I went to Japan to Get UNION ARENA: Fullmetal Alchemist Early
I know you think it is crazy to take your first ever international trip just to get some shiny cardboard a couple months before it is available locally, and you’re right! Thankfully, I already had my trip planned out when the release date for the Fullmetal Alchemist set in Japan was announced. My friend and I even debated trying to play in a release event if we would be allowed, but decided that the language barrier would probably slow the event down too much.
So while I didn’t plan an entire trip around Japan’s newest addition to Union Arena, I did make sure that I would have some free time to check the card shops while I was abroad. However, finding the set proved to be much more difficult than I hoped it would be.
Getting UNION ARENA: Fullmetal Alchemist products proved difficult
When the FMA released on April 25th, my travel group was staying in Osaka, and we were nearing the end of our trip. However, with Osaka being the third largest city in Japan, I figured I had a good chance of finding a shop that sold what I was looking for. After a quick morning trip to Osaka Castle, I headed out with two others to spend the next few hours searching for cards before our next group activity. In total, we walked between over 10 different card shops and while many of them prominently displayed other Bandai TCGs, I only found one that carried Union Arena.
After using some very poor basic Japanese and some Google Translate, I was on my way to purchasing two boxes of Fullmetal Alchemist! But at the last second, a manager came by to remind the cashier that, since it was the newest set, they were currently selling boxes to members only! Feeling crushed, and not knowing when my next opportunity to find other shops would be, I consoled myself by picking up a few singles that were available.
The singles I grabbed of my favorite characters
The next day we made a day trip to Kyoto, and after a shrine visit where I purchased a “success” charm, we did some shopping in the main city. Among these shops, on the seventh floor of an electronics department store, I found a trading card store. I had a few exchanges with the cashier in my broken-but-improving Japanese, but I was finally able to purchase the boxes I had been searching for!
Since I wasn’t sure how much luggage space I would have, I stuck to the two boxes I originally planned for. And later, on our last day in Japan before we flew out of Tokyo, my group went out shopping in Akihabara. While the official Bandai card shop didn’t have any product left for FMA, I did manage to find the last thing I was looking for at a BOOKOFF; the starter deck for the set!
So, after all the adventure to get my hands on these cards, the real question is:
How is Fullmetal Alchemist as a set?
Like many anime fans in the West, Fullmetal Alchemist Brotherhood holds a special place in my heart. Seeing this set join UNION ARENA is huge, and for fans of the series, this set nails its presentation perfectly.
All of our most beloved characters make an appearance in this set, and it is clear that Bandai worked hard to bring the series to life. The regular SR cards are the cleanest and best designed SR cards in all of UNION ARENA so far. I feel like these cards take inspiration from the series’ iconic title cards, as seen below.
The one-star alternate cards are also a sight to behold.
What is Fullmetal Alchemist’s competitive potential as a set?
Look and feel are important. But what the players really want to know is this: how does the set hold up mechanically? Well, as usual, the design team behind UNION ARENA has done an amazing job at bringing the series to life with cards that functionally represent the story and characters.
In Blue, Mustang and his squad work together to burn everything to ashes by trading cards in hand to kill your opponent’s characters. You can also have the soldiers of Briggs put up a unified front to overwhelm your opponent with powerful attacks. Purple, meanwhile, gives us decks based on the Homunculi, who work together to set up for “Father” as your game-ender. Yellow brings the Xing characters who read the Dragon’s Pulse and gain power from your energy line, as well as the Elric Brothers that center around equivalent exchange to secure the win with their alchemy.
Diving into the Fullmetal Alchemist Yellow Elric Brothers Deck
Out of all of the decks, I have only been able to play the Yellow Elric Brothers deck, with a single starter deck as the base. I first played it against our esteemed blog-owner Joseph and his SAO Yellow Goddess deck.
As far as starter decks go, it did pretty decently and had some fun combos right out of the box. After a few swaps from my booster box pulls, this new deck actually puts out a decent threat against current deck lists. The main mechanics of the FMA Yellow deck comes from the Edward raid cards that can search for other cards you need at the price of the raid target beneath them going to the sideline and sacrificing your Raid state.
That would be a steeper price if there wasn’t an Alphonse card that could sacrifice himself to bring back an Edward card and place it beneath an appropriate Raid. Not only do these designs beautifully recreate the climax of the brothers’ story through gameplay, but it feels very rewarding to plan ahead and sequence well.
Overall, Fullmetal Alchemist is one of the most exciting sets for UNION ARENA that we will get over the next few months. With powerful cards, appealing artistic direction, and engaging story-based mechanics, this set will have something to offer all UNION players when it releases in North America in July. Personally, I am going to be convincing anyone I can at my locals to let me run my Elric Brothers deck for casuals until we get the set this summer.
