It's February, friends. It's the shortest month out of the year, known for holidays such as Valentine's day: A holiday that is well known for an abundance of romantic feelings and signs of affection. There are shades of pink and red, hearts abound, floral arrangements everywhere... and none of those are things you'd normally associate with Pirates, right? There few Pirates in the world of One Piece that fit the theme of Valentine's Day, but one stands out, and that is none other than the Pirate Empress Boa Hancock, the wielder of the Love-Love Fruit ( or Mero-Mero no Mi). She isn't just the Captain of the Kuja Pirates but also, as her previously stated title would suggest, the Empress of the island Amazon Lily. Her devil fruit power is reflective of the tales of Medusa where Boa is able to turn living and non-living individuals to stone under certain circumstances. Yet, her leader card acts differently.

Boa Hancock doesn't rest any of your opponents' characters, nor does she strip characters or leaders of their abilities even for a short while, which would be a great parallel to Boa's devil fruit capabilities. So, let's go over what Boa Hancock DOES do.

Boa Hancock sticks to the standard statistics for a mono-colored leader with 5000 power and 5 life with the following ability: "[Your Turn] [Once Per Turn] This effect can be activated when a Character is removed from the field by your effect. If you have 5 or less cards in your hand, draw 1 card." While Boa's ability can be summarized to Once per turn you can conditionally draw a card, the actions taken to meet those conditions are pretty wide. Her ability specifies "When a Character is removed from your effect" whether it be bouncing a character back to hand, putting one of their Characters on the bottom of their deck, or even putting one of your own Characters back into your hand. Boa Hancock also has synergies with a lot of Seven warlord cards since she herself has the seven warlord subtype along with the Kuja pirates subtype. Let's go over some excellent cards to include in a Boa Hancock deck over all.

Let's start off with some of the heavy hitters, some Blue characters that have a DON!! cost of 6 or higher and make a big impact on the board.

For starters, Kaido didn't make much of an impact when he was initially printed in Kingdom of Intrigue. However, we can heavily benefit from this card in Boa. Kaido is a 10-cost 12000 power character that says "On Play you can place one character with a cost of 8 or less and one character with a cost of 3 or less from the field to their owner hand." This is not limited to their characters, but also your own if you need another on play ability to trigger. But hitting one of their 8-cost or less characters making them wait an extra turn to swing with it? Seems pretty good to me.

Of course, with Boa Hancock her own Character is an excellent inclusion in her deck. Boa Hancock - the character - is a 6-cost 8000 power character with an On Play that freezes one of your opponent's characters until the end of their next turn (unless it is Monkey .D. Luffy) and bottoms an opponent's characters that has a cost of 1 or less. The latter of the two abilities that trigger on play is most of the time irrelevant, but being able to stop ANY cost attacker from attacking for a turn and then you can freely swing in for 8000? Pretty darn good.

Jozu isn't a Kuja Pirate, nor are they an Animal Kingdom pirate, but they are a solid character. Jozu is a 6-cost 7000 power character that has On Play you may bounce one of your own characters that isn't Jozu back to your hand and then you can return a character with cost 6 or less to its owner's hand. Jozu also has +1000 counter so that is worth noting.

But if you want to build Boa more around a bounce control kind of theme, these are solid includes for that kind of theme.

Players have a multitude of options to build a Mono-Blue deck with Boa, such as Amazon Lily/Kuja Pirates tribal theme or even just a deck that draws an insane amount of cards with things like Sanji's Pilaf and Love-Love Mellow to try and stall until your bigger characters come into play.

But the choice is yours, fellow seafarers! Might this Empress of the Sea entice you?