UNION ARENA: The Best Sword Art Online Decks
Let’s do something fun – build the best Sword Art Online UNION ARENA decks with the JWA Deck Builder!
While I’ve shared my thoughts and builds in the past when SAO Vol. 2 originally came out, tons of testing, tournaments, and optimization has occurred since the initial Vol. 2 guide released. Now, let’s take a look at what the strongest SAO decks overall are, and have some fun building and testing them with my JWA Premium Deck Builder.
#1 Sword Art Online – Song and Dance
After months of testing and refining, my favorite deck in all of UNION ARENA: Sword Art Online is this one – Song and Dance. This deck takes the strongest elements of both Purple Progressive and Purple Yuna/Song decks and combines them into one fast powerhouse that feels so very good to pilot.
Although I’ve now played Song and Dance in three different tournaments, I actually have yet to lose with it. I’m sure some day I will lose, but until then and even after my custom Purple Progressive deck is my favorite.
Learn how to build and play Song and Dance in more detail via my guide.
#2 Gun Gale Online
GGO may be one of the most underrated decks in UNION ARENA right now. This deck is so insanely powerful and consistent, and yet players at the top tend not to run it. I guarantee you that if more players picked this insane deck up, it would start making top meta deck lists everywhere.
#3 Purple Yuna/Song
Purple Yuna/Song is another underrated deck. While I prefer GGO’s power (from a pure competitive standpoint), Yuna gets bonus points for power. This deck is a bit more challenging to play than some. You absolutely have to optimize each and every turn, and try and see as many cards as possible while you are at it.
Manage to master its complex playstyle, however, and you can easily compete with the best in the UNION ARENA meta.
#4 Progressive
While Song and Dance may have taken over as my current favorite UNION ARENA deck, I owe a lot to this absolute beauty of a deck. Purple Progressive earned me my spot in the UNION ARENA Nationals, finishing 23rd out of 300 hungry competitors at the Las Vegas LCQ.
This deck gets most of its advantage from being incredibly fast: faster than many decks can handle. Manage to hit your early game combos just right (primarily between Asuna and Mito Raids) and many will just fold under the pressure.
Where does its weakness lie? Well all decks have a weakness and Progressive’s is pretty big unfortunately. If your opponent hits you with enough removal, you really have almost no recourse.
The pressure is on Purple Progressive players to come out of the gate swinging hard and early. Do that right, and you can absolutely win even into a challenging meta.
#5 Alice & Friends/Integrity Knights
Alice & Friends – more commonly referred to as Integrity Knights despite there being another purely focused Integrity Knights deck now – has always been a solid deck. However strong the current UNION ARENA English meta may be, this deck more than keeps up with it. It’s straightforward, consistent, and powerful.
If you’re looking for a no-frills deck that gets the job done, you can’t go wrong with Integrity Knights. And to be honest, I’m just a little surprised at how good this deck is from my own extensive testing.
#6 Mother’s Rosario
Last but not least is Mother’s Rosario. This is the other deck that I spent the most time refining. Although unlike Progressive, the reason for spending so much time working on this deck was more because it took that much effort to get it to a place I was happy with. Ultimately this build is what helped me close out my SAO Vol. 2 Rare Battle Season with six total tops and four Asuna UNION RARE Winner cards.
The combination of Kirito with Mother’s Rosario is potent. Not only does he complement this strategy (offering a 2000 BP character on the low end and a 4000 BP protection character), he enables the powerful Proton Sword play. This will let you boost (most importantly) your Raid Asuna to a Damage 2 Impact 1 character at just six Yuuki/Mother’s Rosario cards in the sideline.
While it’s a tricky deck to master as you need to closely monitor your board state and manage it around Yuuki’s various self-sidelining effects, it’s quite rewarding and one of the more powerful removal decks around relative to its energy cost.
