How UNION ARENA Five Pack Battle/Release Events Work

Last night I attended a release event for UNION ARENA’s fourth set: Code Geass. After recently watching the show I became a fast and ardent fan. Of course, I’m already a huge fan of UNION ARENA and play it often, so combining the two was an exhilerating experience. While the set itself is undeniably a resounding success, until last night I had yet to experience a UNION ARENA release event for any set, or the Five Card Pack battle system that they use for these events.

After a long day at the shop filled with testing the new decks from the set and taking part in the tournament, I have some very strong feelings about UNION ARENA release events and the Five Pack Battle system in general.

Here’s what you get from attending a UNION ARENA release event

These release events should be happening for every UNION ARENA set release and they should all follow a similar pattern. Just for attending you get a participation pack with some specially stamped “release event” cards. While these cards aren’t exactly valuable, they are typically more valuable than their normal counterparts you get from packs.

In these packs you can get the following:

  • *2 cards per pack

  • *75 types in total

  • *Release Event Stamped cards are from CODE GEASS Lelouch of the Rebellion [UE04BT] Common and Uncommon cards.

More importantly, however, is the exlusive promo you get just from attending the event. These promos feature alternate and exclusive artwork featuring one of the characters from the set. In this set, we got an alternate artwork for two-energy Lelouch. This works perfectly for me as I can easily swap this into my Code Geass Purple deck for one of the other regular rare versions of the same card.

Code Geass Release Event Promo

Lastly, your entry fee will cover the five packs that you will use to build your deck from. You may also want to bring 60 card sleeves to sleeve up your deck just in case you pull some rare cards that you want to use. I pulled one R* parallel artwork card of Lancelot so this is definitely possible to do from these packs.

What you can get from winning the event

While these participation prizes are cool in-and-of themselves, the real draw for many is the exclusive Winner card you can get from actually winning the event. You can see the Winner card via the image below.

Code Geass Winner Card

How the Five Pack Battle works

If you’ve never been to a UNION ARENA set release event before, you (like myself before attending) might be wondering how they work. Well, it’s pretty straightforward.

  • You get five booster packs with your entry and all of the cards in those boosters become your deck.

  • Unlike constructed tournaments, in Five Pack Battles there is no limit to the number of copies of a card you can have in your deck, and all energy generation counts as the same.

  • This means that you can use as many different colored cards as you want as if they are the exact same energy type.

That’s really all there is to it.

Pros and cons of the five pack battle

Of course, simplicity alone doesn’t success make, and I found the five pack battle to largely be lacking as far as release events go.

Con: Five Pack Battles lack any deck customization

The first problem is lack of customizablility. Unlike release events with the Pokemon TCG (for example) where deck customization is key to success, Five Pack Battles largely come down to dumb luck due to the fact that what your deck is essentially randomized based on the packs you get. Not only does this mean winning is largely impacted by luck — it also eliminates one of the most fun parts of TCGs and that’s the creative deck building process.

As a comparison, the Pokemon TCG has very fun release events where the number of cards in your deck are limited to well below the full number of cards you get in total from your kit and booster packs, creating lots of opportunities for customization and risk taking. While luck will always play a bigger role in this type of an environment, good deck builders can mitigate a lot of that with clever deck designs.

Pro: coming up with ideas around card interactions in the moment is challenging and fun

However, that’s not to say there’s no fun to be had from these types of battles. The thing I found the most entertaining from playing was the serendipity of actually finding synergy between the cards in my deck. Hitting a raid target and pulling off a big move from a pack of random cards is uniquely satisfying, as is slowly building up for a big play that requires specific card combos against all odds.

The challenge is also great as it forces you to remember what cards are in your deck and the liklihood of finding what you need to make specific interactions work.

How well you can plan for these types of scenarios will impact your chances of sucess.

Con: games quickly turn into a battle of attrition

Other than the lack of customizability, the other big glaring issue with Five Pack Battles is how largely un-fun they are. Whereas regular UNION ARENA battles are a constant back-and-forth contest that keep you at the edge of your seat until the very end with interesting triggers that can change the course of the game at any moment, Five Pack Battles are slow, largely monotonous battles that quickly turn into a battle of attrition where one player slowly wears out the other.

Lack of meaningful triggers means once the ball gets rolling in the favor of one player, it’s very unlikely the disadvantaged player will make a comeback.

This also means that if you are serious about winning these tournaments, coming out strong and taking Life early as well as fielding as many strong BP characters as possible right away is the secret to winning.

How Bandai could improve these Five Pack Battle Release events to be more fun

I won’t be negative without also providing some constructive criticism on how these Five Pack Battles could be improved. On easy way Bandai could make these battles more fun would be to just reduce the deck size. This would increase the odds of finding specific cards to make compelling combos possible.

My recomendation would be to keep the same five packs as they have but limit deck sizes to exactly 40 cards. The reduced card count would increase probability of finding the cards you need while also fueling deck building creativity.

At the same time, I would recommend dropping the life point count by two cards. This would speed up the battle and prevent it from feeling too much like a slog.

If Bandai really wanted to go crazy they could also include staple kits along with the five packs that give you unique strategies to add into the deck you build. While these should be optional, they would also help keep things more varied and interesting.

The verdict on Five Pack Battles

Overall I absolutely adore UNION ARENA (if you couldn’t tell by how much I write about it). However, this is the first somewhat negative take I’ve had on anything related to the game. Five Pack Battles (and release events) could be so much better with a few changes to the rules.

As they are now, release events are still a solid way to get exposed to the latest cards, hangout with friends, and have a decent time playing the game despite how uncomfortable battles with randomized decks can feel. Meanwhile, the chance to get one of those stamped Winner cards will drive the most competitive players or major fans of the IP to play regardless of the format.

Joseph Anderson

About the Author: Joseph is the founder of JosephWriterAnderson.com. You can learn more about him on the about page.

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