UNION ARENA: Every Solo Leveling Deck, Ranked
Solo Leveling had some of the biggest hype of any UNION ARENA set to date. But how strong are Solo Leveling decks?
Unlike most UNION ARENA sets, Solo Leveling was released in the English Version first, meaning we didn’t get a sneak peek at how well the decks performed in the Japanese meta ahead of time. At the same time, perhaps this is the exact reason why Solo Leveling has been such a competitively dominant set in the English version: no preconceived notions gave players a chance to take a risk on new strategies.
Below, we’ll be looking at each and every new deck in Solo Leveling, and ranking them from strong to strongest.
#4 Green Level Up
The Level Up deck captures the core mechanic of the anime that makes Sung Jinwoo so formidable especially in the first season – his ability to constantly level up. In the deck, this manifests in a unique mechanic we’ve not seen before – Raid’s that can essentially Raid over other Raids. That’s not exactly what’s going on here as technically the Raid card is raiding over “the base” card of the Raid (Raid cards can’t technically Raid over other characters with Raid).
That being said, my main problem with the deck is that the payoff doesn’t feel quite like it matches how much work it takes to get your Sung Jinwoo fully powered up. Sure, six cost Sung Jinwoo is very powerful.
At surface level, Sung Jinwoo is a six-cost character who acts a lot like a baby Green Lancelot. He can sideline a character on your opponent’s field (regardless of BP) When Played via one of your abilities, has Impact, and can easily boost to a damage 2 character when combined with two-cost Sung Jinah. However, a lot goes into boosting this character into someone who is capable of all of this – including having to have first “leveled” him up from his five-cost character. It’s using your five-cost Sung Jinwoo to play him that will activate the sideline effect – one of this deck’s strongest mechanics.
This is all really cool stuff that’s super lore-inspired – something that makes UNION ARENA so fun. However, I can’t help but look at what this deck is trying to do and feel like building up to eight energy and dropping an Air Cavalry could achieve the same thing more efficiently.
#5 Fourth Jeju Island Raid
Fourth Jeju Island feels like the sidekick to the other main decks in this set. It’s solidly a fine deck – it has removal capabilities, and the ability to play several non Raid characters to active onto your field. But there’s a catch: to use many of these cards’ strongest effects you will have to switch them to resting and they will stay that way the next time they should switch to active – such as at the end of your turn.
While that sounds really bad, you have several abilities that allow your characters to switch to active again – the strongest of which is your Raid Cha Hae-in.
Cha Hae-in is a reasonably solid Raid – one capable of attacking twice in a turn at 5000 BP. Combine that with your many other strong attackers and swap effects and you can easily get many attacks through in a single turn while using your four-cost Choi Jong-in to clear away chump blockers. Cha’s When Attacking isn’t just good for switching herself to active, however. It has the added benefit of removing the “will remain set to resting the next time it would be switched to active,” thereby removing the main drawback of some of your strongest characters.
It’s a nice-to-have in a decidedly mid strategy, placing this deck pretty solidly in the B-tier range.
#3 Japanese Hunters
While the other two green decks in this set are relatively low level (mid-tier or lower), Japanese Hunters is a respectively upper mid-tier build. In the right hands, this strategy can be pretty deadly. Using the Choi Raid, you rapidly deplete your opponent’s low-BP defenders. Then, it’s relatively easy to punch through massive hits on life with your powerful front line of 4000 BP attackers.
Additionally, this deck has a very effective free-play character in the form of 2-AP cost Goto. Coming in at 4000 BP active while also switching two AP-cards to active affords tremendous momentum to this deck.
It’s not a sure thing, however as you do have to have plenty of cards in your hand to activate the effect. But when you combine Goto’s AP re-stand with Choi’s removal, and the combined offensive might of your many 4000 BP Japanese Hunter attackers, you have a solidly strong strategy – if not quite fast enough to keep up with the current top tier decks.
#1 Purple Sung Jin Woo
The Purple Sung Jinwoo deck (not to be confused with the other Purple Shadow Army deck) is overall the strongest and most consistent of all the Solo Leveling decks. Taken as a whole, it has some pretty insane power. Let’s start with the most obvious powerhouse – the Raid Sung Jinwoo.
For starters, five-cost Jinwoo has a powerful force block/Impact attack combo. At 6000 BP that’s pretty insane, meaning your opponent really won’t be able to stop this guy from getting through unless they are nullifying it.
As strong as that play is on its own (a combo that – while less powerful – once made the likes of Code Geass Purple best deck in format), it’s not the only thing that makes this Sung Jinwoo card so strong. Additionally, Jinwoo has a free play ability baked into his “When Attacking,” one that lets you free play a character from your sideline. The best target to use this on is your four-cost Cha Hae-In who will come in set to active, and won’t be able to be blocked by a character with 4000 or more BP.
To use Jinwoo’s effect to free play the Cha Hae-In, however, you will need to have an impressive 20 cards in sideline. That’s not really a massively tall order in a deck that has so much self mill potential, making it a relatively reliable combo to achieve.
There are a ton of other interesting effects in this deck that mostly focus on unlocking benefits from adding characters from your sideline to your hand. However, it’s this mechanic that makes this deck so overwhelmingly strong – easily in the upper UNION ARENA tiers.
#1 Purple Shadow Army
Shadow Army has proven itself to be one of the most popular and strongest decks in Solo Leveling, toppling a Regional already and not looking to slow down anytime soon.
Despite looking like a standard go-big-or-go-home deck strategy, looks can be deceiving. What’s actually going on here is that Purple Shadow Army is one of the strongest free-play decks in UNION ARENA: one capable of rapidly filling the board with characters that can easily boost to high BP threats.
But that’s not all: it’s also got the single strongest character in the set in twelve-cost Sung Jinwoo.
This character functions like a stronger Purple Saito from the Rurouni Kenshin deck. In effect, Jinwoo can Snipe from the energy line just like Saito, granting very similar advantages to that strategy and complete with the Impact.
When played right, Shadow Army does what the best UNION ARENA decks do better than all the rest right now: rapidly fill up the board with characters that can easily be boosted to 4000 BP+ threats – all backed up by a powerful closer.
Learn how to build and play the Shadow Army deck via my guide.
UNION ARENA sets have been so strong lately that you start to wonder if every set will be meta defining. While Solo Leveling isn’t overwhelming the meta with its playshare, it’s more than proven its standing as one of the strongest sets overall. This combined with its collectibility makes it an excellent starting point for new players, as well as the next-best choice for established UNION ARENA players and collectors.
