UNION ARENA: Demon Slayer Purple Deck
Typically, most energy colors in any given UNION ARENA set have about two different decks you can build with them based on synergies between cards. Oftentimes these strategies overlap. In the case of Demon Slayer Purple, there’s a lot of overlap, and when you combine the two main strategies between Gyutaro, Daki, and Muzan, you get a much stronger deck than would be possible leaning too hard into one strategy or the other.
Below, let’s look at my custom deck build for Demon Slayer Purple that feels strong enough to contend with other top decks in the meta.
Demon Slayer Purple Deck List
Demon Slayer Purple Deck main attackers
While any solid UNION ARENA deck is built from many, many strong pieces, there typically tends to be only a handful of main attackers that you will be relying on to gain a strategic advantage over your opposition. In this deck, your primary attackers are Raid Gyutaro, Enmu and Raid Daki. While I run Muzan in this deck, actually it’s the three-cost Muzan that you will be using more often. His activate effect lets you sideline other characters while granting additional BP.
Meanwhile, the big bad Muzan himself won’t come out every battle, and is mostly included in this deck as a finisher.
Gyutaro is the strongest character in Demon Slayer Purple
I can’t rave enough about this card. It’s the reason this deck is largely built around Gyutaro in general. However, this card’s usefulness (like many of the best cards out there in any TCG) is a little deceptive. You don’t notice how strong it actually is right away.
For starters, he’s only a four-cost character which is great – most of the top decks include four-cost 4000 BP attackers and he’s up there among the best of them.
What really makes this character stand out, however, is his mini double attack effect. I say Mini because it’s not quite as good as the double attack effect because it only works when you defeat an opposing character in a battle. What this does, however, is force your opponent to essentially allow your Gyutaro through for a direct hit. If that weren’t enough, late game when your opponent can’t afford to let Gyutaro through, they are forced to give up units as shields – after which he will just take more wins and defeat more characters.
I love this Gyutaro character and he’s an absolute must in your Demon Slayer Purple deck.
Draw a card if Daki is on the field
In addition to all of that, Gyutaro also has the advantage of letting you draw a card whenever he attacks as long as you have Daki on the field. As you will notice when reading this article, Daki and Gyutaro have a lot of effects that combo together just like they do in the show. While Gyutaro is the stronger of the two, you’ll want to prioritize having Daki on the field to take advantage of these strong draw effects.
Strong raid targets for Gyutaro
As you will only be playing four copies of this card, you don’t need a million raid targets like you might for other decks. Still, you have two solid raid targets in this deck, the stronger of which is the three-cost two energy Gyutaro that also lets you draw-one-sideline-one as long as you have Daki on the field. Meanwhile, you also have a zero-cost Gyutaro. The only downside is that this Gyutaro doesn’t have a trigger. He does have an activate effect however that lets you pay AP to draw cards. You won’t really be using this ability most of the time but can be helpful if you find yourself a little stuck.
Enmu’s draw capabilities and added BP make him a must
Enmu is almost as strong as Gyutaro and as the game progresses, he gets stronger. If you have 15 cards in your sideline, he gets a boosted BP stat which makes him capable of blocking opposing 4000 BP bodies while living to tell the tale. If that weren’t great enough he’s only a four-cost one AP character with 4000 base BP and a draw effect that further doubles down Demon Slayer Purple’s epic draw capabilities.
Lastly, Enmu’s Raid target is seriously handy. Two-cost Enmu lets you draw a card if any other cards have been sidelined that turn: a very realistic possibility given this deck’s love for sidelining its own characters.
Daki has surprising strength for a three-cost character
Finally there’s Daki. While this deck runs three different versions of Daki, the strongest (of course) is the raid character. When raided, Daki gains an extra 500 BP to make her a 4000 BP body for only there cost (during your turn). Additionally, when she’s sidelined you get to play her again to the field set to resting. She loses the Raid abilities in this case but it’s still nice to keep her around an extra turn as more bodies on the field is never a bad thing.
Muzan and the power of sidelining
Now that we’ve covered this deck’s main attackers, let’s talk about the powerful Sidelining engine and why you want it in this deck. Demon Slayer Purple is the first set in the English UA game to put a heavy focus on advantages gained through sidelining characters. Many of the characters in this deck have effects that activate only when they are sidelined, and some of these effects are very powerful.
First, let’s talk about three-cost Muzan who is one of the strongest utility cards in this deck if not necessarily your strongest attacker. However, he’s so versatile that he can be used as an attacker when the situation arises, and does so quite effectively.
Muzan is a three-cost character with two energy who lets you sideline another character on your field to add the top card of your deck into your sideline as well as granting him 1000 added BP.
If that weren’t reason enough to include him in your deck he also has the powerful Purple Color Trigger which is arguably the strongest Color Trigger in the game.
Whether Muzan is on your energy line or attacking on the front line, he’s a powerful ally in this deck. Below let’s look at the best way to combo him with other characters to get the most out of his effect.
Sideline Teoni to move around the board
Only being able to move between energy lines at the start of your turn is a bit annoying to deal with in UNION ARENA, meaning you only have access to a limited number of energies and attackers at any given time. Luckily, Teoni offers away around that. Sideline this demon and you will be able to promote one of your energy line characters to the front line or vice versa.
This is a very effective combo to use with Muzan who can sideline Tenoi from the energy line, gain added BP, then move up to the front line to blitz your opponent. Because we aren’t running anything over 4 energy in this deck, you can do this without worrying about the state of your energy line as it is easy enough to rebuild.
Teoni also had the added advantage of possessing a Draw trigger, upping the number of triggers in your deck which is a must in competitive UA decks.
Gain added removal with the Lower Two
You can also use three-cost Muzan to sideline the powerful Lower Two. Although I only run three of these cards in my deck I could be persuaded to bump that up to four. Not only does he have decent attack, when he is sidelined he lowers a character’s BP by 2000. You can use this defensively to slow down your opponent when they are attacking or offensively on your turn. Pop two in a turn and you are removing many threats in the game!
I should also note that both of these powerful effects are accessible via playing the special trigger card Lower Your Heads. Using Lower Your Heads on the Lower Two is a particularly powerful play as you can sideline a bigger BP character and a little one if your opponent has multiple bodies on the field.
If all of that weren’t enough, you can also draw a card after using this effect.
Lastly, you can use either this special or Muzan to sideline the one-cost Daki if you want. While her “when sidelined” effect is strong, often it’s better to have a Daki on the field to take advantage of Gyutaro’s added effects so do so sparingly.
Four-cost Muzan is your end-game closer
Because this deck doesn’t focus primarily on the sideline strategy, Muzan acts as an insurance policy rather than a main attacker. While he generates plenty of energy on the energy line, you won’t be able to move him into the frontline until you have twenty cards in your sideline. However, because you have plenty of other attackers to do your bidding, you don’t need to worry too much about getting this set up. Instead, look to use Muzan as an effective check mate and work without him as needed.
While most will probably look at the Gyutaro/Daki deck and Muzan sideline deck as two separate strategies, they feel much, much stronger when used together, and as I’ve seen from my testing they can very much go toe-to-toe with the other top decks in the format when piloted correctly.
