UNION ARENA: Every Nikke Deck, Ranked
Ready to shoot your way to victory with the Goddess of Victory: Nikke herself?
Well you are in luck – the long anticipated Nikke: Goddess of Victory UNION ARENA set is just around the corner, and I’ll be giving you the rundown on what decks to look out for in this pretty unique expansion.
Nikke Exclusive cards and promos
Nikke is such a popular IP that UNION ARENA is banking on it hard. While you can preorder Nikke booster boxes via my friends at TCGPlayer, you can also get a nice little Nikke flavored storage box when you order four or more boxes from your local LGS.
In addition to getting a cool storage box when you buy enough product, Nikke has even more surprises in store for players and collectors, including a premium box topper with artworks exclusive to the English UNION ARENA version. And, as if that weren’t enough, all of the Nikke AP cards are English exclusive illustrations. You can see the APs, the premium box topper promos, and the storage box via the gallery below.
Now on to the decks which will be based on the cards in the Japanese version of the game, and will be updated once the full set list is available in English!
#6 Tetra Line
Tetra Line is a hyper aggro deck that looks to do one thing and one thing only – move fast and hit hard. It can’t function well in a prolonged battle given it doesn’t have the tools required to deal with bigger BP characters or to survive constant removal. Still, some players might find its cooky mix of mechanics and winter-themed waifus reason enough to run this low-to-the-ground deck strategy.
This deck’s strongest combo occurs between Rupee and Alice.
Assuming you’ve done a solid job of stacking up cards under your characters on the field, you can use these two characters together to play a three-cost character, and then switch her to active with Rupee. This makes the aggro play into this deck much stronger, with the likes of the three cost Alice being able to be played raidless to active, complete with Impact and even 4000 BP if you also combo her with your Noir.
Although a bit more combo/setup heavy than the payoff to this strategy is arguably worth, there’s still plenty of synergies here to explore for those eager to try.
#5 Yellow Exotic/Wardress
The Exotic/Wardress deck is another heavily aggro style deck looking to lower your opponent’s defenses through a mix of BP reduction and resting effects and then strike hard with low BP bodies which can be played with relative ease. It’s a noble goal that ultimately falls short of competitive viability. That being said, its combos do look admittedly fun to attempt to pull off.
Take, for example, the three-cost Viper character. While being a 2 AP character may limit her card count in your deck, she definitely helps establish an aggro strategy by helping you to quickly fill your board with lower BP characters to blitz down your opponent.
Yuni and Jackal work together to create yet another powerful combo for the deck. Raid the Yuni, rest Jackal on the front line, draw a card, neg your opponent’s entire front line by 1000 BP, and then switch your Jackal to active. Additionally, Yuni can switch any of your other characters on the front line with those on the bench, just case you’ve used one of this deck’s many other resting effects.
Combining effects that rest your own characters with others that let you do things like switching strong characters to active feels like it would be pretty satisfying to pull off, even if there are certainly stronger strategies out there that require less work.
#4 Green Missilis
The green Missilis deck is where things start getting a bit stronger for Nikke. While it lacks the bells and whistles of a top tier deck, its strategy is pretty straightforward and admittedly sound: build up your board with 4000 BP characters and swing for life. While you have plenty of strong ways to do this with characters who are either 4000 BP natively or boosted to that threshold, the strongest character by far is the five-cost Laplace.
Laplace comes in hot with Damage 2 and a “When Played” effect that is both a powerful defensive Raid option while also acting as means to disrupt your opponent’s defenses.
Ultimately, the Green Missilis deck doesn’t care about nuanced strategies like removal, BP reduction or building up much of an energy line. It’s more of a blunt instrument looking to build up the board with 4000 BP characters and swinging for overwhelming damage.
#3 Purple Pioneer
If you’re still wanting the purple Nikke UNION ARENA flavor but running a bunch of triggerless cards makes you nervous, you might like the Pioneer Pilgrim deck instead. This deck is surprisingly solid, with a collection of decent BP reducing/removal effects that help you when dealing with 4000 BP characters. Meanwhile, this deck’s color trigger character, Snow White, is surprisingly handy, letting you shut off abilities on opposing characters. This could be a solid counter into cards like Roy Mustang that dominate the meta.
Four-cost Modernia is refreshingly strong all things considered. Raid her to reduce the BP of an opposing character by 3000 BP, and couple that with your other characters like the very effective three-cost Guren to finish off a 4000 BP character or more.
Solid removal, a handy ability negation like this, and topped off with a heavy-hitter like the five-cost Guren makes Purple Pioneer a solid choice for players looking for a well-rounded deck with a lot of options.
#2 Purple Pilgrim
The Nikke Pilgrim/Iheritor deck brings one of the most unique mechanics into UNION ARENA so far – a deck focused on triggerless cards. Not only do you gain benefits from running an incredibly low count of triggers, this deck also seeks to punish your opponent for using triggers in their deck.
While there are a lot of interesting little mechanics to support this strategy baked into the deck, it really culminates in your five-cost Dorothy Raid who acts as a powerful removal tool with a pretty impressive range.
And while you do have a few cards that help you get value off of your triggerless life cards like the three-cost Dorothy that lets you draw a card for each triggerless off of life or the site card that lets you add them to hand, the payoff from running so few cards with triggers doesn’t fully feel there to really make this strategy totally worth it.
That being said, the combination of Dorothy’s powerful removal with the two-cost Guren make this deck feel playable even if not likely to fall into the hands of the most competitive UNION ARENA player out there.
#1 Counters with Modernia
So despite the general consensus amongst those in the know about the UNION ARENA meta in Japan being that Nikke is not a very strong set, I actually really, really like this yellow deck. It has a lot going for it. For starters, Moderna feels like a very solid removal character with a similar kind of appeal as the legendary Roy Mustang FMA Blue deck.
Honestly, how is this card not good? When you play her, you get to bring a bunch of “Memory” cards to your hand. Then, you get send as many event cards from your hand into your sideline as you want to sideline something on your opponent’s field with BP equal to 1000 plus 1000 per card sent to the sideline. This is basically Roy Mustang’s removal effect only with massive recyclability thanks to the When Played effect that will let you instantly fill your hand with up to four event cards (assuming you’ve managed to hit all of your Memory events).
You also have plenty of ways to draw cards, and search out events in this deck. For example, the four-cost Rapi lets you search out an event card and add it to the hand.
Meanwhile, four-cost Raid Anis has a pretty powerful draw effect, letting you draw potentially three new cards and you even have a three-cost, two energy-gen character that lets you search out Memory cards from the top seven of your deck.
As if all of that weren’t solid enough, you have yet another strong attacker who also functions as your card with the color trigger, and that is the four-cost Neon.
Although played raidless, having Damage 2 on a raidless character like this (with only needing to have played an event to get access to it) feels quite solid for a backup attacker.
All-in-all, there’s enough here with the solid draw, search capabilities, and powerful removal that you can theoretically use turn after turn to make Yellow Nikke a threat – if not necessary a contender for the S-tier.
