24 Mar 2025
At the end of this masterclass you will be able to think multiple turns ahead and play around everything your opponent can do. All you need to do is follow these steps EXACTLY and you will make the right play regardless of the deck you are playing.
Before the game
Before you play a single game with your deck you must understand how your deck wins and loses. You should also understand how the most relevant decks in the meta play. I only focus on competitive One Piece, so for this article don't worry about irrelevant decks because you should beat them most of the time anyway unless they counter your specific deck.
Early don plays
After you get an understanding of all the decks in the meta you can now efficiently plan ahead starting from turn 1. Let's begin with some simple rules for the early game.
Never waste any resources if the card you are likely to play gets immediately answered by a card your opponent is likely to have without occurring any value at all.
(Example) |You are playing Purple Luffy| Your opponent has a 4c Kuzan on the field. If you have a ZoroJuro in hand and a 5C blocker Kid in hand with no way of removing the Kuzan you should always play the ZoroJuro because either card will bait out the Kuzan reducer but at least the Zoro got its effect off to get another card whereas the Kid is going to die without doing literally anything.
(Example 2) |You are playing Smoker| against a yellow deck you should aways prioritize playing a card like 4c Borsalino rather than 4c Kuzan because they can easily respond with 5c Nami or 5c Gedatsu to immediately nullify your last turn.
Always mulligan for a hand where you have viable options for the beginning and middle part of the game unless you are playing against an incredibly slow deck where you have plenty of time to safely get to the late game
(Example) |You are playing Doflamingo vs Enel| Your starting hand has 2 10c Kaido and some mediocre early to mid game cards. I would absolutely keep that starting hand because most of the time Enel would never pressure you down fast enough to not get value out of the Kaidos, and now that Raigo is banned Kaido is guaranteed to stick to the board and win you the game. Enel can no longer starve you out of the game, and once their big guys turn sideways you immediately kill them or take multiple cards out of hand with Kaido.
If you have a hand that has a searcher and some late game options
Your hand is not good enough depending on what the searcher can grab, or what deck you are playing against. Sometimes it is better to have all early game options against an aggro deck like Zoro, or if your searcher can only search top end cards for whatever reason.. Do not keep that hand unless you are playing against a slow deck.
Never prioritize don attachment to kill a character or inflict damage unless you either do not have any other options or you have to prioritize killing a character on the board that would invalidate the move you would make this turn
(Example) |You are playing a Lucci mirror match| Your opponent has a 2c Uta on the field that can reduce anything by 2 cost. You would like to play a card like 4c Kuzan to draw a card and set up for future plays, however with the Uta and Lucci reduction every single card can K.O your Kuzan. It would be best to establish a 3c brook to K.O the Uta because you are still establishing a character, killing something, and potentially killing something else with brook with additional reduction.
Middle game plays
The middle of the game is your opportunity to set yourself up for the late game. This is where I would say 50 percent of the games are lost. Failure to set yourself up for the late game, or to play characters that disincentivize boss monsters (any big character that is highly impactful) will set you so far behind that it makes it really hard to come back into the game.
Setting yourself up for the late game
This could be done in a few different ways (A) playing characters that reduce the effectiveness of your opponent's boss monster. (B) Searching for cards that deal with the aftermath of your opponents boss monster
For example A
If you are building a good deck or playing a meta deck.. It's good/meta for a reason. It means it has applications to deal with other meta decks. All you have to do is figure out what your counter measures are on exact curves.
(Example) |Way back in the day in op06 with the Sakazuki vs Gecko Moria match up| If you went 1st with Sakazuki, on your 7 don turn you would play 7c borsalino. You would do this because your opponent on 8 don could NEVER answer it while playing a gecko, they would have to answer it using much weaker methods. Doing this would also make them waste resources so that they might not have an answer for your gecko on the following turn.
(Example 2) |You are playing Purple Luffy vs Blue Boa| On your 10 don turn if you have the option of playing a 9c Linlin, or another Luffytaro.. You should always play Luffytaro because it plays around a 1 card answer like red rock. It also does not get 1 card answered by a gravity blade. In this match up you should know that Boa struggles when it can't cleanly answer what you did on the following turn. So compiling a group of characters that can not be easily answered is the winning strategy in this example.
(Example 3) |You are playing a red green law vs BlackBeard| Once your opponent hits 10 don they would like to start dropping 10c teach. However, if you flood the board with 3-5 relevant attackers, they likely can not drop teach safely because they are going to die.
In summary, in this part of the middle game all you do is play characters that make what your opponent want to do much harder. Throw them off their game and put them in awkward spots. I have found that if you put an average opponent in a weird position, they are likely to just throw the game because they are not used to doing anything other than playing on curve or playing their decks main strategy. I personally have won tens of thousands of dollars in prize cards because my opponent did something they should not have done.
For example B
Lets say you do not have an answer for what your opponent is going to do. Another great option is to just say.. “Okay nothings stopping you from playing (whatever card it is they are known for playing). How can I respond to the card in an efficient way AFTER the smoke clears? Usually the answer is playing searchers, drawing cards, or even taking life a bit aggressively to be able to find a clean answer to what your opponent is going to do.
Let's think of it like this.. If you do not have a clean answer for a powerful card, it is going to tip the game in the opponent's favor. If they continue the game while they have the advantage they are likely going to win. A lot of people are worried about taking life because they are going to lose, but you are going to lose regardless if you don't do something about the current game state. You might as well gamble dying quickly to potentially win, rather than lose later in the game because you were late to drop impactful cards.
Disincentivizing boss monsters
This is the last way to set yourself up for the late game that I believe is effective. If you don’t have a great hand, or you don't have any ways of finding an answer for the late game cards.. Sometimes it's best to go insanely aggressive into your opponent's life to scare them off from playing big characters.In set 09 this was the case with Doflamingo into decks like Lucci and Shanks.
Doflamingo pretty much played nothing over the power of 7k (unless you are me) So we literally had no chance of dealing with anything big. Our answer to every slow deck was being able to outpace your opponents' big characters by ignoring them and killing them before their big characters take over the game. This is your last option to actually take over the game in an impactful way.
In summary in the middle parts of the game you are either
- Preparing for a boss monster
- Responding to a boss monster
- Disabling the opponent from playing a boss monster because they will die
Late game plays
Funny enough I started doing late game plays and realized that too much goes into it that we can not really go into brief detail in this article. You have to be able to read board state, resource management, and correct math. All of which will have their own separate articles and videos.
If I could leave you with 2 tips for the late game is making sure you are not playing to lose. So often I see people overplaying blockers or over countering that they never actually put themselves in positions to win the game.
Sometimes it's better to take a chance on your last life being a 1k counter to bait your opponent into going for lethal rather than playing a blocker. In a situation like this..If they play a blocker you are more likely to lose the game, but if you take the hit at least you are giving yourself an opportunity to steal a game you shouldn’t have won.
The difference between a top 8 player and a top 64 player is the top 8 player is able to steal 1-2 games per tournament because they capitalize on ways to play out of bad positions or steal games.
The last tip I’m going to leave you with is recognizing when you just do not have the ability to survive. I have won multiple games with a Rebecca blocker attacking for 5-6k because there was absolutely no possible way I was going to win. While the chances of that happening are slim, I would rather have a slim chance of winning than a guaranteed chance of losing.
All of these guides and videos are completely free for the public. They are no longer gate kept behind a paywall. All I ask in return is you support me by getting some quality TCG products from our store, or a super chat on YouTube if you can. If you found this helpful, please share this on reddit/twitter so other people can see it as well. Good luck in your next tournament.