The Cards to Get Before One Piece TCG's Royal Blood (OP-10)

It is time to return to Dressrosa and Punk Hazard with OP-10 Royal Blood! The newest booster set for the One Piece Card Game, OP-10 is sure to shake up the meta quite a bit with a whole new slew of Leaders and cards featuring scenes from the Punk Hazard and Dressrosa arcs of the series.

In addition to highlighting these two arcs, Royal Blood introduces new cards for the Black Blackbeard Pirates, Yellow Supernovas, and Green Odyssey themes. While there are a ton of new cards in this set, it is always smart to make sure you've picked up some older cards that will see play once OP-10 drops. So, let's look at what you'll need moving forward!

Building Yellow Eustass"Captain"Kid 

We're going to start off strong with one of the biggest decks coming out of Royal Blood: Yellow Kid. This new Leader card is all about manipulating and revealing your own Life Cards to gain an advantage over your opponent. Focusing primarily on the Supernovas-type cards, the Yellow Kid deck will be packed full of Yellow Supernova cards, which will conveniently premiere in Royal Blood! So, outside of cracking open some packs of OP-10, you'll need some other cards…

So, we're going to focus on what are probably going to be the hardest cards to get for the Yellow Kid deck. EB-01 Shirahoshi and Viola, along with the OP-07 Portgas.D.Ace.

Shirahoshi and Viola are both super important to your Yellow Kid strategy! They're both +1000 Blockers, and they both have solid on-field effects. Viola synergizes perfectly with your Leader's End of Turn ability. Viola has an On Play ability that flips all of your Life Cards face-down or lets you rearrange your opponent's life. Both of these effects are super strong. Being able to manipulate any potential Triggers that your opponent will have, along with turning your Leader's ability back on are both incredibly powerful at all points in the game. 

Shirahoshi is really strong because her ability makes it so that your opponent will always want to attack her. Otherwise, they risk giving you more Life; and we all know what happens when Yellow decks get more Life. Having a Blocker that essentially needs to be removed by battle is really strong and one of the main reasons why this Shirahoshi has been going up in price so much over the last few months.

Finally, let's talk about Portgas.D.Ace OP-07-119… This card is just amazing as it hits hard, gives you additional Life, and has Rush. What's not to love? In reality, this Ace is one of those cards you hopefully picked up when 500 Years in the Future was released. He quickly started to rise in price, and now it is one of the most expensive non-Alternate Art cards in the set.

Building Red/Green Smoker

If you're looking to build the new Red/Green Smoker deck, you're going to find yourself wanting to play more Green Boss Characters in your late game. So why not go for some of the best ones that have been seeing success?

These three cards have had the most success in the Eastern OP-10 format lists as the big drops in the deck. Let's go over them in terms of age, shall we?

8-Drop Eustass"Captain"Kid comes from the first set of the OPTCG (Romance Dawn) and has been a staple in most Green strategies since it was released, and for good reason! As long as it has a DON!! attached to it, it serves as a pseudo-Blocker. Any time you can throw an 8000-power Blocker onto the field, you'll have a good time. It gets even better when you combo it with the 2-cost Donquixote Rosinante that can KO itself instead of letting your Kid get KO'd. 

Next, we have the 10-Drop Donquixote Doflamingo from OP-04 Kingdoms of Intrigue. It feels like it is a neat coincidence that this card will see a ton more play once we hit the set, which brings us back to Dressrosa. This card, just like the character featured on it, is a total monster. It freezes up to 3 rested Leader or Character cards so that they stay rested for an extra turn. It is a super powerful card, often shifting the tide of any game when it hits the field.

Finally, the 7-Drop Hody Jones is one of the strongest cards in any Green strategy. 8000 Power with Rush is nothing to scoff at. It also rests up to two of your opponent's cards when you play it, which just makes it even stronger! It deals with two potential Blockers, or in the case of decks like Bonney, can even deal with their Leader ability by resting their active DON!!. All of this in exchange for a single Life? 100% worth it.

The great thing about all of these Green Boss Characters? They all got reprinted in PRB-01 Premium Booster! That means that for the regular art variants of each, you aren't going to break the bank. I think Kid might be the most expensive one at about $6 a copy, but it appears in way more Green decks than Hody or Doffy combined.

Building Black/Blue Usopp

Alright, the last card we're looking at is the man himself: GOD USOPP! The Straw Hat sniper finally gets his own Leader card in OP-10, which makes a ton of sense, considering he gained a massive following during the war in Dressrosa. 

Amazingly, this is one of the cheapest decks you can build when it comes to older cards. Most of the Dressrosa cards in OP04 Kingdoms of Intrigue and on are all Rares or lower. The only older SR (Super Rare) that you would play in the deck is the 7-Drop Monkey.D.Luffy from OP-04.

This card is relatively inexpensive, all things considered. The fact that you won't be playing four copies of it helps the budget of this deck as well. Aside from it? Most of your cards can be found in bulk bins at your locals. So grab them now! This deck will likely be super fun to play and will be successful as well.

Well, that's about it! Those are all the cards I think you should be picking up as we get closer and closer to the release of OP-10 Royal Blood in the next week. The prerelease events are starting this weekend, and once those are finished, it'll be time for the actual set to drop and the format to change gears. I'm expecting to see these three decks shining the most out of the new set, with Sugar, Caesar Clown, and Trafalgar Law being the decks that fly under the radar compared to everything else.