There’s A One Piece TCG? Here’s What You Need To Know
One Piece, the wildly popular anime franchise, has entered the trading card game scene. It follows the standard principles across the genre, collecting cards of characters from the anime and using them in battle against other collectors.
Let’s take an in-depth look at one of the newest trading card games.
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What is One Piece?
For those unfamiliar, One Piece is one of the most popular anime shows in the world. It is the winner of three anime-related awards and a nominee of 11 others. As an extremely decorated media property, it’s not too surprising to see it start branching out into trading cards.
The plot of One Piece is centered around the pirate Monkey D. Luffy and his crew as they pursue the legendary treasure known simply as the One Piece. At the time of writing the show has over 1050 episodes and shows no sign of slowing down.
One Piece TCG release information
Sales for the trading card game started on September 30th, 2022 with Super Pre-Release Starter Decks becoming available for order. The official, standard version of the starter decks released on December 2nd, 2022. Since then, several more starter decks and booster packs have been released including Romance Dawn and a Film Edition Starter Deck.
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Release formats for the One Piece TCG
The One Piece TCG has two release formats, starter decks and booster packs.
Starter Decks
Every starter deck will feature a complete deck of 51 cards, 10 Don!! Cards, and a playsheet. The rarities guaranteed in each deck are as follows:
- 1 Leader Card
- 2 Super Rare Cards
- 14 Common Cards
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One Piece Booster boxes and packs
There are 24 packs in a One Piece Booster box. Booster packs include 12 cards in every pack.
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One Piece TCG checklist information
At the time of writing, there are currently 276 cards in the One Piece TCG across the four starter decks and Romance Dawn booster pack. The game features 7 different color variations as well as five card types.
All cards that are multicolor parallels are Leader cards. It’s important to note that the colors do not signify rarity, rather they are used for gameplay. Building a deck around a color or two will net the best results in-game.
- Red: 79/276
- Green: 63/276
- Blue: 61/276
- Purple: 78/276
- Black: 2/276
- Yellow: 1/276
- Multicolor: 8/276
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How does the One Piece TCG work?
Unsurprisingly, the game itself functions very similarly to other popular trading card games like Magic: The Gathering. The basic premise of playing cards on a mat with the goal of bringing your opponents’ health to 0 is still there, but One Piece introduces some unique wrinkles to separate itself from the pack.
One such example is the bonus abilities that leaders have which influences which leader you want to play with and what your deck’s strategy will be. These leaders also have the health points for your team, so you have to decide whether it’s worth taking damage in exchange for utilizing your leader in battle.
The “mana” in-game are Don!! cards, a reference to the phrase prevalent in the show. Other features of the game include the aforementioned color combinations and some whacky abilities related to the One Piece world.
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Final thoughts on the One Piece TCG
In a gaming scene as deep and well-established as this one, it’ll be difficult for the One Piece TCG to really make an impact. It’ll take time, money, and many more releases to build up a card roster that provides enough compelling gameplay to make it a serious competitor to established giants like MTG or Pokémon.
As of right now, the One Piece TCG is a neat opportunity for collectors thanks to the high-quality art on the cards, but it isn’t quite ready as a serious trading card game.
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Further reading
Interested in other Cardlines write-ups on the trading card game industry? Check out some of the pieces below:
