build up cards in your sideline with the ultimate goal of being able to field this powerful character: Evangelion 13.
Assuming you have 26 or more cards in your sideline, Evangelion 13 is boosting to a 5000 BP Damage 2 Impact 4 character. Impact 4 as in “you better let this damage 2 through or else). Additionally, it has a draw engine built into it – making it pretty uniquely powerful for a primary attacker.
While Kaworu and Shinji won’t be the strongest Evangelion deck of them all, it’s an interesting one that should fill the void in the hearts of players who really love these late game high reward decks.
#4 Yellow Evangelion
Putting Yellow Evangelion this low down on the list might surprise (and maybe even anger) some players. However, this is largely due to the deep cuts made to the yellow energy color in Evangelion. No other energy color suffers as badly as Yellow from the cards excluded from the English set, and you really do feel that zero-cost draw-one-sideline-one Asuka missing from this deck.
Regardless, it’s still a strong deck with uniquely powerful mechanics that make it a powerful aggro threat in the current meta. And while there are plenty of strong cards in this deck that let you free play many more characters in a turn and switch them to active than is usually possible, it’s the four-cost Asuka Langley that really catches my eye.
Indeed, there are few cards in the game as strong as this single card, and it’s not a character that requires Raiding to get off, either. Getting to choose between two powerful different effects When Played gives you solid options to deal with whatever threat you are facing. Meanwhile, she switches to active without needing any other supporting characters to help her out in that regard. Finally, she’s going to be removing a character from the field with 5000 BP or less by just sidelining one of your chump attackers, and then you get to play a character from free from your hand.
As if all of that weren’t enough, you can use Asuka to close out the game by boosting her BP and granting her Impact.
Asuka may be your strongest card, but there are plenty of other strong characters in this deck. The other unique supporting character I’d like to touch on here, though, is this incredible Misato character.
You’re really going to want to keep Misato on your energy line so you can take advantage of her insane “During Opponent’s Turn” effect that lets you play any character added to the hand from your life set to active onto your turn. Given half your deck has Get triggers, odds are pretty solid you’ll be able to use this effect often, granting Yellow Evangelion an advantage equaled by no other deck.
At the end of the day, even with the cuts made to Yellow to keep it from steamrolling the English meta, Yellow Evangelion is the strongest Raidless deck strategy to date, and should still fit easily into the upper tiers, if no longer in the S-tier.
#3 Purple WILLE
The hit the Purple WILLE deck gets is far less severe than the one Yellow got. While you do lose a one-cost Mari character who is pretty good, she’s fairly easily replaced by the one-cost Rei who is also a fairly strong card – albeit one that doesn’t fit your strategy nearly as well.
Meanwhile, Purple WILLE benefits from some pretty insane BP reducing effects that give previous decks focused on that strategy more than a run for their money. You’re essentially looking to reduce the BP of your opponent’s characters to be in range of removal via your five-cost Mari Raid Evangelion while keeping other reduced BP characters around to grant your four-cost Asuka Raid Evangelion Double Attack. Play your cards right and you can even prevent your opponent from being able to block Asuka’s Evangelion, presenting a pretty dangerous threat to your opponent especially later in the game.
While losing the one-cost included in the Japanese set does hurt this deck a little in terms of speed and consistency, it’s still a more-than-solid deck that can easily compete into the UNION ARENA meta, even if it won’t be nearly as dominant as the other Purple deck on this list.
#2 Red Shinji/Rei
Oh boy – another insane red deck. Only this one really is pretty crazy and unlike anything we’ve seen in the game before. And it really is all thanks to the biggest card in this deck – the powerful seven-cost Evangelion Raid character.
First, this seven cost Evangelion is a powerful closer – its Impact 3 makes it a chore to stop from coming directly at your life. Combine that with the fact that it could be attacking three or more times in a single turn and you have some insane finishing power. Meanwhile, the fact that it can’t be removed by Trigger abilities with four cards underneath it gives it some serious staying power.
However, despite how big this guy is, it might be the six-cost Rei that’s really this deck’s most useful card.
Rei offers unmatched utility to Red Evangelion, acting as a removal tool while also letting you play any Shinji or Evangelion 01 character for a reduce AP cost and one less energy. Suddenly this energy-heavy deck feels a lot less heavy, letting you raid your strongest character at only six energy.
While Red Evangelion is less overwhelmingly powerful in the Japan meta than Yellow and the Purple WILLE deck, players will see Red Evangelion as one of the top decks to not get a restriciton, and therefore it will likely be even more popular and thus more successful in the English meta than either of those two decks.
Yet as strong as this deck is, there’s still one stronger.
#1 Purple Gaius
The number one deck in Evangelion is Purple Gaius and – given the cuts made to the English set – it’s not really close. Purple Gaius will likely be the single strongest deck in not only the Evangelion set but in the entire UNION ARENA English meta after it releases. Really the only deck with potential to match or rival it is the Purple Yuna deck in SAO if the Yuna doesn’t get restricted.
So why is this deck so strong? Well, it really all has to do with the seven-cost Gaius itself.
If it takes you a moment to figure out what’s so great about this card, you’re not alone – Gaius isn’t like anything we’ve had in the meta before. Really, he acts as much as a support character as an attacker. While yes he does make for an excellent offensive character with 5000 BP and Impact, it’s its ability to rapidly fill your front line with strong attackers that really makes it a top tier power.
For example, when you play this Gaius character, you can play a card as powerful as the six-cost Asuka for free. While she lets you draw a card and has 5000 BP, essentially she’s just a beat stick that you can use to clobber your opponent with overwhelming force.
However, lest you think that Gaius lacks any nuance, there’s a lot more strategy going on here than just throwing bodies at your opponent. Indeed this purple mecha deck does also have a character with a forced block attack built-in, just like that other purple mecha deck that once dominated the English meta – Purple Code.
Indeed, beyond the apparent similarities – being a purple mecha deck – Gaius really does feel a bit like a new and improved Purple Code Geass to some extent. While the core mechanic may be different, you do have a very powerful forced block you can pull off with your key characters – one that can also combine forced block with Impact the same as the Guren does in Purple Code.
However, unlike the Guren from that deck, you don’t need any other character name on the field to unlock this forced block and you also get access to powerful card search at the same time.
Meanwhile, you have a very handy one-cost character capable of converting any Purple attacker into a Damage 2 or Impact 1 character. Better yet, why not use this effect on your Gaius and make it an Impact one and Damage 2 character?
It almost goes without saying at this point that Gaius is going to be the clear dominant meta deck coming out of Evangelion. And with no cuts made to its set list, it has free reign to dominate the UNION ARENA English meta without consequence.
However, no deck is without weakness – there are many ways to deal with high energy powerhouse decks like this. Still, players will have to learn how to play this deck or play against it if they want to survive in a post Evangelion world.
Clearly, the UNION ARENA developers didn’t mind one single deck dominating the rest. Gaius feels predestined to rule until the next big thing comes along. That being said, they did do a good job on inhibiting the other top tier decks. This way the very top of the meta won’t be all Evangelion. Instead, we’ll likely see Gaius and Red Shinji/Rei rising to the very top of the meta, with Yellow and WILLE close behind.
It was a smart move for the set – balancing powerful decks to enourage players to invest in the set while not destroying the meta as we know it.
