UNION ARENA: Every Tokyo Ghoul Deck, Ranked
Looking for the strongest UNION ARENA: Tokyo Ghoul deck to build and play?
Below, I’ll be giving you my personal recommendations for which Tokyo decks are strongest and why, including ranking every new deck in the set from good to great.
Also, thanks to the new JWA Deck Builder, you can easily import these decks and use them as the starting point for your own custom Tokyo Ghoul deck. To do this, all you have to do is click the button below the deck you want to build and you will be directed to the JWA Deck Builder with the list populated for building!
#7 Mado Squad
Tokyo Ghoul deck list
Mado Squad has a really cool mechanic that’s not commonly used in UNION ARENA. In essence, the deck it is most like in the English Version to date is the Levi deck from Attack on Titan. By focusing on switching AP cards to active, you can unlock effects on your characters for free, much in the same way Levi can unlock powerful additional attacks.
You have two primary characters that will unlock abilities for free on your characters. One is your Raid Haise and the other is on your two-cost Akira.
Haise is vital here as it will let you reuse all three of your AP to activate the effects on your Mado characters. However, read the fine print! You can’t use this ability to then play a bunch of cards – it’s purely here to be used to pay the AP costs of your characters (including his own effect). So make sure you only use this after all of your AP has been used!
Akira doesn’t let you re-stand an AP, but what she does do is let you use the ability of one of your Mado characters that costs an AP for free.
Of course, many of your Mado Squad characters have handy abilities that you can choose to use at will to face whatever situation you are facing thanks to these effects. My favorite of the group is this guy: Kuki Urie.
Kuki reminds me a bit of the Zombie Bambietta from Yellow BLEACH, only turning him into an Impact character won’t hurt at all because of how much free AP you get in this deck that’s aimed specifically at activating abilities. Not to mention having a 4000 BP character with both Nullify Impact and Impact is always nice to have.
Ultimately, Mado Squad is a very cerebral deck – players who love to think hard for complex plays and payoffs will like a deck like this, even if it lacks some of the brute strength that other decks from the same set possess.
#6 Purple Touka & Kaneki
Tokyo Ghoul deck list
First, we’ll look at the deck that you can build directly out of the Tokyo Ghoul Starter Deck. And yes, if you’re wanting to build this deck, I would 100% recommend buying the Tokyo Ghoul Starter Deck as it will get you largely what you need to get started.
So I have to say that despite this deck not necessarily being the strongest in Tokyo Ghoul, as a whole Tokyo Ghoul is a powerful set, and even its lower-tier decks make their way into the higher tiers of the English meta. With that being said, the Kaneki/Touka deck packs a powerful punch with just a few upgrades from the starter deck.
In practice, the deck this one reminds me the most of is the Purple Progressive deck from Sword Art Online Vol. 2 – albeit less strong overall. Just like how Purple Progressive focuses on the interplay between the Raid Asuna and the Raid Mito or 2-AP cost Kirito, this deck focus on the core interplay between Touka and Kaneki.
The key mechanic to look for here is to use the Touka to:
Unlock additional aggro by switching a low-cost character to active when played.
Switch Kaneki to resting and have Touka gain Double Attack.
The key goal here is to just move very fast in typical aggro fashion, taking a ton of life before your opponent is able to set up for big removal plays. Meanwhile, Kaneki has his own tricks, like switching himself to active when he has a card facedown under him – something which is easy to achieve thanks to two-cost Riza.
Is this the strongest deck in the world? No, not really. Plus its combo-heavy nature makes it weaker to heavy removal, midrange strategies. But in the hands of the right pilot, it might just be fast enough to win.
#5 Aogiri Tree
Tokyo Ghoul deck list
Anyone who knows me knows I love a good deck that inflicts damage to itself. If you love decks like Yellow SAO Goddess, Red Attack Titan, or even Speed O’ Sound Sonic/Boros, then you’ll love the Red Tree deck. And while this deck has plenty of strong characters in it, the strongest by far is five-cost Kaneki.
At just five energy, Ken Kaneki is pretty insane – dealing Impact 1 and Damage 2 which is essentially the holy grail of keyword combinations in UNION ARENA.
The only drawback? You’ll be taking your own life at the end of your opponent’s attack phase to keep him around. However, that’s a small price to pay for a character that’s this strong.
You also have a bunch of other stuff that makes this deck strong, like the four-cost Ayoto that lets you free-play a character while also having Double Attack, and some removal capabilities as well as strong characters at low cost. But it’s really the insane power of five-cost Kaneki that makes this particular deck special.
#4 Arima CCG
Tokyo Ghoul deck list
Here we go – another exciting and powerful Tokyo Ghoul deck. The Yellow Arima deck just feels so, so good. Like everything has a place and synergy. Like most good decks, this one focuses on the interplay of two powerful Raid characters. And when I say powerful, I really mean powerful. Let’s start with the strongest card int he deck: Arima himself.
Arima is a powerful card. At seven energy, he is swinging through as a 5000 BP attacker with Damage 2 and the capability of attacking twice in a turn. That feels really good, and it feels even better given the added layer of protection he gets natively – forcing your opponent to discard a card from their hand if they want to choose him with any abilities until the start of your next turn.
The other Raid character that makes this strategy so strong is Juzo Suzuya.
Juzu is your most reliable way to enable the re-stand on the Arima, letting you attack twice. Juzu has a very straightforward sideline effect that forces your opponent to choose one character to sideline. The strongest way to leverage this effect is to use your smaller Juzu characters to sideline weaker opposing characters so that your opponent only has strong ones to choose from when this Raid is played.
Not to mention he also has Impact at 4000 BP.
If you like powerful higher-end (energy-cost speaking) decks, you’ll love the Arima/Juzu Yellow Tokyo Ghoul deck.
#3 Purple Kaneki
Purple Kaneki
I’m not going to lie – the potential of this deck makes me shiver ever so slightly. In it, you have two VERY strong removal characters, and both are Kaneki. For starters, you have the ultimate, twelve-cost Kaneki that forces your opponent to make an impossible choice: let their character be sidelined or let you draw cards.
That choice is especially difficult into decks that need cards in the sideline in order to function: something of particular consideration in the Rare Battle format but also still worth noting against other popular decks like the Evangelion 13, Muzan, or even Purple BLEACH.
Like many other “big guy” decks before it (think Saitama or Shadow Army), Kaneki’s 12 energy cost looks daunting at first but is easily reduced thanks to an ability that takes off one for each card of different required energy in your sideline. To further drop that number down, the decently strong “That’ll Do, Kaneki” Event drops Kaneki’s energy cost down by one when played and stacks.
And while the 12-cost Kaneki is the most head-turning card in this deck, he’s not your only powerful character. Both five-cost and seven-cost Kaneki characters are deadly in their own right, one forcing removal and the other swinging for Damage 2.
While the high energy cost mechanic will keep this strong deck out of the current S-tier, it’s a solid A-tier deck that should be very popular for its high end power and unique mechanic.
#2 Red CCG
Red CCG
If I’m going to be fully honest, which deck is stronger between #1 and #2 on this list feels like a bit of a toss-up for me. Both are very strong, and CCG has a lot going for it. For starters, you have a powerful, 5000 BP Damage 2 Impact 1 character in the form of Kisho Arima (don’t worry, he gets easier to play the more CCG characters you have on the field). While this guy acts as your closer, you have strong plays at every point of the game, including solid removal via your Raid Juzo. Meanwhile, Amon and his Raid line act as the backbone of this deck’s strategy.
With the deck’s combination of aggression, AP extension, removal and high-end power, you could easily see this deck showing up at the top of local or even regional-level tournaments. Essentially, it takes the established “affinity” focused deck formula and dials it up a notch, giving you better rewards for hitting that higher, eight cards of a given affinity on the field.
What do I mean by that? Well, just look at the four-cost Raid Juzo.
Juzo affords a much higher payoff from filling your board with eight cards of a single affinity than we’ve seen from other similar decks by letting you play her for free and also removing a character with up to 4000 BP on your opponent’s field.
Indeed, of all the Tokyo Ghoul decks, the Red CCG Amon deck feels the most well rounded with solid plays at every stage of the game: solid aggro early on, decent removal for midrange, and powerful closing moves for the end of the game via the Arima.
#1 Purple Tsukiyama Shu and Crew
Tsukiyama Shu and Crew
Last but not least, we come full circle with the Tsukiyama Shu and Crew deck. This deck has a lot in common with the starter deck upgraded list we covered earlier on, but with one major difference: it has Shu.
Shu is a powerhouse of a card, to put it mildly. You can think of him as a five-cost Ichigo from Purple BLEACH only with the added benefit of gaining Impact When Attacking, as well as having a BP reduction effect that scales a bit more easily. Assuming you’ve done a good job of filling your sideline with this deck’s Color Trigger card (an event), you’ll be able to rapidly send cards to removal to easily take out 4000 BP (or more) characters.
It’s a potent combo that should feel familiar especially in the hands of more old school UNION ARENA players who remember the days when removal decks like Purple BLEACH dominated the meta.
However, as Tokyo Ghoul is now, Shu is far from his own deck without a supporting. Indeed, you’ll need to pair him with the Kaneki and Touka strategy to unlock a cohesive offensive strategy – one that pairs ruthless removal with powerful Impact and Double Attack potential.
Of all the Tokyo Ghoul decks, Tsukiyama Shu and Crew feels the strongest thanks to its powerful offensive and reliable removal, and you’re likely to see this strategy showing up at high level, tournament play.
As a whole, Tokyo Ghoul is a very solid set. It may lack a single, meta defining deck the way sets like Kagurabachi or Evangelion did, but this is more of a collection of equally strong decks with a few standouts. With Purple Evangelion getting hit hard by restrictions, Tokyo Ghoul has more than enough power to compete in a flattening UNION ARENA English meta.
