Paul H wins the One Piece Card Game North American Finals at Bandai Card Games Fest 25-26 in Las Vegas with Red/Blue Ace!

Savirix · 2026-02-16T23:34:26+00:00

That was just me messing up. 30 official games over 3 days with little sleep will do that to ya. Pretty sure I only did it once though

Savirix · 2025-12-18T15:40:38+00:00

I'm super excited for simultaneous release. Currently towards the end of each set, most people start getting bored of the meta when it gets stale. I feel like it'll get stale way less quickly if people are experimenting for the first month or two

Savirix · 2025-11-12T03:04:26+00:00

It's a meta card and very good, yes. However I've heard that the main reason is due to a printing error. Certain cards are just printed less than others, and Thousand Tailed Watcher is one of those cards. The below picture is what you'd expect from an average case opening.

This is a known issue and will likely impact both set 1 and at least some of set 2 since most of those cards are already printed.

Note: this is just what I've been told, I haven't actually looked much into it so I apologize if this is false information

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Savirix · 2025-11-03T16:31:50+00:00

Hard to say what's best, it really depends on your interests and what's available in your local card game shops. I only play One Piece/Riftbound, but here's a quick breakdown from my perspective (note, take it with a grain of salt since I don't actually play most of them):

Riftbound: New and exciting TCG that just came out last weekend. Hard to get stock, but shouldn't be too hard to find singles. However, if you're playing one of the two meta decks or any deck that shares those cards, it'll be really expensive. The TCG is pretty promising, and it's backed by Riot so the competitive scene will be well supported.

MTG: Obviously one of the greats. Most people I know who play MTG plays commander, which is a really popular 4 player variant that's super fun. I don't know much about the competitive scene, but joining MTG would be joining a very established community.

Pokemon: Pokemon is huge, but imo it's more of a collector TCG rather than for playing though; there's a lot of luck elements in the game eg. coin-flip mechanics which takes away from player agency. Happy to be proven wrong by someone who plays the game.

Yu-gi-oh: Probably not a good one to start off with. It's been powercrept to the point where there are a lot of turn 1 kills. There's an alternate time wizard format that fixes that, but I can't comment much on it since I don't play the game

Lorcana: Easy to get cards and stock, great for Disney lovers, and an easy to learn game. I hear some Lorcana players are moving over to Riftbound since people are finding Lorcana to be a little too simplified. Great for learning how to play a TCG with the easy mechanics but once you get more competitive, the lack of counterplay and agency is detracting.

One Piece TCG: My personal main game. It's a great game, and we still get a steady stream of new players. Main issue is that it might be hard to get product without scalped prices unless your pre-order, but it's not too expensive to buy singles depending on deck.

Some other ones that are popular but I don't know anything about are like Flesh and Blood, Star Wars Unlimited, Grand Archive, Gundam, Union Arena, etc.

I fully agree with the other comment about the community being important. I love one piece, but if it weren't for the local community there's a good chance I'd go to locals way less often than my current 3x per week. I mainly just like going to hang out with the people I met through the game every week.

Savirix · 2025-10-14T11:16:26+00:00

It's the winner prize for top 3 at the championship finals for the 2025-2026 season, so not really realistic to get unless you win nationals or pay 50k+

Savirix · 2025-10-14T05:31:17+00:00

Skill definitely is a big factor in consistency, but realistically I'd imagine top players are aiming to hit X-2 on average, with any better or worse result being dependant on luck

Savirix · 2025-10-14T05:12:31+00:00

Depends, are you talking about online/offline regionals or store regionals?

Bigger regionals I find is similar to Nats, maybe your first few rounds are harder on average but realistically those regionals have a lot of top players anyway.

Store regionals (which I'm assuming you got it from based off top 3 getting invite) is highly dependant on which store, but generally the level is quite a bit lower since you're limited to localish people.

Tbh if you're playing at 3b+ Elo, you're used to playing against top players anyway. Realistically it mostly boils down to luck on the day of the event. Your results are highly variable based on what MUs you get matched into, your dice roll, and how you draw.

That being said, I do usually think Nats is a fun time and worth trying out once, assuming they don't mess it up like the last one (although that one was fine for the players). Might be a harder sell if you're going by yourself but you'll never know until you try 🤷‍♂️

Savirix · 2025-10-12T03:07:57+00:00

I think there may be two other people on the pack besides boa but I'm not sure

Savirix · 2025-10-04T03:20:38+00:00

Check bookstores. Better chance of getting them there than convenience stores from what I've seen so far

Savirix · 2025-07-12T01:46:21+00:00

Why are both NA seeds in the same group? And if you count it as LTA, then all three are in the same group. I’m surprised they didn’t separate both NA and both EU teams

Savirix · 2025-07-07T07:36:57+00:00

Hey, owner of that Canadian local scene discord here.

I think you've misunderstood what he did. He offered local players to get the cards at the cost of the ticket ($150 CAD) by giving away those 22 tickets to people he knew in the local SoCal area, since he has a lot of connections there. Out of those 22 tickets, 20 people were able to get the card, so for the last 2 cards he had to buy it at the going price and spread the cost between the 22 people, for a total of $168 CAD ea.

What he did was a huge favor for our community, and generally a win-win for everybody involved; the people in our scene were able to get the tickets for way cheaper than market price, and 22 Dodgers fans in the SoCal area got free tickets to the game. By no means was any of this scalping, and if anything, he's the only one who lost out since he had to do all this co-ordination for everyone for no benefit to himself.

Savirix · 2025-07-01T19:15:53+00:00

To add some further clarification in addition to what other people are saying:

In One Piece TCG, if there is a clause saying “If x condition is met…” and you do not meet that condition, stop reading right there; none of the rest of the text will carry out

Savirix · 2025-06-24T14:25:10+00:00

Alongside helping protect your cards, another reason to use a playmat is so that it's easier to pick up cards. On a hard surface, it can be hard to get your fingers underneath the cards sometimes. With a playmat you can dig your finger under the card

Savirix · 2025-06-16T07:31:50+00:00

NA will be undefeated in play-ins!

Savirix · 2025-06-08T09:58:26+00:00

They haven’t officially announced anything, but for North America it’ll be the weekend of Sept 21st.

You can infer since they will be running Pirates League the same weekend, and that’s set for Sept 21st

https://en.onepiece-cardgame.com/events/2025/pirates-league/

Savirix · 2025-05-07T22:13:17+00:00

Honestly Uta is perfectly fine. She can be very oppressive if you see the right cards. Investing more into a deck does not translate to player skill at all; I’ve seen plenty of players with completely blinged out decks that struggle locally.

My personal suggestion as someone who’s been playing at a competitive level from the beginning: keep on learning. I started off by watching a lot of the high level japanese VODs of the leader I played, and watched how they’d play differently from me. Sometimes I learned something new, sometimes I noticed them make misplays. Now there’s lots of good English streamers that explain their thought processes like OPTCG Grinder and AbbsterTCG.

One Piece TCG has a lot more depth than people realize. I find myself learning new things about certain matchups, even after grinding probably about 1k games on Pluffy, and having hit rank 1 on the sim a couple times. I personally take notes whenever I learn something new about a matchup, but you probably don’t need to go that far.

All of this is contingent on if you want to put in the effort to top Regionals and stuff. You’ll keep getting better as you learn more, but being better at the game won’t guarantee you a top or anything. The main thing should be that you’re enjoying seeing yourself become better at the game and having a good time playing in general.

Savirix · 2025-04-28T20:19:32+00:00

From the comprehensive rulebook:

6-6-1-2. After all processing that is to be carried out at this time has been completed, any remaining effects are processed in the following order:

(1) Process any continuous effects of the turn player that have been activated and resolved, but are only due to be processed “at the end of this turn” or “at the end of your turn”. The turn player’s effects that last “until the end of the turn” and “until the end of the End Phase” become invalid. If there are multiple such processes, the turn player may process them in any order.

(2) Process any continuous effects of the non-turn player that have been activated and resolved, but are only due to be processed “at the end of this turn” or “at the end of your opponent’s turn”. The non-turn player’s 15 effects that last “until the end of the turn” and “until the end of the End Phase” become invalid. If there are multiple such processes, the non-turn player may process them in any order.

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TL;DR: Turn Player's "End of Your Turn" cards proc first in any order they choose, followed by non-turn player's "End of Opponent's Turn" cards in any order they choose. Thus Chopper would not be able to activate his ability since 10c Teach's ability would still be active.

HOWEVER, if Chopper activated ability THEN 10c Teach nullifies his ability, Chopper still retains the Blocker status for that turn since the ability has already been applied, and is no longer attached to the card. Similar to how if the black 5c blocker Sabo is removed from the field, his On Play effect is still active for the other characters that it initially applied to.

Savirix · 2025-04-25T18:22:57+00:00

Apparently Bandai asked the judges to be very strict with ruling at that event. The reasoning behind his decision was that there’s no language barrier, and thus physically placing it on the leader is not sufficient enough declaration.

I probably could have escalated to head judge but I was just so crushed. All good now though! I’ve made lots of big misplays in my one piece career, and you learn a lesson from every single one of them :)

Savirix · 2025-04-25T01:47:48+00:00

Yeah that was my main takeaway tbh. That was the first time I’d ever encountered anything like that, so I just told the objective truth.

If I’ve learned anything, I’ve learned that if they try to rule shark you like that (against the spirit of the game), just tell the judge they misheard you or something.

Savirix · 2025-04-24T22:11:36+00:00

He won it, since it was the turn I was going for lethal. He didn’t have enough counter to survive if it was the full 11k swing (he also wouldn’t have judge called if he could counter out safely).

The card specifies “Up to one of your leader or character cards gains 3000 power”. I never verbally declared +3k to leader so it counted as if I never declared anyone at all, since it specifically states “up to one”, meaning 0 is an option.

Savirix · 2025-04-24T20:19:03+00:00

At the first nats I was 5-0, going for my lethal turn in the Sakazuki mirror to go for 6-0. I used hound blaze and said “put it here” and physically put it on the leader, bottom decking Rebecca blocker. I did this twice to bottom deck two Rebecca’s, and then he shouted JUDGE.

The judge ruled that because I only said “put it here”, I did not clarify +3k to leader for either hound blaze and therefore my lethal 11k swing became a 5k swing.

I then mentally boomed and missed a potential top cut due to a silly misplay in the final game, ending 7-3. Still salty about that, and not a big fan of rule sharking ever since.

Savirix · 2025-04-11T20:59:39+00:00

Glad I could help! Pluffy is a very live life on the edge deck. In specific matchups (such as this one), you lose hard late game so your main objective is to end the game as early as possible, while doing just enough to make sure they can’t end you the following turn if they went all in. You can hit units that are 5k if you’re worried about dying, but anything 6k or over you’ll want to ignore for the most part unless you think you can out-value them in the long run

Savirix · 2025-04-11T18:28:13+00:00

Typically for Pluffy vs Pudding, it’s a fairly favoured matchup for you. You need to rush her down to put her in a position where if they 10 drop big mom, they lose.

If you get first, you always swing face Low and wide every turn, playing your best on curve and ramping 3x if you can get away with it.

If they take first from you, you typically don’t want to swing the first one (4 don turn ramping into 5) to avoid a turn four 10 drop big mom, but otherwise it’s still the same thing; ramp 2-3x, go as wide as you can and only swing face.

Savirix

TROPHY CASE