Deck Guide - Baroque Works Crocodile

The One Piece TCG is an undeniable success. Unfortunately, it is also undeniable that some of this game's "investors" have behaved reprehensibly by buying products en masse to create artificial product scarcity, increasing and manipulating stock prices. They are almost real-life pirates whose treasure chests are full of the finest colorful cardboard.

However, card game players have always managed to have fun with the most suspicious, weirdest decks, finding fun in decks with accessible budgets, but full of elegance and personality. We can even say that some of these decks were built in a way that can be considered art.

In today's article, we'll see the golden hook man himself, Crocodile, in a deck that favors his original band of villains, Baroque Works, all of that by investing very little, and with all the rage of someone who is ready to take over Arabasta.

The Arabasta and Baroque Works arc as a whole is to One Piece what Urza's Saga is to Magic: The Gathering. It happened twenty years ago, and people still discuss it.

One of the main reasons behind this is its villain, Crocodile, one of the powerful seven pirates who signed a deal to become Warlords alongside the Marines, the Shichibukai. In the end, Crocodile was breaking his part of the deal with the Marines, and was coordinating the criminal organization Baroque Works under a pseudonym, "Mr. 0".

As a leader, even though we have two other Crocodiles in the game, we'll use Crocodile OP04-058, from this game's fourth set, Kingdoms of Intrigue, to build a deck with a lot of flavor that welcomes other characters from Baroque Works really well.

Crocodile OP04-058 has the following ability: the first time a DON!! card returns from your board to your DON!! deck during your opponent's turn, you can return one of the DON!! cards that were placed there back onto the board in the active position. This ability not only allows you to lower the cost of the abilities that require you to return DON!!'s into your deck, but it also allows you more flexibility by returning a tapped DON!! on your board to your deck and placing it back onto the board, now active. This allows you to use events like Nez-Palm Cannon OP04-075 and Colors Trap OP04-074 by surprise.

Finally, it is important to remember this leader's details: it is a purple and yellow leader, and has four health points. His types are "The Seven Warlords of the Sea" and "Baroque Works", he has 5000 power and its attack type is Special.

We wanted to build this deck on a very reasonable budget. Therefore, we'll focus only on purple cards. Yellow is, currently, one of the most powerful cards in this game, and its best staples, like Charlotte Katakuri op03-123, have become more and more expensive and limiting to new players, or players that don't want to spend that much money.

Besides this, by prioritizing Purple, we can create a deck with a lot of flavor, focusing more on the different Baroque Works characters.

The list we used in this article is the following:

As said before, this leader's ability returns to the board one of the DON!! we returned to our deck during our opponent's turn, which allows us to lower costs and even get a new active DON!! to spend on events with the Counter keyword. So, what we are looking for are characters and events that can return DON!!'s to our deck during our opponent's turn.

This deck is quite reactive, playing heavily like a "Tempo" deck in Magic: The Gathering, in which you'll keep your cadence of plays and value while you break the natural cadence of your opponent's game style. In a way, we can say this deck is very similar to an American Football team because, in it, we have well-defined attack and defense cores with which you'll be able to defeat units here and there and decide the game through its details, which is a bit exhausting to your opponent. Besides this, Miss.Valentine(Mikita) OP04-066 allows us to look for the character we want the most among the top five cards in our deck, improving our band of characters even more.

You attack on your turn with powerful characters, and, when your opponent's turn comes along, you can activate your abilities, which allow you to stabilize your board better and gain value at the cost of your opponent's actions. Most of the cards in this deck can return DON!!'s to our deck on our opponent's turn; we'll discuss them throughout this article.

We use eight characters that have +2000 Counters. ミス・ダブルフィンガー(ザラ) OP05-073, in particular, is a very interesting ramp card if we need gas at the early stages of the game, and it is also a character with good attack stats for the earlier stages. Besides this, she can also be played through her trigger, which can also return DON!! to your deck.

On the other side, Mr.13 & Ms.Friday OP04-073 is much better in your hand, but it works as an emergency ramp tool and can be played from your health pile through its trigger. Besides, the other twenty cards in this deck have +1000 Counter, which means, you have twenty-eight cards that can be played like so.

We also have events that can be played as Counters, as long as you pay for their costs. Colors Trap OP04-074 is the most interesting one: this card has a very low cost, increases the power of one of your characters or leader by +1000, and taps one of your opponent's 4-cost or fewer characters, which is perfect to delay their attacks so that a support character, that doesn't attack, can be the target of your attacks, or, finally, to disable an opponent block on your next turn.

Nez-Palm Cannon OP04-075 gives you a much more significant amount of power (a +6000), and should be saved for important situations, besides providing you with a DON!! ramp, if you have less health remaining.

As Blockers, we have eight characters. Four Miss.MerryChristmas(Drophy) OP04-067, a more direct blocker that only has this ability, but can be played from its triggers, and four Mr.4(Babe) OP04-071, a character that returns a DON!! to your deck and becomes a massive wall with Blocker and 7000 power during battles.

Cards like Mr.3(Galdino) (OP04-070) can use their abilities to take the game into a slower rhythm that will demand more resources. In Mr.3's case, we can lower the power of a character, forcing our opponent to spend a DON!! or another extra resource on that attacker to make their attack efficient. Similarly, Mr.2.Bon.Kurei(Bentham) (OP04-069) can equal its power to their attacker's power, and, like so, with a simple +1000 Counter, you already protect it in some trade.

Another excellent way to slow down the game and disrupt your opponent is with Miss.Goldenweek(Marianne) OP04-065, which has an effect similar to Colors Trap OP04-074's; she disables enemy characters and prevents them from attacking, as long as they cost 5 or less, giving your leader more protection.

Finally, Mr.5(Gem) OP04-072 is a powerful removal; it destroys low-cost characters on your opponent's board. It is perfect to remove small blockers, support characters or characters without abilities that just attack with a lot of power.

These are the two characters that represent the top of the Baroque Works hierarchy: Mr. 0, the pseudonym used by Crocodile OP04-060, and Ms. All Sunday OP04-064, the pseudonym used by Nico Robin, which later on would join the straw hat crew.

Crocodile OP04-060 is our main attacker, but it has a high cost; because of him, it is important to pilot this deck more conservatively and strategically until we can access him. With a high attack power, capable of attacking many times without you attaching any DON!! to him, he not only can recover your leader's health, but also helps you cycle your hand, getting rid of cards that you don't need while you draw.

Ms. All Sunday OP04-064 plays perfectly with our leader. Not only does she allow you to ramp and draws you a card, but her trigger is a DON!! -2 that places her on the board. She herself can rest one of the DON!!'s you returned, and the other can be rested by your leader, if you still haven't used this effect with him yet. This makes her trigger cost practically zero, and she is a character with 5000 power that can attack most leaders easily, and draw you a card if you have enough DON!!s.

As said before, this deck is a bit cheaper than others. Like so, you can customize it and improve it with other cards that are more expensive. One card I really like is Gild Tesoro (ST05-006), which allows you to draw more cards just by returning DON!! that might as well have been used before.

Charlotte Linlin (ST07-010) is another great addition, providing you with damage or healing. Capone"Gang"Bege OP04-100 is useful so we can access more +2000 Counters, but also allows you to delay your opponent's game plan, preventing the enemy attackers from moving.

Queen ST04-005 is another excellent addition, but we all know Charlotte Katakuri op03-123 is the main rare card every yellow deck desires.

This deck has a promising future. In the EB-01 set, which will be released soon in Japan, we'll get new support cards for Baroque Works, such as Miss Monday, Mr. 9 and Miss Wednesday. They all have a nice effect that really brings a lot to this deck.

I hope you liked this deck. See you soon!