How Will One Piece TCG Adapt to the New Banlist?

In all of my years shuffling cardboard squares, I've never seen a ban list announcement met with both so much excitement and so much venom at the same time.

Let's set the scene: We all knew a red and purple shadow was looming. ST10 Trafalgar Law (001) has been running rampant in the east since OP07. While it hadn't found the same level of dominance over here in the west, it was still a certified contender for best deck in the format. The deck was sent into overdrive in Japan upon the release of OP08's Black Maria (074), a card capable of circumventing the leader's drawback entirely. Eastern players had been crying out for a banned and restricted announcement ever since, hoping to curb the power level of the deck before it spoiled the excitement for OP09.

With OP08 on the horizon for the rest of the globe, players were eager to know if we'd be subjected to the same ascension of Red Purple Law and if that reign would continue across all of Japan. As the festivities came to a close at the country's Championship Final, Bandai Namco delivered our answer.

Both Trafalgar Law (001) and Enies Lobby (098) will find themselves on the eastern banlist on September 1, 2024, celebrating the release of OP09 by stamping out the problematic leader and severely hindering the only deck capable of hanging alongside it, Black Rob Lucci (079).

No big deal, right? We operate a whole three months behind the eastern community. What's the problem? Well. It turns out nobody wants to see that particular miserable format ever again - so we're receiving the exact same banlist update here in the west on September 6 to coincide with the release of OP08. You know, a whole three months ahead of schedule.

This throws a few different spanners in the works. The rest of the world will now play events in an entirely different metagame during the eighth expansion with little to no guidance from events that took place in Japan. Rob Lucci (079) isn't going to suddenly become terrible overnight through its unsearchable power card being banned but it's certainly going to be a little less consistent. As for RP Law, the general response to the replacement version of the leader has been very underwhelming (and we don't even know if it's arriving in the west yet!) - the biggest menace is gone, so what does the format look like now?!

Well, step one is addressing that question for the North American Championship Final, which has been brutally caught in the crossfire. Much like the infamous "EB01.5" format before it, this event will play a one-off format that'll forever be forgotten to time. Falling on September 13, it was previously agreed that this event would be using the OP07 format to allow players ample time to test their strategies. Now, all of that has been thrown into chaos. There's a need to understand exactly what's viable in less than a month with two of the biggest predators removed.

Blue Nami

A real love-it-or-hate-it deck, Blue Nami (040) gets my vote for the metagame contender that benefits most from this update. Previously, Nami had been sneaking into top cuts by bullying Rob Lucci players to tears but the RP Law matchup was miserable at best, often going far too wide to handle or stuffing Kaya (044) back into the deck. With your worst matchup a thing of the past and many other positive matchups like Yellow Enel (098) looking to step up to fill the void, Nami seems like a phenomenal choice moving forward.

We've also got little reason to expect too much aggression out of OP08, so I expect Nami's increased performance to continue for some time!

Yellow Enel

Enel (098) had already been putting up several competent showings during OP07, playing a steadfast control strategy that eventually slams the door with Yamato (112) and Portgas.D.Ace (119). It's another deck that had a notoriously skill-intensive matchup against RP Law, sometimes teching heavily to improve it. Now, that space can be dedicated to improving the various black matchups instead. That leads me to believe we'll be seeing Enel triggering many a Capone "Gang" Bege (100) yet.

Much like Nami, Enel has been lurking in the "B Tier" of strategies for a while now and really stands to benefit from this change.... unless Nami is suddenly the best deck. That matchup is awful.

Black Yellow Luffy

It's hard not to mention Monkey.D.Luffy (003) as a viable option going forward. It was pretty definitively "Deck 3" over the last month underneath Black Rob Lucci and RP Law. Truthfully, this feels less a story of what has been gained and more of what already existed.

Black Yellow Luffy is an exceptionally powerful combo deck that'll happily take life damage early to enable blistering pressure through the three brothers, Monkey.D.Luffy (014), Portgas.D.Ace (010) and Sabo (007) and gigantic leader swings. You're also reliant on Gecko Moria (086) cheating the kid brothers out of the trash to snowball enough pressure in later turns. Once you throw in a need to be at zero life in order to play the game, it's easy to see why the deck is such a difficult one to pilot.

Thankfully, Black Yellow Luffy absolutely obliterated Black Rob Lucci, so if the deck remains a figurehead of the metagame, you stand to massively improve. Sadly, the position of this deck could go either way in time though, with difficult matchups into Yellow Enel, Green Bonney and Blue Nami - all who stand to gain equally from these changes.

Blue Purple Reiju

Finally, we get to the biggest beneficiary of the Trafalgar Law (001) ban, Vinsmoke Reiju (042). To put it bluntly, that matchup sucked. Like, really sucked. Several of your most dedicated buildarounds require you to have equal or less DON!!! than an opponent in order to do anything of substance and that allowed the leader ability of Trafalgar Law (001) to completely shut them down. Now, Vinsmoke Reiju (069) and Vinsmoke Sora (063) have been given a new lease of life and may actually prosper as we head into the OP08 metagame!

Personally, I really like how Vinsmoke Reiju stacks up against a number of the other decks I expect to find success in the new format. Tools like Porche (072) allow us to cheat a small Vinsmoke character into play to create multiple threats as early as turn two, which is phenomenal against decks like Blue Nami. Charlotte Pudding (047) is also a standout favorite in this deck, regularly messing up the plans of resource intensive decks like Black Yellow Luffy and Yellow Enel. All in all, I expected this deck to disappear entirely following OP08. Now, it might just be able to hang with the best!

Closing Thoughts

I think we all saw some type of change to Red Purple Trafalgar Law coming, but the timing and addition of Enies Lobby (098) to the equation caught the entire community off-guard. Overall, I'm very excited to see how the metagame adapts going forward - I'm not going to miss being rushed to death by Killer & Kid (003) anytime soon.

But what do you think? Will some other fifth deck be the one to rise from the ashes? Come let me know over at @HowlingMines on Twitter/X! Alternatively, give my other work here on TCGplayer a peek if you enjoy the ramblings of a Brit who plays too many card games.

But until next time.

I've been HowlingMines, you've been amazing.

Happy Prereleasing!