Become King of the Pirates with the ‘One Piece Card Game’
The One Piece Card Game invites you to join on the adventure by challenging your friends to epic pirate battles of your own.
We love a good card game. They’re competitive, they’re an excuse to get together with other people and play games, and they scratch that itch to build and maintain a pristine collection. Plus, lots of the collectible card games out there are based on some of our favorite shows and series. Such is the case with the One Piece Card Game.
Pokémon and Yu-Gi-Oh are usually the first two TCGs to come to mind, but there have been collectible card games for a ton of our favorite nerdy interests over the years. If you love something, there have been beautifully illustrated cards for you to collect. Today we’re talking about the One Piece card game and seeing who’s on track to become king of the pirates.
One Piece Card Game
First announced on March 7th 2022, the One Piece card game was available and ready to play in Japan in July 2022 and then worldwide by the end of the same year. Released as part of One Piece’s 25th anniversary celebration, the game gave fans of the Straw Hat Pirates another way to jump into the world of One Piece… sort of.
Like most anime associated card games, many cards are associated with various characters, each card given different attributes, powers, and point values. Cards’ artwork is sourced from one of four places- the manga, the anime, original illustrations made for that card, and ‘other.’ So far, other has included images of figures.
“I’ve decided long ago that I’m going to be King of the Pirates. If I have to die fighting for that, then I’d die!”
– Monkey D. Luffy, One Piece.
Games are played competitively worldwide. 2024’s championship finals are already underway with tournaments already happening in September in Dallas, TX and Liverpool, UK. But more tournament championship games are upcoming with even more planned for the 2025 season.
READ MORE: “We’re Gunna Be King of the Pirates!” The Straw Hat Pirates Explainer
How to Play
In general, games aren’t difficult to play and follow a consistent list of deck types and game phases.
Decks consist of one Leader Card, fifty Character Cards, and ten Don!! Cards. Leaders are the main fighter of your deck while the characters are their backup and team. Don!! Cards act as this game’s resource pool.
To prepare for gameplay, each player draws five cards from their deck as their starting hand. Then they place another collection of cards equal to the life value of your character aside in a ‘life’ pile. The life pile effectively acts as your Leader Card’s hit point markers. With these piles set up, players are ready to begin gameplay
Turns consist of five phases; Refresh Phase, Draw Phase, Don!! Phase, Main Phase, and End Phase.
In refresh players set resting cards to active and return Don!! Cards previously given to active cards. Next comes the draw phase where players draw one card from deck. In donn!! phase players increase their available Don!! Cards by two per turn. Main phase is where most of the actions happen; this is where players will use the Character Cards in their hand and attack their opponant. Finally, the end phase is the end of the player’s turn.
In order to play a Character Card, players must pay the amount listed as the card’s cost in Don!! Cards. If they don’t have enough Don!! Cards or don’t have enough available, they cannot play that particular Character Card yet.
Attacking
To attack players turn their cards to the rest position (on its side) and declare which character you want to attack. Competing players compare their cards’ attacking power. To win the attacker must match or beat their opponent’s power. The losing player removes one life card from their life pile and adds it to their hand, effectively removing one of their Lead Character’s hit points, but giving them access to that card in gameplay.
Players may also give active Don!! Card to character. For every Don!! Card you play on Character or Leader Card, they recieve +1000 power to their power. Some characters have effects or abilities that trigger when they attach Don!! Cards.
Other Character Cards have abilities, trigger abilities, and counters that can be used in game to assist or protect your leader or character cards.
For a more detailed and visual breakdown of the rules, the video posted to the official One Piece Card Game website is especially helpful.
Starter Decks
There are currently twenty Starter Decks:
- Straw hat Crew Starter Deck (featuring Monkey D. Luffy)
- Worst Generation Starter Deck (featuring Eustass Kid)
- The Seven Warlords of the Sea Starter Deck (featuring Crocodile)
- Beasts Pirates Starter Deck (featuring Kaidou)
- One Piece Film Edition Starter Deck (featuring Shanks and uta)
- Absolute Justice Starter Deck (featuring Sakazuki)
- Big Mom Pirates Starter Deck (featuring Charlotte Linlin)
- Monkey D. Luffy Side Starter Deck (featuring Monkey D. Luffy)
- Yamato Side Starter Deck (featuring Yamato)
- Rising Three Captains Ultimate Deck (featuring Monkey D. Luffy, Trafalger Law, and Eustass Kid)
- Uta Side Starter Deck (featuring Uta)
- Zora and Sanji Starter Deck (featuring Roronoa Zoro and Sanji)
- 3 Brothers’ Bond Ultimate Deck (featuring Monkey D. Luffy, Portgas D. Ace, and Sabo)
- 3D2Y Starter Deck (featuring Monkey D. Luffy)
- Edward Newgate Red Starter Deck (featuring Edward Newgate)
- Uta Green Starter Deck (featuring Uta)
- Donquixote Doflamingo Blue Starter Deck (featuring Donquixote Doflamingo)
- Monkey D. Luffy Purple Starter Deck (featuring Monkey D. Luffy)
- Smoker Black Starter Deck (featuring Smoker)
- Charlotte Katakuri Yello Starter Deck (featuring Charlotte Katakuri)
Booster Packs
Large sets of cards are released in smaller ‘booster packs’ containing six random cards. So far there have been nine sets of cards and regular booster packs released.
- Romance Dawn
- Summit War
- Powerful Enemies
- Kingdoms of Conspiracy
- Hero of the New Era
- Twin Champions
- 500 Years in the Future
- Two Legends
- The New Emperor
The second kind of booster packs are the ‘Extra Boosters’ which contain their own unique cards. So far there is only one set of Extra Boosters available, the Memorial Collection.
Finally the One Piece Card the Best is the third kind of boosters. They contains 110 of the previously released cards, 50 of which have new art. Additionally, each pack will have one completely new card.
To learn more and play for yourself, you can visit the One Piece Card Game website, here.
Happy adventuring, nakama!
