UNION ARENA: NIKKE Yellow Modernia Deck
Want to build the strongest UNION ARENA: NIKKE deck? Give the Yellow Modernia/Counters deck a try!
This deck includes solid draw support, card search, and powerful high-end removal via Raid Modernia that makes it a solid deck into the UNION ARENA English meta right now. Below, we’ll go over the deck, the cards that make it work, and more.
Yellow Modernia deck
Breaking down Modernia
While there are plenty of strong cards and consistency pieces to this deck, the card that really makes it sing is the five-cost Raid Modernia.
If her “When Attacking” effect seems familiar, it might be because it’s almost identical to one of the strongest UNION ARENA decks of them all: Roy Mustang. Both cards are capable of removing characters turn after turn if left unchecked. However, the main difference is that Modernia is only able to sideline event cards to extend the range of her 1000 BP base removal effect.
While that may seem like a negative, she also has the powerful ability to bring back any number of “Memory” cards from the sideline to your hand when played. That’s a powerful advantage that even Roy doesn’t have, making it far easier to have the cards you need to remove opposing characters each turn without necessarily having to thin out your hand.
Let’s look at “Memory” a bit more
Memory is a very solid event card, complete with an Active trigger which makes including it in your deck easy from a trigger standpoint. Meanwhile, when you use it you essentially get to draw two cards for free, as long as you discard another event. Using a Memory from hand to draw two cards and then discarding another Memory from hand is a great way to get the Modernia removal engine running.
Moderina’s Raid line
A powerful Raid isn’t enough by itself to make a top UNION ARENA deck, however. It also needs a powerful line of Raid targets that help move your strategy forward. Luckily, Modernia has a very solid line of Raid targets that’s up there with the best.
Zero cost Marian is this deck’s zero-cost draw-one-sideline-one: a staple card that is omnipresent in top tier decks. Meanwhile, two-cost Marian feels very strong, complete with a draw trigger, 3000 BP with three or more other Counters on the field, and a “When Played” that enables you to search through the top three cards of your deck for a “Memory” card or “Counters” character. Finally, three-cost Marian fullfills this deck’s need for a two-energy generating raid target for Modernia, while also unlocking a very powerful card search effect that lets you search the top seven of your deck for a Memory and add it to your hand.
While finding the exact ratio of these powerful Raid targets will take some fine tuning, each is powerful in its own way and adds a ton to this deck’s strategy.
Rapi is a powerful Impact attacker
If you haven’t noticed yet, Impact is such a powerful keyword ability that essentially every top tier deck has an Impact attacker. And Yellow NIKKE is no exception, with your other strongest attacker being four-cost raid Rapi. For her to gain Impact, she only needs three or more other Counters characters on the field – an easy thing to meet given all of your characters are counters but one.
Yet Rapi admittedly has a lot more going for her than just the powerful Impact keyword and 4000 BP as a Raid character. She also has an incredibly strong “When Played” effect that lets you search the top four cards of your deck for an event card. This is a fantastic supporting effect to extend the range of Modernia’s removal effect, but can also be an effective way to find key events when needed. Although different in what it targets, the card that this most reminds me of is the effective four-cost Saito from the Purple Saito Kenshin deck, and it should have a similarly powerful effect in Yellow Moderina.
Finally, Rapi also has a “When Attacking” effect as well, letting you boost the BP of one of your other Counters characters by 1000 BP, potentially enabling you to swing over a 5000 BP defender or to get another 4000 BP attack through, depending on your needs.
Rapi’s Raid targets
Despite Rapi being a solid Raid character (and you actually have another Rapi Raid in Yellow that’s not in my list), the one that does hold her back just a bit is the lack of a two-energy generating Raid target. Still, you do have the typical zero-cost Raid target with the get trigger and a fantastic one-cost Rapi that lets you filter through the top two cards of your deck so you can find the cards you really want with relative ease.
Neon brings solid Damage 2 into Yellow NIKKE
As if all of these powerful offensive capabilities weren’t already enough, this deck also has one of the stronger Damage 2 attackers we’ve seen thanks to four-cost Neon with the color trigger. Not only does the yellow color remain the strongest color trigger in the game, in this deck it’s packaged into a card that you will absolutely want to include in your deck.
As long as you have played an event card this turn (something which is very likely in Yellow Modernia), Neon gains Damage 2 and a draw-one-sideline-one when attacking. That’s an incredible amount of value packaged into one card with 4000 BP, and as we’ve seen from Renji Rush builds and even the powerful Lancelot deck, 4000 BP attackers with damage 2 are worth their weight in gold to enable a devastating offensive that forces your opponent to sacrifice their characters.
Anis is Yellow NIKKE’s Swiss Army Knife
The last 4000 BP attacker in this deck is the formidable Anis Raid. In fact, Anis is such a solid card that it almost hurts to run her at only two copies. However, given just how strong the rest of your attackers are, she really fits in as more of a situational card. And she’s quite the situational card!
Complete with powerful defensive capabilities like Nullify Impact and Double Block, Anis also lets you draw two-or-three cards depending on whether or not you’ve used an event this turn, and sideline one. That’s some incredible draw capabilities and I could see many players building their decks more tightly around Anis despite the fact that I like this more aggressive, offensive-minded build with her as a supporting character.
With a collection of powerful characters, repeatable removal, and solid draw/search engine, Yellow Modernia could be a top tier deck, perhaps even S-tier in the still Kenshin heavy meta that won’t like Modernia’s removal going off turn-after-turn.
