Demon Slayer is a hot, hot show with a movie that grossed the most out of any anime movie, ever! If you’re eager to put together your own Demon Slayer deck, you can’t go wrong with building from the starter deck that comes out with the latest UNION ARENA set.

In this guide, I’m going to walk you through the process I took to come to my own build for Demon Slayer Yellow using what I got from two starter decks and two booster boxes.

Once we’ve taken a look at my little project (and the deck came out quite good), we’ll be looking at how you can take further steps to optimize this deck.

UNION ARENA Demon Slayer Starter Deck

One of my favorite ways to get my hands dirty and really experience a new card set is to start with what I get from opening products. This way you can really get a feeling for the new mechanics and figure out how you might want to build your own version of the deck.

While UNION ARENA decks are more competitive than decks in other TCGs, they’re hardly optimized. That being said, with a little work you can certainly upgrade them to be much more effective.

For this project, I picked up two Demon Slayer starter decks and two booster boxes.

Why buy two starter decks?

Picking up two starter decks will give you a good deal more consistency than you are likely to get from relying solely on your boxes. Mostly I wanted to ensure I had all the staples Yellow needs to succeed in my deck so I grabbed two decks. This also gave me access to four total copies of the Raid Tanjiro Kamado who is this deck’s strongest attacker

While there may be additional strong cards at your disposal in Demon Slayer yellow you could use to buff these decks, these will certainly do if you’re looking to hit the ground quickly and start building/playing the new set.

Demon Slayer Starter Deck Easy Upgrade

First off we have the easy upgrade. This is based solely off of the boxes I purchased along with the starter decks to give you a realistic idea of the kind of deck and consistency you can expect to get from deck building from cards you get from products.

Because I picked up the starter decks, this deck right now has all the staples you need to build a Demon Slayer Yellow deck, even if lacking the bells and whistles that come with a full Tanjiro/Nezuko build.

In this build, you’re running a relatively limited number of Nezuko compared to what you would in the full build (covered below). However, because you only have one or two cards that interact with Nezuko, that should be okay.

Bolstering your ranks are many of the powerful Hashira characters available to this energy color. While you won’t be looking to leverage the Hashira affinity effects that become available depending on the number of Hashira in play, they are still strong cards to help this rush deck succeed.

Despite being a budget build, this deck has surprising strength and synergy, and using it you are certainly able to fill up your board in a hurry with characters you can use to rush your opponent’s life.

Full Tanjiro/Nezuko Demon Slayer Starter deck build

While I have most of the cards I need for this deck already, I’m missing some key ingredients to really lean into the dynamic sibling attack relationship that you’ll be looking for in a full Tanjiro/Nezuko build.

Let’s look at some of the key cards you can add to the above deck to increase synergy. You can get these cards either from buying products or simply by purchasing the singles via TCGPlayer.

The strongest Tanjiro card

Although the Tanjiro that this starter deck comes with is fairly strong, it has some shortfalls compared to this stronger Tanjiro. For starters, the starter deck Tanjiro only has Impact the turn he is played, and that Impact is only activated if you have Nezuko on the field.

Meanwhile, this Tanjiro has Impact always, and also has a powerful When Played effect that lets you recycle already used Nezuko for additional effectiveness.

Raid Nezuko packs a punch

I didn’t pull any Raid Nezuko from my packs but if I had I would definitely put them in this deck. She’s a strong character who works very, very well in tandem with Tanjiro, letting you move characters in and out of the front line, while also giving you some added attack power in the process.

One really cool strategy is to use Nezuko to safeguard your Tanjiro raid for the following turn, while also getting access to another strong attacker. One great option here is to use Nezuko’s “When Attacking” effect to swap in Inouske to the field.

If you combo this with the three-cost Tanjiro’s effect that grants additional BP whenever a character moves during the attack phase, you get access to a relatively strong, low-cost Impact attacker.

While the Demon Slayer Yellow deck may lack some of the power of other top decks in UNION ARENA right now, the synergy between these cards is fun and exciting, and this deck can certainly win if you manage to get it up and running fast enough.

UNION ARENA: Demon Slayer Yellow Starter Deck Upgrade Guide