Join me for the heartbreaks and the joys that led to winning four winner cards –– going undefeated at four tournaments with four different decks.

If you’re looking for a TCG with fantastic support for local tournaments and competition, UNION ARENA might just be the game you are looking for. Unlike other TCGs that provide minimal support to local scenes and limited prizing, there are a variety of ways to get involved at your favorite game shop competing for meaningful prizes varying from the excellent store tournament cards to the rarer Rare Battle promos.

Starting in January, Bandai released a new wave of Winner cards featuring characters from the two sets to be released in early 2025, as well as a card featuring Nobara from Jujutsu Kaisen which released last November.

I completed a full playset of the Rengoku winner card less than one month after the 2025 Vol. 1 Store Tournaments started. Perhaps just as interesting, each winner card was from a tournament that I won outright, going undefeated and taking the top spot. As if that weren’t cool enough, at each of those undefeated runs I played a different deck – a feat pretty impressive in-and-of itself showcasing a handy control of a range of strategies rather than riding one OP deck from start to finish.

Buckle up and I’ll take you through this incredible ride from zero to four Winner cards in under four weeks.

Winner Card One – Jan 3rd with Purple BLEACH

My first winner card of the set came from also my first store tournament for the 2025 vol. 1 series. An interesting theme of each of the winner cards I bagged from the series so far is that each was on the back of a somewhat disgruntling defeat. For this tournament, the night before I had finished in second place out of 17 players at a BLEACH Rare Battle. While that’s actually pretty solid it was my first Rare Battle defeat as I had won both my Code Geass Rare Battle and BLEACH Rare Battle undefeated leading up to this one. While I still go the promo, I felt that I had made something of a wrong choice in going with a hybrid Ichigo/Byakuya build.

Going into this tore tournament, I went back to my trusty old BLEACH Purple build which hasn’t ever let me down. It didn’t that night either, and carried me through several rounds against strong decks and opponent’s to the finish line.

Here’s a rundown of each of the matchups I faced while piloting BLEACH Purple.

Winner card one matchups playing Purple BLEACH

Win vs. Blue Sukuna/Nanami
Win vs. Purple Code Geass
Win vs. Purple Code Geass

Besides seeking redemption with Purple BLEACH, I also knew that most players would be playing Code Geass at that point as the set hadn’t been out very long. And with the holidays happening shortly after release, everyone was excited to test out what was then considered the best UNION ARENA deck.

I’d run the matchup in tests many times and actually felt as though Purple BLEACH had the slight advantage given less dependence on a full energy line. I was not dissapointed and the matchup handled well for Purple BLEACH.

Winner Card Two – Jan 17 with Purple Code Geass

If you notice the dates here I’m skipping a week as I actually didn’t play for a whole week while I was away in Disneyland covering the North American Championships for Lorcana. Eager to get back and play, I hadn’t actually had the chance to play Purple Code Geass competitively and wanted to find something spicy to take with me to my next store tournament.

After running a few different variations of Purple Code in tests, I settled on a build that played hard into the powerful Checkmate mechanic. Using this event card you can double down on the damage gained via Guren’s powerful forced block/Impact combo.

The night before winning my second Winner card in the set, I actually burned out fairly hard at a tournament and quit early to go home. Partly it was just bad luck on my part and good plays on my opponent’s part that resulted in the loss. Partly it was that I was overplaying into Checkmate, running four copies in my deck which was, in reality, too much.

Additionally – and although losing is as big a part of playing TCGs as winning is if you want to get better – I had pulled a serialized Tanjiro just hours before the tournament and I think I was still coming down off that insane rush, making my plays a little off kilter.

After reassessing and making a few positive changes to the deck, I went to a store tournament the following night and went undefeated.

Winner Card Three – Jan 25th with Purple Gyutaro

You could say I have a thing for Purple decks. My third winner card was also won piloting purple, only this time with a brand new deck from Demon Slayer – a set that had only officially released a day before this tournament took place.

Luckily, I’d been testing and experimenting all week long with different varations of Demon Slayer Purple before landing on the winning combination of cards featuring both Gyutaro and the powerful sideline engine usually associated with the Muzan build.

I’ve written extensively about my Gyutaro/Daki deck build that won me the 20-player tournament where I won my third winner card as well as the journey to building it. That being the case I won’t go too deep here on the extensive process it took to land on the final build in this article.

To put it briefly, I attended three different tournaments that week as well as running countless practice matches against meta decks to determine the above deck that won me the tournament and my third winner card. It was probably the single biggest UA tournament I’ve won to this date, and the fact I did so with a unique, original deck build from a set that had only just been released may be one of my bigger TCG accomplishments ever.

Round one versus Hunter x Hunter Green

My first round was against Hunter x Hunter Green but not the famous Kurapika. Instead, it was against Gon and Friends. While that deck can do decently when you get what you need, I had a much better start than my opponent did, and was able to control the fight from start to finish.

A pivotal moment in the match was when my opponent fielded a Gon raid target onto the front line after using his search event to pull a Raid Gon into his hand. Of course, getting rid of that target is a no-brainer in that instance, and the game was pretty much sealed from that moment on.

Round two versus Lancelot

Lancelot is actually my worst matchup with Gyutaro as the 5000 BP bodies eliminate Gyutaro’s main advantage – that being threatening a double attack. With that in mind I quickly rushed my opponent down before he could get his energy line going. After an initial rush, he didn’t have what he needed to rebuild to threaten me in the late game, and I pulled off this win with relative ease.

Round three Purple Code Geass

Facing off against Purple Code Geass at a tournament is bittersweet for me. It’s bitter because of how good the deck is, but sweet because I practice with that particular deck so much that I know the ins-and-outs of it. I also know its weaknesses which is a huge advantage you can and should leverage.

This match was much, much closer. However, slowly but surely I was able to pull ahead. There were a few key turning points that helped me pull ahead. For starters, my opponent made a bold opening move for Code Geass by sacrificing a sound energy line for an early attack with Gawain off of a tapped zero-cost C.C.

While I’m all for aggressive plays, such a play may not be the most advised thing to do when piloting Purple Code Geass as that deck really needs five energy on the board most of the time in order to get its stronger plays off – namely your five-cost Guren.

In this case it didn’t hurt him too terribly much as he was able to rebuild, but it’s always a risky maneuver.

However, he hit a Special Trigger off of life the following turn with the Gawain after which I had a huge advantage in terms of board presence.

The next fatal move was my opponent playing The Power of Absolute Obedience without having Lelouch on the field. While this did remove one of my 4000 BP bodies, it did so at the cost of additional plays.

Lastly, as Gyutaro was so new in the meta at that point my opponent didn’t know that he switched to active after winning a battle, so he essentially gave me free removal against my Gyutaro the first time I attacked with him.

Round four versus Blue JJK

By now myself and my opponent were at the top table playing for the big win. Even though Blue JJK isn’t as bad of a matchup as Lancelot, it’s still a scary one because of just how powerful this deck can be if it finds enough fingers in the sideline. Nanami is also a powerful tool in this deck, slowing you down and preventing from rushing your opponent down.

Going first I took the aggressive stance, taking life early and then building up a solid wall of 4000 BP characters early on. With only one finger in sideline and facing down an early rush play and a full board of 4000 BP characters, it was mostly a downhill battle after that while my opponent handled himself admirably, giving it his all to the very end.

Again not knowing Gyutaro well enough helped here as my opponent did attempt to block him once only to realize he switches to active afterwards. While that didn’t win the game for me, it didn’t hurt. The only tough decision I faced in this matchup was towards the end deciding whether to sideline a Nanami and let him rest one of my characters before attacking or not. I settled on going for the sideline and the final play also involved playing Demon Powers for added insurance despite having a lethal attack already and superior board presence.

Ultimately this tournament was a thrilling one to say the least, and my opponents were all gracious and a pleasure to play with.

Completing the playset with Yellow Tanjiro

After that insane victory playing a brand new deck of mine, I really wasn’t thinking too much about the fact that I still had a playset of Winner Rengoku cards to complete. Despite the fact I figured I’d just play my Purple Gyutaro build again at my next store tournament, after practicing a bit with Demon Slayer Yellow, I figured I’d give my unique take on this deck a try.

After studying the cards and the meta a bit – including existing Tanjiro builds – I realized that most of the decks I’d seen and talk I’d heard around Demon Slayer Yellow was focused on the wrong things.

A unique take on Tanjiro Yellow ditches Raid Nezuko

Everyone was talking about the Raid Nezuko and her ability to switch in multiple attackers. However, getting this combo up and running takes a lot of moving pieces making it far less consistent than other top decks. Plus, players seemed to be missing a key insight into the strengths of Yellow Tanjiro and that is it’s actually a very strong removal deck.

When you play your cards right, omit the Raid Nezuko, and focus instead on the strongest cards Yellow Demon Slayer has to offer, what you have is something of a mashup of the powerful removal of BLEACH Purple with the crazy stun effects of Toshiro Hitsugaya – a former top contender in the UA meta.

What first gave me the idea to drop Raid Nezuko from my finished Tanjiro build wasn’t just the fact I didn’t happen to pull any of her from my Demon Slayer boxes: I had done a similar thing with my Gyutaro Build, dropping Raid Daki in order to focus on stronger cards available to the energy color.

While both of these characters are strong and similar in that they focus on synergy with other attackers while only posessing an energy cost of three, ultimately they fall short of stronger characters with higher base BP. That may not sound like a lot but a Raid character with only 3500 BP can’t be played vanilla for much of a strategic advantage, and I’ve found this fact to greatly diminish the reason to play characters like this in my deck.

Additionally, focusing on an all out attack the way Raid Nezuko encourages you to do often fails in the later stages of the game or even if you just get unlucky enough against certain triggers.

Unlocking crazy removal with Tanjiro and Tokito

Instead, this deck focuses on leveraging the powerful two-AP cost Tanjiro removal and Tokito’s insane stun effect to gain the upperhand on your opponent. This is a much more midrange strategy than the Nezuko rush build, and allows you to go toe-to-toe with just about any meta deck out there.

Additionally, I ran four copies of the starter deck Tanjiro instead of the other Tanjiro most players run. Again, this is partly because I happened to have four of the starter deck Tanjiro handy and less of the other one but also because of the fact that in this build gaining the 500+ BP until the start of your next turn can be a huge, huge advantage. Much more so than being able to play a Nezuko from your hand/sideline for free.

Round one versus Code Geass Purple

Code Geass purple is one of the top meta decks after all so I suppose I shouldn’t be surprised to see this deck pop up at tournaments all the time. Be that as it may, I was able to turn a hand full of zero cost characters into a crazy rush attack that took four of my opponent’s life cards before he even had the chance to field a character to the front line.

This is actually a fairly handy tactic to use against Purple Code Geass as this deck typically can’t afford to field too many characters to the front line early as it needs to build up a solid energy line. Additionally, Purple Code Geass likes to sit and wait until you have some characters on the field before it starts forcing you to block or sidelining your characters with its Gurens.

Despite that opening rush attack my opponent was still able to give me a run for my money, and it remained a close fight to the very end, although I never lost the upper hand that an early rush attack of that magnitude provides.

A very critical play in this matchup was possible thanks to my astute choice in including four copies of the starter deck Tanjiro as it blocked a Guren forced block at a critical moment and won the battle, which means I not only had a strong attacker the next turn but didn’t have to give up a life to Impact.

Tokito was also critical here as once I had the upper hand I could retain it instead of burning out as more rush-style decks tend to do. Tokito was able to freeze down an opposing Guren, while acting as a defensive barrier in the case he was sidelined.

Round two versus Demon Slayer Red

This round was the most surprising of the night in that – despite having a very rough start – my opponent was able to come back and almost threaten to defeat me entirely. While I again never quite lost the upper hand gained from a much stronger start, things got very, very hairy when my opponent recovered and was able to build up a full front line of attackers including two Zenitsu Raid and two Inouske Raid with Impact.

That’s not a fun board to face down at all and this was made possible partly because of having a hand full of Finals as well as just solid plays.

In the end, however, the lead I gained early on was enough to pull me through, and a combination of having Impact combined with Yellow Color Trigger enabled me to fairly easily edge out the win.

Round three versus Kurapika

The final round of the final tournament to complete my playset was also probably the single most challenging of any of the matchups highlighted above. Kurapika is not a fun matchup to face down with Tanjiro as when it gets what it needs it is very hard to contend with. Kurapika’s high BP stats undermine your ability to remove via Tanjiro, and you instead need to lean much harder on Tokito.

That being said, the biggest challenge of this particular match came from a gamble I took on promoting early to the front line to play aggressively without having the curve in my hand or on the field to ensure I could keep playing cards next turn. While the gamble wasn’t insanely risky as I did have three energy on the energy line, ultimately it caused me to brick a turn as I couldn’t draw anything to enable me to play more cards.

Despite a decent start, I almost lost the entire battle because of this brick, and my opponent’s 4000 BP Kurapika with Impact characters combined with a strategic two-AP Hisoka play nearly cost me the game.

Ultimately, however, my aggressive plays and survival with the Tanjiro 4500 with BP boost carried me through, and I was able to attack through his characters after dropping a Special and swinging with two Impact attacks.

The journey from zero to four Winner cards essentially over three weeks of play was exciting and thrilling with plenty of ups-and-downs and hard work. Winning each of these tournaments with a different deck meant constantly testing and improving my decks while testing them painstakingly against a plethora of other decks, more often on my own than with others. Winning tournaments is no easy task, and that’s just as true in UNION ARENA as it is with any other TCG.

If there’s one takeaway I could leave you with, however, as you embark on your own journey to claim a lot of Winner cards and earn the esteem of your peers it’s this: don’t let previous failures deter you from your goal. None of these wins came without first experiencing defeat and learning from failure in order to improve. Losing is as much a part of playing TCGs as winning, and in some ways we learn more from losing than we do from winning.

So if that new deck idea at first doesn’t succeed – try, try again. Keep testing, keep playing, and keep a good attitude no matter if you win or lose. It’s all part of the game.

UNION ARENA: How I Got Four 2025 Winner Cards in Under a Month