UNION ARENA: Every Solo Leveling Deck, Ranked
Solo Leveling has some of the biggest hype of any UNION ARENA set to date. But how strong are Solo Leveling decks? Below, we’ll be looking at each and every new deck in Solo Leveling, and ranking them from strong to strongest.
Unlike most UNION ARENA sets, Solo Leveling will be released in the English Version first, meaning we don’t have a ton of tournament data to base rankings on. That being said, below are my picks for the deck builds you can use as a solid starting point for each of the four main archetypes in this set, as well as how they stack up in the current meta based on their core mechanics, consistency, and power.
#4 Fourth Jeju Island Raid
Fourth Jeju Island feels like the sidekick to the other main decks in this set. It’s solidly a fine deck – it has removal capabilities, and the ability to play several non Raid characters to active onto your field. But there’s a catch: to use many of these cards’ strongest effects you will have to switch them to resting and they will stay that way the next time they should switch to active – such as at the end of your turn.
While that sounds really bad, you have several abilities that allow your characters to switch to active again – the strongest of which is your Raid Cha Hae-in.
Cha Hae-in is a reasonably solid Raid – one capable of attacking twice in a turn at 5000 BP. Combine that with your many other strong attackers and swap effects and you can easily get many attacks through in a single turn while using your four-cost Choi Jong-in to clear away chump blockers. Cha’s When Attacking isn’t just good for switching herself to active, however. It has the added benefit of removing the “will remain set to resting the next time it would be switched to active,” thereby removing the main drawback of some of your strongest characters.
It’s a nice-to-have in a decidedly mid strategy, placing this deck pretty solidly in the B-tier range.
#3 Green Solo Leveling
I’m leaving this deck as “Green Solo Leveling” because it truly captures the core mechanic of the show that makes Sung Jinwoo so formidable – his ability to always be leveling up. In the deck, this manifests in a unique mechanic we’ve not seen before – Raid’s that can essentially Raid over other Raids. That’s not exactly what’s going on here as technically the Raid card is raiding over “the base” card of the Raid (Raid cards can’t technically Raid over other characters with Raid). However, in essence, in this deck is always getting stronger.
That being said, my main problem with the deck is that the payoff doesn’t feel quite like it matches how much work it takes to get your Sung Jinwoo fully powered up. Sure, six cost Sung Jinwoo is very powerful.
At surface level, Sung Jinwoo is a six-cost character who acts a lot like a baby Green Lancelot. He can sideline a character when played on your opponent’s field (regardless of BP), has Impact, and can easily boost to a damage 2 character when combined with two-cost Sung Jinah. However, a lot goes into boosting this character into someone who is capable of all of this – including have to have first “leveled” him up from his five-cost character. It’s using your five-cost Sung Jinwoo to play him that will activate the sideline effect – one of this deck’s strongest mechanics.
This is all really cool stuff that’s super lore inspired – something that makes UNION ARENA so fun. However, I can’t help but look at what this deck is trying to do and feel like building up to eight energy and dropping an Air Cavalry could achieve the same thing more efficiently.
#2 Purple Shadow Army
The Shadow Army deck – featuring twelve-cost Sung Jinwoo – Pretty much feels like your standard go-big-or-go-home deck strategy. If I had to compare it to one deck over all, it would probably be the Green Saitama deck from the One Punch Man set. Both decks have high energy characters that become easier to play via certain aspects of the game state. While you do have the advantage of pulling off more combos with the characters that are on your board, the payoff for twelve-cost Sung Jinwoo doesn’t feel nearly as high as game-winning one-punch.
As far as playing the deck goes, Shadow Army actually feels a bit like Purple Saito from the Rurouni Kenshin deck. In effect, Jinwoo can Snipe from the energy line just like Saito, granting very similar advantages to that strategy and complete with the Impact. However, just like how the Green Solo Leveling feels a lot like a Lancelot deck only with more hoops to jump through, so does Shadow Army feel like a higher effort Purple Saito.
Sure, you technically unlock more plays via the interplay between 12-cost Jinwoo and your Shadow Army characters that unlock powerful effects when switched to resting (and subsequently switched to active via Jinwoo’s “When Played.” I’d rather just have the ease and consistency of Saito, however, and not have to deal with how many affinities I have on my board.
#1 Purple Sung Jin Woo
The Purple Sung Jinwoo deck (not to be confused with the other Purple Shadow Army deck) feels like the strongest and most consistent of all the Solo Leveling decks to me. Taken as a whole, it has some pretty insane power. Let’s start with the most obvious powerhouse – the Raid Sung Jinwoo.
For starters, five-cost Jinwoo has a powerful force block/Impact attack combo. At 6000 BP that’s pretty insane, meaning your opponent really won’t be able to stop this guy from getting through unless they are nullifying it with a Nullify Impact.
As strong as that play is on its own (a combo that – while less powerful – once made the likes of Code Geass Purple best deck in format) is enough to gape at, it’s not the only thing that makes this Sung Jinwoo card so strong. Additionally, Jinwoo has a free play ability baked into his “When Attacking,” one that lets you free play a character from your sideline. The best target to use this on is your four-cost Cha Hae-In who will come in set to active, and won’t be able to be blocked by a character with 4000 or more BP.
To use Jinwoo’s effect to free play the Cha Hae-In, however, you will need to have an impressive 20 cards in sideline. That’s not really a massively tall order in a deck that has so much self mill potential, making it a relatively reliable combo to achieve.
There are a ton of other interesting effects in this deck that mostly focus on unlocking benefits from adding characters from your sideline to your hand. However, it’s this mechanic that makes this deck so overwhelmingly strong – easily in the upper UNION ARENA tiers.
UNION ARENA sets have been so strong lately that you start to wonder if every set will be meta defining. While Solo Leveling isn’t the strongest set we’ve seen, at least one or two of these decks should be meta relevant, making Solo Leveling a solid option for both players looking for fun and strong decks and collectors.
