What's the Over-Under on a Better Format?

So I Heard A Union Arena Ban list Was Coming

In light of the recent announcement on the Union Arena’s new restriction list coming over the weekend, I’d like to take my time to collect my thoughts and to put them in writing to see how far off base or how in-line I am with the competitive environment. I myself am not a tournament grinder, and I will often participate in one, maybe two regionals-level events a year. I am not sponsored by anyone, and I enter these tournaments almost exclusively to be a disruptive element and nuisance to anyone unprepared to play against my shit-ass decks.

So, you know, this will be the closest to an “average opinion” you’ll get from the acreage guy playing Union Arena nowadays.

I have some of my predictions listed below for some of the most problematic decks in Union Arena right now as well as an approximation for how likely these restrictions are likely to happen. I have ordained these numbers from the ether using the fine art of Making It The Fuck Up, but it condenses my opinions in a TL;DR-type fashion for those who are allergic to long paragraphs of explanation and would prefer seeing a two-digit number to summarize my thoughts on their likelihood of being banned. As an additional exercise, I will also return to this article for a follow-up to see just how likely my assumptions aligned with the actual announcement of the new restrictions.

Shadow Army

Limited to One: Sung Jinwoo [SLG-1-022] : 35% - Unlikely

So this guy is, functionally, the primary playmaker and pay-off of this deck. He’s 5000BP, he’s got Snipe-Impact, and he’s often going to be a solid blocker in the event he isn’t just winning the game on the turn he’s Sniping to remove a character from the field. However, I can see this being a valid way to restrict the deck. If there’s only one copy of this card, the easy finishing potential of the deck is practically gone, and the one extremely tempo-swinging tech of re-standing a Monarch’s Domain [SLG-1-035} or one of your supportive soldiers like Tusk [SLG-1-031] or Kaisel [SLG-1-029] before you attack is functionally an unreliable outcome. I don’t think this will happen, however, due to the style of restrictions that Bandai likes to put on decks. They’re less likely to limit the big, flashy end-game piece of a deck, as that’s a really good way to kill the deck from being ran (there’s some contention to this assumption, however - see Evangelion below). Still! If this happens? I won’t be shocked that it did, but I’ll be certainly surprised Bandai is willing to go this far to curb the deck’s power.

Pair Restriction of Both Sung Jin-woo Raids : 10% - Extremely Unlikely (… Unless?)

In the older, proto-typical days when Solo Leveling was released, a lot of players opted to include a mix of both Sung Jinwoo [SLG-1-022] and the Demon Castle Sung Jinwoo [SLG-1-021] to give the low-energy Sung Jinwoos in their energy line a way to contribute to their combat. This is a smart play, as Shadow Army is a deck that piles cards into its sideline rapidly, and a 5000BP must-be-blocked Sung Jinwoo… or a 6000 BP with Impact and must-be-blocked Sung Jinwoo is not a hard ask for this deck. This restriction I’m proposing here is a piggy-back off of the one above, because… let’s be honest? If the only restriction to Shadow Army is Sung Jinwoo [SLG-1-022] to one, then people are just going to toss this card in as a substitute. If you wanted to 110% massacre this deck, you could limit-to-one Sung Jinwoo [SLG-1-022] and then pair-restrict the Sung Jinwoo raids entirely This feels unnecessarily cruel to this deck, but if you’re a massive hater… this is technically the solution to the Sung Jinwoo problem. Nowadays, this card is cut from most lists because most people copy the Spencer Freeman list which features none of this guy. Still, it’s something to think about if you’re on a warpath to completely delete this deck form meta representation.

Limited to One: Monarch’s Domain [SLG-1-035] : 80% - Highly Likely

If you play Shadow Army, I’m willing to bet you’d be willing to agree when I say this is the best Field card in the entirety of Union Arena. A two-energy producing, plays-active, BP booster with the Shadow Army attribute is anything and everything this deck wants. Shadow Soldiers [SLG-1-030] too small to contribute to combat? Make ‘em bigger. You need Tank [SLG-1-032] to run offense as well as defense? Make him bigger. Is that 4000BP stat line on Igris [SLG-1-028] a problem because your opponent can just block with a 5000BP defender? Guess what? He’s gonna be 5000BP too now. This card turns a measured, balanced, defensive wall of weenies into the Armies of Mordor. And wouldn’t you know it, you will, more than likely, be activating this effect multiple times per turn in the mid- to late-game. This card is strong, and I’ll be stunned if it’s left completely unchecked.

Limited to One: Shadow Monarch [SLG-1-039] : 95% - Almost Guaranteed

This card is a rather unassuming one. It’s five energy to play. It’s only able to play one character active, or two rested… and the two rested are small guys. They’re just little dudes. However, the amount of Action Points this card is able to cheat out over the course of one game is utterly deplorable. Take the most common target, Igris [SLG-1-028] into consideration. Igris is a 2AP card on-face, because he not only plays active, but also spits out a Shadow Soldiers from sideline or from hand. You are playing a 2AP card, for 1AP, and he’s still played active as an attacker. Take even the lowly Beru [SLG-1-033] for instance, despite him being omitted from many lists. You can toss this guy into sideline early game, revive him when you have a critical mass of Shadow Army cards on your field, and conjure up a double-attacker to be that 5th or 6th attack you need to finish off an opponent. Even if you play two 3-energy or lower cards, this card doesn’t force you to play them to front line. You can play two-energy producing cards to your back line, adding energy dots to your field, and becoming both a -1 energy discount on Sung Jinwoo [SLG-1-022], +2 energy generated total, and if you raid that same Sung Jinwoo, he can even make that card active to use its effect the same turn its played. You are cooking with a ton of gas with this card. I’m willing to bet this will be similar to the restriction of Spear of Gaius [EVA-1-063], where we have Bandai precedent set showing us a powerful Special event is more than willing to be put to one copy 

Yellow Sakamoto

Pair Restriction of Taro Sakamoto [SMD-1-026] with Heisuke Mashimoto [SMD-1-008] and Shin Asakura [SMD-1-017] : 70% - Likely

When testing these decks upon release, I typically ran the “pure” versions of these decks. Sakamoto’s Store was one which revolved around the “Sakamoto Store” attribute, and the other deck was Shin and Heisuke working together to reveal cards on the field and gain advantage as such. What I didn’t expect was Taro Sakamoto functionally just being like adding crack cocaine to the game knowledge engine that was Shin-Heisuke. Looking at cards in hand, cards in life, cards on the top of decks… this is the information richness that people who are ought to cheat in Union Arena want to have, but this deck brings it all together in an obscene package that functionally maps out your next two-to-three turns for you, as well as blanking out one of your opponent’s life-triggers or draws. It’s a nasty mix, and I’ll be shocked if it’s allowed to stay. 

Limited to One: Taro Sakamoto [SMD-1-026] : 50% - Fair Odds

This is the playmaker in yellow Sakamoto decks. It’s a powerful character with free-play who attacks at 5000BP with Impact. It’s an incredible amount of value in a single action point. Raiding him out of life isn’t even a bad proposition, as even though he loses the value of Impact, he’s still free-playing a character and functioning as a 5000BP blocker. Even though he un-raids himself at the end of your attack phase, he’s more than likely to leave behind a nuisance of a card like Taro Sakamoto [SMD-1-024] behind that’ll muddy your opponent’s ability to deal with the other characters on your front line. It’s a solid card, but seeing as it’s the poster boy for the entire Sakamoto Days set? I’m not sure it’ll be put on the chopping block. Still, a limitation to this card is going to bring down both Sakamoto Hybrid and Sakamoto’s Store decks in power level with one fell swoop. It’s an efficient restriction, but ultimately, not a likely one.

Limited to One Shin Asakura [SMD-1-017] : 40% - Slightly Unlikely

I have a feeling this is the one prediction I’ll have that might be proven completely wrong and I’ll look like an utter fool, but let me explain my thought process. Shin is an information piece, a card that lets you look into the future of both your plays and your opponent’s plays while blanking one of their draws by putting a card from hand on top of their deck. This effect is remarkably powerful. Ask anyone playing Yu-Gi-Oh how they felt about Kewl-Tune Rotary and watch them light up like a Christmas tree.Perfect hand knowledge is a dangerous effect to give any card because, let’s be honest, it can help you make ultra-risky plays at a much safer level. If your opponent’s hand has few impactful attackers… but they’re able to drop three Specials on your head, you may be reticent to perform an over-extending wombo-combo at the thought of getting blown the fuck out. You might see a Raid in their hand that’s a critical component. Take for instance, a Sung Jinwoo [SLG-1-022]. If you don’t see it in hand, your opponent can’t bluff as if they’re ready to drop it on your head next turn. They don’t got it, and they won’t have it, seeing as you can place anything else on top of their deck to prevent it from being drawn. Unless they add a copy from life or a search-the-deck effect, they’re effectively stranded with their hand, and you can then choose to get silly on them and put extra pressure onto their board.

All of that being said? I just don’t think Bandai will see perfect hand knowledge as a huge issue. They’ll see Shin Asakura as a critical piece in a deck absent Taro Sakamoto [SMD-1-026] and refuse to restrict it because it’s “supposed to be” at four copies in the other deck alongside Heisuke. 

Evangelion (Just As A Whole)

Limited to Two Evangelion Proto Type-00 [EVA-1-105] : 25% - Unlikely

I have some thoughts about unifying the ban lists between both the English and Asian formats of the game. While the English format in most cases is a different beast, with cards releasing and getting new support on a wildly different schedule, in one case it is consistently inferior: card quality. They just have more sets and more recently designed cards in order to keep up with their format. In the Asian meta, Purple CoMETIK (aka Comiket) from Idolmaster was one of their top-tier threats, taking names and out-resourcing fools who thought they could hold a candle to its draw-power and combat excellence. It’s a gross deck, and I recommend looking at this prototypical deck list courtesy of T-Interval from ExBurst here. In English, we ain’t even heard about this deck.And Red Evangelion beat it at the Asian Nationals in 2025-2026. You know who else was in that top 4? Yellow Sakamoto Hybrid.

I’ve been hearing from a lot of people Yellow Sakamoto is a “fine” deck and doesn’t need to be hit. They also say that about Red Pseudo-DMS, mentioning it as a “fine” deck that doesn’t necessarily need restrictions. I for one find that to be patently absurd. If this red deck is doing well enough in the Asian format it’s still putting up numbers, what’s stopping this deck from becoming #1 threat if Shadow Army is taken down a peg? What if this deck overtakes Shadow Army naturally? These restrictions keep it more in line with what the power level of decks should be looking into the future.

While I suspect this deck is unlikely to be hit in the next restriction list? Keep your eyes on it. It’ll happen eventually.

Limited to One Rei Ayanami [EVA-1-004] : 25% - Unlikely

The argument for this card is similar to the argument above. These cards were powerful enough in the Asian meta to still be a threat at the top tables. If you think they aren’t a menace in the English tournaments, you’re dead wrong. It’s even up for debate right this instant whether or not Yellow Evangelion or Yellow Sakamoto is the better strategy. Why Yellow Evangelion gets to have Rei Ayanami [EVA-1-004] to bolster its 4000BP characters to 5000BP, play active, and have Negate Impact all in one when a Rei Ayanami [EVA-1-005] sidelines itself is beyond me. Keep an eye on this card, as once again, this card is already in the sights of Bandai as being strong enough to restrict. I don’t think this card will be included in the newest restriction list purely because it hasn’t been put on there yet, and I’m not confident that Bandai will do what it needs to in order to limit this card.

Red Kenshin

Pair Restriction of Both Kenshin Himura Raids : 0.00% - It’s Literally Too Based To Be Real

Red Kenshin is a deck that you have to warp your brain around, a deck that operates on an axis nearly perpendicular to the way Union Arena is typically played. Card effects that normally don’t warrant a spot in a deck, like Step and Can’t Be Moved/Played to Energy Line, all become invaluable against this deck that pushes cards into the energy line.

Why Step? Because if you play a blocker up front to resist your Red Kenshin opponent’s attacks, they can elect not to attack, thus stranding any non-Step character in front line if you’d like to use them to generate energy later. Why Can’t Move? Because even if they win a combat against these cards, their side-effect to push guys into the back-line is essentially nullified, and we’re playing regular Union Arena again.

The thing I despise about these decks is whenever a Kenshin is Raided out of life. The starter deck Kenshin Himura [RNK-1-106] meandering out of life means you’re going to get a card pushed back into energy line, while this card can still block. It’s like a double-block where the first block gets hyper-advantage. You can straight up lose games just to this. Any chance the Kenshin player doesn’t have to spend the 1AP to play their raids, the happier they are. Now, is Kenshin the boogeyman like he used to be…? No, not really. Do I think this deck warrants some kind of restriction…? Yes, but where even to hit it? If you limit both of the Raids, I feel like the deck is true-and-well crippled beyond repair. If you limit only one, they may just end up replacing the extra copies with other 4-cost beaters, like Hajime Saito [RNK-1-102]. Which one do you even restrict? The double-attacker? The Impacter? I feel like the best way to just avoid that issue is to let the Kenshin player pick an effect: You get one free energy line push On Play and Impact, or you get potentially two pushes via your When Attacking effect. Pick which one you like most, but you can’t have both.

Things That Aren’t Going To Happen But I Wanna Discuss Them

Limited to One Evangelion Test Type-01 (Spear of Gaius) [EVA-1-033] : 5% - Nigh-Impossible, yet HilariousPurple Evangelion is a deck that keeps on kicking. People love it. People still play it. Even though the restriction of our precious Asuka Shikinami Langley [EVA-1-051] and Spear of Gaius [EVA-1-063] remains, and will likely remain for the foreseeable future, if you want to play Test Type-01… you can! It’s a great relief to players that this deck, as mutable as it is, was still allowed its spiciest playmaker. I was really down on this card when it first released, thinking it wasn’t that great. Then, I played it come and realized it’s awesome. And now, I’m more in the middle on it. It’s a super-powerful playmaker, but it needs cards like that Asuka to really become abusive, otherwise it’s a solid value piece and little more.

If you really hated this deck? You’d restrict this card to one copy. Why? Fuck you, that’s why. That’s the only reason I could see this card being dinged on the next restriction list, but as goofy-sounding as that premise is, it’s not completely impossible. With the limit-to-two restriction in Asian format on Evangelion Production Model-02' [EVA-1-041], I would like to remind my readers that anything is possible when it comes to Purple Evangelion cards. This specific IP/Color combination will be my chosen wildcard for this upcoming announcement.

Pre-emptive Restrictions to NIKKE/My Hero Academia/Bleach Volume 3 Cards on Arrival : 0% - ImpossibleConsider this paragraph a conclusion to my thoughts on the upcoming restriction list. The following sets up through Mushoku Tensei look very fun! They’re flavorful, balanced, interactive, and have a great deal of interplay between them and the current meta decks in the format. I’m hoping that with this upcoming restriction list and these new sets around the corner, there will be a good amount of fun to be had and the top tables will stop looking so samey. I love variety in Union Arena, and I feel if more people tried out these decks at higher level events, we’d have a far better picture for how decks stack up to one another. With the three or four powerhouses on top, the comparative strength between decks is highly skewed. I keep hearing strong decks like Red Attack Titan and Yellow Rem & Ram are not worth the risk of entering a major tournament when you can just bring what you already know what works into the meta. This feels like it’s cutting a whole lot of the fun out of Union Arena, which is scaring the fuck out of people when they realize they’re unprepared to face rogue decks. I hope this restriction list helps embolden people into learning that if you want to win, you can just play meta…

But if you want to win with style? You gotta baffle someone with your bullshit deck, and exist in the state of  smug superiority that your deck will never be sent to the gallows.

So I Heard The Union Arena Ban list Was Shitty!

Let’s talk about the only one of these wagers that even remotely paid out first and get it out of the way.

Limited to One: Monarch’s Domain [SLG-1-035] : 80% - Highly Likely

Final Result: WASH (All gamblers who placed their bets on this get their bet returned)

If Shadow Army was going to get anything hit, it was this Field or their Special. I was leaning on the side of their Special being hit primarily due to precedent. They’ve limited the Purple Evangelion card Spear of Gaius to 1 already, so for them to hit Shadow Monarch to 1 it would make sense following the logic of prior English and Asian ban lists. However, Bandai decided to hit their Field… to two. Two. You can still run a card, at two, which isn’t even stranded in life due to it being a Get triggered card. Now, if Purple Shadow Army was going to be slaughtered and laid to rest, I would be the first one to defend its honor. I personally dislike both the Shadow Army playstyle as well as its exceedingly powerful, over-the-edge ability to both control the board as well as manage their resources in ways most decks could only dream of. But if you put this deck out to pasture, all you’re doing is pushing the guy on top of the pile to somewhere in the middle, and the equally infuriating play patterns of Yellow Evangelion and Yellow Sakamoto would just fill up the void it left. You need to be deliberate when releasing a restriction list so that you’re not just playing kingmaker. You can’t make it seem like you’re kicking one kid off of the swing set in order for the other kids to get their turn. While that might make the 5th or 6th most-powerful deck in the format a little more viable, it’s not really going to make the playground as a whole a better place.

There’s something I really dislike when limitations/restriction lists like this come out and it’s that they feel completely impersonal. It feels like Bandai looked at a list of the ratios of all Shadow Army decks, and saw that 4 copies of Monarch’s Domain was in nearly all of the decks that were submitted. Some decks might be running 11 Shadow Soldiers instead of 12, some might be trying to tech in a Beru in place of a Igris, and some might even be running Mutilates in a 1-3 ratio like the good old days… but every single person has 4 Monarch’s Domain, and they thought “Oh yeah, let’s cut this card out to 2 copies so that a deck which may win 60% of the time now wins 55% of the time”. While I don’t have the hard math on what the Shadow Army deck’s win ratios were on average at the regional level, I’m 111% confident this is exactly what happened. A restriction to two of Monach’s Domain and nothing else is a decision that was handed down from a spreadsheet.

When I used to play Digimon, there were a few cards like this that fell into the restricted list, and almost all to 1 copy. For example: Back when Numemon X-Antibody was restricted, people dropped the deck immediately because you could no longer consistently get wins with it. But you know what you could still do…? If you drew the Numemon X-Antibody… you could still perform the degenerate combo you were trying to do the whole time it was at 4 copies. You only needed the one copy to do the combo. Same with Hidden Potential Discovered: Do you want a 0-cost Digivolution for the cost of a single card in hand? You can do it. You might even get to do that twice noways with the insane discounts you can get on your power plays. Granted, you weren’t going to be winning regionals or Evolution Cups with a strategy that involved gambling on a sacky-one-of in your deck statistically speaking, but wouldn’t it just crush your spirit if, for instance, you are at  1-1 table just trying to game, trying to play your hardest, and you get curb-stomped by a statistical anomaly? Wouldn’t it just have been better to have that crucial, game-determinative card completely forbidden and you two could play a civilized match instead of playing this game of will-he-draw-his-game-ending-super-threat-and-just-hose-me russian roulette…?

Let me ask you a question: If I said I was going to punch you in the mouth for certain during our TCG match, you’d have a miserable time getting ready for the moment I’m guaranteed to pop you right on the teeth, and you’d likely never want to play against me again. But if I said to you before the game I’d only bash your face in half of the time, would you sit down and calmly play a round out with your excuse being “Well, he’s statistically less likely to fuck my shit up so it’s fine by me.” Come on, really? Even if Monarch’s Domain is at a single copy, you can still activate it twice any turn you raid the 12-energy Sung Jinwoo onto your field, which means you can still get all of your defenders stuffed by +2000BP attackers. 

There’s always a risk that people who enjoy and feel a connection to these decks might feel slighted. They might be worried that their “investment” into a deck will be made for naught with the stroke of a pen. No one wants to be that kid that got kicked off of the swingset to make room for the others. But even if you like the swingset, there’s still other things to do, more fun to be had, and you definitely don’t need to optimize the fun out of your games. Sure, swinging on the swing set is really damn fun, but if it’s all you do and all you’re ever going to enjoy at the playground… maybe you’re not seeing the big picture here. Maybe you’re worried that mere fiat will be all it takes to sour your time in Union Arena. And even if you’re freaking out about a restriction list dashing your hope away? You know what else they can do…?

They can always reconcile this issue with another stroke of the pen. Blue Sukuna was limited, now it’s not, and I’ve never heard a Blue Sukuna player complain about it even a peep.

We’re unlikely to be getting another ban list for a great many months, so this looks like it’s the status quo for a while. I’m hoping that the upcoming sets can inject some more diversity and show some novel strategies entering the more competitive side of the game. For me, this restriction list would have honestly been better off not being released. Why even announce a list if this is the only thing you’re going to bother to put on it? All of my hopes, dreams, thoughts, inspection, speculation, and utterly deranged reflection on our top decks amounted to nothing at all.

Or, at least, statistically nothing at all.

Play rogue decks. Play Asian format. Play your heart out and then some. But don’t play the odds that a ban list is going to fix issues at the very top fringe of this game, at least in English format. And never forget the wisdom of one passing Shadow Monarch to the next:

Death to the King. Long live the King.