UNION ARENA: Fullmetal Alchemist Purple Deck Guide
The strongest new deck coming out of UNION ARENA: Fullmetal Alchemist might just be the Purple Father/Homonculus deck. With a similar flavor as Muzan from Demon Slayer, this deck has all the hallmarks of a top tier control deck. Excellent draw power, insane discard/mill, and a strong closer make FMA Purple very attractive, indeed. In the guide below, we’ll be taking a look at my custom build for the deck and going over how to play it to dominate the UNION ARENA meta.
Fullmetal Alchemist Purple Homunculus deck
The most important cards to your deck strategy are the mighty Father and Lust. Father is your end of game closer with his punishing removal capabilities, and Double Attack keyword. Meanwhile, Lust is this deck’s primary draw engine, and your best bet for rapidly fueling your sideline.
Father is your end of game closer
This card’s biggest advantage is the fact that he’s a four-cost character with 5000 BP, Double Attack, and a “When Played” that sidelines any character on your opponent’s field. He’s also got a handy “Activate: Main” ability that lets you bring him back from your sideline and add him to your hand. That’s a very handy effect to have as you will likely be sidelining him with one of your various powerful discard/mill effects. It also means you can keep bringing him back as long as you manage to have the required number of cards in hand to discard.
Use the Lust Engine to fuel your sideline
Although there really are a myriad of ways to rapidly fuel your sideline with enough cards to hit that magical 20 number (at which point you’ll be able to play your Father character), your strongest engine is the Lust Raid and her raid targets. When played, she lets you draw-two-sideline-two – an effect that lets you fuel your sideline as quickly as the Rukia Raid in Purple BLEACH. Once you hit 10 cards in sideline, she’s also letting you draw an additional card, making her up there with Rukia as one of the strongest draw engines in the game.
However, that’s not the only thing that’s good about her. Her “When Sidelined” is also quite strong, letting you recycle the card you raided over to your hand. That’s very helpful as all three of your possible raid targets for Lust are quite strong. Take a look at them below:
Recycling your Lust targets means getting access to additional sideline fuel, while getting Envy back means potentially gaining additional resting capabilities. That will come in handy especially later in the game when you can rest your opponent’s chump blockers and punch through multiple attacks.
Additional sideline fueling effects
While Lust is going to be your strongest and most reliable tool to reach 20 cards in sideline, she’s far from your only option. In fact, one of the elements that makes Purple FMA so strong is just how many ways you have to get cards into your sideline. Let’s look at your backup strategies, starting with the strongest: Nina and Alexander.
Nina and Alexander offers rapid sideline fuel
Think of Nina & Alexander as your backup method for fueling your sideline to reach that magic 20 number. Essentially, you can mill the top two cards of your deck when you play this character, regardless of whether it is raided or not. When raided, however, it grants energy generation while also letting you draw a card. Having access to a card like this and the Lust Raid gives unparalleled access to filter/draw/sideline effects. If you only had these two cards in this deck, you could pretty reliably reach 20 cards in sideline in order to play Father. However, it gets better.
Purple FMA has a powerful site
Sites are turning out to be one of the key ways decks with access to them are able to differentiate themselves in the current metagame. Lucky for you, FMA Purple has access to a very strong one thanks to Countrywide Transmutation Circle.
Each turn after it is played you can use this effect to place the top card of your deck into your sideline. Once you have reached 20 cards in sideline, you also get to draw a card. That’s pretty insane, and also a solid way to help keep your hand full later in the game so you can recycle your four-cost Father character.
The only downside of this card which keeps me from ranking it up there in efficacy alongside the likes of Lust and Nina & Alexander is the fact that it does not come in Active, meaning you’ll need to wait a turn before you can start using its powerful effect.
However, given this is a control deck you want to be playing for the long-game, so maybe that’s not such an issue.
Even more cards that fuel the sideline
If your head is already spinning from the possibilities here, there’s still more. Namely, three additional cards that help fuel your sideline: Homunculi, I’ll Be Taking Yours, and Envy. Homunculi also lets you mill the top two cards of your deck, with the added benefit of also bringing back a purple Homunculus character from your sideline. The only negative here is you are going to be expending an AP to play this, making it less effective than the characters that essentially achieve the same thing.
I’ll be Taking Yours, meanwhile, is your Special, meaning it’s one of your primary removal tools. For situations where you don’t need to take out a big BP character, you can use this to sideline an opposing character with 3000 BP or less and mill the top two cards on your deck.
And, finally, there’s Envy – this deck’s strongest attacker outside of Father with Impact 1, and a When Attacking that lets you draw-one-sideline one. As if that weren’t enough, he’s got a solid “When Sidelined” effect that can be used to defend incoming attacks – something that’s always handy in control-focused decks like this one.
Purple Fullmetal Alchemist Homunculus deck looks strong
With access to so many insane effects, powerful attackers, and one of the strongest late-game closers in the game, my outlook on Purple FMA is very positive. My best guess is that it will likely make the S-tier of decks in the post-Fullmetal Alchemist UNION ARENA meta, and is easily one of the strongest Fullmetal Alchemist decks of them all.
