The 10 Cards Everybody Wants from Awakening of the New Era

This is a very special time for the One Piece Card Game. We are now at the one-year anniversary of the game's release in the west, and the new set, Awakening of a New Era, is full of awesome stuff to commemorate that milestone.

In addition to everything else you would expect from a new set, Awakening of the New Era contains not one, but three different Manga rare cards as well as a special anniversary card drawn by One Piece creator Eiichiro Oda himself! Even though supply is starting to catch up to demand, I still think it's likely this set will become the most valuable one we've had since OP1. Let's get into some of the cards that could make that happen.  

#10 Zoro-Juurou (Parallel)

The first year of this game has mostly been dominated by various forms of red decks due to the exceptionally strong base of cards that color started with, but with OP5 we are going to start seeing the other colors catch up in a big way. Zoro-Juuro is a big part of that for purple.

Up until this point the ability to ramp DON!! has either come on cards without counter value like OP1 Ulti or that have some drawback like ST Jack. With Zoro-Juuro, that is no longer the case. While he doesn't get immediate value, the payoff for untapping with this card in play is something we've not yet had access to in the game so far, which makes Zoro-Juuro exceptionally valuable. While more removal heavy metagames could prove hostile to this card, its baseline power alongside its type and counter value make me confident it will endure as a fixture of purple decks for years to come.  

#9 Rob Lucci (Parallel)

The next card on the list might be one of the best unintentional top-down designs of all time, because I have a feeling players are going to grow to hate this card as much as fans of the story hate Rob Lucci himself. Red's dominance in the first year of the game was largely defined by its access to cards like OP1 Nami, OP2 Dadan, and OP3 Izou letting them play to the board while improving the consistency of their draw with no real way for the opponent to punish that.

Well, now they can. Not only is Lucci very strong against a lot of the common play patterns you normally see out of decks like Zoro and Law, but there are many ways to add cost reduction effects to your deck and use Lucci to K.O. much larger threats. Enhancing Lucci allows for some of the most drastic swings in board presence that are currently possible in the game, which will give black decks a much bigger role in the metagame. This card will be a competitive staple for as long as it's legal to play.      

#8 Leader Belo Betty (Parallel)

The first Leader on our list is a newcomer to the card game, but I wouldn't be surprised to see them garner a new fan base rather quickly. It's also a good time to note that OP5 marks a return of using Manga art for Leaders' faces, which I'm sure most people will be happy to see.

Belo Betty is one of two Leaders for the incoming Revolutionary Army subtheme within Awakening of the New Era. Revolutionary Army features many Characters who want to get their power over 7k, so obviously Betty's ability to give three Characters +3k power works incredibly well with them. While decks like Zoro and Law have been filling the aggro role in the format to this point, neither of them is able to go quite as fast as Betty can when everything geos according to plan. While the deck may be a bit weaker to remove than other red decks, the amount of power Betty can put into an attack on any given turn is hard to beat.  Any fans of hyper fast aggro decks now have an outlet to play that way without having to worry too much about interaction. All gas, no brakes.

#7 Rebecca (Parallel)

Between OP2 Borsalino and OP4 Sabo, black already has access to some of the best blockers in the game. That strength is getting bolstered even further with the addition of Rebecca in Awakening of the New Era.

While the other blockers I just mentioned are powerful due to their resilience, Rebecca is a more versatile way to get additional value. This card turns your trash into a bit of a toolbox, allowing you to get back whatever 3-7 cost black Character card you may need for the given situation, and then letting you play a 3 cost for free alongside her. Rebecca changes how black decks can be built and what cards might be good in them, with ST Hina and OP2 Koby being a couple of the main beneficiaries. Having 0 power is certainly a liability in some situations, but the upside here is high enough that it's hard to see many black decks not choosing to utilize this incredibly versatile blocker.

#6 Leader Enel (Parallel)

Quick Japanese lesson: if you watched the Anime and are familiar with this character as "Eneru," you might be wondering why the printed name is Enel. Both of these are technically correct, because while the Japanese printing of the name is エネル (e-ne-ru), it is very common to not fully pronounce the "u" at the end of a word, which in the case of "ru" ends up making an "L" sound, hence Enel. So don't be pedantic at your locals if someone likes to pronounce it one way or the other, both are fine.  

As for the actual Leader card, Enel is quite powerful and will provide an interesting alternative to OP3 Charlotte Katakuri, who has had a near monopoly on mono-yellow decks up to this point. While having only 4 Life as a mono-colored Leader may seem like a large downside, Enel's ability to continually heal when going to 0 Life actually results in him sometimes being closer to a 6 or 7 Life Leader. You may need to discard a card after activating the ability, but it's important to note that the discard is not a required cost, which can enable some wild plays. For example, if the last card in your Life is Two-Hundred Million Volt Amaru while you have only 2 cards in hand, you can take the damage, discard 2 cards to active Amaru's trigger and gain Life, then trigger Enel's Leader ability to gain another Life without discarding a card because you now have 0. It may not come up super often, but it's an important interaction to understand.

A much more common thing you'll likely see from Enel decks is OP4 Yamato, as that card synergizes exceptionally well with the Leader ability and can make it very difficult for the opponent to ever deliver a final blow. You can even build the deck to "starve" the opponent by not attacking their Life until you have full control of the game, considering cards like OP5 Gedatsu and OP5 Hino BIrd Zap want your opponent to be at high Life.

#5 Leader Luffy (Parallel)

Since the set is called Awakening of a New Era, it makes sense that we get a few cards featuring the man who's ushering in that era, and the first one to come up on the list is his new Leader card. Purple Luffy (or "Pluffy") plays perfectly into exactly what the color wants to do by accelerating DON!! potentially multiple times a game. While this does come at the cost of a Life card each time you do it, there are many great blockers in purple now that can help you survive at very low Life totals.

The interesting thing about this Leader is your curve starts at either 4 or 5 depending on whether you want to go first or second, so you can run many more expensive cards in your deck than would normally be reasonable. Five-drops like OP2 Magellen and ST Queen gain a lot of value in this deck considering how early you get to play them and how much you can mitigate the minus DON!! effects of both cards. Even other forgotten cards in the format like OP3 Paulie could find a home in a deck like this depending on what you want your ramp curve to look like. Luffy cards are always popular, but this one has the additional benefit of being a strong metagame contender as well.      

#4 Leader Sakazuki (Parallel)

While Saksuki may not be the most popular character in the canon due to his various war crimes, this Leader card is far too strong to ignore and will likely become one of the mainstays of the competitive metagame. We've seen a couple strong black cards in Rebecca and Lucci come up on this list so far, and this Leader is one of the better homes both of them will find.

Sakasuki's ability to reduce a Character's cost by 1 with no additional DON!! investment fundamentally alters the rate of most removal in the color combination, making cards that might be afterthoughts into incredibly strong role players and putting strong cards like Lucci on another level. The second ability to "rummage" bad cards out of your hand once per turn also gives the Leader access to a level of consistency that few others can match. That ability also alters that amount of 0 counter value cards that would normally be acceptable to play so Sakazuki decks can be built much more greedily without being punished for it.

In the last set Leader Rebecca tried to fill the role of a control deck, but in a very unique way that may not have appealed to normal control players. Now there's a Leader that enables a much more conventional control game plan at a very high power level.    

#3 Special Rares

Like every set since OP3, Awakening of the New Era contains a small collection of special rare cards with a unique art design that gives us another awesome thing to potentially open in these boxes, and the SP rares for OP5 might be my favorite to date.

The cards this time around include incredible variations of OP1 Nami, OP1 Yamato, OP2 Uta, OP3 Lucci, OP4 Kiado, and newcomer to the game, OP5 Enel. I expect there to be an audience for all of these cards, with Nami being the clear chase card that should outpace all of the others by a fair bit. That said, we've seen even the less desirable cards in these sets hold quite a bit of value or even soar up over time with changes in the metagame, so opening any one of these cards is something worth being incredibly happy about.

#2 Oda Luffy

Now we come to one of the special additions for the first anniversary that I as a Law player am personally very excited about. For this special occasion, Oda himself was commissioned to make a special illustration of ST Luffy that can be randomly opened in this set. Any unique illustration by Oda would be exceptionally valuable under any circumstance, but this one just so happens to be on one of the strongest red cards in the game that was already in short supply due to underprinting issues with the original starter decks.

If all of that isn't enough, there are actually two different versions of this card—the normal one that has roughly the same drop rate as the SP rares, and a special gold version with Oda's signature that's much closer to a Manga rare in scarcity. We've seen in the past how valuable cards with art directly from the manga can be, but a unique illustration is on another level, and will attract many collectors who don't even play the game. Add the signature to that, and you have what is likely to be one of the most sought-after cards a main booster set has ever produced for the One Piece Card Game.  

#1 Manga Rare Trio

The pinnacle of every OPCG set has always been the Manga rare card standing alone above everything else, but since this is the one-year anniversary, Bandai decided that just one manga rare card simply wouldn't do. So this set features three.

All of the "roof piece" captains who battled Kiado and Big Mom atop Onigashima to usher in the new era get the Manga rare treatment for their cards, so whether your favorite one is Luffy, Kid, or Law, there's something here for you.

It's also worth noting that the base and Parallel versions of all of these cards should be quite desirable in their own right, as each is a very powerful game piece. Gear 5 Luffy is one of the best finishers in the game that has incredible synergy with both his Leader card in this set as well as the red/purple one from ST10. Law provides a huge boost to ST10 Law decks that gives that strategy much more staying power than it previously had, and Kid's card might now be the best blocker in purple and will likely show up in most purple decks moving forward. These cards being strong matters less for the value of their Manga variations, but it's still worth keeping in mind in case you open a Parallel.

With three full Manga rares alongside Oda's signed Luffy card, this set has four cards at comparable rarity to all of the previous set's single Manga rares! While all three will be very valuable, my expectation is that Luffy's Gear 5 card will end up being the most valuable among them due to how much that moment means to fans of the story. I'm personally not a huge fan of ripping packs, but in the case of Awakening of a New Era, the expected value is just so high that even I will be getting in on the fun. I wish you luck and hope you get to open one of these awesome cards for yourself!