OP09 - Emperors in the New World: Leader Review

Leaders are, undoubtedly, the most important cards in the One Piece Card Game. They stay at the center of your board at all times and completely determine your game style - that is, what the deck you want to build needs to do, the colors you can use, whether your leader can attack or not, and even how much HP you'll have at the beginning of the game.

So, considering that, when we decided to review the new set, Emperors in the New World, or OP09, we decided to begin with its leaders.

As its name (Emperors in the New World) suggests, this set focuses on the four great pirate emperors in the One Piece universe nowadays - the Yonkou. The set itself is directly tied to what's currently being developed in the manga, so you won't see Kaidou, Big Mom, or Whitebeard getting their flowers in this set.

It was also inspired by ODYSSEY, the most recent One Piece video game. A few of these new cards refer to the story of the video game and its characters, in fact. Clearly, the goal was to promote the game's release on Nintendo Switch.

Finally, even though this detail was a bit detached from everything else (despite being very welcome), this set released the first Leader version of Nico Robin. Her cards focus a lot on scenes and characters that showed up in her flashbacks, when we were shown her past in Ohara.

Next, we'll discuss these Leaders one by one, according to how they're numbered in this set. Please note that we are not ranking them according to tournament results, or how viable/meta they are.

Shanks OP09-001 is a red Leader with 5 life, 5000 power, the Slash attribute, and the following types: The Four Emperors and Red-Haired Pirates. This character is the only Emperor who remained an Emperor throughout the entire show, and I find him incredibly interesting. He is one of my favorite One Piece characters, so I could stay here all day discussing him.

In any case, what matters to us is his ability, which actually makes him not only one of the best decks in the entire game, but also one of the best monored Leaders ever released. Once per turn when your opponent declares an attack, you can use Shank's ability to give a target character -1000 power - whether they're the attacker or not - until the end of the turn. You can use this in several ways, but the most obvious one is nerfing one of the enemy attackers so they can't deal damage to you that easily. To actually deal damage to you, your opponent will have to add more DON!! to them. This means Shanks OP09-001 can simply be a 6000 power Leader once per turn.

Another quite interesting way to use this ability is with Lucky.Roux OP09-015. Besides a Blocker, when Lucky.Roux is knocked out, you may destroy one enemy character with 6000 power or less. This way, you'll be able to knock out strong characters after you use Shanks OP09-001 to nerf their power. You can even use Shanks OP09-004 to do this, as he gives all enemy characters -1000 passively.

Once you see how the cards designed for this deck work, you can easily see how it is supposed to be a more relaxed monored Leader compared to Leaders like Monkey.D.Dragon OP07 - 001. You'll often play more defensively, kind of like a "Stax" deck, in a way.

Shanks OP09-001 is also one of the best performing decks in the meta nowadays. It is resilient, counter-attacks really well, and can be quite aggressive when you need to. It is undoubtedly one of the best Leaders from this set!

Lim OP09-022 is the ODYSSEY Leader. She is green and purple, has 5000 power, 4 life, and the Wisdom attribute. You can only use her effect once per turn in your Main Phase, and it is the following: you may tap 3 DON!! to get one DON!! from your DON!! deck and also play one ODYSSEY character that costs 5 or less from your hand on the board. This means that you'll be able to, essentially, play a character on the board for less DON!! than usual.

Her other ability is even more relevant, but it is a bit controversial. With this ability, all characters you play on the board will come in tapped, which technically makes them vulnerable to enemy attacks and any effects that lock down tapped characters, like Carrot OP08-023.

In theory, this would go really well with ODYSSEY characters overall, as their abilities all trigger when they enter play if there are tapped characters on your board. In practice, this makes your characters big targets, which essentially means you won't be able to build a board with Lim OP09-022.

That being said, Bandai has announced they want this deck to be functional and stand out in the meta. So, they included more ODYSSEY cards in the next set, OP10 - Royal Bloodline, which even worsened the green card pool for the other green Leaders in it. In any way, Lim OP09-022 might become an option in the future.

I've been saying Buggy should have his own Leader version for a while now, maybe instead of Kuro OP03-021 or Arlong OP03-022, and representing the East Blue. As we're talking about the most recent version of this character (more specifically, based on the manga), this Leader version of Buggy focuses on Cross Guild, his newest fleet, and two ex-shichibukai: Dracule Mihawk and Crocodile.

Buggy OP09-042 is a monoblue Leader with 5000 power and 5 life. He also has the Slash attribute and the Four Emperors and Cross Guild types. You can activate his ability as many times as you want in your turn, as long as you can pay for it. With his ability, after you tap 5 DON!! and discard a card from your hand, you may then put a "Cross Guild" character on the board directly from your hand - no matter how much it costs.

In other card games, putting powerful cards in play for a small cost is considered one of the most powerful abilities around, and should always be balanced accordingly. That being said, it seems as if we're still missing more impactful cards for this archetype, considering it didn't perform well when it was released. Buggy OP09-051 is a promising character when you first look at him, but you'll need a lot of time to set up before you can play him on your board. Meanwhile, Yonkou decks can play an attacker with 12000 power without necessarily having to set up the board beforehand.

This seems to be an intended effect. To make up for it, Bandai has announced three Cross Guild cards (Dracule Mihawk P-081, Crocodile P-082, and Buggy P-084) will be available as tournament prizes in the future. They won't make this deck unstoppable, but they'll help a lot.

Buggy OP09-042 is more interesting than strong, and it doesn't seem as if Bandai knows what they're doing with him. Lim OP09-022 and him are most likely the weakest Leaders in this set. Bandai will have to really sit down and think about what they want to do with him because any powerful Cross Guild character that they release for him might simply break the game.

Here it is, the Four Emperors version of our favorite captain. He is black and purple, has 5000 power, 4 life, the Strike attribute, and The Four Emperors and the Straw Hat Crew types. He also has two abilities. One is static, and, to use it, you'll need to attach 1 DON!! to it. After you do that, you'll make all characters in play cost 1 more, which is perfect to stall the game against black decks.

You can trigger his other ability once in your turn. It lets you get two DON!! from your DON!! deck and put them in play (setting one as active and resting the other one) whenever you return two or more DON!! to your DON!! deck. This means you'll be able to draft incredibly interesting strategies for this deck, as, instead of returning a certain number of DON!! to your deck, you can return even more. Essentially, you'll be able to use this ability for the first time by returning two DON!!, and then use it again for just one DON!!.

This Leader also came with Gum-Gum Giant OP09-078, one of the best counter events ever released.

Monkey.D.Luffy OP09-061 is one of the best Leaders from this set. Even the cards Bandai created for him are making other Luffy, like Monkey.D.Luffy ST10-002 and Monkey.D.Luffy OP05-060, more viable.

There is an interesting/unusual Leader in every set, and, this time, Nico Robin is that Leader. This type of Leader usually has a lot of potential, but folks have to work hard to make them work. Nico Robin OP09-062 has 5000 power, 4 life, the Strike attribute, and the Straw Hat Crew type.

Her first ability is the Banish keyword. With this keyword, your opponent will have to trash any card they draw from their life pile if you manage to deal damage to them with Robin. The effects of these cards won't trigger either. Her other effect lets you discard a Trigger card from your hand when you attack with her to get a DON!! from your DON!! deck.

These abilities are great, and building decks with her will be quite interesting. Unfortunately, she doesn't have a lot of support, as Bandai didn't release as many cards for her as they did for the other 5 Leaders from this set. They practically dedicated an entire color for them, while not that many yellow cards support Nico Robin OP09-062 in particular. Instead, yellow cards mostly work with the Revolutionary Army type (so, with Belo Betty OP05-002 and Sabo ST13-001), and the Egghead type (Vegapunk OP07-097); they don't exactly support Robin. If she at least had the "Former Baroque Works" type, we could use cards like Crocodile OP04-060 with her, which would make her a lot better.

Still, Nico Robin OP09-062 has won a few matches in Asian tournaments, so this could mean we can upgrade this deck even more to make her more competitive.

And here we go. Marshall.D.Teach OP09-081 is a monoblack Leader with 5 life, 5000 power, the Special attribute, and The Four Emperors and Blackbeard Pirate types. His first ability is static and disables your On Play effects. You can activate his second ability in your Main Phase if you discard a card from your hand. If you do, your opponent's On Play abilities are disabled until the end of their next turn.

Marshall.D.Teach OP09-081 is the strongest Leader in this set, and also the most difficult to play. He is only now beginning to perform well and consistently, and the OP09 season is almost over - OP10 is just around the corner, in fact.

To play him well, you need to know exactly how your opponent's deck works - this means knowing which are their biggest turns, and which threats they can play in them. Use this to protect yourself and disable their main abilities before they can win the game with them.

This game relies a lot on On Play abilities, so most characters you play in this deck won't be that useful outside combat. Disabling abilities, then, is incredibly relevant, strategically speaking, and could simply win you the game.

And, for Leader and character effects, we have Marshall.D.Teach OP09-093. Firstly, it is a gigantic blocker with 12000 power and stops enemy attacks incredibly easily, but it also disables Leader and character effects. This means you'll be able to deal with incredibly important enemy cards and, for instance, force a Nami OP03-040 to lose by "deckout" if you play it on the right turn.

OP09 - Emperors in the New World is the strongest set released this year, and may entirely change the meta, just like OP05 - Awakening of the New Era did in December 2023. The Leaders in this set are extremely powerful, as are the other cards in general. I can definitely say with confidence that it will be the game's new baseline in 2025.

What about you? What did you think of this set? Tell us your thoughts in our comment section below.

Thank you for reading, and see you next time!