Blue Yellow Portgas D. Ace - The "Fire Fist" Ace

I'll never get tired of saying this: One Piece TCG's sealed decks are a true treasure for all players. Be it for new players or veterans, these products often include incredibly relevant cards, and these are usually only available in these products.

Charlotte Linlin ST07-010, Queen ST04-005, Dracule Mihawk ST12-003, and many others fit this description to a tee. They were released in these sealed, structural products, and never showed up in regular sets since then. They only returned as promotional cards.

That being said, Ultra Deck 13, the new premium deck, brings not only great cards to the game, but also three different leaders for us to use.

In today's article, let's see one of these three leaders, the one who might not be the most competitive leader in the game, but it is relatively easy to build with the cards included in Ultra Deck 13: Portgas.D.Ace ST13-002.

As we said before, this is a premium product. It includes a great deckbox, and also a booster with three cards.

These three boosters may get you extra copies of the cards already in this deck, but they'll have a black and white finish that is really similar to ink. These are some of the prettiest cards around in person, in front of your very eyes. They feature a beautiful white varnish, and a delicate black texture in the sections that look similar to ink.

All of these cards fetch a good price compared to their regular versions. If you get one of the super rare versions, or even one of the leaders in this style, you can sell them and make an even bigger profit, if this works for you.

Other than that, there are only yellow cards in this deck. All its three leaders have two colors, however, which means you can add more support cards of other colors later on. Sabo ST13-001 is yellow and red, Portgas.D.Ace ST13-002 is yellow and blue, and, lastly, Monkey.D.Luffy ST13-003 is yellow and black.

This is our original decklist:

This product includes, mostly, 4 copies of each card in this list. However, it only includes two copies of each Super Rare card, which we'll discuss later on. Additionally, there are only a few copies of Gum-Gum Jet Spear ST13-018, Flame Dragon King ST13-017, and Emporio.Ivankov ST13-005, but they aren't too essential for its strategy overall.

It is a great idea to buy one copy of this deck and get the other copies by buying singles. This will save you a significant amount of money, and it is much better than buying two Ultra Deck 13s. That is, unless you want an extra deckbox and also want to try your luck again with the boosters featuring the alternative art styles.

You can easily play all the leaders featured in this product with the original deck list, but we can adapt Portgas.D.Ace ST13-002 more easily than the others, so let's discuss him.

We'll work with Portgas.D.Ace ST13-002 as our leader in this list. Once again, I stress that, to build him straight out of the box, you'll only need one structural deck and two extra copies of each Super Rare card.

In the build we'll cover today, we'll use some cards that are not in the original product. However, with just the original list and a few extra singles, you can build a perfectly viable version of Ace for local tournaments and even regional competitions.

Portgas.D.Ace ST13-002 has 4 health, 5000 power, is yellow and blue, and a Whitebeard Pirate. He also has two abilities.

The first one lets you look at the top five cards in your deck, get one character that costs exactly 5, and put it on top of your Life pile, face-up. But you need to attach two Don to him to use it. You'll put the other 4 cards at the bottom of your deck in any order.

When you need to look for cards in your deck, this is the card you'll use the most, and it is critical for your most important strategies. The most fundamental cards in this deck cost 5, and, considering you can get them from our life pile and put them on your board or your hand, this strategy is extremely consistent.

Portgas.D.Ace ST13-002's second ability is static, as in it is similar to a passive effect - it always triggers at the end of your turn. It Trashes all face-up cards in your life pile.

There are many decks and cards that focus on interacting with face-up cards on your life pile; Sabo ST13-001 himself is included in the Three Brothers deck and is one of such cases.

Portgas.D.Ace ST13-002's effect is nothing more than a way to make this type of strategy a bit riskier. After all, it can be extremely comfortable to just add more cards to the top of your Life pile and stretch or control the game as you use them as an extension of your hand. These cards do offer you a lot more options to play.

Without this limitation, you would be able to build an incredibly powerful control deck, stack many Life points, and just add the best triggers from your deck straight to the top of your Life pile.

Unfortunately, this makes cards like Charlotte Katakuri OP03-123 stronger for your opponents. Instead of just moving the target card around temporarily, they'll actually remove them from play.

This is the list we'll discuss in this article:

The Three Little Brothers

The basis of our list is nothing more, nothing less, than the younger versions of the characters in this Ultra Deck's title - The Three Brothers. So, they're Monkey.D.Luffy ST13-014, Sabo ST13-007, and Portgas.D.Ace ST13-010, which all have similar attacks.

Each one costs two, and you may send them from your board to your graveyard to reveal the top card in your Life pile. If the card you revealed costs 5, and has the name specified by the character you trashed, you can play it from the top of your Life pile.

Additionally, when you activate their effects successfully, your leader, regardless of which one it is, will get +2000 power until the end of your opponent's turn, so they'll have 7000 power. They might even have 9000 power or more, depending on how your turn went.

To make it easier to understand: if you Trash Portgas.D.Ace ST13-010, and see that the top card in your Life pile is also a Portgas. D. Ace that costs exactly 5, you'll be able to play it for free, and also boost your leader's power.

Notice that you'll need to check the name and the cost of the top card in your Life pile, but not its color. It doesn't need to be a yellow card. This enables multiple strategies with other cards that meet these requisites.

If we look at the Japanese releases, which will hit the stores in Japan before we see them in the West, there are many promising new cards for the younger versions of these characters. They'll be great targets to pull from our Life pile.

The Three Big Brothers

As we mentioned before, these three brothers use their younger versions to grow into their adult versions throughout the game. To do this, they use, specifically, the stronger, 5-cost versions of themselves from the top of your life.

These cards are quite different from the 2-cost versions. Each has their own abilities and traits.

Let's start with Portgas.D.Ace ST13-011, the strongest among the three brothers.

The character version of our leader doesn't have sophisticated abilities. It just gets Rush when it enters play if you have two or less cards in your Life pile. So, you'll always have a 7000 power character with Rush to play, which is perfect to catch your opponents off-guard. This simplicity, added to the fact it is yellow, makes it an excellent choice for decks like Enel OP05-098 and Yamato OP06-022.

Sabo ST13-008, on the other side, is much more versatile. When it enters play, you may trash the card from the top or bottom of your Life pile to K.O. an enemy character that costs 5 or less. So, you can use Sabo ST13-008 both straight from our Life pile (through Sabo ST13-007), or from your hand - by using some card that your leader put on the top of our Life pile but that you can't use right now, like Curly.Dadan ST13-006.

We can say the same for Monkey.D.Luffy ST13-015, which, when he attacks, gains +2000 power until the end of your opponent's turn. Then, if you have 1 or more Life cards, you'll draw 1 card and Trash 1 card from the top of your Life pile. Like so, you can use the inefficient cards your leader put at the top of your Life pile as fuel for other cards that require you to Trash a card from the top of your Life pile.

Notice that even if you have zero cards in your Life pile, you can still activate Monkey.D.Luffy ST13-015's effect to gain +2000 power. The only difference is that you won't draw a card or Trash a card from the top of your Life pile.

Other Cards

Monkey.D.Garp ST13-013 and The Three Brothers’ Bond ST13-019 will get you the cards you need from your deck. They can easily find you any version of Ace, Luffy, or Sabo for very little Don!!!.

We included Makino ST13-012 and Yamato ST13-016 because they have Counter +2000, but you can use them in a pinch when you don't want to lose a face-up card on the top of our Life pile to your leader's ability or something your opponent played.

Another relevant card that has Counter +2000 is Sanji OP03-102, which lets you add cards to your Life pile when you attack with it. Thunder Bolt OP03-121 also interacts with cards in your Life pile that you can't use - it transforms them into removals.

Finally, the most distinctive card in this deck is Charlotte Pudding OP06-047, whose effect is quite similar to cards like Pokémon TCG's Judge, but it only works one-way. It forces your opponent to shuffle their hand back into their deck and draw 5 cards, regardless of how many cards they had before.

During a One Piece match, it is quite common to see players build their hand in a way that meets their needs and sets up their future attacks. So, Charlotte Pudding OP06-047 is a great way to disrupt their plans, as she dismantles big hands with seven or more cards, or just really valuable hands.

Like so, she'll force your opponents to start all over again. She is also a great tool to finish matches, considering she noticeably improves matchups against decks that hoard answers in their hand, like Enel OP05-098 and Nami OP03-040.

Portgas.D.Ace ST13-002 is the type of deck all TCGs want. It is easy to find, has accessible cards, and you can build it with only two copies of cards included in a sealed product, which is available at most stores. This deck can put up a fight and win many matches at any tournament. It will be even better once the next sets come along.

Next, we'll cover Sabo ST13-001, but Monkey.D.Luffy ST13-003 is probably the strongest deck out of these three. He has been dominating Japanese tournaments, but I'll wait a bit more to discuss him because, right now, we still don't have some of the most popular tools for him. We will only be able to grasp his full potential once we have OP07 in our hands - which will be soon.

What did you think of our list?

Do you prefer the other leaders?

Tell us your thoughts in our comment section below!

See you next time!