Hohohoho! The One Piece card game will make its official world debut this winter, a few months after the Japanese release. Meanwhile, events like Anime Expo and Gen Con are giving fans a little sneak peek before the booster set and starter decks become available worldwide. Also, One Piece Card Game walkthrough app is available right now for those who can’t wait. Aside from One Piece’s amazing mix of art, this Bandai-produced card game has some familiar card mechanics that veteran TCG players may be familiar with.
how to play
The gameplay in One Piece Card Game is pretty standard for TCG. If you have played Magic The Gathering, Hearthstone, or the Dragon Ball Super card game, these mechanics will be very familiar to you. That said, the gameplay can be pretty fast-paced at the moment, so there won’t be many matches in time. The goal is to reduce your opponent’s life points to zero, where you can then land the final blow. To do that, you’ll need your leader and character cards to deal damage to your opponent.
Your deck will be built around your leader card. The leader card determines how many life points you have, but it will also be your opponent’s main objective to win the game. It’s very interesting that the leader card determines your health, as most TCGs will have players mirror each other in health. It’s a bit of a concern because certain decks thrive on taking damage quickly, so lower health leaders are at a disadvantage early on.
Together with your leader, you will have character cards to deal with the pain as well. Character cards are played by paying the cost of the cards as seen at the top left of each card. Just like Hearthstone, you accumulate mana or DON! cards each turn up to the maximum of ten, which will allow you to play these character cards on the field. I don’t care about this kind of mana pool or stacking in TCG. I imagine the card game will introduce more ways to manipulate the constant increase in mana like Heartstone has done with the system over the years. Be careful with the amount of DON! cards you use each turn because you may want to save them for event cards that will help you defend your characters.
Event cards are like instant cards or spells in other card games to help you in certain situations. For example, the Guard Point event card allows a player to give their leader or character 3000 more power during a battle as a counter. It costs a DON!! card to use, so if you used all your mana or DON! cards during your turn, you cannot defend with this card on your opponent’s turn.
Having a mana pool is nice to see, as it allows for multiple turn-based interactions for both players compared to the Pokemon card game, for example. Personally, it makes for fun and exciting interactions that can change the flow of the game. Finally we have the Stage cards that have several benefits. Like your leader, you can only have one scenario card on the field at a time.
The scenario cards do not have passive effects like Yu-Gi-Oh! field cards, but they have abilities that you can use each turn to support your other characters or leader. For example, the Thousand Sunny scenario card allows a player to rest or turn the card sideways to increase the power of a Straw Hat character or crew leader by 1000. This is always useful when you really need to get that damage done. . Overall, the gameplay isn’t super unique, but it does make the game much more accessible. I just hope to see more interaction with your deck or trash area like searching, repeating, or guessing, because the demo deck and tutorial app don’t give players much to work with outside of aggressive cards.
deck construction
Like other card games, there are multiple colors or archetypes in the One Piece card game. As of now, there are four starter decks announced: Straw Hat Crew, Worst Generation, The Seven Warlords of the Sea, and Animal Kingdom Pirates. Straw Hats appear to be red cards, which generally means they are usually in aggro or aggressive decks that rely on fast damage. The Worst Generation is a green deck which in this game means a lot of card activation. This could lead to attacking again with characters or refreshing your GIFT! cards to play more cards. The Seven Warlords of the Sea is a blue deck that usually means a control deck. As in other card games, blue cards can return a character from the field to its owner’s hand or deck. The latest starter deck, Animal Kingdom Pirates, has a mechanic that allows players to lower their DON! card counting to perform powerful actions like destroying an opponent’s character card. This purple deck has ways to increase your mana, which makes up for the powerful high-cost cards. Judging from Luffy’s leader card in the demo deck, some leaders can be multi-colored, which can lead to a variety of deck combinations than just single-color decks. So maybe instead of a Straw Hat Crew deck, you could mix up some of the worst generation characters to make a red and green Supernovas (Super Rookies) deck. In other words, there may be some room to craft some unique decks other than the more obvious tribal or category decks.
Art
Last but not least, the One Piece art is probably what fans are most excited about. The card game will draw art from the manga and anime, but will also showcase brand new unique art. Bandai gave some teasers already showing new designs for Sabo, Trafalgar Law, and Roronoa Zoro.
Bandai was kind enough to provide a demo deck and promo pack so you can see all the English version cards available so far in all their glory. It looks like the higher rarity cards will be getting some cool, slick design treatments, which isn’t much of a surprise. Good luck to all collectors!
The One Piece card game is the latest TCG from Bandai, and after trying the game, it mostly resembles the Dragon Ball Super card game, followed by Hearthstone. The gameplay is simple and leaves room for some racy moves. I can see other mechanics making their way into the game as more sets are released over time. The One Piece card game will have its Super Pre-Launch Event soon, between September and October, with the full global launch this winter.
