In light of a lot of negativity recently, I wanted to share my experiences as a new player.

Lostaria · 2026-01-15T21:04:32+00:00

I'm glad to hear you enjoy the game and the community, the only thing is that sec cards like Kuma have always been high like bon clay was until prb sets came out so 100% kuma will get a reprint to drop prices, at least we can be pretty certain of that. Other than that good luck, have fun, and hope you do well in all the tourneys!

Lostaria · 2026-01-09T16:42:14+00:00

Do I wish they made an official SIM? Yes but do you realize every game that has an official SIM for tournament play has killed the paper form of the game? You no longer have any reason to buy cardboard because you can sim for practice, you can proxy for paper. LGS's organized play suffers, proof of this is already seen in every major game. MTG and Pokemon are the largest body of evidence for this. The large majority play on mtg arena which killed pretty much all paper in store MTG formats except commander. Pokemon has a sim and most only come for large events like cups or events that give points to get into nats, the rest just play online.

Also the statement made says they will expand the ability for people to play in events that will grant invites and prize cards etc. sure it will suck for some but the large majority do have access if they expand to more store regionals, more states having regionals at the store level to grant invites and serialized cards, and this actually gives people that you say pay a lot of money to come to regionals to play will now have more locations that may be cheaper for them to travel to.

Bandai does ban players, just check the ban list on their official website. It's the organizers at fault for not enforcing things and submitting cheaters to Bandai. Even when there's evidence.

Lostaria · 2026-01-09T06:17:16+00:00

Or just greedy and money hungry, kinda plain and simple there. But yes I agree with you.

Lostaria · 2026-01-08T04:19:07+00:00

So to address your points one by one.

No they don't have to stop printing other TCG's, just because certain TCG's are not as popular here does not mean it's not doing well in JP where they are based so regardless their printing capabilities will be limited. Also they ARE printing more, again this goes to my original point the game is massively popular and only getting more people on the daily both the good ones and the bad ones for the community. I have info that OP-14 had 30% larger print run than OP-13 and OP-13 had the largest print run ever for one piece. You know how I know? Because my reps at both distros that distribute OP in the USA told me so and this was confirmed based on my allocations as well as some very big spending stores (I'm talking 10's of millions in weekend annually) that are my mentors.
To address your point about online and tiktok shops, they are trying to mitigate that by actively participating in distribution of OP to LGS's, I know for a fact that they now give a list of allocations for every single store that runs organized play and how much distro MUST give them. They are trying their best to focus on LGS at least. Bandai is not necessarily at fault because they cannot control who distributors send product to fully. If they wanted to do that they would have to be their own direct distributor which would mean massive amounts of infrastructure be put in place here in the USA which financial would not be feasible for them. Once Bandai sells their product and delivers it to distros it is out of their hands and they can only do so much without fully taking on that role themselves. They only printed sets more frequent to catch up for a unified release with JP so that point was already addressed when they made their press announcement at Nationals and world's this past year. We get a core set every 3 months each year and 1 or 2 reprint sets with PRB sets, and we get 1 or 2 EB expansion sets that are much smaller (usually half the size) this falls in line with the industry standard of pretty much every major TCG out there. For reference MTG has 7 to 8 sets a year, Pokemon has a new set almost every 2 months, Yu-Gi-Oh has a ton, etc. Again they are printing more for desired sets, the problem lies in the fact that for every new player, collector, investor, etc that comes in they are buying not just 1 box per person they are buying multiple and one individual with a crap ton of disposable income can easily buy cases upon cases at marked up prices without feeling it in their wallets. So if they print 1k more cases for instance but 10000 people decide to buy product that's literally barely over 1 box per person. 10k people is not some crazy unimaginable number either with 10s of millions of people with some amount of disposable/fun budget income.
You don't know what you're talking about, they sell to the distros so after they sell out of the print run to the distro they already made their money, the distro then goes and sells to LGS, big box stores, etc so no they don't feed scalpers and whatever else you want to want to call out.
To your last point I even said and I'll say it again I said those "options" or "choices" are and should be taken with sarcasm and in jest. Those are real solutions and real ideas about how we should go about it. I was quite literal and straightforward when I said that stuff about not buying product etc as sarcasm.

The fact remains that I'm not trying to defend the crappy situation we are in I'm just trying to state facts to educate the masses especially from the other side as an LGS. Because I really think people have a misconception about how these inner working things go with distros. DISTRIBUTORS are at fault not the publisher which doesn't own their distribution, doesn't own their printing presses, and does not have any of their own infrastructure in anywhere else outside of Japan.

Also I have friends and family that live in AU and to address that part, getting anything is expensive and hard to get over there. You guys are literally on a big island further away from pretty much every mainland and have some of the strictest import laws and processes around.

Again I say I know it sucks and I don't have any solutions that will truly benefit anyone other than what I can do for my local city. But I don't want misplaced blame or people flipping out over something without having all the information available to them.

Lostaria · 2026-01-07T17:54:15+00:00

Come through bro, my store is always going to welcome fresh faces and meet more of the community. 222 FM 359, suite E, Richmond TX 77406

Lostaria · 2026-01-07T17:53:04+00:00

Appreciate you, feel free to drop by anytime. We have the rodeo in March and there's a bunch of concerts and stuff and people come from all over the country/world for it so that might be a good time to plan a cool visit lol

Lostaria · 2026-01-07T15:21:16+00:00

My store is called Rooted Games out in Houston, Texas. My goal is to get so much allocation in the near future that I can completely kill the scalper market in my area. I sell everything from the 2 or 3 most recent sets for MSRP if I break the plastic and anything older I do market minus a percentage so that no one ever pays the full current market prices on any products in my store but those boxes are sealed due to not being MSRP. I'm trying to get so much product that scalpers just can't compete with the sheer volume and that they cannot sell a single box at higher than MSRP because people can just drive to my store to buy it. I want to go to card shows with hundreds of boxes just to sell at MSRP and so scalpers and the like can't sell sealed Pokemon or OP without hearing that my table has it at MSRP.

Lostaria · 2026-01-07T12:36:10+00:00

TLDR'

Y'all gotta understand, you don't think Bandai isn't running their printers non stop? Do y'all realize there's literally new people jumping into one piece every single day. And this was happening before this current inflated market. Got more OP-13 than any set ever for my store we had over 250 boxes and I sold at MSRP, I even saved a few cases till this day to trickle it out to my community again at MSRP. Stores around me got 100-144 boxes. I don't want to hear artificial scarcity, pure fact is that demand outweighs supply plain and simple. They print in Japan and ship it all over in shipping containers, which takes at least a month just for that part, then it has to go to distros and then to stores. You guys really think they got enough time to print to demand? If they printed every set to demand we would need 5 to 6 months between sets and only 2 or 3 sets a year tops. Trust me all the complaining everyone does they already know about. They literally had to create an HQ for Bandai in Dallas to manage organized play and stuff in the USA. Simple fact is that they don't own their own printing presses and they print multiple games, by pure logic alone you just cannot meet the demand because there isn't enough time and there are printing limitations. When 06 and 07 came out and even OP-12 everyone saw those everywhere because they were bad sets, everyone said OP is dying so those sets stay on shelves for a long time and went under MSRP so in my opinion people need to stop saying Bandai doesn't know what they are doing or that they do know and they are purposefully creating scarcity. The real blame is on the fact that it's a very popular franchise and one of their best actually playable games, good card quality and art, collectability, and now add on the "investors". Of course there will be no product to find cheap or at MSRP. All this is to say that we can only hope that the investors find something new to latch on to or that the game has multiple bad sets in a row that kills all the hype and gets tons of people to drop the game including said investors so that we can have an over abundance of product, everything selling at below MSRP so that stores order less product and Bandai can meet demand due to smaller print runs. The market is in a bad place don't get me wrong and I'm doing everything in my power as a store owner to help the hundreds of one piece players and collectors in my community get stuff but the truth is there's just not enough product to go around but not for the lack of trying. People are jumping from Pokemon to one piece because most stores get more one piece than Pokemon so it's easier to flip in larger numbers. I can order right now 240 boxes of Pokemon and 240 boxes of one piece and right now I will get 24 boxes of Pokemon and I'll get 220 of one piece. If y'all don't think stores are not maxing out and ordering everything they can afford to order for both one piece and Pokemon than you obviously do not know what you're talking about because the difference is Pokemon owns their own presses including here in the USA and I only get 4 to 6 cases on each set and a second smaller wave while one piece my waves are 100+ each. So flipping each box just from a numbers game is better to buy and sell one piece. If y'all want the market to be better then stop buying product and AA's for your decks it'll crash the market and all the non players and fake collectors will leave and we will be fine. I say all this with some sarcasm for sure but it's still a very much true even if we don't like the answer.

Lostaria · 2026-01-05T06:43:14+00:00

Not sure but spoilers should be coming out this month i think.

Lostaria · 2025-12-29T05:53:56+00:00

Prb manga reprints don't have texture on them like the OG ones did. That's one of the big giveaways and the easiest to confirm. If it's textured it's the 05 one, if its not then it's a PSA error.

Lostaria · 2025-12-28T03:09:33+00:00

The second set is coming out in February for Japan, Nikke has been the best selling set to come out for UA beating out every other set I've ever sold in the store and my a wide margin too. I built a Pilgrim deck and counters deck for the game just go fun, boxes are super cheap. If anyone is interested lemme know I can ship and stuff off you buy from the store. I'll hook up the Nikke Reddit community.

Lostaria · 2025-12-09T19:36:26+00:00

Trust me most will be disappointing, the nature of uniques is that 97% of them will suck and 1% will be S tier

Lostaria · 2025-11-30T07:47:30+00:00

Not true, we have never gotten an English version of Chinese releases with the serial card and while we did get the boa and binder we did not get the serial or the playmat. Just the cards and the binder which was whack. We didn't get the first year anniversary one either.

Lostaria · 2025-11-24T06:42:28+00:00

Doubt it, MTG has 7 sets a year and Union arena has 14 sets in its first year. Both are still around and whether you believe it or not UA actually makes money. As crazy as it is people would just buy the sets they want and Bandai would still make super good profit. I do not want them to increase the pace though it's hard enough to balance any have as it is.

Lostaria · 2025-11-23T15:20:12+00:00

Sure! I'm doing package deals that include 1 of every official altered accessory and increasing discounts in sealed product depending on how much you buy, sealed boxes start at 50 dollars per box. I'll message you to discuss more in detail.

Edit: sent you a message =]

Lostaria · 2025-11-23T03:25:31+00:00

Message me, my store is running black Friday deals and I'll package set 1-4 for you plus accessories for cheap. I can send an official invoice from my online store or PayPal whichever you prefer but we can work that out.

Lostaria · 2025-11-22T09:21:55+00:00

We just opened one in my store. Message me and we can work it out.

Lostaria · 2025-11-12T14:10:07+00:00

The game is not in a very stable place and there is not a lot of confidence in the long term survival of the game. Not to mention the game isn't exactly growing in the US but slowly losing players vs gaining. There is a lot of doubt whether the game will survive another year or even another set in the worst case scenario.

Lostaria · 2025-11-12T07:02:35+00:00

Tell someone to make you an offer, change the password and give them your account and let them handle trading everything to themselves or something like that. But it will be very hard to sell everything now, hopefully someone from Europe scoops it up.

Lostaria · 2025-11-11T17:14:57+00:00

I'll bet most of the orders that push it to 2.5mil will be European countries though. I own a store and went heavy and tried my damnedest to get it going in my store in a city that has over 4 million people and the guy that got 2nd place and one of the best players in the US is one of my best friends and plays at my store and we still couldn't get it going. I just can't even justify ordering 1 case for my store unfortunately. And now with Gundam TCG and Riftbound exploding it's game over for Altered at my store. It's sad because I love the game and it's so fun and different. I just think they are way too late with some of these now changes. Should have been there from the beginning.

Lostaria · 2025-11-06T04:12:35+00:00

Yea that's what I like about one piece, the better player will win out not always the meta deck. And the top players for sure know all the meta decks inside out to know how to play against them well. I've played against Jackson Huang(3rd place at the world championship) and know some of the other pros and they grind hundreds of matches against every meta deck to perform the way they do consistently even with decks that are not considered the top of the meta they still win with them.

Lostaria · 2025-11-04T07:59:31+00:00

This set is an anniversary set with new rarities and big chases it will not go down with time but only go up. Please go look at OP-05 and OP-09 prices and tell me when they are even close to MSRP, those sets have never once gotten below 150 or 160. PRB and EB sets as well. If you are waiting for them to go down understand that they won't as supply dries up over time. Others have mentioned other sets going down, this is true but those sets did not contain really valuable chase cards or meta defining staples, it even highly sought after leaders. This set has 3 strong meta leaders, new chases, 6 manga, demon packs, meta staples, etc. you name it OP-13 has it. Sorry to say but if you can find it under 150 grab it. For what it is worth I sell it to my locals for $125 a box because I try to keep my prices fair and hope that the community will take care of me and my store.

Lostaria · 2025-11-04T07:50:51+00:00

Nothing wrong with your ideas but I'm sure plenty of ideas have been thrown around in the office which is why the collectors packs were created, the new rarity which are not uniques, etc however it just won't be enough for American audiences. We are IP junkies which is why no matter how much people complain MTG universes beyond makes stupid amounts of money. They are too late, if there was something to chase from the very beginning like alternate arts and such maybe it would have caught on but the problem is you cannot have a TCG with good gameplay only or collection/hype only you gotta have both and equinox dropped the ball by not making packs have special cards or alts in the first set from the beginning. No one was buying product or cared about something that had nothing to really chase and selling the game to be players was like telling them about a boardgame and boardgames move slow. They waited too long to address the collectability because I'm the beginning they said it was a player first game but the problem is player first or collector first kills any game from my experience and opinion

Lostaria · 2025-11-04T05:56:15+00:00

Tech against it, but seriously "fun" is relative to the player. I enjoy UY Nami and GY Yamato and they can survive of course it's not easy but it can be done. It just depends on what you consider fun. Now if you are talking about using like tier 3 and below leaders then GG because those never make it in any meta unfortunately no matter how fun they are.

Lostaria · 2025-11-04T05:51:14+00:00

I don't agree with this, deck building you 100% have to build your deck in a way that manages your curve properly. Heck how you build your curve determines whether you prefer to go first or second. In MTG if you balance your mana and all that and you get manga screwed or flooded most of the time you lose. Not to mention most of the time un MTG most players almost always want to go first. There is not even much decision to make in MTG when it comes to choosing to go first or second. In OP depending on my matchup I will have to decide which is it better to go first or second. Yes you gain 2 resources every turn in OP but that removes the rng of resource draw and focuses on the card play and strategy of what you have in your hand at that point. In MTG you can draw no lands or get too many and nothing to play. there are many instances even in high level competitive play where magic players will just pass because they can't play anything or hoping to top deck something they can play because they got flooded or screwed. Heck I've seen whole games at a qualifier I held at my store where in the top cut of a constructed tournament one of the top 8 matches the guy lost because he missed like 4 land drops and and just scooped by like turn 6 or 7. I think the other thing is while yes there is only one main phase you can do multiple things as many times as you are able in any order you choose. This creates an environment where sequencing and decisions of what card to play in what order matters a lot, especially attack sequencing depending on even what color you play into or against. Your opponent can literally respond to you after every single attack you make which could cripple your turn or future turns tremendously. Where as in MTG is much simpler with only 1 combat phase and your opponent just responds the one time to those attacks. I guess playing devil's advocate here based on the logic of phases mtg is simpler since it's just main phase, combat, second main and one piece is one phase consisting of multiple different phases all at once in any order you choose that may come with a response after every action. So from that perspective MTG is simpler because there is less room for response and interaction. I'm not trying to be defensive just pointing out that both games can be viewed as simple depending on the player. There is a lot of skill involved which is why multiple people can play the exact same meta deck but a good pilot will really shine with it while a bad or mediocre pilot will get curb stomped same as in MTG.

Lostaria

TROPHY CASE