5 Reasons You Should Try the One Piece Card Game

The One Piece Card Game is flying off the shelves and exploding in popularity at card shops around the country.

If you haven't yet been really introduced to One Piece, you may be wondering what's so appealing about this pirate-themed card game. Today I'm going to lay out why I and so many other people have been drawn to this game, and why we're enjoying it so much.

#1 The Universe Has Tons of Fans (For Good Reason)

The first point in the game's favor is that the anime and manga it's based on has a massive and devoted fan base willing to engage with things like this card game optimistically. Having a solid player base from the jump has really helped the scene develop by ensuring local events always have enough players to fire.

Aside from the practical benefits, the One Piece universe is just incredibly rich and engaging even if you aren't already familiar with it.

This is a massive world with a wide array of diverse characters that will provide a steady stream of content for new sets for years to come. If you aren't a fan of One Piece now, you'll very likely become one after playing this game.

#2 The Deck Building Is an Exciting Puzzle

Deck building is one of the main puzzles that draws me to a new card game, and how well that game's systems allow me to express myself creatively is a big part of whether I end up enjoying it or not. The drastic rise in the popularity of Commander in Magic: The Gathering is evidence that I'm not alone in my passion, and I'm happy to report that One Piece provides an excellent outlet for those of us who enjoy creating cool decks based around legendary characters.

In One Piece you choose one Leader card out of more than 100 options, each with a special ability that informs the rest of your deck building choices. From there you can add up to four copies of any card that share a color with that Leader. This is a structure that many people will find familiar, but there are some new elements to explore.

Deck building in One Piece requires balancing interaction, proactive elements, and counter cards, which creates really interesting puzzles to which there are rarely any objectively "correct" answers. It's up to you to decide how to strike that balance based on your own risk tolerance and what you want your deck to look like. The world is your oyster.

#3 The Resource System Asks You Tough Questions

As someone who has spent most of their card-playing lifetime with Magic: The Gathering, One Piece's resource system is one of the main things that sold me on the game once I started playing it.

In One Piece your cards and abilities are played by resting (tapping) DON!! cards, so they function largely like lands. The DON!! cards exist in a separate deck of 10 cards that you draw two from every turn, so your resource development is deterministic from game to game. There is no drought or flood in One Piece.

The obvious drawback to a static resource system is it can cause games to play out similarly, but One Piece has addressed this by giving DON!! a second ability. DON!! can be attached to any of your Characters or your Leader to boost their power by 1000 for that turn, which creates an opportunity cost for using DON!! to play cards normally.

Every DON!! representing both one "mana" as well as a +1000 power equipment means their value will change dramatically from situation to situation. Maybe one game you use your DON!! to develop your board early, and in another matchup you use it to apply pressure aggressively. You may also encounter situations where the best line of play lies somewhere in the middle, and finding that balance is an immensely enjoyable problem to try and solve.

The most interesting puzzles I've ever played in any card game have come late in games of One Piece where you try to parse out how much DON!! you need to commit to several different attackers vs how much you need to expend on your other cards and abilities. Those situations also play into our next reason why One Piece is a great game.

#4 Combat Is Engaging for Both Sides

In One Piece, the ultimate goal is to make successful attacks against your opponent's Leader enough times to deplete their Life cards and make one final attack. These attacks are always interesting because of the choices they open for the defender.

Most Leaders in the One Piece Card Game 5000 power. Now, assume that Leader A attacks Leader B for 5000. That would be a successful attack if the defender does nothing, because attackers win ties in One Piece, but the defending player has the option to discard a card from their hand to increase an attack target's power by the card's counter value—either 1000 or 2000, depending on the card.

This creates a very interesting dynamic when paired with the fact that any Life cards you lose go directly to your hand, so when your Leader is attacked you have the choice of either going up a card while being 1 Life closer to death, or going down a card to remain healthy.

This tension also extends to any Characters in play you may have, as rested Characters are also legal targets for attacks and go to the trash if they lose the combat. There are also some Character cards that have the ability to block an attack, which redirects any attack on another Character or Leader to them.

Combat in One Piece revolves around trying to make these resource exchanges around attacks more profitable for you than they are for your opponent, and all of the considerations that go into that create boundless room for skill expression.

#5 It's Affordable (If You Want It to Be)

Most of the value in a box of One Piece cards comes from the alternate-art versions of the base cards in the set. This means that when people open boxes, they are doing so to chase these rare cards, leaving an excess of everything else to flow out into the market and keeping the base versions of cards very affordable.

Sometimes acquiring cards for a game like MTG can be challenging because Mythic Rares, or sometimes even base Rares, are those chase cards that people open boxes for. In One Piece, those chase cards are purely cosmetic.

At the time of writing we are currently in a bit of a supply drought due to the game's immense popularity, so prices are a bit higher than they would normally be, but even with that, the overwhelming majority of cards are under $10. Cards being so cheap complements the game's diversity very well because it becomes a great deal easier to experiment with multiple decks without feeling like you have to make a large investment.

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Hopefully I've made a compelling case as to why you should try out the One Piece card game and you end up having as much fun as I've been having!