One Piece TCG: Deck Guide - Luffy ST14

Before today, I often referred to starter decks as the players' holy grail. They include incredibly relevant cards but, as they're not widely available, they can be expensive and frequently are the best targets for scalpers. I'm pleased to say this has changed: One Piece TCG products are now easier to find because Bandai has been working on improving their distribution.

In today's article, we'll go through the new Starter Deck, Starter Deck 14, which is called "3D2Y". By the way, this name is a reference to how much time the Straw Hat Crew spent training separately.

This deck focuses on the pirates of the Straw Hat Crew and the time they spent training separately throughout two years. It also focuses on increasing the cost of these characters and creating synergies with cards that interact with high-cost characters.

This is the initial list straight out of the box:

Monkey.D.Luffy ST14-001, another leader Luffy, has 5000 power and 5 life, and is black. When you attach a DON!! to him, he increases the cost of your characters globally, and, if you have at least one character that costs 8 or more, he gets an extra 1000 power. As long as you meet these two conditions, this effect will be active. So, you only need to attach a DON!! to him and have a character that costs more than 8 on the board to activate it, even on your opponent's turn. This means that this Luffy can have 6000 power even if it's not your turn, so he's quite resilient.

This is a simple ability, but it enables great plays and rewards you when your stronger cards are on the board. Furthermore, Monkey.D.Luffy ST14-001 can counter some yellow decks and many black decks, two incredibly strong colors in the current format. After all, these two colors often can only remove characters if they cost very little or nothing at all.

So, this is a black deck (the best color in the current format) as well as a yellow deck. This means we need to make many changes to it if we want to improve it overall. We can add many cards that are better positioned in the metagame and add more strategies for its leader, which can have 6000 power consistently as you play.

Fortunately, this deck performed much better in the west than in the east, where it didn't stand out a lot. It is a natural counter for Rob Lucci OP07-079 and other black decks precisely because it increases the cost of its characters and makes them harder to remove.

The list we'll use today was played by José Alberto Carmona Quiñonas at the Mexico City Regionals. He got fourth place with it:

The Cards

Usually, in these articles, I try to build a deck or get a list that performed well in the hands of a certain player, but also use the contents of the sealed product as a base. Uta ST11-001 is a great example of that: it works incredibly well in its initial starter deck, which carries only two copies of it, and the deck itself includes singles from other sets, so it could be considered a high-tier deck.

Unfortunately, trying to use this starter deck as a guide only made my life harder. There are, yes, a few very interesting, cool cards in it, but what we really care about is Sanji ST14-003, a super rare card that we'll use three copies of. This way, getting a second copy of this deck doesn't make sense; we only need one extra copy of this character, which is not that expensive.

Sanji ST14-003 costs 5, which is overall great. When he enters the battlefield, if we have a character in play that costs 6 or more, he lets us destroy an enemy character that costs 5 or less.

There's a lot we can do with this effect. Our leader increases the cost of our characters, so, with him in play, Sanji ST14-003 enters the battlefield and activates his effect immediately by himself. He will cost 6, and thus you won't have to rely on any other character to use his effect. Considering this and the fact that black decks notoriously lower the cost of enemy characters, this card is a great removal that fits this deck like a glove.

Another card from the starter deck that we kept is Nico Robin ST14-007, which discounts the cost of enemy characters to make them more vulnerable to removals. We use less copies of her in our upgraded version.

We can also use Nami ST14-006 from the original starter deck in alternative builds. She would work as a blocker and draw us cards at the end of the game, but we have infinitely better blocks for this deck, so replacing her makes more sense. After all, she is not exactly a must.

The last card from the original list we kept is another Mugiwaras, Brook EB01-046, which is one of the best removals in the current format.

The Navy

One set of black cards that works really well in this meta is the Navy. As their design centers around removing and punishing enemy characters, we can say they behave exactly like the Navy in the manga and the anime.

Let's start with Brannew OP03-089, the searcher that will add any sort of character to our hand. With him, we'll not only be able to get any card we want from the top 3 cards in our deck, but also fill our graveyard with a few other options that will be incredibly useful later on.

So, he'll get us our +2000 Counters (Tsuru OP02-106, Tashigi ST06-006, and T-Bone EB01-049), the event Ice Age OP02-117, or some of our main cards, like Kuzan OP02-096, and Issho OP03-078.

Removals

Like any great black deck, this deck uses many removals that rely on the cost of enemy characters to work. Cards like Brook EB01-046 and Jack OP08-084 let you remove enemy characters again and again, as you'll be able to remove at least one character per turn. Kaido OP08-079, T-Bone EB01-049, and Sanji ST14-003 are also great removals, but they only work on the turn you play them.

If you combine them with a few cards that reduce the cost of characters, like Issho OP03-078 and Kuzan OP02-096, you can actively clean your opponent's board entirely. Whenever you can, try to use them to clear the way for your attackers and get rid of potential rivals.

Gecko Moria

Now, let's discuss the most important black card in the entire game, Gecko Moria OP06-086, whose effect brings back cards from the graveyard. The idea behind this card is to bring back Rebecca OP05-091, which also brings back a low-cost character and puts another in your hand.

This means we'll be able to spend 8 DON!! to bring back a character that costs 2 or less and one that costs 4 or less, which will be Rebecca. Rebecca, in turn, will bring back a character to our hand, and put another character that costs 3 or less on the board. When you add it all up, you'll see that, not counting with the character we returned to our hand, we'll use 8 DON!! to play, in total, 17 DON!!-worth of characters.

Furthermore, we'll have a character with 9000 power on the board as well as another blocker, and we'll also be able to return many useful options from the graveyard, like Brannew OP03-089, Brook EB01-046, and Tsuru OP02-106. Their effects, which activate when they enter the battlefield, are great.

The synergy between Gecko Moria OP06-086 and Rebecca OP05-091 is one of the strongest and most versatile synergies in the history of the game so far. It is absolutely a must for most decks that can use black, and truly only makes this deck even stronger.

Overall, Monkey.D.Luffy ST14-001 performs really well in many types of matches, so it's a great deck for tournaments. It has a clear advantage against decks like Jewelry Bonney OP07-019, Enel OP05-098, Roronoa Zoro OP01-001, Monkey.D.Luffy ST13-003, and Donquixote Doflamingo OP01-060.

Monkey.D.Luffy ST14-001 is very oppressive and is great if you want to play offensively, as it can attack many slower decks, like Enel OP05-098 and Jewelry Bonney OP07-019, directly where it hurts the most: their life. It can also be quite aggressive against decks that build great boards, like Roronoa Zoro OP01-001 and Donquixote Doflamingo OP01-060.

However, despite these matches, it has a few weaknesses against specific decks, like Rob Lucci OP07-079, Nami OP03-040, and Monkey.D.Luffy OP05-060, which can be more resilient and harder to overcome.

Monkey.D.Luffy ST14-001 is definitely interesting, as it was a great example of how the game is played differently in the east and the west. To this day, it hasn't gained a lot of traction in Japan, for instance, but it became very popular in the west when it was released.

Nowadays, this deck is incredibly well-positioned in the meta because it can face some of the biggest threats around without any issues. It has clearly shown us how sometimes a deck only truly becomes strong when players are willing to experiment and learn how to play it.

What about you? What did you think of this deck? Tell us your thoughts in our comment section below!

Thank you for reading, and see you next time!