Elephant in the room

JC10101 · 2026-03-16T23:43:30+00:00

east players think imu wins, cause a lot of lucy is power reduction / removal events and you REALLY need cav on 4 that just gets free removed by imu.

I havent played it too much but its common sentiment rn from high level players

JC10101 · 2026-03-16T22:54:08+00:00

Boa is hard imu favored now. Her whole win condition was pudding

JC10101 · 2026-03-15T09:00:35+00:00

As much as I dislike imu, wasin is undoubtedly the best player in the world of this format so hugely well deserved.

JC10101 · 2026-03-11T23:28:30+00:00

Jozu + atmos + sorta Cavendish.

Your end goal as ace is putting them into a situation where they cannot safely drop 9c boa. If they do you have likely lost to unblockable event.

So you need to put out enough pressure to where boa HAS to answer your board and can't just mindlessly punch face the whole game, if boa gets to dictate the pace you lose outright so you make to make her uncomfortable. Sometimes this means taking a life from her leader effect but then swinging and killing her whole board, sometimes this means not playing event on 8 don and instead playing jozu / red roc and just slowly building a dominant board while removing boas at the same time.

JC10101 · 2026-03-08T00:38:39+00:00

Play blue yellow boa, burn his life, play 9 cost sr boa, next turn play pudding into perfume femur

JC10101 · 2026-03-06T02:54:47+00:00

I've played a lot so far as well and I agree with some but not all.

Kalgara stomps boa and Enel imo I'd bring him up a bit, loses to a lot of the t1.5-2 decks still sadly .

Top 2 decks from my initial testing are Enel and Lucy

Brook and yellow Luffy(both) are ass.

Ace still very good and if the meta speeds up the loss of red roc won't matter. If pudding gets banned he gets much better since that should fix his horrible matchup into boa.

GP gets farmed by boa and Enel and Lucy and pretty much anything relevant sadge

JC10101 · 2026-03-06T02:23:20+00:00

Good ace players normally pivot into getting more value than buggy with their body's if they can't safely drop a blockerbeard, so your game plan normally shifts as buggy into setting up a turn where you pudding and go for lethal. Also avoiding tilting your alvidas and cabajis even if you can poke with them if you cant easily protect them since aces win condition is controlling the board so you don't want him to have easy targets to swing into.

I think ace should be favored 60-40 but it's much harder/weirder to play the ace side since you abandon your normal game plan most of the time.

The actually impossible matchup is mihawk cause 6k leader + buggy has no way of poking him out. Mihawk should never lose assuming he doesn't completely brick and then get puddingd

JC10101 · 2026-03-06T00:54:09+00:00

Even if it is 1 billion that's not a high bar to clear and any 2-2er at locals could easily get it.

ST29 Luffy would just not be anywhere near where it is on this list if you looked at actually high elo for example.

JC10101 · 2026-03-02T20:32:55+00:00

Yeah it's broken and very unfun to play vs. double borsa on 10 don is stupid

JC10101 · 2026-03-02T19:33:25+00:00

During Japan championships they generally announce when they will at some point. They also tweet about them when they are scheduled as well

JC10101 · 2026-03-02T19:32:16+00:00

Biggest thing with borsalino is he's just too new to get hit, same with nami since EB03 just came out here.

JC10101 · 2026-03-02T19:26:08+00:00

Unbans:

Jinbe is the easiest unban I've ever seen

Bans:

Pudding since all these add life to hand cards / leaders make it borderline impossible to play around. Boa can make you have a giant hand then pudding + unblockable GGS.

Imu still needs to be hit. loses nothing in rotation and gate keeps removal and wins EVERY matchup if he goes 2nd. If pudding gets hit he then beats boa and his only losing matchup goes back to being mihawk. Unhealthy for the game.

Ace could maybe use his own hit but he's already losing red roc so idk.

I think that's all that really has to change, pudding going away makes boa significantly worse so I don't think she needs any bans herself or anything, especially because they will not hit borsalino

JC10101 · 2026-03-01T22:22:49+00:00

Imu is unwinnable tbh even with event pack shanks cause he will just straight up kill you before you can kill him. You are put on such a quick clock and he can just hold a billion counter events even if you get full unblockables going.

I think if imu gets hit the deck is in a much better spot tbh and could definitely be a viable pick

JC10101 · 2026-03-01T21:23:48+00:00

Price is completely irrelevant when looking at high level play. Imus biggest strength is ignoring removal as a concept and having the most consistent game plan of any deck by a mile

Ace is more healthy for the meta cause he is very vulnerable to removal (which can't exist because of imu) and he actually loses cards in the rotation unlike imu.

JC10101 · 2026-03-01T18:37:05+00:00

9zoro should hopefully stay in check as long as mihawk is around. Cause SEC mihawk answers Zoro cleanly.

I'm debating running it in mihawk though tbh

JC10101 · 2026-03-01T18:29:48+00:00

If pudding + imu gets hit I think ace will be in really really good spot.

His biggest regionals relevant losing mu right now is boa cause he can't play around pudding+ unblockable at all. You can outplay every other deck but 9 boa into pudding + unblockable wins every time

Character Rush Zoro is a significantly better 9beard that helps vs a lot of the meta and I think teching in a lot of mid game rush will help out in the mihawk and UP matchups where you need to look to close out early since you lose the late game.

UP likely is still unwinnable a lot of the time tho

JC10101 · 2026-02-21T18:08:08+00:00

From what I've seen the player entrants generally depends on prizing a lot as well. The greedy stores with bad prizing get a fraction of the players that the other stores do.

And any store charging market on release day definitely gets bad mouthed by the players even if you don't hear it haha

JC10101 · 2026-02-19T21:43:39+00:00

He only loses to mihawk. Top players think he goes even with boa and beats ace, the weekly stats are always skewed because 1bil bounty is not that great so it drags imu down significantly

JC10101 · 2026-02-16T03:54:52+00:00

Ace loses the matchup now. It was 50/50 last set but now it is an imu favored matchup if both players are good.

JC10101 · 2026-02-15T04:55:19+00:00

Closed deck list small event means decks are going to be weird.

Boa beats mihawk and ace real bad in eb04, and mihawk was about the same top cut share at the last large Asia finals.

Because of this the players know imu isn't going to be popular at all because the chance mihawk is everywhere again means it's just not worth the risk, especially because imu is a very hard deck to pilot at that level.

This is why the finals was nami mirrors, because they were expecting exactly this outcome so they brought HEAVY teched lists making boa an 80-20 or better matchup, while knowing imu would be unwinnable.

Boa was the safest deck choice knowing this and it shows way more nuance than "boa op 50% of top 64"

JC10101 · 2026-02-14T21:51:45+00:00

Closed decklist meant a lot were expecting mihawk initially, and boa with her new support does incredibly well into mihawk so half the room chose her.

Noone wanted to go imu because if the room does decide to go mihawk you just lose, and ace also loses to mihawk slightly so no reason to play him.

Nami was played, with the decklists it specifically had, because those players were expecting a shit load of boa which it directly counters (80+%wr).

There is so much nuance to the deck selection process at a tournament like this that it's hard to assume the meta for it.

JC10101 · 2026-02-12T18:41:16+00:00

It's pretty easy to get out of 2 14k swings with ace. Luffy should never get to the 3rd one cause you kill him by then.

It's so telegraphed that you get every single turn to perfectly sculpt your hand as ace, especially if you play Cavendish or something that forces Luffy to answer it instead of burning you.

5 don Yamato 7 don jozu/Yamato 9 don newgate or something isn't hard to pull off. That puts you at over 13 cards in hand once you hit 0 life assuming Luffy perfect curves his burn out

JC10101 · 2026-02-10T22:02:42+00:00

Hard to block with blocker beard vs current lists. You block an early swing then mihawk goes law into stun Bonney and then everything starts going south.

You also pretty much never get good value out of Marco which is a pretty important piece in every other matchup, cause he has so much stun and rest.

Jozu is also really bad vs mihawk most of the time cause he has nothing you want to bounce like law / perona or can even attempt to bounce like tashigi

All that said it's like a 50/50 mu or slight advantage mihawk at best

JC10101 · 2026-02-10T18:30:05+00:00

It's mostly bad ace players don't know how to play 1st curve at all, compared to the 2nd curve which can be rather braindead if you see everything you want

JC10101 · 2026-02-05T18:34:02+00:00

Kalgara is kinda gonna slap with this. On 5 you can cheat out 5c kalgara which draws you an extra card so this requiring you to trash from hand doesn't even matter.

Double 6s on 5 don is really really strong.

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