What colors should you play in the One Piece TCG?

What Characteristics would you use to describe yourself? When describing yourself to a new friend or a new coworker would you say you're adventurous, maybe even daring? Or perhaps you find the idea of risks repulsive and you'd much rather have almost every situation planned out and any risks calculated? Are you constantly listening and a true people person? There are plenty of characteristics to describe oneself, and there are likewise many ways in which the Colors of the One Piece TCG embody their own play styles, which may parallel your own view of yourself.

Welcome Aboard Seafarers! Today, we dive into the many colors of One Piece to help you decide which colors may suit YOU the best! The One Piece TCG consists of 6 different colors: Yellow, Green, Purple, Red, Blue and Black. Let's deploy the Mini Mary II and set out!

Yellow

What do you think of when you think of the color Yellow? Mustard? Maybe a school bus? Wel, I'll tell you what wouldn't come to mind first if it wasn't for the OPTCG: Life gain. Yellow serves as a safe haven for card archetypes like Wano, Big Mom Pirates, and Skypiea. Some examples of these archetypes are; Charlotte Katakuri, Gedatsu, and O-nami.

You'll notice all of these cards mess with Life in one way or another.... And I am not talking just swinging characters into your opponent's life. Katakuri himself serves as pseudo-removal for any immediate threats on your opponent's board, by throwing it to the bottom of their life. You could even save your own skin and put one of your own characters back into your life pile to set up a trigger such as Capone "Gang" Bege stopping your opponent from swinging with one more attack.

Gedatsu functions as removal but isn't as versatile, or as big of a body, as Katakuri. He can K.O. a character that has a cost equal to or less than your opponent's life. So the lower their life is, the smaller the character Gedatsu can hit.

Then there's O-Nami. O-Nami doesn't directly impact you or your opponent's life immediately, nor does she depend on one's life total for functionality... but she will give one of your threat's Banish. This is huge; a 1-drop character that on play grants a threat Banish means that someone isn't getting their Trigger off life loss, nor does their card taken from the Life Pile go into their hand. O-Nami functions as an immediate buff for any Yellow deck looking to dwindle down their opponents options or to simply strike fear into their hearts.

If you've been burnt from the table in other card games from burn spells or any form of aggressive builds and found yourself enjoying the Life gain Archetypes... Yellow is the color for you. Setting up your life cards, gaining life, and with some control aspects for your opponent's life pile, Yellow serves as one of OPTCG's strongest colors within the format.

Purple

Purple is associated with a lot of things. Transformers associate this color with the Decepticon cause. In Pokemon, one would most likely associate it with Poison or Ghost type Pokemon. Perhaps you might associate Purple with some commonly used Applications such as Messenger or Discord. Either way, Purple is the land of Big, BIG, Characters with BIG impacts. You enjoy BIG BIG things such as Mechs and Kaiju? You've come to the right place. Some staples within Purple are: Eustass "Captain" Kid, Monkey .D. Luffy, Kaido and Magellan. These are all big names in relation to the One Piece story. Monkey D Luffy is the main character of the entire series. Kaido is one of the Emperors of the Sea and is known for his strength and his rule over the country of Wano. Magellan is the previous Warden of the prison Impel Down. Supernova Captain Kid is known for his absolutely aggressive acts and the power of his magnetic Devil Fruit. But it's not just the names that are big, each of these cards also have BIG Impacts.

This printing of Kaido comes from Starter Deck 4 ,which isn't a cheap deck to get your hands. He is a 9-cost 10000 power character that removes a character that costs 6 or less and gains Rush as long as you place 5 DON!! cards back into your DON!! deck on play. In order to activate an ability you must return DON!! back to your DON!! deck. Well, abilities that require you to return your DON!! are very commonly within Purple. As a matter of fact, I believe the only card that has a DON!! minus effect that is NOT in Purple is Starter Deck 3 Blue Crocodile Leader. But Kaido is just one example of how the color Purple utilizes DON!! manipulation to play big characters as fast as possible.

Enter Monkey .D. Luffy. Talk about a card that practically embodies high risk high reward. Luffy is a 10 cost 12000 power character that On Play you can return all 10 of your DON!! back to your DON!! deck and remove all characters besides Luffy from your field to the grave and then take an extra turn after the current turn Luffy was played in. Luffy also has an ability of pay 1 DON!! and add up to one DON!! card from your DON!! deck as active. In many ways, this Luffy is HUGE... but he functions perfectly as a finisher. The last thing you want to do is play this card with a phenomenal board state only to wipe your own board clean and not finish off your opponent with your extra turn, right?

Besides our main character, let's go over the Warden himself. As literally poisonous as Magellan is, On Play Magellan causes both you and your opponent to return one DON!! back to the DON!! deck and on K.O. forces your opponent to return two DON!! to their DON!! deck. Talk about DON!! manipulation! A 6000 power character that disrupts your opponent's DON!! on play and on K.O.? Nothing but value from Magellan.

But now that we've gone over these characters which heavily impact the board, Captain Kid functions very differently. Kid is a 5-cost 6000 power Blocker that states if a DON!! card would be returned to the DON!! deck, return one DON!! card from your DON!! deck to active. This gives you a HUGE advantage and takes away the downside of DON!! Returning effects. Kid not only helps protect your Life Pile, but also helps you manipulate your DON!! to cast your bigger characters.

Black

Black, the absence of all color (in light theory). It's commonly associated with Death and negative feelings, or any sort of lose... Unlike Purple and Yellow, Black is about what you would expect. Graveyard manipulation, Character removal, and Cost reduction are staple functionalities within it's slice of the color pie. But what are the staples when it comes to Black? Lets go over the characteristics of Black in the OPTCG through these commonly used characters; Gecko Moria, Rebecca, Kuzan, and Rob Lucci.

Let's begin this undead journey with one of the Seven Warlords himself, Gecko Moria. Gecko Moria holds a justified high card price as an 8 cost 9000 power character that on play allows you to place two characters from your Graveyard onto the Battlefield: one a 4-cost or less unrested, the other a 2-cost or less rested. An 8-cost for what could be 18000 power worth of characters? (I.e. Moria 9000 power, Set 5 Rob Lucci 6000, and Set 2 Helmeppo) Needless to say, that's incredible! Why would you care if your characters are dying or not if you can just bring them back by resting 8 DON!! and playing Gecko Moria. However, where Gecko Moria shines as our shadowy star for grave recursion... What are our other options?

Set 5, Awakening of the New Era, provides us with Rebecca which is a 4-drop 0 power blocker with On Play return a character cost 3 to 7 from your graveyard to your hand and then play a 3 cost or less character from your hand rested. Not only does Rebecca serve as a blocker after being played, but brings back dead characters. The only down side compared to Gecko Moria is that she can not bring the character brought back to your hand directly back to the field if it has a higher DON!! cost than 3. With this being said, let's move past Thriller Bark and Dressrosa and move on to someone with a much more global presence... Kuzan.

Kuzan serves as a staple mid-range character who has an On Play and an On Attack ability. With a cost of 4 DON!! and 5000 power, Kuzan's On Play will draw you a card and then when he attacks he will give an opponent's character -4 to their cost. Kuzan replacing himself On Play is great! But why do we care about your opponent's card cost if their character is already on the field? Excellent question. All of Black's removal pieces care about the cost of your opponent's cards, the same as Green's Removal... but we will get to that later. You will have Characters and Events that say things such as "K.O. A character cost 4 or less" or "K.O. a character with a cost 2 or less" or even additional benefits from cards such as Haute Couture Patch Work which states if your opponent has a character with cost of 0 then that character will not refresh on your opponent's next refresh phase". While not a Meta card, there is an incentive to ensure a character is down to zero cost. Kuzan helps enable removal pieces and additional card effects within Black decks in the OPTCG.

Now, Rob Lucci, a member of Cypher Pol Zero, is a 4-drop 6000 power character that On Play you may return three cards from your graveyard to the bottom of your library in any order and then K.O. one of your opponent's chracters with a cost of 2 or less and another one of your opponent's characters with a cost of 1 or less. Working alongside a cost reduction card like Kuzan at 5000 power, that's pretty good.... He also returns 3 cards from your graveyard to the bottom of your library; Not 3 Black cards, nor 3 Black cards with a total cost of 4 or less, nothing like that. The flexibility of this ability is absolutely bonkers. He isn't just a mainstay for mono-Black Leaders, but a mainstay for any leader that touches Black. But that's enough sneaking around for us, let's get to something more impactful physically!

Red

Red, Red, Red. The color of what runs through your veins after it's hit fresh air, the color that often symbolizes emotion, the color commonly used in the phrase "I am seeing red" when talking about anger. Red in the OPTCG is exactly what you would expect it to be, much like Black. Red serves as a home for Archetypes such as Revolutionary Army, Alabasta, and Straw Hats. Red encourages a fast and aggressive approach swinging DIRECTLY at your opponent's Life Pile for a quick game, and low cost characters to help support this cause. We won't dive into Red a whole lot as it's pretty straightforward, but let's go over a few staples and what kind of things Red does outside of turning characters sideways and attacking. For this, I am going to refer to Set 1 Sanji, Set 5 Karasu, and Set 5 Chaka.

Looking at Sanji, he is a 2-cost 3000 power with a +2000 counter on him and an ability of "Activate:Main Once Per Turn you may add 1 card from your life pile to your hand and this character gains +2000 power and then you may attach two rested DON!! onto this character." Looking plainly at Sanji, he is 3000 power so he won't hit a leader with that power by itself, and he removes a card from your life pile? He must only be used as a 2k counter from hand... right? Nah. Removing a card from life to buff Sanji opens up the door for more cards in your hand, and your life isn't normally relevant when you constantly applying pressure to theirs. The more cards in hand, the better. PLUS, as aggressive as Red decks are, Sanji could get two rested DON!! that had been attached from one of your other characters to Sanji taking him from 3000 power to a hearty 7000 power forcing your opponent into a position where they must use a 2000 counter... unless they are playing a 6000 power leader. Then it's a different story of course.

With Haste, let's go over Revolutionary Armies most valuable character card, Karasu. Karasu is a character that has an on play ability and on attack ability that causes your opponent's leader's power to be reduced by -1000 power for the rest of the turn. There is a caveat with the on attack trigger which is Karasu has to be at 7000 power while on the attack for it to trigger, but the knocking down your opponents' leader's power by a thousand really makes the aggressive end game more accessible by opening up other attacking characters to the higher opportunity to reach their leader and force them to draw a card from their life pile.

Chaka is a 5-cost 6000 power character that on attack if a DON!! is attached to Chaka you can move 2 rested DON!! to one of your leaders or characters. Now, in Vivi, a leader who cannot attack, of course this is not optimal. However, this is another example of moving rested DON!! To guarantee an attack toward your opponents. Chaka may have the Alabasta card type, but he serves as a valid option for other Leaders that touch Red within the OPTCG as a higher cost option to move rested DON!! around.

Green

Time to touch grass ya'll. Green provides a unique combination of characteristics within the OPTCG. Resting characters, Removing Characters, Freezing Characters, Buffing Characters, and Unresting DON!!, green is very similar to Red but has more of a focus on Characters themselves instead of an aggressive approach. Let's go ahead and go over different characters within the Green card pool to display these approaches. For this we will look at X. Drake, Rosinante, and Hody Jones.

For 5 DON!! On Play X. Drake will K.O. a rested character with a cost of 4 or less and provides a 6000 power body. X. Drake does require your opponent have a rested character, but this is just a commonly used example of what Green can do while utilizing already rested characters.

Rosinante is an 8-cost secret rare with 8000 power and both an On Play and during Opponent's turn effect. Rosinante plays more along the lines of protecting and putting characters into play. His On Play allows you to rest Rosinante to play a Green character with a cost of 5 or less from your hand, and on your opponent's turn your active characters with a cost of 5 or less cannot be K.O.'d by effects this turn. Rosinante provides a big body, protection for lower cost characters, and a way to cheat out characters with a cost of 5 or less.

Moving on to Hody Jones who has more of a... controlling aspect of Green to him. Hody jones is a 7-drop 8000 power character with Rush that on play rest either 2 of your opponent's DON!! or characters, clearing the path for an 8000 power attack toward your opponent.

Blue

Lets wrap this up with the color of the sea and the clear skies, Blue. A color that normally signifies control does, in fact, work with control! Blue has drawing cards, returning creatures to hand or the bottom of deck, and rearranging the top of your library. Scrying into the Crystal ball is a specialty in this color. Lets look at the following characters for examples of these attributes; Doflamingo, Boa Hancock, and Borsalino.

Starting with one of our two Warlords of the Sea, Doflamingo is a 3 DON!! cost 4000 power Blocker with on play you may look at the top 5 cards of your library and put them at the top or bottom of your library in any order. This allows you to avoid cards that you aren't in need of in your next few draws or set up your draws as need be.

Boa Hancock, another Warlord, is a 4-cost 5000 power character with blocker and if a DON!! Is attached to her on block/on attack, if you have 5 or less cards in your hand, you may draw a card. Having the capability to refill your hand on both attack and block is phenomenal no matter the situation.

Let's cut to the chase here with admiral Borsalino. Borsalino is a 7-cost 8000 power character with an On play trigger to return target character with a cost of 4 or less to the bottom of its owners deck. Not only is this a big body character, but it also serves as removal to get rid of threats on the other side of the board...

Now that we've taken a look at how the colors operate in One Piece TCG, which one intrigues you the most?

Until next time, venture on fellow pirates!