Heya everyone! I've been checking out how the OP08 meta is shaping up in the East competitive scene and picked up early builds for the new Leaders who have managed to top-cut and win some of those tournaments!
Remember, we’re still in the early stages of the OP08 meta, so decks might change a bit in the coming weeks as players optimize their builds.
Green Carrot
The Green Carrot Leader wants to control the board in the mid-game through her ability to rest 5-cost or less Characters. To trigger her ability, you need a {Minks} type Character on the board. Fortunately, the deck includes plenty of low-cost {Minks} to support this strategy.
OP08-022-inuarashi and OP08-023-carrot are a nuisance for your opponent, preventing their rested Battle Cards from becoming Active on their turn. This effect only applies to already Rested Characters. However, even Active Characters aren’t safe, as OP08-021-carrot can rest them and keep them rested, slowing down the opponent’s next turn.
OP07-026-jewelry-bonney helps by keeping one of the opponent’s rested Don from becoming Active, potentially delaying their bigger plays.
The goal is to prevent the opponent from taking control of the board until you can drop your high-cost Characters. OP04-119-donquixote-rosinante can cheat out one of your 5-cost Characters, allowing you to quickly build a strong board. OP04-031-donquixote-doflamingo can keep three of the opponent’s Characters rested for their next turn, giving you time to build a dominant board position.
Yellow Kalgara
The Yellow OP08-099-kalgara deck uses its Life resource to develop the board and pressure the opponent. For 1 Don, Leader OP08-098-kalgara can play {Shandian Warrior} type Characters with a cost equal to the total number of Don you have. This allows you to play characters like OP06-114-wyper and OP08-099-kalgara for just 1 Don, enabling you to develop two characters in one turn and create a threatening board presence.
OP08-105-jewelry-bonney is our value card which we're planning to damage opponent's Leader when attaching a Don to her. Managing to damage their Leader will activate her effect, drawing us two cards and making us trash one card from hand.
OP08-109-mont-blanc-noland is a powerful card when comboed with OP08-099-kalgara. If OP08-099-kalgara is on the board, you can add a card from the top of your deck to your Life cards, making it harder for your opponent to win and giving you extra resources. The additional health is valuable since your Leader damages himself.
The deck includes Ace rush attackers! ST13-011-portgasdace and OP07-119-portgasdace join the battlefield and immediately attack, either controlling the board or targeting the Leader. The 10-cost OP07-119-portgasdace offers an additional Life Card, adding protection and resources.
Red Blue Marco
For 1 Don, Leader OP08-002-marco draws you a card and lets you place a card from your hand back into the deck. Similar to Sakazuki's card draw effect, but you decide if the card goes to the top or bottom of the deck instead of the Trash. Additionally, Marco reduces the Power of one of the opponent’s Characters by -2,000.
This deck synergizes with Marco’s abilities, using cards like OP03-013-marco, OP08-118-silvers-rayleigh, and OP02-004-edwardnewgate-511 that exploit the power reduction to KO low-power Characters.
Marco’s draw ability helps filter your hand and find better cards, while also setting up combo plays with OP06-119-sanji. The plan is to reach 10 Don, use 1 Don for the Leader ability, put a high-cost Character at the top of your deck, then play OP06-119-sanji, ensuring you have two big threats on the board.
Since Marco is a {Whitebeard Pirate}, you can fully utilize cards like OP02-013-portgasdace and OP02-004-edwardnewgate-511.
Red Green Tony. Tony. Chopper
OP08-001-tony-tonychopper is an aggressive deck that can drop multiple Characters on the board and start launching a barrage of attacks. The Leader ability lets you attach 1 rested Don to up to 3 {Animal} or {Drum Kingdom} type Characters, boosting your aggressive strategy and enabling those characters' effects.
With cards like OP02-040-brook, OP08-007-tony-tonychopper, EB01-009-just-shut-up-and-come-with-us, and OP01-047-trafalgar-law-753, it's easy to develop more Characters and present a mid-game threat.
OP08-013-robson and OP06-035-hody-jones are Rush attackers that provide immediate threats once played. You need to attach 2 Don to OP08-013-robson to activate the Rush ability, but with the Leader ability, this shouldn’t be difficult.
Purple Yellow Pudding
OP08-058-charlotte-pudding is a ramp Leader who gives you a rested Don when she attacks, but you have to turn 2 cards from the top of your Life Area face-up, revealing your cards to the opponent. This is giving them valuable information on what you'll have in hand in future turns.
The ramping ability means we can get away with running a lot of high-cost characters. So cards like OP08-069-charlotte-linlin, OP08-119-kaido-linlin, and OP03-114-charlotte-linlin act as our win conditions.
In the mid-game, we have ST13-004-edwardnewgate and OP08-063-charlotte-katakuri as solid bodies on the board. They both can manipulate our Life Area, making sure we don't have a face-up card at the top of our deck so Leader OP08-058-charlotte-pudding can reactivate her Ramp ability.
OP08-069-charlotte-linlin is your best play on 9 Don, gaining a Life Card and removing a threat from the board to slow down the opponent's pace.
OP08-119-kaido-linlin is our strongest but most difficult to set up play. We're basically spending 10 Don, but not affecting the state of the board at all. It's more of an investment for our upcoming turn, getting to attack with OP08-119-kaido-linlin will KO all other characters, give us an additional Life Card, and trash the top card in the opponent's Life Area.
Black Purple King
The only OP08-057-king list I found that managed to win a tournament. The list feels a bit all over the place and definitely can be optimized to be better.
Leader OP08-057-king's ability lets you deramp -2 Don to either draw a card (if you're at 5 cards or less or reduce the cost of one of the opponent's characters by -2. We're usually not using Leader ability until we hit 10 Don so we don't delay our higher cost plays, which we have a lot of.
This deck is able to control the board in the late game, using cards like OP08-084-jack, OP08-079-kaido, OP08-069-charlotte-linlin, and OP02-121-kuzan. Having OP02-121-kuzan stick on the board makes life difficult for opponents trying to set up high-cost threats. If you cannot put your opponent's characters in range of your removal, Leader OP08-057-king's ability will be useful in these situations.
Obviously, we want to drop our win conditions as early as possible, this is where ST04-017-onigashima-island ramp accelerates our game plan and will find use in the late game as well since we have multiple cards with a -1 Don effect, including our Leader.
This list is also trying to go for a OP06-086-gecko-moria into OP08-059-alber and then cheat out either ST04-004-king or OP08-060-king. It's a strong play but having all the right pieces can be difficult.
Closing Words
OP08 meta is still shaping up and there's a lot for players to explore and test with. OP08-099-kalgara is finding the most success in tournaments so far, and from what I've been reading, for once, the community has a positive opinion towards a Yellow meta Leader.
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