The 10 Cards Everybody Wants from Kingdoms of Intrigue

Hello One Piece fans! We are now heading into the release of OPCG's fourth major set release, Kingdoms of Intrigue, and it's bringing a lot of exciting new cards to the table.

While previous sets were mostly made up of generically good cards with fairly broad applicability, the power cards of this set are synergy-driven in very specific ways. If you're looking to make one of the new decks, the overwhelming majority of the cards you'll need for it will likely come from this set, while pre-existing decks like Whitebeard of Law won't find much here to bolster their power (as if they needed it).

That said, there are still a few very desirable cards that could show up in a broad range of decks, alongside several of the new decks that are likely to be strong metagame players. So even if you're comfortable with your old deck, this set is very much still worth opening.

#10 Queen Leader (Alternate Art)

We'll start off by showcasing one of the new leaders coming to the game alongside the brand new alternate-art treatment used for the leaders in this set. Queen, like most of the other leaders in this set, is very specific in what it's trying to do. This one specifically requires your life and hand cards combined to not exceed 4 in order to activate, in addition to requiring you control an 8-drop in order to reach max potential.

All of that may seem like a lot, but the upside of gaining a life for 1 DON is huge, especially when combined with some other cards we'll get to on this list. Queen being yellow/blue also allows for some unique synergies where you can set up a Trigger card on the top of your deck with cards like OP1 Perona or OP1 Doflamingo and then add it to the top of your life with the leader ability or even a card like OP3 Sanji. It's not uncommon for the Queen deck to gain upwards of 3 life a game, so if the playstyle of summoning giant characters like OP1 Dracule Mihawk and OP3 Katakuri while gaining a ton of life sounds appealing to you, keep on the lookout for this awesome leader card.

#9 Donquixote Doflamingo (Alternate Art)

Here we have our first generically good card that could show up in pretty much any green deck going forward, but will certainly have an established home from the beginning. 10-drop Doflamingo is a really big addition to the game because up until this point green's top end has been comparatively lackluster against the other colors. That combined with no real aggressive tools to compete with the likes of Law or Zoro left the color in a bit of a dead zone, where it struggled to find success.

This card changes that dynamic by enabling green to potentially win longer games while giving it a bit more interactivity it was also lacking. When it is able to hit max value, Doflamingo can functionally act as a Time Walk, preventing your opponent from attacking on their turn—which is especially important when you just fully tapped out for a 10 drop. That's a massive tempo swing that can often turn a losing position into a winning one, so if you've found yourself struggling to win games with green for the past couple sets, Doflamingo will be a great addition to your deck.

#8 Nefeltari Vivi Leader (Alternate Art)

This leader card is one of the two in this set that uses a new design template for multicolored leaders we haven't seen before. Despite being two colors, both of these leaders start the game with 5 life, but can't attack to compensate. Instead they both have fairly powerful card draw abilities that enable specific synergies for their corresponding cards in the set.

In the case of Vivi, she can give any of her characters Rush and draw a card for the cost of 2 DON. This pairs very well with cards that have on-attack abilities such as the ones found on her loyal protectors OP4 Pell and OP4 Chaka. While there are many Alabasta-type cards that are specifically designed to be played alongside Vivi, the leader itself is not limited to just playing Alabasta cards, so feel free to get creative.

This leader is not expected to be a huge metagame player, but I anticipate it will still be a highly desirable card due to the art depicting one of the more iconic moments in One Piece alongside Vivi's popularity as a character.

#7 Yamato (Alternate Art)

Before I get into the reasons why this card is both incredibly powerful and desirable, I wanted to take this opportunity to say a couple things about the character of Yamato so anyone unfamiliar with them has a better understanding of their identity.

Eichiro Oda has often used his work to represent various forms of queer and transgender identity in a positive way, starting as early as Alabasta with Bon Clay. Those representations have become more developed and nuanced over time, which eventually lead to the creation of Yamato, a person born female who chooses to identify as a man while still presenting as a woman. This not being a common manifestation of trans existence has led many in the community to dismiss it, but I assure you it is very much real and valid. In fact, I have a friend who identifies in a very similar way. Some people think trans existence is defined by dysmorphia or some kind of revulsion toward the body you were born in, but it's not. It's defined by the courage and commitment to do whatever it takes to become the person you know you should be. That spirit of determination is exactly what Yamato personifies, and it's what we should all appreciate and respect in trans people.

In regard to the One Piece Card Game, this is one of the strongest yellow cards we've gotten, which is saying a fair bit. Not only does Yamato have the ability to KO a decent-sized creature when he comes into play depending on both players' life totals, he also gains you a life in the spots where you would need it most. There is an interesting chess game that takes place while you have this card in your hand. The normal calculus of how you want to defend an attack may change based upon how big of a character you want to KO with Yamato.

Any yellow deck that cannot play OP3 Charlotte Linlin will absolutely want to play Yamato, and I wouldn't be shocked to even see him show up in some of the Big Mom decks as well.

#6 Monkey.D.Luffy (Alternate Art)

Like many cards in this set, Monkey.D.Luffy is reasonably powerful on its face, but it's hard to appreciate its full power without the context of the cards it exists alongside.

Cards like OP4 Corrida Colosseum and OP4 King Kong Gun are some of the bigger reasons why Luffy is the centerpiece of the incoming Rebecca deck. There are many Dressrosa cards that send extra cards to your trash so Luffy's reset ability is constantly fueled, but a cool side benefit of that ability is letting you to stack your deck to some extent as it's not uncommon to cycle all the way through your deck and reach the pile you set up on the bottom.

The primary function of Luffy in the deck however is his ability to repeatedly attack active characters, preventing your opponent from ever developing a board without great difficulty. Once you have control over the game you can target Luffy with OP4 King Kong Gun and end the game from almost any position with multiple large double damage attacks. This one is going to be a mainstay in the format for quite some time.

#5 Sanji (Alternate Art)

One of the most important things yellow decks have access to is trigger cards that nullify and attack or gain an additional life to make end-of-game combat math difficult, so Sanji is going to be a huge addition to their arsenal. Every yellow deck was already playing ST Brulee due to how valuable those effects are, and Sanji is an all-around improvement for the most part.

While you do have to discard a card to activate Sanji's trigger, 5k power blockers are vastly more resilient to removal than those with 3k or less power, so the odds of this card actually getting to block are fairly high. In addition to that, Sanji is also a serviceable attacker that could surprise your opponent and allow you to push for lethal damage in spots you normally wouldn't have been able to.

It's hard to imagine a yellow deck that wouldn't want to play four Sanji for the foreseeable future, so this card will be in very high demand.

#4 Doflamingo Leader (Alternate Art)

Another new leader coming into the game that people are excited about is green/purple Doflamingo. His effect leaves deckbuilding fairly open, so you can do a lot of things with it.

While there are many Donquixote Family cards that care about having open DON at the end of your turn, I expect the most common iterations of this deck will feature many of the Film type cards from previous sets because the most powerful ones happen to be in these two colors. That iteration of the deck plays a very tempo-oriented gameplan with Film cards like OP2 Luffy and OP2 Brook letting you play multiple characters a turn while you leave up counter events like OP1 Punk Gibson and OP4 Spiderweb for protection. There are still several Donquixote cards that are strong options like the 10-drop Doffy we talked about earlier, as well as OP4 Sugar, so the deck is still bringing some new things to the table.

If you've enjoyed playing with film cards in the past but haven't been able to find a great home for them yet, Doffy will likely be a great choice for you.

#3 The 5 Special Rares

A new feature of these sets that seems to be a constant going forward is a small pool of cards that appear at a rarity higher than a normal alternate art to give boxes more value, and boy do they certainly accomplish that this time. For OP3 we had the Wanted Poster cards filling this role, and I was apprehensive to put them too high because I was unsure about both the drop rate and desirability of such cards.

Now that I have a better understanding of both, I'm very confident in saying these five cards are some of the most valuable cards you could open in this set. While last time Luffy was the clear chase card that would end up head and shoulders above the rest, this time I don't believe there's much of a gap between these cards. Boa, Law, and Whitebeard should all be fairly close in value to one another, with Sakazuki and Magellen not far behind. You should be stoked to open any one of these cards as they will all be immensely desirable.

#2 Rebecca Leader (Alternate Art)

Now we arrive at what is likely to be the most impactful addition to the format this set has to offer in the new leader, Rebbeca.

Like Vivi this is also a dual-color 5-life leader that cannot attack, but in this case the leader ability and supporting cast are quite a bit stronger. While Rebeeca demands the high deck-building cost of playing almost exclusively Dressrosa cards, it turns out there are actually more than enough good ones to make a very strong deck. Not only that, but the consistency given from the leader ability allows you to see pretty much your entire deck every game, so you can very reliably enact whatever gameplan you chose to go with.

This leader enables what I consider to be the game's first true control deck due to the strong interactivity gained by cards like OP4 Luffy, OP4 Trueno Bastardo, and OP4 Kyros alongside being able to get value turn after turn through your leader without giving your opponent life cards. While this deck is fairly challenging to play optimally, it provides a whole new way to approach the game that I believe will appeal to a large portion of the playerbase. This is certainly the most desirable leader in Kingdoms of Intrigue.

#1 Manga Rare Sabo

We now have a pretty solid sample of how valuable Manga rare cards can be, and while Sogeking proved to be a bit of a miss for the last set, I anticipate a return to prior highs this time around with Sabo.

While its desirability as a game piece is less relevant for a Manga rare, I think Sogeking showed (at least in part) that it's not completely irrelevant. On that front, Sabo might actually be the most powerful game piece among all the pre-existing Manga rares that also has fairly broad applicability across almost any black deck. Between Sabo and Borsalino, black now has access to what are likely the best blockers in the game, with Sabo even adding some consistency with his looting ability.

As a character, Sabo's popularity isn't on the level of Ace or Shanks, but he's certainly a fair bit ahead of Sogeking, so I would anticipate the value of this card to track closer to the first two Manga rares rather than the last one. The only other thing that could potentially depress the card's value is the fact it seems this set might not have the scarcity issues the previous ones did, so there will simply be more copies in circulation. In any case, Manga rare Sabo will still be far and away the most valuable card in Kingdoms of Intrigue, and anyone should be ecstatic to open it.