The BLEACH Purple deck featuring Renji is getting a lot of traction right now thanks to a big win at the first big tournament in North America for UNION ARENA.

Below, we’ll be looking at my own custom deck build for BLEACH Purple. While you can checkout the deck build that went first, second, and third in my list of UNION ARENA tournament decks, this build looks to be a little more balanced than the Renji Rush deck that most are playing right now.

BLEACH Purple with Renji – Deck List

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.

Raid Targets for Renji

Because you really want to perform Raid with this character when he’s played, I’ve included five other Renji characters to make that a bigger possibility.

While we’ve talked about the zero-energy cost Renji, the other Renji at your disposal is the three-energy Renji. This Renjis not only gives you additional Raid targets in your deck, he’s a great way to help get more cards from you deck into your Sideline.

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, it’s 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.

Kurapika – Hunter x Hunter Green

Despite how powerful BLEACH Purple is, it’s main advisary apart from itself is Kurapika. While technically BLEACH Purple has the advantage, if your opponent is able to quickly set up Kurapika’s Raid character, they can begin to overwhelm you. Snipe is a huge problem for this deck to overcome, as is Kurapika’s high BP.

The trick here is to keep your Removal in store for Kurapika, or (as I was able to do in this matchup just recently) go for such an aggressive early game play that your opponent has no hope of catching up.

Yellow Bleach

Yellow Bleach isn’t much of a problem for this deck, either. There are some interesting plays that deck has around freezing your characters, as well as making you think twice about attack. All-in-all, I find this matchup relatively easy to manage if a bit tricky at times.

Byakuya BLEACH Purple

Byakuya BLEACH Purple isn’t a whole lot different than the Renji build. However, Byakuya does give your opponent some interesting plays to use against you that you won’t be able to replicate. If the game goes long and they are able to use Byakuya on you in combo with everything else, you likely won’t win.

The sweet spot in this matchup is early to mid game before Byakuya becomes as much of a threat.

The trick here, again, is to play into your strength and win as quickly as possible.

I’ll be adding more matchup data soon, but in the meantime the main trend here is to focus on 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. And with BLEACH Purple, winning the race really is the name of the game!

UNION ARENA: BLEACH Purple Deck List and Guide