Whether you're a tenured Tabletop explorer or new to TCGs, the One Piece Trading Card Game is a phenomenal experience with easy-to-understand mechanics and a simple to pick up play patterns. The One Piece Franchise has such a large fanbase that is bringing people who have little experience with Trading Card Games into the community, with an overwhelmingly successful launch in 2022. But enough praise; let's go ahead and break down the basics of the game.

Like Magic: The Gathering's Oathbreaker and other Commander adjacent formats, the One Piece TCG Starts with a leader card of your choosing and consists of two decks: your DON!! Deck and your Play deck. Your Play deck should consist of 50 cards, a max of 4 copies of a card, and all cards in the deck should be the same color (or colors) as your leader. Keep your leader separate from your play deck. Your DON!! Deck should be a separate deck that has a total of 10 DON!! Cards in it. In total, a player will need 61 cards: One leader, their 50-card Play deck, and a 10 Card DON!! Deck.

Before the Game Begins

There are only a few things that must be done before the game begins, but it is important to note. Before starting the game, each player will place their DON!! Deck to the bottom left of their respective play areas. They'll place their leader in the middle right of their play area, and their Play Deck about a two-card space to the right of their leader. Each player will shuffle their decks and roll a die to see who will determine who goes first. After dice rolls, each player will draw a hand of five cards. Before turns start, each player can choose to shuffle their hand of five cards back into their deck and draw a new hand of five. In Magic: The Gathering, we call this a Mulligan, but unlike Magic: The Gathering you can only mulligan ONCE! After hands are decided, the player places cards from the top of their deck equal to their leader's life total in the top left hand corner of the play area. This is your Life Area and each time you take damage you will draw a card from your Life Pile and add it to your hand. much like Prize Cards in the Pokemon TCG. After these steps have been completed, you and your opponent will proceed to the games!

Leader

For the sake of education, we will be breaking down the components of a Leader card. For this breakdown we will refer to Set One "Romance Dawn" Mono-Red Leader, Roronoa Zoro (001).

In the bottom right hand corner of this leader you will see a white number in a colored circle matching your leader's color. This number represents your life total. In the top right you will see a white numerical value. This number, in this leader's case 5000, represents the leader's power. Those two numbers are the basic structure of every leader, but it is important to note that every leader has a unique ability that can be found in the opaque text box on the card.

Moving forward we will be breaking down what type of cards may or may not be within your 50 card Play deck. We are going to break down the following Categories; Character, Event, and Stage.

Let's start with Characters.

Characters

Characters cards are much like Leaders and the majority of your deck will consist of them. Let's use Set 4 "Kingdom of Intrigue" character Sanji (007) for this breakdown.

When looking at a Character card there are a lot of similarities to Leaders. Like Leaders, Characters have their power displayed on the top right hand corner of the card. However, unlike leaders, Characters have a "cost" to play them. In order to play a Character you must rest (Turn your DON!! Ninety degrees to the side) the specified number of DON!! Cards to put it onto the field. Characters are used to deal damage and gain a board presence. Characters can also be utilized for Character Removal, downsizing one of your opponents' characters, or even searching for other characters! Characters are also used to deal damage to your opponents' leaders, which is the most fundamental use of Characters all together.

Events

Events function much like Magic: The Gathering's Instant and Sorcery cards... If the event states that it can only be played on "Main Phase" then it's the same as a Sorcery, if the Event states it's a "Counter" it can only be played in response to your opponent declaring an attack on your leader or one of your characters. Gor those of you who have not played Magic: The Gathering before, Events are cards that you spend DON!! equal to their DON!! Cost to play, and the effect on the card will go into effect immediately. Unlike Character cards, after the effect of an event resolves, they go directly to the Graveyard. Events do not permanently stay on the board.

Stages

Stages are cards that once played stay on the field permanently unless another card is able to remove them. You can only have one stage on the field at a time. If there is already a stage present on your board, you must place that stage in the graveyard in order to play a new stage. There are not a lot of stages in the One Piece TCG but for our breakdown we will use the stage Thousand Sunny from Starter deck 1

Thousand Sunny states that once per your turn, on your main phase, you can rest Thousand Sunny and give one of your "Straw Hat" type Leaders or Characters +1000 power this turn. While this ability does not state it can only be used once per turn, once you rest a card its effects cannot be used again unless a stage is set to Active.

"Main" and "Counter"

Now that we have broken down every card type there is out there, let's take a look at important keywords that will appear on the card types listed above! There are two important key phrases that indicate when a card may be played; "Main" and "Counter." If a card has the words "Main" within a blue oval text box, that means that card can only be played during your turn and outside of combat. On the other hand, unlike the "Main" keyword, "Counter" means that card can only be played in response to a Character being declared as an attacker toward you and cannot be played during your turn. Rather, it must be played during your opponent's turn. Understood? Excellent! Now, let's dive into the Game Play.

Gameplay

After dice have been rolled, turns have been decided by the higher dice roll, Life cards have been distributed, and hands of five have been drawn, you and your opponent will start the game. The player who starts the game draws one DON!! card from their DON!! deck and place it into their DON!! area which is located at the bottom of their respective play area. Every turn after this, each player will draw two DON!! from their DON!! deck and place it into their DON!! deck. However, the player who goes first will not draw a card on their turn. In proper order, your turn starts with drawing DON!! from your DON!! ceck, drawing a card to add to your hand from your Play Deck, and then going into "Main". Unlike Magic: The Gathering, there is no maximum hand size. A player must start with 5 cards, but could end up with 10 cards in hand. Additionally, Leaders cannot attack on each player's first turn. On your "Main" phase you can rest your DON!! to play characters, play events, or stages. There is no limit to how many "Main" or "Combat" phases you may go into. However, you can only play characters equal to the amount of DON!! that is available to you. Also, it's important to note that DON!! is versatile as it can be attached to Characters and your Leader at any point during your turn to give your Leader or Character +1000 power during your turn. By deciding to do this, however, this means you cannot rest this DON!! To play any more cards from your hand. Moving on past DON!!, a player can only have 5 Characters on their field at a time. If you are to exceed this limit, a player has to choose a Character to sacrifice into their respective Graveyard to make room for a new Character to be put into play. Now that we've gone over what Characters, Leaders, and DON!! can do during a player's "Main," let's delve into Combat. During combat, which occurs whenever you decide to attack with your Leader or Character(s), this card is put into a resting position and can attack either your opponent's leader or your opponent's rested character. Going back to examples, we will use Namule from Set 3 Pillars of Strength and starter deck two's leader Eustass"Captain"Kid (001).

Let's say your opponent's leader is Kid. You will notice that he has an activated ability that states on their main and only once per turn they may pay 3 DON!! To trash 1 card from their hand and Set their leader as active. This means they can attack twice with their leader if they choose to utilize this ability. With this being said, during one of your chosen combats, let's say you have chosen to attack your opponent's leader Kid with your character Namule. No DON!! Attached to your Namule, which means you are attacking 5000 power Leader Kid with 5000 power Namule. At this time, before damage is dealt, if your opponent has a character with "Blocker" they may choose to rest that character and have that character take the damage for their leader or they may choose to counter out of that damage. They could discard a card with a counter on it or choose to use a counter event. There are characters such as Set 1 Otama that have +2000 counters on them and others such as Set 1 Nami that have +1000 counters on them.

Damage is negated if the number on counters exceeds the amount of damage that would be dealt to a character or leader. It is important to know that character cards in hand can also be utilized as counters for characters on the field, such as blockers. However, if the counter leads to a Leader or Character matching the amount of damage that would be dealt during combat, damage is still dealt from the attacking Leader or Character. The counter amount must exceed the amount of damage being declared in order to negate any form of damage. When a leader takes damage, that player draws a card from their Life pile and adds it to their hand. Their life cards may have a Trigger on them. When drawing a life card, you do not reveal the card to your opponent unless you choose play the trigger on a card.

Lets look at Set 3's Event Fire Fist:

If you were to draw this card from your Life Pile and notice a trigger you could choose to activate the Trigger and instead of adding this card to your hand you would instead K.O. one of your opponents characters of 5000 power or less and then put this card immediately into a graveyard.

Now having gone through Combat, lets go over the methods of winning a game of One Piece. You win a game of One Piece by either depleting your opponent of all their life cards and then dealing the final blow or by your opponent milling themselves out (UNLESS YOU ARE NAMI LEADER.... But we won't go into that in this article). After your opponent has drawn all their life cards, they must take damage once more in order for you to come out victorious.

With that being said, you my fellow Pirate have come to an understanding of how this game is Navigated and you too can explore the vast capabilities of this adventurous Trading Card Game! I hope to see you out on the dastardly seas!