For those doing the store tournaments so far, you might already know a little bit about this deck as both Lelouch and C.C. were teased as store winner card. Indeed, the four-cost two-action C.C. is a beast of a card who is absolutely worth bolstering just to take advantage of her powerful closing abilities.

Below, let’s take a look at the custom Code Geass Red Pizza deck I used to win first place at my the Code Geass Rare Battle.

While dedicated UNION ARENA players will undoubtedly look to add some max rarity versions of these cards to this deck, the base version Pizza deck has the advantage of being quite affordable. This deck should cost you under $30 and is quite strong. That’s great news if you are on a budget!

This deck really is all about pizza

It’s called Code Geass Pizza for a reason: Pizza affinity cards are the center of this deck’s strategy. Whether or not you are able to win the game will largely depend on how consistently you are hitting your Pizza cards. Hit a bunch of them early on and you could be on a fast track to vicotry.

Luckily, you have plenty of cards capable of pulling these cards from your deck. Let’s look at each Pizza affinity card first and how you would use it, and then dive into the many ways you have to search these cards out.

Delivery Pizza

If you are a fan of Code Geass then this picture should need no explanation: depicting the ever-popular character eating her signature pizza. However, in gameplay I actually really like this card. It essentially lets you search for more cards for free as you restand the AP you used to play it.

Giant Pizza

While Delivery Pizza is the stronger of the two Pizza card, it’s also very handy in certain situations. While this deck bolsters a good many 4000+ BP characters, you can easily bolster the 3000 for free using this Giant Pizza event, making them more formidable when attacking. Or use it to boost your 4000 BP characters to take out bigger baddies out there like the Lancelot. The choice is yours!

This deck runs two powerful Pizza searchers

Getting Pizza cards into your sideline is the name of the game in this deck. As such, you have many powerful and reliable ways to search out Pizza affinity cards. Each of these cards enable you to search seven cards deep on the top of your deck which is the strongest card search ability in the game in terms of depth.

Of course, you are limited to just pulling out Pizza cards that you find there. But because you are looking so deep, finding these cards happens pretty reliably.

While three-cost Lelouch works as effective raid target, Ganymede stands out as the more useful of the two. Being able to raid at just three energy is very effective in this deck. What’s more, Ganymede offers a ton of utility thanks to the fact it also has two energy generation.

One effective play is to play Ganymede, pull a missing Pizza card from your deck, and leave it on your energy line to blitz the field with a two-action C.C. Earlier on before a C.C. is necessary, you can poke and prod at your opponent’s life with it.

That quickly gets even more threatening if you manage to pair a Ganymde with Giant Pizza, making it a 4000 BP three-cost raid!

Four-cost C.C. is one of the strongest characters in the game

Of course, we have to talk about the reason you are putting all of that Pizza into your sideline in the first place, and that’s C.C. I have to say I originally underestimated this powerhouse when I won her during the store tournament season. After using her to win several battles at the Code Geass release event, however, my opinion quickly changed about her.

Now, I’m glad I completed a winner card playset (and more) from winning a bunch of tournaments. She’s really, really good.

Of course, how strong she is will depend on how many Pizza cards you get into your sideline. But manage to get a full six and she can quickly close out a game for you.

Code Geass Red Pizza deck offers plenty of card removal

Lastly, one thing that makes this deck capable of contending with the other top decks out there is the fact that it has a ton of removal. You have your specials which reliably sideline 5000 characters or less, and the formidable five cost Lelouch who you can use to sideline characters up to 4000 with relative ease.

Suzaku is this deck’s secret sauce

Lastly, we have Suzaku who might be this deck’s MVP. For only four energy, Suzaku has Impact and a powerful “when attacking” effect that lets you stand a character who has already attacked – provided they have 3000 BP or less. That’s most of the characters in this deck. If your opponent has been focusing on building up their energy line rather than their front line, Suzaku can be a deadly turn two or three play, letting you quickly diminish your opponent’s life.

In the Rare Battle event I won, Suzaku was actually my MVP not the big C.C. and he was the deciding card that won me the final battle.

Code Geass Red Pizza – advanced plays

Now that we’ve covered our bases, let’s go into a few more specifics on how you can use more advanced plays to dominate the field with Pizza.

Look to promote early

Turn one, always set up to promote the next turn. You need to be taking life early and often in order for this deck to work. However, make sure you don’t do this at the cost of having a resource line. You really need to be using all of your AP each and every turn so if you don’t have the cards in your hand to enable you to play your higher cost energy characters, don’t worry about taking life but focus the energy line.

Ideally I’ll promote a zero cost character to attack my opponent’s life early while building up my energy line slowly behind it.

Set up the Suzuku combo early

One of the added benefits of promoting early is that you will likely have a low BP character in play that you can combo with Suzuku to take a lot of life. You don’t need a ton of energy on your energy line to get this combo to work: just four and a Suzaku character.

Use Raid to move Suzaku to the front line and combo him with your low BP attacker to take as much as three life in a turn. This is especially deadly thanks to Suzaku’s built in Impact keyword, making it impractical for your opponent to block him.

Pay attention to the order in which you arrange your cards from your Pizza Searchers

One thing I learned fairly quickly from playing my Pizza deck was that it really matters how you arrange the cards you search via your three-cost Lelouch and Ganymede. And how you arrange the cards depends on what your game state is like. Essentially, there are two different ways to do this which I will cover below.

Phase one: less than six Pizza affinity in Sideline

Before you have six Pizza in sideline: Always prioritize putting an extra Pizza card if there is one in the seven cards first. You will cycle through your deck a lot with the seven card search capabilities meaning you want to ensure those extra Pizza cards are easy to find.

If you don’t find a Pizza card in there, then that means you need to prioritize your big powerful cards. I always put my four-cost C.C. first if she’s in the seven cards, followed by my removal cards like Chess game and five-cost Lelouch.
If there are Final triggers in your seven searched cards, put those right next to your C.C. in order as you can pull of a crazy combo with these two cards (more on that in a bit).
Suzaku is an option to put closer to the top of the stack and will depend on the matchup (more on that in a bit).
Lastly, put all additional Pizza search cards at the very bottom. Chances are you won’t need them again by the time you draw them again as you should have found all of your Pizza cards by then.

Phase two: six or more Pizza in sideline

Clearly if you have six Pizza cards in your sideline you don’t need any more Pizza. Put whatever extra Pizza you come across at the very bottom of the stack and just prioritize removal, C.C., and Finals.

The Four life kill combo

Now we’ve gotten to the really fun part: putting that powerful C.C. you’ve worked so hard to power up to work. C.C. is so deadly once you have six Pizza in sideline that I tend to save her to play towards the end of the game for fear she might get sidelined too early otherwise.

While she is a powerful closer in-and-of herself, if you pull of this combo, you can utterly decimate your opponent’s board.

I’m not gonna lie: it takes a lot to get this set up but I’ve pulled it off more than a few times in actual battles to taste its sweetness. Here’s what you need in order to make it work:

Six Pizza affinity cards in sideline.
Four energy generation on the energy line.
Two four-cost C.C. in hand.
One President’s Orders (Final)
Full APs

That’s a tall order but get all these things and it’s sort of like the Exodia combo, especially if your opponent has only four life remaining. All you do is play one C.C., hit the Final, and then play the second C.C.. Pull this combo off and you are clearing the remainder of your opponent’s life in a single swing.

Code Geass Red Pizza matchup guide

Code Geass Red Pizza is an excellent choice for the Rare Battle format where players are only allowed to bring decks built with cards from the Code Geass. It has solid matchups against the two big decks in this format if you know what you are doing. Here are a few tips for those matchups. This also applies to regular tournaments because these two decks also happen to be two of the strongest UNION ARENA decks right now. So you’ll run into plenty of them.

I’ll also cover one additional matchup which is against the popular Blue Sukuna deck. I’ve had the chance to practice against this deck a bit and have some pointers there, too.

Vs Lancelot Code Geass Green

The main advantage you have against this deck is how quickly you can move. You absolutely have to out-blitz this deck as if they can get to the part where they just start shoving Lancelot’s down your throat you will not be able to take it.

Five-cost is a lot less effective in this matchup as it can’t usually clear Lancelots. However, he is handy to take out a one-cost Euphemia who blocks your Specials from your hand. Use Lelouch to clear Euphie first then slam a Lancelot with a Chess Game.

Again, this only works when your opponent isn’t fully set up as you just can’t get rid of more than one Lancelot in turn.

All of that being said, if you’ve managed to take enough life early on (which usually isn’t a huge issue in this matchup), you can always use C.C. to clear the life out at the end regardless of how many Lancelot are on board. She has 5000 BP when you have six Pizza in sideline meaning she’s cutting through even the mighty Lancelot!

Lastly, don’t underestimate Giant Pizza in this matchup. You can use it to boost your 4000 BP characters to being strong enough to get through Lancelot as well!

Against Code Geass Purple

Purple is the real threat here and it’s the deck you’re likely going to run into the most as it is the single strongest deck right now. In this matchup, again it is critical that you get moving fast. Code Geass Purple can’t do much against you without having five energy on board and that’s your main advantage: you don’t need more than three energy to start doing some serious damage.

Additionally, Suzaku is very strong in this matchup, letting you out-aggro your opponent while being a huge threat since Purple doesn’t field 5000 BP characters.

Be very wary of the Impact and forced block Guren in this matchup and look to always have a patsy on field. Keeping a lower cost character alongside your stronger ones means you can let them survive a turn as opposed to using them on a forced block.

Lastly, your five-cost Lelouch is deadly in this deck, letting you easily clear those Guren or Gawain they worked so hard to play.

Blue Sukuna

Lastly (and outside the Rare Battle meta), Blue Sukuna is a pretty tough matchup for this deck but it is winnable. The main challenge I found in this deck is that you can’t often pull off that crazy four life turn with two C.C. in play the way you can against other decks if they are fielding the Raid Nanami. He’ll simply freeze your C.C. if you sideline it. That’s not a hue issue however and otherwise this matchup is actually fairly decent for you.

While Code Geass Red Pizza may lack some of the bells and whistles that make the other top tier decks in this set stand out from the crowd, it’s a very strong deck in its own right, and a great option for players looking for a good combo of fun and power.

With the right mindset, it can absolutely dominate the playing field!

UNION ARENA: Code Geass Red Pizza Deck List and Guide