UNION ARENA: Every One Punch Man Deck, Ranked

Although UNION ARENA’s sixth set – One Punch Man – has yet to hit the shelves, all remaining spoilers (minus the alts) have been revealed, giving us a solid understanding of what the main deck archetypes are likely to be.

And while innovations and in-game testing will help us solidify the top way to play these decks, I’ve put together a few preliminary builds that encompass the deck archetypes that capture the main themes available to the energy colors and are most likely see play.

Below, let’s walk through each of the main decks from One Punch Man and how they stack up from least to greatest.

#6 Hellish Blizzard

This isn’t the first time we’ve seen a deck focus on event cards as a requirement to unlock powerful effects. However, it does so in a way that we haven’t quite seen before, putting a huge focus on events as the main requirement to victory.

This deck doesn’t look awful – it does have some interesting plays, letting you play events for free, and putting your oppontent’s into a deep freeze while simultaneously enabling you to sideline cards.

However, none of your characters are really strong enough even with the boosts from the event cards to justify this strategy or really make including a ton of events in your deck advantageous in the long run.

#5 Red Speed-o-Sound Sonic

Red decks are typically pretty aggro. While in this set the stronger red deck is likely to be Garou and he’s anything but aggro, Speed-o-Sound Sonic lives up to its name in delivering a frenetic gameplay experience that could easily overwhelm your opponent early on if you let it. This deck focuses on using four-cost characters ro rush down your opponent without worrying too much about added removal.

That beings said, you should be able to get away with pairing Sonic with Boros the same way you can pair Garou with that character to enable late game finishing moves.

I don’t think Boros as its own archetype currently has the kind of support it needs to be an attacker in its own right, however having a character with Impact, cost four under the right circumstances, and one that can also remove a character when played is just too good not to include in any deck you can.

#4 Green Saitama

Green Saitama looks really, really cool. In some ways, it’s the deck that most lives up to the One Punch Man name, given fifteen-cost Saitama can literally end the game in one punch. However, he’s insanely hard to play even with all of the potential energy generation you have at your disposal here.

My guess is that this deck will suffer much in the same way similar decks like Muzan from Demon Slayer suffered given it takes until late in the game to be able to get these sorts of effects off.

However, if the steep cost of paying Saitama proves to be surmountable, this deck could turn out to be very strong and make for a fairly different kind of game than what’s available to us in the North American meta to date.

#3 Metal Bat

Although most will likely gravitate towards the King/Saitama deck, this Metal Bat Deck has a lot going for it. If you pay attention, it’s actually got some insane removal between the Samurai character and Pig God. As if that weren’t enough, you have a ton of Nulify Impact available to you which you can use to defend against much of what you’re likely to come across in the post One Punch Man meta.

This deck is very easy to play, doesn’t run anything higher than a four-cost character, and makes for an excellent rush deck. Not to mention Metal Bat Raid is a very strong character capable of bringing itself back from the sideline.

If you’re looking for something strong, fast, and with plenty of removal, give Metal Bat a try.

#2 Red Garou

I’m really liking the way this Red Garou deck looks. This deck has some pretty insane removal between three cost Garou’s When Played that can sideline characters based on how many cards are in your sideline, Baros’s When Played that works when you are on your last leg life-wise, and even the Hero Almanac that forces your opponent to block. Six cost Garou himself essentially forces a block as not doing so enables him to attack twice.

This deck has a lot of power behind it with the only problem being a reliance on a full sideline and characters with relatively high energy cost.

If you’re willing to take on the challenge of pulling all of that together, however, you should be in for a fun ride.

#1 Yellow Saitama

Yellow Saitama is also the deck that the One Punch Man starter deck is based off of. One really nice thing about UA in general is that Bandai is really good at giving us starter decks that feed into actual, solid competitive decks once things come to fruition. We’ve seen that with just about every set that’s come out, and One Punch Man shouldn’t be any different.

Yellow looks very, very strong. You have so much removal in this deck and can really take advantage of Saitama’s 10000 BP in a way that would just be too difficult in the Green Saitama dcek. You also get some pretty sick peripheral cards like the ONE PUNCH event card – the signature punch that you can play to reduce your opponent’s life without even needing to swing for a hit.

If you’re really hungry to play a strong deck which includes your favorite characters from the show, Yellow Saitama is the deck to run with!