UNION ARENA had an incredibly strong launch in North America for its English version of the game with a series of store tournaments that had some very cool cards you could win. Players from all around grabbed their favorite decks from their favorite anime and duked it out for special, unique artwork cards of favorite characters like C.C. from Code Geass and Byakuya from BLEACH all stamped with WINNER in big letters.

It’s been a few months now since the store tournaments launched and many players like me have already completed a playset of their favorite winner cards from the store tournament, while others have completed play sets of every single winner card of the series.

So what do you do when you’ve gotten your fill of store tournament winner cards? Well, don’t think you’re out of cards to chase just yet. This December saw UNION Arena kick off their Rare Battle tournaments complete with their own unique participation pack promos and prizing for the top four.

Below, let’s get into what you can get from attending a Rare Battle tournament, and look at what my personal experience was at one of these tournaments, and even an inside look at the big battle between me and the legendary UNION ARENA player who got second place at the biggest UNION ARENA tournament to date!

How do Rare Battles work?

Rare Battles are constructed events meaning you bring your already built 50-card deck to the tournament the same as you would at a store tournament. The only difference here is that you are limited to building decks out of cards from the anime the Rare Battle is for.

For example, if you are competing in the BLEACH Rare Battle, you can only bring decks built from BLEACH cards and so on.

What are the prizes you can get from winning a Rare Battle tournament?

While the store tournament prizes were pretty epic, the Rare Battle prizes might be even more exciting. Not to mention the alternate format is a welcome mix-up from the current UNION ARENA meta as players are only allowed to play decks built from the specific anime that battle is for.

Winning the tournament gets you one of these gorgeous, exclusive promo cards stamped with “WINNER” on it, depending on the anime rare battle you are competing in.

But don’t worry – this isn’t a winner-take-all kind of a deal. Players who finish 2nd-fourth also will be getting a promo. The artwork is the same as the ones above, only the cards themselves won’t have the WINNER stamp on them.

In addition to getting one of these special promos, you’ll also be getting three exlusive sleeves featuring artwork from the action points you could get from this series’s store tournaments. I thought this was a pretty cool touch and I will definitely be using them to sleeve up my own action points for decks.

What do you get just for showing up?

As if that weren’t reason enough to compete in a Rare Battle, you also get prizes just for playing. Just like in the case of store tournaments, you will get a special promo pack that contains one of several promo cards also featuring exclusive artwork. These cards are so nice looking that they are reasons enough to show up and play without fear of “wasting” your time if you don’t happen to snag a winner promo.

How my BLEACH Rare Battle final battle went

Now that we’ve covered the basics of how these tournaments work and what you can get from competing, let’s talk about my own experience playing at a BLEACH Rare Battle. I’d done well earlier this week finishing in first playing my BLEACH Purple deck list so I figured I might as well bring that to the BLEACH Rare Battle despite the fact I figured I’d be facing down plenty of mirror matches.

Interestingly enough, in the battle to decide first and second place against my good friend Jeremy (the guy I was talking about earlier who also writes for this blog), we were both playing – you guessed it – BLEACH Purple!

The final battle – BLEACH Purple Mirror Match!

It was a battle of epic proportions and we were neck-and-neck each step of the way. I managed to pull out with the narrow victory in the end.

If I could pinpoint one play that probably won me the game it was when I chose to hold back some of my strongest characters and wait instead for my opponent to play his first. This didn’t come without its own fair share of sacrifices. Indeed, at a pivitol moment I was forced to choose between blocking a Renji Raid with Damage 2 and letting it through.

You would think the right move here would have been to block the Renji as getting behind in Life early on theoretically is bad against a deck like BLEACH Purple that likes to move quickly.

However, because I had held back from fielding my own Raid Renji and instead pushed a 2500 BP Ichigo forward to take a life, I actually wasn’t going to be that far behind by allowing the Damage 2 attack through.

Because I hadn’t played the Renji, I knew that I wanted more bodies on the field to take as much life as possible in a single turn, and I also had a Getsugatensho in my hand. So essentially in this scenario I was trading his two shot attack at my life for a three life shot the next turn. This largely worked from a life trading standpoint because I had been aggressive in taking a life on my first turn.

Luckily enough the Damage 2 triggered a Special so I actually got to save my Tensho for later. That was a very lucky move but also one of the advantages of letting a Damage 2 hit through – you get the chance to activate more triggers, and even choose the order in which they resolve!

The chances of hitting a special from the Life are also one of the reasons why I didn’t choose to field the Raid Renji that I had in my hand even though I could on the very second turn (I had a Bankai and had gone second). I was worried that what happened to my opponent might happen to me. Weird how that works.

Regardless, it was still an exceptionally close match – just what I would expect from my opponent who is easily one of the best players around (and I was lucky he wasn’t playing his Kurapika Green deck which I would argue is his best deck for him).

The BLEACH Winner card is more gorgeous in person

As cool as this winner card looked online, it looks even more gorgeous in person. For the deciding round the shop owners put these cards on the table beside us and told us to go at it. Seeing this beautiful card right next to me within reach definitely motivated me to dig a little deeper and take the risks necessary to win any tough battle.

I found this unique twist on the UNION ARENA battles energizing and the challenge of competing for a Rare Battle Winner card exciting. I hope you have a chance to attend one of these events and snag one for yourself, as well!

I Got the BLEACH Rare Battle Winner Card – Here’s How it Went