UNION ARENA: Speed-o’-Sound Sonic/Boros Deck Guide
Sometimes, I love to be wrong. Originally, I thought the Boros/burning your own life for added effects strategy was something of a gimmick. I totally saw the potential to use Boros as a late game closer (he’s an incredibly strong card), but I didn’t think it was likely to be an effective strategy to lean into that entirely.
Again, sometimes I love to be wrong. As it turns out, if you build your deck the right way, Boros combined with Speed-o’-Sound Sonic is an incredibly deadly deck, and is likely one of the best One Punch Man decks of all.
Speed-o’-Sound Sonic/Boros Deck List
Is removing your own life a good idea?
Generally speaking, One Punch Man is an innovative set. There’s a lot of firsts in this set. We get the first 10k character. We also have the first anti-removal deck in the form of any deck with Saitama. Another innovation, however, is the Boro’s mechanic. Essentially, this deck runs many, many cards that gain added benefits when your life and your opponent’s life is at a combined total of four or less.
While these cards range in strength from helpful to game changing, the other thing is that this deck runs a series of cards that also let you add life to your hand.
So while you are hurting yourself in the form of reducing your life for your opponent, you also are gaining incremental cards to your hand. In the case of three-cost Boros, if you choose to use the “when played” effect, you are essentially gaining three cards while also putting yourself more closely in range to leverage your powerful effects.
I absolutely love the way this works – enabling you to gain resources while working your way towards game ending effects.
Use Mosquito Girl to lower your life
While Mosquito Girl may be the “weaker” of your life removal cards, she’s still quite effective. For starters, she’s only one energy cost. This makes her effective in helping you achieve your curve while also acting as an excellent early game attacker.
Indeed, she has two handy effects. First, when you play her she can boost the BP of one character by 1000 for the rest of the turn.
Then, her activate ability lets you bring a card from your life area to your hand while boosting her to a 4k character. That’s all pretty insane if you think about it – you get an added card in your hand AND she becomes a 4k attacker.
Although this deck likes to burn through its own life in order to unlock powerful effects, I wouldn’t use her activate ability unless you really need to. There are better ways to remove life, like the last card we talked about: there-cost Boros.
Cards that boost with four life or less
There are several cards that give you added benefits from having a combined total of four life in both yours and your opponent’s life.
We’ll make our way up the ladder in regards to strength of these card’s effects so you can understand how helpful they can actually be.
Two-cost Speed-o’-Sound Sonic
We’ll start with the two-cost Sonic character. Actually, this guy’s not weak at all and when you combine all of this guy’s abilities. However, the low-life count boost he gets is the weakest of your cards. essentially, he just becomes a 4k BP character during your turn when you and your opponent have four or less life.
However, he’s really here for the other effects, like the when played draw engine and Red Color Trigger that lets you sideline a character with 2500 BP or less.
All together, two-cost Sonic’s got a lot going for it! So make sure to include him in your One Punch Man Red Deck!
Deep Sea King
Deep Sea King actually isn’t as strong as two-cost Sonic overall, but his low-life boosting effect is more necessary in this deck. While gaining 1k BP is decent, it’s really the Nullify Impact that makes him stand out in this deck. The thing is, you’re going to be wanting to run your own life down to two just about as quickly as possible. Once you do that, however, it’s handy to have a Nulify Impact character around to defend your life.
I think the argument could be made to include a total of four of these in your deck – the Nulify Impact is that handy.
Carnage Kabuto
Carnage Kabuto is the character that starts tipping the scale more in your favor with the life removal effects. Here, suddenly you have a one-AP, four-cost character you can play directly from your hand raidless that gains Impact once you have four or less life on the field. That’s a pretty insane character, and (again) unlike anything we’ve seen in the game so far.
Boros is this deck’s strongest card
Finally, there’s Boros. In addition to the incredible power you gain from just getting cards from your life into your hand, this Boros is reason enough to whittle your own life away. As soon as you hit that magical four number combined total in life for both you and your opponent, Boros becomes insanely strong. He can be played for just the cost of four, sideline any character you want on your opponent’s fornt line, hits for 5000 BP the turn he’s played, and has Impact 1.
Boros is an insane closer and works to close out the game once you’ve used your Speed-o’-Sound Sonic character to get your opponent’s life considerably down.
Speaking of…
Speed-o’-Sound Sonic is here to reduce your opponent’s life
I’m not going to pretend that Speed-o’-Sound Sonic is the greatest card in the world. He’s fairly strong. What makes him effective in this deck, however, is that you can use him earlier on to get multiple attacks in before closing things out with your stronger characters like Kabuto and Boros.
The Raid Sonic is the strongest of them. He has a decent draw effect and an ability that lets you swap in additional attackers. Think Tanjiro and Nezuko here.
However, this deck does not play super hard into the Speed-O’-Sonic engine in favor of the Boros and low-life boosting characters.
However, there will still be situations you can switch in one of your eight two energy or less Sonic characters from the bench. Alternatively you can use this effect defensively, keeping your Sonic Raid on the bench and a chump Sonic on the front line to block attacks or take specials.
I’m also running two of the two-AP Sonic characters who comes in resting. He’s a handy attacker and can help fill up your board with characters. Again, both of these guys are going to be stronger earlier in the game to whittle away your opponent’s life. Eventually you’re going to want to hand things over to your more powerful characters, however.
Super S is a powerful tech
Last, I’m running two copies of Super S in this deck. She’s a versatile character letting you choose between drawing a card or removing two lower BP characters so long as they have the same BP. This isn’t always going to work but for instances when you’re facing down multiple 1500 characters or 2000 BP characters, Super S can help soften the board, enabling you to deliver multiple hits in a turn.
I’m pleasantly surprised by just how strong this deck can be. It’s up there as one of the best Red decks we’ve had in the game so far, and possibly even stronger than Ashford or Pizza due to how powerful cards like Boros can be. From my testing, it should fair well into many of the top decks in the format.
Have fun playing it and let me know your experience with this awesome deck!
