One Piece TCG Review: OP010 - Royal Blood Leaders

Leaders are, undoubtedly, the very core of the One Piece Card Game. They're always the first cards we get to see whenever a new set comes along, and completely dictate how each deck plays. They determine which strategies we can use, which colors, whether we can attack with them or not, and even how much life we have when the match starts.

So, we thought it was only fair we start discussing Royal Blood, or OP10, from its new leaders. Without further ado, let's go!

This set largely focuses on the Punk Hazard arc and the Dressrosa arc, so most of the new leaders are from this part of the story. We'll also get support for the purple Donquixote Family archetype (Sugar OP10-003 will definitely see some play), and the old Donquixote Doflamingo OP04-019 archetype. Red focuses more on the Punk Hazard arc - the leaders we got for it are Smoker OP10-001 and Caesar Clown OP10-002.

There are many new black/blue Dressrosa cards, so Usopp OP10-042 and even the forgotten Rebecca OP04-039 will become a lot better. Rebecca, in fact, started seeing some play after this set was released in Japan, and became an interesting rogue list.

The new yellow cards support Supernova, an archetype that was green at first, so Trafalgar Law OP10-022 will be able to use both of these colors. Eustass"Captain"Kid OP10-099 is another strong option for this archetype, but then you'd have to give up green, and that's certainly not ideal.

The biggest disappointment is green, as, instead of developing this set's themes even more, we got support for the ODYSSEY archetype, last seen in OP09. BANDAI could have used this color in much better ways. For instance, they could have given us some proper Navy cards for Smoker OP10-001 that also interacted well with Issho OP04-020.

In today's article, we'll go through each leader following their set numbers, so please keep in mind we didn't rank them by playability, competitiveness, or anything of the sort.

Smoker OP10-001 is a red/green leader who has 4 life, 5000 power, and the Slash attribute. He is also a Navy and Punk Hazard character. He has two distinct effects: one activates in the opponent's turn, and the other you can activate manually once in your turn.

His first effect gives +1000 power to all Navy or Punk Hazards characters you control on your opponent's turn. This is a passive effect that happens automatically, so it is an extra layer of protection for your characters. On the other side, you can activate his second effect once per turn during your main phase when you control a character with 7000 power or more to untap up to 2 DON!!.

In Asia, this leader is performing the best out of all the other leaders in this set. The main reason is that his game style values resilience and protects the board rather well. Unfortunately, to play it, you'll also have to play Caesar Clown OP10-002 and red characters, which could have been avoided entirely if BANDAI gave us more green/red Navy cards.

Caesar Clown OP10-002 is a red/blue leader that has 4 life, 5000 power, and the Special attribute. He is also a Punk Hazard and Scientist character. If you attach 2 DON!! to him, you can use his ability to return Punk Hazard characters that cost 2 or greater to your hand and K.O. an enemy character with 4000 power or less.

When Caesar Clown OP10-002 was revealed, we all got a bit anxious because his ability was really similar to Trafalgar Law ST10-001's ability. However, it simply lets you remove a character if you return a character to your hand, instead of letting you play another character.

He is probably the worst-performing leader in this set. The fact he has to rely on Punk Hazard characters, which don't see a lot of play, limits our build options considerably. Furthermore, if we use his ability with Monet OP10-016, it is a bit more valuable, so this character is essential in your opening hand. Unfortunately, he doesn't have a lot of synergy with generic characters like Otama OP01-006, so he's less competitive than other leaders.

Sugar OP10-003 is a purple/red leader that has 4 life, 5000 power, and the Special attribute. She is also a Donquixote Pirate, and they got a whole new line of purple cards in this set.

She has two abilities. The first one lets you, at the end of your turn and if you control a Donquixote Pirate with 6000 power or more, set up to 1 DON!! as active. This effect essentially recovers part of the resources you spent in a turn, so you'll be able to set up defensive plays on your opponent's turn more easily. This way, you'll be able to use Counter Events, or any abilities that need active DON!!, without many issues.

Her second ability lets you, on your opponent's turn and once per turn, get up to 1 DON!! from your DON!! deck and set it as active whenever you use an Event. This ability, as you must have noticed, interacts really well with her first ability. They'll essentially let you turn cards like Little Black Bears OP10-080 into ramp.

Unfortunately, building a deck around her is a bit complicated. You'll have to play a lot of Events instead of other cards, particularly Events with Counters, because this deck is vulnerable without them. Still, you can get decent results with her if you put in some effort to learn her game style.

Trafalgar Law OP10-022 is a green/yellow leader that has 4 life, 5000 power, and the Slash tribute. He is also a Dressrosa, Heart Pirate, and Supernova character.

His effect is a bit confusing, so here goes: when he has one DON!! attached and the total cost of your characters is 5 or more, you may return one of your own characters to your hand. When you do this, you'll be able to reveal one card from the top of your life, and, if it is a Supernovas character that costs 5 or less, you can put it in play directly without paying its cost.

His effect was directly inspired by his canon ability to perform surgery and rearrange internal structures. Previous leader versions of this character had similar effects, mostly swapping characters in play with others. This yellow version, however, focuses on "manipulating life", as his effect lets you play characters directly from your life pile. Furthermore, his colors let us play the best strategies the Supernovas had to offer us throughout the three years since the game was released, including older and more recent cards in this archetype.

His ability essentially lets us recycle cards and speed up the game, as, with it, we can reuse characters like Monkey.D.Luffy OP10-111 (activating his On Play effect before we return it to our hand), or put in play a stronger character like Cavendish EB01-012, for instance. The problem, though, is that he gets you characters directly from your life pile, so, if you're not careful, you might run out of these cards. I've won many matches against this leader (on a simulator) because my opponent didn't use this ability all that well, so I recommend you use it carefully if you do decide to play Trafalgar Law OP10-022.

Usopp OP10-042 is a blue/black leader with 4 life, 5000 life, and the Ranged attribute. He is a Dressarosa and Straw Hat Crew character. Usopp also has a passive effect that increases the cost of Dressrosa characters that cost more than 2 by +1. You can easily find this sort of effect in black, as many cards in this color have something to do with changing how much cards cost.

His second ability recovers resources, as it draws a card for you whenever one of your Dressrosa characters is K.O.'d or removed from the board through an enemy effect. However, you can only do this once per turn on your opponent's turn, and only if you have 5 or less cards in hand. This effect essentially makes sure you never run out of options as your characters are removed.

Usopp OP10-042 was well-positioned in the meta, but recent bans made his best matchups a lot worse, particularly Donquixote Doflamingo OP01-060 and Enel OP05-098. Nonetheless, it is still a good deck with interesting strategies and solid cards, like Rebecca OP10-058 and Kyros OP10-046.

Eustass"Captain"Kid OP10-099 is the leader I'm most excited about. He is yellow and has 5 life, the Special attribute, and the Supernovas and Kid Pirates types. His ability lets you, at the end of your turn, reveal one card from the top of your life to untap a Supernovas character that costs between 3 and 8 and give it Blocker until the end of your opponent's turn. This ability makes this deck very defensive, as, with it, you will be able to protect your leader from important attacks.

This deck was named the "next Enel OP05-098", as it is also clearly difficult to face and yellow. It also plays a lot of healing and ways to force enemy interactions. The fact it untaps characters and gives them Blocker essentially means you'll be able to attack with these cards and then use them defensively on the next turn without any issue, which is incredible. Basil Hawkins OP10-109 is the main card in this deck: it lets you trash one card on the top of your opponent's life pile when it is K.O.'d, so it is a perfect Blocker.

Unfortunately, it hasn't performed as well as expected, as it was a bit overshadowed by Usopp OP10-042 and Smoker OP10-001. Still, it is a lot of fun.

Despite the weak green card pool and forcing Smoker OP10-001 and Caesar Clown OP10-002 to share the red card pool, this set is solid, a well as quite fun to play.

It has interesting new leaders that can grow as we get more sets and more cards for their respective archetypes. It also brought us some nice support, even though its power level isn't as high as OP09's.

That being said, OP10 should be an incredible set, and impact the meta too!

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!