UNION ARENA: My 2nd Place Kurapika Deck from a 100+ Player Tournament

Yesterday, Joseph and I competed in my first ever webcam tournament for Union Arena, hosted by TheEgman. With a staggering 124 players competing, we got to see a variety of decks vying for the top spot.  I decided to enter with my Kurapika build, as it is an extremely reliable core deck and it’s what I have the most experience with so far.  I was able to take 2nd place overall, so I wanted to share my experience in the tournament.

2nd Place Kurapika Deck List

While this deck list looks extremely similar to what I wrote about in my last article, the changes I made allowed me to play very differently from how I was before, and clearly it paid off.  Here are the cards I wanted to highlight though:

Melody 

The only new card to this list, but it has opened many new paths to play this deck. The ability to generate energy on the front line makes this deck faster, more consistent, and more aggressive.  When compared to the only similar card in our format, Shigekuni Genryusai Yamamoto (R) from Bleach Green, she shows one very distinct advantage; Melody’s 1 energy cost allows her to be played as early pressure against faster decks, and can be used to block against similar threats from the opponent. 

With Melody, you won’t always need to keep three 2-Energy generators on your energy line for your Raid Kurapika plays.  If combined with Basho, Melody gives you an extremely flexible energy line, allowing you to push characters forward more often when you want while still having the energy for the big plays when you need it. This is a card I may consider running four copies of, but with my current testing, two seems to be a comfortable spot.

Hisoka

I had previously described Hisoka’s ability as “Snipe’s little brother”, but I wanted to go into more detail about why I ended up choosing this card for my list.  I found that Impact characters, and this deck in particular, can run a problem with their end game during close matches.  Since Impact characters are rarely blocked, an opponent will not lose characters during combat and can rebuild a board surprisingly quickly. 

While Snipe helps a lot with taking key cards off of the board, these effects only last for one turn, so you need another attacker that kills off their board. Most other Impact decks have other in-archetype attackers to fill this role, but this deck’s secondary attacker is the 5 energy cost Kurapika that gains Impact easily.  This is where Hisoka comes in. He not only will trade cards off of your opponent’s field, but he gives you a card draw when you win the combat as well. 

While it does cost 1AP to use this effect, late game rarely sees you with enough cards in hand to make this a real sacrifice anyhow.  It is worth noting that I considered two other cards to help with this late-game issue:

Hanzo mostly threatens blocks by choosing Damage 2 until end of turn, but your opponent may end up in situations where taking the 2 damage in exchange for some trigger effects may be worth it.  Leorio doesn’t threaten blocks, but would allow for a hyper-aggressive early game with so much Impact damage flying through, you are unlikely to run into a close end-game in the first place.  Any of these three cards can fit well depending on your playstyle, but I found Hisoka to be the best fit for me in our current meta.  

Three-Cost Leorio (R)

There aren’t too many cards right now that can recover a card from the sideline, but all of them are either very restrictive on what you can grab or are expensive to play.  Leorio falls into the latter category, but provides enough value to offset the cost.  Again, since late game you may be ending turns with AP unspent anyway, using 2 to grab whatever you need to build a stronger board is not too big of a deal.  Raid targets, double-energy generators, or attackers are all within reach of this card since we only play on color.  However, seeing this card early in a match can feel bad when trying to build momentum, so I wouldn’t recommend more than 2 of these in a deck.

The Matchups

Let’s just dive straight into the matchups I had throughout my tournament run, in round order.

Rounds 1&7, Win - Bleach Purple

One of the most common opponents you will find, Bleach Purple, often uses its large number of removal effects to control the board and swing for big damage. This matchup may seem tough at first, but you do have some key advantages to keep them in check.

First, if they have to use the 5-cost Ichigo to remove your Raid Kurapika, it will cost them a hefty 10 cards in the sideline. An opponent will be less likely to play a Special card in the early game if they can avoid it, allowing you to sneak in early hits or build a resilient board that can bounce back from their removal cards. 

Second, Raid Kurapika blocks all of their main attackers safely thanks to the 5000BP.  They can’t get Impact or Damage 2 through as often as in other matchups.  However, they will likely have more Raid cards on the field at one time, so choose your Snipe targets carefully. 

The 4-cost Ichigo from the starter deck is their larger threat in the long run, as it can draw cards and gain Impact. But don’t underestimate Renji! He is close behind because of Damage 2, but depending on your board you may be able to sacrifice blockers to keep him from being a problem, so he is a little less threatening.  Meanwhile, the 5-cost Ichigo is not that scary after he has been played, so target almost any other 4000BP card on the field before him. 

Finally, if you are playing against a Byakuya variant like I was in round 1, Raid Byakuya is your highest priority to get off of the field.  Not only does he have Impact, but he takes away your BP advantage very easily.  Byakuya may be the best counter to Kurapika out there at the moment, and I have seen a lot more Bleach Purple players adding him in to help them.

Rounds 2-3, Win - Hunter X Hunter Purple

While this deck has some cool combos to pull off, it does struggle quite a bit against Kurapika. This is especially true if they use more Phantom Troupe cards than Zoldyck Family, as the Troupe’s Special card cannot remove your Raid on its own. 

Watch out for the 6-cost Hisoka though, as he can pull your weaker double-energy generators to the front line, messing up your later turns. He also has 4500BP and Impact, making him a threat in combat too. Uvogin can also cause problems, as he has Damage 2 boosts to 5000BP on the opponent’s turn. 

On the Zoldyck side, Silva is a weaker version of your Raid Kurapika, but he can still bully your other frontline characters. Zeno will combo well with Raid Illumi to sideline any character and draw two cards, but a good player will rarely promote Zeno to the frontline before the effect can be used.  In this matchup, your Snipe targets should be Silva, Uvogin, any other Impact cards, and then Zeno if they promote him earlier than they should.

Round 4, Win - Kurapika + Gon

This was an awesome deck to run up against!  It uses the starter deck Gon to boost the frontline so that almost all of the attackers can kill a Raid Kurapika if needed, and it has a ridiculous amount of Impact attackers to constantly threaten your life. 

In addition, Gon allows you to still make strong plays on a smaller energy line. Your opponent’s Raid Kurapika is still the highest priority Snipe target, followed by any other Impact attackers, then any Raid target characters.

Round 5, Win - Kurapika Mirror

This matchup will come down to two things: better target selection, and better card draw.  While your Snipe priorities are going to be extremely similar to the above, Basho is a very valuable target if timed well. If you are in a spot where an opponent will have to push a lot of cards forward to block on their next turn, or they have been slow to build their energy line, using Snipe to take out a Basho can cripple their chances of making a comeback.  Other than that, there isn’t much to this match up that can be planned for.  If you are good at improvising and draw decently, you should be fine here. 

Round 6, Loss - Toshiro Rush

Honestly, I wish I could give better advice for this matchup, but I really didn’t get any data off of this game.  While I got a turn 3 Neon play that normally would have pushed the game in my favor, my top 4 cards were Satotz, Hunter License, and 2 more Neon. 

As if that wasn’t enough of a blow to my momentum, I also got very unlucky that I had almost no triggers in life to slow him down. 

The only moment I can identify as a major misplay was when I sniped his Rangiku over a Toshiro.  I had not yet realized he was playing a rush deck, so trying to disrupt his energy line in anticipation of a big Raid Unohana play was all for nothing.  I will need a lot more experience with this version of the deck before I can give any advice on it, let alone judge if it is a losing matchup or not.  However my opponent pushed his advantage beautifully throughout our entire match, and ended up taking a very well-earned first place in the event overall.

Final Thoughts

First, I wanted to thank TheEgman for running this massive event.  While the total event runtime was fairly long, we were never left waiting on rounds to wrap up, and we still got plenty of breaks.  For my first ever webcam tournament, it was amazing to see how smoothly everything operated. Second, I wanted to thank Joseph for the many games we have played together.  He has helped make our local scene very strong as a whole, and I feel that I learn something new with every match we play!  If you want more of his analysis of the Egman tournament, check out his article here.