UNION ARENA: BLEACH Purple Deck List and Guide
BLEACH Purple has been a staple in the meta since the very beginning. Today, it remains one of the strongest UNION ARENA decks in the game with a proven track record of success at many, many tournaments. But how do you build and play it?
Luckily, BLEACH Purple is relatively easy to pilot, more affordable now than it used to be, and a ton of fun to play.
Below, we’ll be looking at my own custom deck build for BLEACH Purple. After having a ton of success with other decks like Byakuya and Yamamoto in the original, Hunter x Hunter/BLEACH format, I decided to take a more standard BLEACH Purple deck with me to my first store tournament post Jujutsu Kaisen. My deck choice did not disappoint and I went undefeated after four rounds.
Below, I’ll be showing you how to pilot this deck yourself and take you through some of the matchups you are likely to run into at your own UA event.
1st place undefeated deck list by Joseph Writer Anderson
-
BLC-1-045: Renji Abarai (4)
BLC-1-034: Uryu Ishida (4)
BLC-1-039: Ichigo Kurosaki (4)
BLC-1-035: Orihime Inoue (4)
BLC-1-040: Ichigo Kurosaki (4)
BLC-1-037: Kisuke Urahara (2)
BLC-1-103: Ichigo Kurosaki (3)
BLC-1-052: Rukia Kuchiki (3)
BLC-1-047: Renji Abarai (4)
BLC-1-053: Rukia Kuchiki (3)
BLC-1-104: Ichigo Kurosaki (4)
BLC-1-041: Ichigo Kurosaki (4)
BLC-1-064: Getsugatensho (3)
BLC-1-066: Bankai (4)
If you’re looking to build the BLEACH Purple deck, the best place to start is to pick up a UNION ARENA BLEACH starter deck. A lot of what you are going to need to build this comeptitive deck comes in that starter deck.
Otherwise, the rest can be found in booster packs, boxes or online via our friends at TCGPlayer!
In the guide below, we’ll go over how you can use these cards to battle down the competition and win!
Turn one and zero cost cards
As you will be using your own cards in your Energy Line to play more powerful cards in a few turns, it is absolutely integral that you start your hand with zero cost characters. Although just one will do, I find a turn one opening where I can play multiple characters (when going second) to be very effective. This is especially true in a BLEACH Purple deck that looks to move fast.
This deck runs twelve zero cost characters, but only three different ones. They are:
Ichigo Kurosaki
Renji
Uryu Ishida
Ichigo Kurosaki
Of those zero-cost characters, your most reliable choice is usually going to be Ichigo. You’ll need him in play to use powerful actions like the iconic Getsugatensho, or to use it as a target for your Raid ability later on. If I could have just one zero-cost character in my opening hand, it would be this Ichigo.
Uryu Ishida
Meanwhile, Uryu can be highly effective as well. Like most card games early on in their life, UNION ARENA doesn’t have boatloads of draw support. However, also like most card games, the more cards you see throughout the game, the more likely you are to find what you need in order to win. Uryu helps you start seeing additional cards as early as your first turn. He also helps you get cards into your sideline, which will help you remove those cards later on in order to gain powerful abilities.
Renji Abarai
Zero-cost Renji is mostly in this deck to give you something to play turn one and to use as a Raid target later on for your incredibly powerful, bigger Renji.
Orihme works best when played into Uryu
Before moving onto the core of this deck, I want to mention one card which is surprisingly powerful, and that is Orihme. She may not look like much, but she’s actually one of the most effective cards in your deck, letting you easily scale up energy in your energy line so you can start playing more powerful characters.
She’s an absolute life saver, and her When Played ability that bounces a character into the hand on your field works best into Uryu. If you can hit Uryu every time, then you can keep drawing cards and accelerating cards into your sideline – a powerful combo that makes BLEACH Purple work well.
Ichigo Kurosaki and Getsugatensho
If you are a fan of the anime, you won’t need much of an introduction to Getsugatensho. Ichigo’s signature move feels boarderline broken in this game. Why is it so good? Even if you have just a zero-cost Ichigo in play, if you pop one of these actions you can sideline any character with 5000 battle points or less.
This is one of the strongest cards in all of the Bleach set right now, and it’s going to be your best weapon and way out of most scenarios. It’s also the main reason Ichigo is the core backbone of your deck. This deck runs thirteen Ichigo character cards, making the odds fairly good you’ll have him in play when you manage to draw a Getsugatensho.
While we’ve looked at the one Ichigo already, let’s take a look at him in his stronger forms below.
One-cost Ichigo Kurosaki
There’s a couple of reasons why this character card is included in my deck apart from the fact his name happens to be Ichigo Kurosaki. While he’s a great target for both my Raid characters and Tensho, he’s got a few tricks unique to him as well that make him strong.
First of all, he helps you thin your deck out a bit via his “When Played” effect. You can take a look at your top card and either add it to your hand or put it in your sideline. This helps with your general goal of getting more cards into your sideline that you can use for powerful effects later.
Meanwhile, he has a very powerful “Color” trigger ability, letting you immediately play a character from your sideline if he’s chosen from your face down life points.
Three-cost Ichigo
While he doesn’t have a Trigger ability (or any Trigger for that matter), this Ichigo packs a punch for a relatively cheap character. His “When Attacking” effect makes him a 4000 BP character – the magic number that seems to be the standard right now for attackers in the game. Meanwhile, he also grants two energy when on your Energy Line – a fact which can be very helpful to play more powerful cards.
Raid Ichigos
Apart from Getsugatensho, it’s helpful to have plenty of options in your deck to use as targets for your Raid Ichigos. While Raid boost doesn’t enable you to play your characters for any less energy, it does grant you added effects and can also helps you move characters up to the front line and activate them if they are rested.
In this upgraded deck, I run two 104 Ichigos (found in the starter deck) and four 041 Ichigos. Both are strong with different effects that have their own uses. The starter deck Ichigo can attack your opponent’s life when it defeats a character, while the rarer and more valuable Ichigo you can find in packs has a pretty crazy effect that essentially scales indefinitely. You can use this to potentially wipe out any card on the field when played. Remember, when a character’s life is reduced to zero, it is sidelined, making this ability crazy if you’ve been able to stack up a lot of cards in your sideline.
Renji Abarai is a secondary attacker
Now that we’ve talked at length about Ichigo, let’s talk about Renji who basically functions as your second main attacker. Renji Abarai’s Raid character is incredibly strong. He has the ability to gain Damage 2 which means you will gain two life cards from a direct hit to your opponent. Meanwhile, his Raid effect is even more enticing. Assuming you have enough cards in your sideline, you can lower an opposing character’s BP by 3000 – enough to sideline many characters entirely.
BLEACH Purple is really good at card removal, using Getsugatensho and When Played abilities from Ichigo and Renji to obliterate characters on the board.
Where it suffers is from a relative lack of Impact keywords compared to other strategies, as well as a having access to a high powered BP character. Not having access to Impact means more often than not you are looking to dominate the board early so you can swing at your opponent’s Life directly. This is part of the reason why Renji is so good.
Without access to frequent Impact characters, you will need Renji to take direct hits whenever possible using Damage two. This can quickly win you the game. Before your opponent can overwhelm you with those high BP characters.
Supporting characters and their role in the BLEACH Purple deck
Now that we’ve covered the main attackers and core strategy at this deck, let’s look at some of the supporting characters I’ve included in this list and how they help.
Kisuke Urahara
Kisuke is your standard energy generation character, letting you get additional bang for your buck energy-wise by having him in your Energy Line. He only gains energy generation if he is active, however, so keep that in mind when using him to play higher cost characters.
Rukia Kuchiki
Last but not least, Rukia is probably your strongest supporting character. She’s got high BP meaning you can use her in battle. Meanwhile, her abilities lend much needed draw support and the ability to grand incremental BP to your characters. While 500 may not sound like a ton, it’s enough to swing the odds in your favor in what might otherwise be a stalemate.
While the popular aggro deck build doesn’t run a shift target for Rukia, this deck does. While you can certainly play her directly without Raiding her just to have a 4000 BP character in play, why not take advantage of her powerful Raid effects if it works out?
Bankai and how it works
While we’ve talked about the power of Getsugatensho, there is one additional and powerful event card worth mentioning in this deck. And that is, of course, the UNION ARENA staple, Bankai. The reason this card is a staple in any BLEACH deck as it allows you to re-up your Action Point cards and play additional actions in a turn – something which can massively put you ahead of the competition.
Simultaneously it acts as a get out of jail free card. You never know (unless you’ve played four Bankai) whether or not that final card in your Life is going to be this Final Trigger, giving you reason to hope even when you otherwise wouldn’t have any.
BLEACH Purple Matchup Guide
BLEACH Purple works really well when you can get out the gate firing fast. For this reason, I always tend to promote characters to the frontline at the start if I can get that easy first Life point card. After that, winning is going to depend on how many 4000 BP characters you can get into the frontline early on, as well as the kind of card removal you get.
Below, let’s look at how this powerful deck stacks up against the other decks you are likely to see out there.
Blue Sukuna – Jujutsu Kaisen
Blue Sukuna is a beast of a deck, especially if you let your opponent get the fingers they need into their sideline. However, you have one huge advantage over this deck and that is speed.
While Blue Sukuna has options to play and battle it out without having to necessarily get all of their fingers into the sideline, it lacks the sheer amount of card removal that BLEACH Purple is renowned for. At the early to mid part of the game, it’s just not as strong.
Where Blue Sukuna will start to out pace you is in the later part of the game, when they have all their fingers in the sideline and Malevelont Shrine on the field.
In this matchup, it’s key to get moving quickly and take life as early as possible to avoid facing down a fully powered up Sukuna in the late game.
Kurapika – Hunter x Hunter Green
Kurapika is the deck BLEACH Purple probably struggles with the most. It’s not so much that it is a hard counter as it is the two decks balance each other out relatively evenly. BLEACH Purple is the faster deck, Kurapika is the stronger one.
The main advantage you need to look to take against this deck is to (again) just move faster. It takes a full board of energy generating characters for Kurapika to play its strongest Raid. Apart from that Raid character, the rest of its deck isn’t that strong.
If you can manage to dominate the board early on, you can win the game. Move to slow and it’s very difficult to win in a battle of attrition against a board filled with 5000 BP Kurapika.
Toshiro Rush – BLEACH
Finally, let’s talk about Toshiro Rush – the most popular way to build Toshiro today. After winning a high profile tournament, it feels like everyone and their brother who wanted to play Toshiro wanted to play Toshiro Rush.
In this matchup, BLEACH Purple has the distinct advantage. In reality, the only tactic they have to use against you is the powerful four-energy Kenpachi who isn’t affected by BP reducing effects.
While your five-energy Ichigo won’t work against this character, you can still use your Tensho to wipe him off the board. Just save your Tenshos for him and you should be alright.
With BLEACH Purple, the name of the game is getting the ball rolling quickly, while offsetting your opponent with superior card removal. This will make winning the race to seven life easier for you. But with decent to strong matchups against the other big decks in the room, it’s unlikely BLEACH Purple will be going anywhere anytime soon, and remains a powerful and strong bet in a meta that is rapidly becoming more diverse.
