Deck Guide: Navy Mono Black Smoker

Some time ago, we went through a meta that was truly dominated by yellow in One Piece TCG. Yellow controls players' health, has powerful trigger effects and can draw and add cards incredibly easily, which makes their game plan slower, but significantly powerful.

This kept on like this until One Piece's fifth set, which brought a few tools to another color: black. Sakazuki (OP05-041) is, currently, the most powerful leader in the game and has a huge presence and equally relevant victories in big and small tournaments.

Sakazuki (OP05-041)'s success and the success of the black cards lately made me reflect on how we could use them to revive a few older leaders in this color.

And that is precisely what we'll do in today's article. We'll get an old leader with an interesting effect and prepare a deck that is cheap but also has pieces that are good enough to make it competitive.

The leader we'll use in today's article is Smoker OP02-093. Smoker is a character that debuted very early in One Piece's story, and was also released early in the TCG. Smoker was a Navy captain; he stumbled upon the gang we are all familiar with in Logue Town, chasing them all the way to the Grand Line. Years later, he became vice-admiral. His ability comes from the Moku Moku no Mi, the smoke-smoke fruit, which made Smoke a true chimney, considering he uses cigars to create more smoke to use his abilities.

Smoke is a black leader card with 5 health, 5000 power and a "special" attack. His type, just like most black cards connected to the World Government and royal families, is "Navy".

His ability is simple: when there's a DON!! attached to him, this leader can, once per turn, discount the cost of a character your opponent controls. After that, Smoker checks if there is a character that costs 0 on the board, not necessarily the one he targeted, and, if there is one character that costs 0 on the board, he gains +1000 power, which makes him a 6000 power leader until the end of that turn. This helps you attack with him and bring more aggression to your board.

When I started playing Digimon TCG, which is practically One Piece's brother game because it is from the same company and has similar designs and rules, I fell in love with black cards. In this game, this color focused on Machine Digimon, which are very resistant, can bring the game to a complicated state, and exhaust your opponent.

In One Piece, black works significantly different, but it still satisfied me a lot. As I mentioned, black cards focus on the part of Luffy's story that features the government, but their abilities greatly focus on discounting the cost of other cards, and putting them in range of this deck's removals and effects.

This deck was created to fetch a reasonable price, have good, competitive cards, but not go overboard on the format's most expensive staples. At the same time, we also won't create a deck that prioritizes cheap prices instead of quality. This deck costs exactly what it needs to cost, without any absurd prices or excesses.

The deck we'll use is the following:

This deck will create a line of defense with nine +2000 counters and seventeen +1000 counters. Unlike some decks we have seen before, some +2000 counters, such as Tsuru OP02-106, are also valuable on the board, and aren't only in this deck just to increase one of your character's stats when they are attacked.

Additionally, we have Shockwave ST06-014, an event with a counter that can increase your leader's or your character's power, and, at the same time, it can knock out an enemy character that costs low enough.

Only our events have triggers: Shockwave ST06-014 and Ice Age OP02-117 are excellent removals against creatures that cost very little and a bit above, meanwhile, Meteor Volcano OP02-119 does the exact opposite and stops being a removal to become a draw engine that allows you to remodel your hand in the best way possible. All triggers in these events are very versatile and can bring various plays to your

deck.

We also have excellent blockers in this deck. Shirahoshi ST08-006, besides blocking, can also discount the cost of enemy characters and Fukurou OP03-088 is a light version of Borsalino (OP02-114), which is a pretty expensive card. Therefore, Fukurou is an excellent replacement to build a deck that goes for a better price.

As we saw by analyzing our list, many of our cards discount the cost of enemy characters, and try to not only activate our leader's ability but also activate other cards that bring an effect when characters that cost below a certain number are on our opponent's board.

To boost this strategy, we have cards that discount costs when they enter play, such as, for instance, the aforementioned Shirahoshi ST08-006, one of our blockers, or also Tsuru OP02-106, a great counter. Ice Age OP02-117 is an event that discounts the costs of more than one character, and goes perfectly in this deck.

However, discounting costs only once is relatively irrelevant; the best cards in this deck can constantly discount the costs of enemy cards, every turn.

The most classic example would be our own leader, Smoker OP02-093. Unfortunately, this card only discounts the cost of an enemy character by 1, and therefore we need more creativity and other cards to discount the cost of enemy characters.

Among all of them, Issho OP03-078 is my favorite because it brings a global version of the effect this deck most wants, and discounts by 3 the cost of all characters your opponent controls if you add a single DON!! to it. Issho OP03-078, on top of it all, also has an effect when it is played and the opponent has more than 6 cards in their hand: it allows you to discard two cards from their hand without peeking at them, just like Trafalgar Law ST10-010, which has a similar effect in purple.

We also have Tashigi, a character that is strongly linked to Smoker and is critical in Zoro's story. In this deck, we use two versions of this character: Tashigi ST06-006 can be tapped to discount the cost of one of your opponent's characters by 2, and Tashigi OP02-105 discounts the cost of one of their characters by 3, as long as she attacks with at least one DON!! attached.

As much as this ability has a cost and compromises your DON!!, actually, it will be very interesting to you because Tashigi OP02-105 has at least 6000 power when she has one DON!! attached, which is a great value for certain trades and allows her to be a threat to the leaders in play, which will have to use a counter to deal with her. It is a very positive version of this ability and this character's stats.

Now that our opponent's characters are all discounted, our cards can activate their powerful effects.

Besides our leader, Smoker OP02-093, we have two more versions of this vice-admiral chimney as characters in this deck. Smoker ST06-004 and Smoker OP02-102's effects work when there is a 0-cost character on the board. Smoker OP02-102 gains +2000 power and Smoker ST06-004 gains Double Attack, one of the most powerful abilities in the game, which allows you to remove two health points from your opponent at once.

{1 Koby (OP02-098) || 1 Monkey.D.Garp (OP02-115) || 1 Monkey.D.Garp (ST06-012) || 1 Sakazuki (OP02-099)}

Sakazuki (OP02-099) can activate its effect when it enters play, and discard a card to knock out a character that costs below five, whereas Koby (OP02-098) has this exact effect, but it targets characters that cost below three.

Monkey.D.Garp (OP02-115) activates its effect when it attacks and has at least two DON!! attached. It goes perfectly with our leader. Monkey.D.Garp (ST06-012) can tap and discard a card every turn to knock out an enemy character that costs below 4, and therefore brings recursion to this effect.

Finally, we have the aforementioned events that knock out enemy characters that cost below a certain number, be it through their main effects or triggers.

If we want to upgrade this deck and make it an expensive deck with a few of the best options in this format, we will surely begin by removing its four Fukurou OP03-088 and replacing them with Borsalino (OP02-114), one of the game's main staples.

Another incredible new card in this color is Rebecca (OP05-091), which, besides having blocker, can recover a few cards you discarded to activate Sakazuki (OP02-099) and Monkey.D.Garp (ST06-012)'s effects.

And, of course, both versions of Admiral Aokiji, Kuzan (OP02-121) and Kuzan (OP02-096), fit this deck perfectly; Kuzan (OP02-121) is more expensive and is better because it discounts the cost of all enemy characters rather suddenly, constantly, and enough to put most characters in the game in the range of your deck's removals. Additionally, it also destroys a character that costs 0 when it enters play.

Fitting these cards significantly increases your deck's power, and gives it the best tools from one of the best colors in the game, but, still, they are expensive pieces and should be added wisely.

These leaders that are relatively unpopular are usually the ones that are the most fun to me. Vice-admiral Smoker and all his Navy crew really show the best black can bring to the game, and can bring you a lot of fun in an efficient and simple deck that performs nicely in several types of matches.

See you next time!