UNION ARENA: Every Hunter x Hunter Vol. 2 Deck, Ranked
Hunter X Hunter may have been one of the very first sets ever released, but one year later it’s getting a major facelift thanks to the brand new Hunter x Hunter Vol. 2 set. While most of these decks aren’t going to feel great going up against other contemporary powerhouses or Vol. 2s, Hunter x Hunter fans should still be delighted with some of the added support their favorite decks are getting, including some cards that are brand new to UNION ARENA and exclusive to the English version of the game.
#7 Bomber
As hard to believe as it may seem, there actually was a time when Blue Bomber topped tournaments. And while being able to sideline 4000 BP characters via Genthru’s Raid combined with Bara’s effect used to be relatively attractive in a much less competitive meta, today having to expend that kind of effort just to reach a 4000 BP character feels bad. Not to mention Bomber has a noticeable lack of secondary attacker, with me having to resort to teching in Razor just to have another strong body.
While having a 4000 BP Damage 2 character under the right circumstances is pretty cool, there’s a noticeable lack of support in this deck even with the new 4-cost Raidless Genthru.
Blue Blomber did sort of have its time to shine once, but when looking at this deck after Vol. 2, it’s quite likely that time is over.
#6 Phantom Troup
Phantom Troup is a deck that focuses primarily on recycling your other cards’ “When Played” effects. However, that strategy is dependent on your other cards having plenty of strong effects.
Perhaps the biggest change coming in Vol. 2 to Phantom Troup is that you no longer have to mix it with other decks. Instead of a Phantom Troup/Zoldyck family hybid that you used to build, Phantom Troup functions more or less on its own now. That still doesn’t help the fact that it’s low-tier even with Vol. 2 support, but it does at least create an interesting deck building challenge.
#5 Specified Slots
Specified Slots has always been a fun, zany deck. In Vol. 2, however, it comes much more into its own, even becoming somewhat competitively viable. There are some very unique and powerful cards in this deck. Strip of Beach, for example, lets you have as many cards as you would like in your hand, while Paladin’s Necklace still stands out as a very powerful mini-special almost, depriving your opponent of their strongest Raid characters.
On the Vol. 2 side of things, Specified Slots gets a very powerful new Raid character in the form of Raid Gon.
Apart from being a 4000 BP raid character, Gon lets you play a Specified Slot card for free, while also letting you recycle them to your hand when sidelined. Additionally, you get a powerful new site called Blue Planet to replace the Risky Dice and a new Bisky who is admittedly pretty good.
Blue Planet lets you draw a card and then recycles itself, while Bisky can edge out close games by forcing her way through 4000+ characters who won’t be able to block her.
However, none of these cards are enough to make Specified Slots anywhere close to top tier. Something tells me, though, that Specified Slots characters won’t really care.
#5 Zoldyck Family
The Zoldyck Family deck really isn’t too bad, especially thanks to the solid new Killua Raid we get in Vol. 2.
Killua plays into the whole Zoldyck family thing of letting you gain benefits when opposing characters that you select are sidelined.
Another thing that makes the Zoldyck Family deck compelling is how many triggers it runs – the above deck has fifty in total. The only downside, really, is that your biggest and strongest attacker comes in resting. Otherwise his combo of Snipe and Impact would be insane.
#4 Gon and Friends
Hunter x Hunter’s first set released with a Green starter deck aimed at Gon and Friends. That starter deck, however, kind of sucked especially when you take into consideration how incredibly strong Kurapika was and it hailed from the same energy color. However, in Vol. 2 we get a complete overhaul for the Gon and Friends strategy, one that has a lot more synergy and potential than the old “boost AP stats to infinity and beyond” did.
This deck focuses on having plenty of named characters on your board. Although you can certainly build around the starter deck Gon with 5000 BP, in the upgraded deck you have plenty of options without resorting to that.
And while this deck is a lot stronger than it used to be in the first set, it still doesn’t have any one single advantage to its name that screams “play me.” It’s more of a well-rounded deck than a single powerhouse strategy.
#3 Razor Attack Team
Although new energy colors released in UNION ARENA Vol. 2 sets can really be hit-or-miss, yellow Hunter x Hunter provides some compelling new strategies. One strong option is the Razor Attack Team – kind of a similar concept as Gon and Friends but with Hisoka instead of Liorio. Admittedly, this deck gets the buddy-deck system down better, offering higher payoffs for comboing characters with specific names together.
The strongest play in this deck has to do with combining Gon and Killua into a Snipe/Impact play.
Using this combo grants your Gon either Damage 2 or Snipe, depending on which ismore advantageous for you. Of course, doing so will switch your Killua to resting, meaning you’ll likely want to use your three-cost Killua to swap in to attack in its place.
While that core combo is strong, this deck isn’t without its own fair share of setbacks. The biggest one being the awkward jump to six energy needed to play Hisoka. While it doesn’t break this deck’s back as each of your two energy gen characters is strong, it still feels odd to play mostly a four energy cost deck and then have to jump so high up just to get another name on the field.
#2 Razor
So let’s talk about Razor – the number two deck in Hunter x Hunter Vol. 2. This deck feels really, really interesting from the get-go, although it’s strongest advantage are its two very solid Razor attackers.
Thanks to the new yellow energy color, Hunter x Hunter has something it hasn’t really had before: access to a very solid removal strategy. Five-cost Razor lets you sideline a character when he is played based on how many [Nen Beast] affinity cards and face-down cards are under characters on your front line. You get 1000 in your range for each.
I could see Razor’s effect scaling pretty high given how many combos you have at your disposal to stack cards under other cards. To make matters even better, Razor has Nullify Impact. This helps because he won’t just be sitting around as a vanilla 4000 BP attacker like so many other similar attackers do.
Meanwhile, I also really like this two-AP Razor.
Possessing the mighty yellow Color Trigger, this Razor is here largely to play defense, and he’s not as tough to play as he looks at first as he will be re-standing one of your AP cards after he is played. What I really like about this card, however, is its ability to block incoming Impact attackers, while also opening up holes in your opponent’s defenses.
Finally, the Razor deck has a unique and fun mechanic included in it, that being a card that has a very big limit on how many copies of it can be included in your deck (in this deck there are 14 of them).
While there is certainly a good deal of gimmick to this deck, it’s got a refreshing amount of removal and combos that make it stand out from every other Hunter x Hunter deck.
#1 Kurapika is still number one in Hunter x Hunter
I was testing against Kurapika the other day – now one year out from back in the early UNION ARENA days when that deck was best deck in format. Now, it’s gotten stronger, but only by a sliver. It’s still the strongest deck coming out of Hunter x Hunter Vol. 2, but the only real added support this deck gets is thanks to a new English exclusive four-cost Kurapika.
This four-cost Kurapika brings a very much needed additional attacker into the fold for the strategy. Meanwhile, it also benefits you by being able to generate energy from the front line – a fact that will make playing energy-heavy seven-cost Kurapika much more reliable.
Finally, having an Active trigger is always solid from a card like this, and while you will need to discard a card in order to “turn-on” its energy generating effect, the character also lets you draw a card when attacking – largely making up for the deficit.
Is this new support for the deck that once reigned supreme in UNION ARENA enough to launch it back to the S-tier? I don’t think so. But it should be enough to give it the edge it needs to compete.
