UNION ARENA: Spear of Gaius Gets Hit with Restrictions
One of the very strongest decks in the UNION ARENA English Version right now just got hit with a massive restriction. Two of its strongest cards have been reduced to only one copy each. This is a huge deal for the deck as the restriction of these cards will massively inhibit the deck’s ability to draw cards at an alarming rate.
The change comes after Gaius seeing overwhelming play both in the English Version and Japan. For whatever reason, when the original cuts came out for Evangelion, Purple Gaius was unscathed, allowing it to essentially dominate the game since its release.
Today, the UNION ARENA team is saying “enough” just ahead of the kick off to the UNION ARENA 2026-2027 Championship season. I guess hardcore grinders are going to have to find a different deck to play – and so will the guys who keep showing up to my locals with the same Gaius build week after week.
What this means for Purple Gaius
I want to be fully realistic with you: even these deep cuts aren’t enough to take Gaius out of the game completely. I’ve felt for a long time now that Gaius was something of a broken deck. It doesn’t take playing against it very much to realize that the deck as it was before the cuts could just do too much.
The perpetual, uncapped draw felt like the worst part of it, though. So limiting its draw capabilities as well as the ability for players to find a Spear of Gaius Special off of a AAA Wunder search will make the deck much more fair.
While Gaius won’t dominate the meta after these cuts, it will still remain a viable deck, albeit with a few changes.
What to run in your Gaius deck instead
Of course, players will need to make a few changes to account for this hefty restriction. They’ll still want to run the one copy of each card, but they’ll need to add two more cards into the deck to fill the gap.
The first card is pretty obvious: Longinus, the Spear of Despair will need to replace Spear of Gaius as this deck’s special. For those not playing Gaius, this is a much more fair special. It can’t be searched out via Wunder, and it doesn’t let you draw yet another card. It’s just a good old fashioned kill card.
To be honest, there’s no one-to-one replacement for the Asuka card. She’s just so good. However, you do have this Mari card that many players already run anyways. Bumping her up to four in your deck feels like a strong play to alleviate some of the lost utility from the six-cost Asuka getting dropped.
She may not open up more avenues for you to see even more cards, but she does enable a powerful free play effect that feels necessary in a post-restricted Spear of Gaius deck.
Because you run so many Mari characters anyways, many players are teching in her Raid character for a little added utility. This could be an option that’s more attractive now that you have room without so many Asuka’s in the deck.
This Raid Mari is less reliable than the Asuka when paired with Gaius, but still has a handy draw effect that makes it a potential fit for the build going forward.
I’m very excited about this restriction, as it should help the game feel more varied going forward. Many decks that simply couldn’t deal with Gaius have the potential to reenter the game, and as a result the meta should be much more varied. The big events in Vegas back in February were essentially “play Gaius or play against Gaius” which doesn’t make for the most fun, stimulating game experience long term.
