One Piece TCG: April Banlist Review + Everything We Know About Rotation

At the end of the Bandai Card Game Fest, on March 17th, 2025, Bandai announced the new One Piece TCG banlist.

Most players expected changes to the main decks in the game: Donquixote Doflamingo OP01-060, Marshall.D.Teach OP09-081, and Monkey.D.Luffy OP05-060 and his future purple variants that will soon come to the west. Luffy, in fact, has been conquering many podiums in Japan already.

In today's article, we'll go through the next One Piece TCG banlist, effective from April 2025 onward. We'll also show you everything we know about the new game structure Bandai announced at their last event.

This banlist was not exactly what we expected, yet one of the few things we saw coming was the Jinbe OP07-045 ban. This card was essential in Donquixote Doflamingo OP01-060, which was arguably the strongest deck in the format because of its great synergy with the Seven Warlords.

Otherwise, there were a few surprising bans. Gecko Moria OP06-086 and Ice Age OP02-117 were old targets from a time black decks were unbeatable and represented a good part of the meta. As the game progressed, though, players stopped asking Bandai to ban these cards.

Gecko Moria OP06-086

Gecko Moria (OP06-086) has been one of the most popular cards in decks with black cards ever since it was released. It impacted the game so much that the devs decided to monitor its play rate and influence in competitive settings closely, like Birthing Pod in Magic: The Gathering.

What sets this card apart from all others is that you can use its ability to bring to the board basically all types of characters and leaders. This flexibility basically means you can create a huge advantage with it rather easily. If you play it just once, your board will already be much larger than your opponent, so, on its own, it is already powerful enough to decide who wins.

Furthermore, creating 8-cost cards that can stand on the same ground or even surpass Moria became rather difficult. Considering all of this, Bandai simply decided to ban Gecko Moria OP06-086.

Without Moria, black decks will most likely have to resort to other ways to create advantage, like Rebecca OP05-091, but none of the options available are as strong as Moria. This means this color will slow down a bit, and matches will be more balanced and rely less on a single power play.

Ice Age OP02-117

Ice Age OP02-117 has always stood out among cards that discount the cost of characters because it discounts a lot and is quite cheap. This cost-to-benefit ratio has made it an extremely valuable tool for black decks, as, with it, cost-based removals are even easier to use. Even decks that don't focus on this mechanic that much, like Monkey.D.Luffy ST13-003, used it sporadically.

The strong interaction between this card and black - discounting costs and removing - made it a core card in this color. This basically meant that any new card whose effect relied on how much characters cost had to be designed with Ice Age OP02-117 in mind, which was quite restrictive. This limitation eventually made Bandai create a few cards that increased their own cost while in play just to avoid this type of effect.

Now, the alternative for Ice Age is Haute Couture Patch★Work OP05-094, which, unfortunately, doesn't discount as much, but can prevent an enemy character from untapping if necessary.

The Future of Black

As both Gecko Moria OP06-086 and Ice Age OP02-117 were banned, black lost two of its main staples. These two cards defined the very identity and strength of black decks.

Without them, black, whose main leader was Rob Lucci OP07-079, is a lot less consistent and could take a while to adapt, at least until new support cards come out to make up for this space.

Jinbe OP07-045

Jinbe OP07-045 became powerful because it is cheap and interacts with cards like Edward Weevil EB01-023 e Trafalgar Law ST17-002, particularly with Donquixote Doflamingo OP01-060 as their leader. This leader already has enough tools to stay relevant in the meta, like Marshall.D.Teach ST17-005, another card players thought would be banned. Jinbe's interaction with these characters and this leader lets you put multiple characters in play in the first few turns, which gives you an early advantage that goes beyond what the devs wanted for the game.

This effect made the game so unbalanced it became less strategic and more dependent on a few plays, particularly with characters that have strong effects when they enter play. Furthermore, because it is a low-cost card, the devs eventually realized they wouldn't be able to create a card with a similar cost that could compete fairly. Its low cost is what "forces" us to either play it whenever we can or have to face it whenever our opponents can play it.

Considering how this card negatively impacted the game, the devs decided to simply ban Jinbe OP07-045 to make sure Donquixote Doflamingo OP01-060 is balanced and open some space for new cards to see play.

This will, unfortunately, affect decks that are less relevant competitively, like Boa Hancock OP07-038, which was just beginning to find some space.

Kingdom Come EB01-059

Kingdom Come EB01-059 or "Raigou", as he is popularly known because of his Japanese name, was designed with Enel OP05-098 in mind, but ended up banned. Their synergy became unexpectedly too powerful for such a slow, defensive deck.

The idea behind this card is to reduce your opponent's life to 1, which is ideal for Enel players. However, it created a disproportionate advantage and let you remove threats all while you increased your own defenses efficiently, time and time again. According to Bandai's official announcement, this level of control made matches extremely one-sided, and, as such, the opponent was hardly able to come back against a deck that focuses so much on control and healing as Enel OP05-098.

This ban, was, by far, the most unexpected and unexplained in the entire list. It was more a way to deal with an extremely frustrating deck, than actually a card that was so relevant and oppressive it had to be banned. Kingdom Come EB01-059 was the main tool Enel had to deal with enemy threats directly, and was incredibly helpful in its defensive game style.

What Is Not in the Banlist?

Marshall.D.Teach ST17-005 was a good ban because of how easy it makes the game for Donquixote Doflamingo OP01-060. It gives you tapped DON!! and lets you control the top of your deck every turn. That way, you always have the best option to play, which, coincidently, used to be Jinbe OP07-045.

Another card many of us suspected would be banned was Gum-gum Giant OP09-078. This card is an excellent defensive option that cycles cards in your hand, refines it, and gives +4000 to your leader or a character if your leader is a member of the Straw Hat Crew. Many purple Luffys will come out in the next few months, and this card will make them all incredibly consistent in the late game. You'll be able to grab many unexpected wins with it.

Block rotation is a resource used in a few card games, like Magic: The Gathering and Pokémon TCG, to keep the game fresh. This system removes and adds cards to the main format of the game periodically.

In One Piece TCG, the standard format will "rotate" once a year. Cards with a certain number printed on the bottom, inside a small bubble in the shape of Gomu Gomu no Mi, will leave the format. This is how Bandai will update the game year after year.

We don't know much about this system yet, and how it will work with the cards that have already been reprinted, like the ones in PRB-01 The Best. However, we know they'll reprint more cards, and these cards will be valid in the upcoming rotations. On Bandai's official live stream, they briefly mentioned the idea of an eternal format, similar to MTG's Legacy, with dedicated tournaments, but that was all.

That being said, this rotation will only happen a year from now, in April 2026, so we'll have plenty of time to adapt to the change.

Many players were extremely disappointed with this banlist and the rotation as well. However, these changes can be positive, as they can bring us new ways to play and explore the game we love so much, including new strategies and new decks.

What did you think of the banlist and the rotation? Tell us your thoughts in our comment section below.

Thank you for reading, and see you next time!