Breaking The Triangle? 5 Decks To Try For OP-13!

By BenFitzLive

OP-13 has just released for the One Piece Card Game and, for those who have been keeping an eye on what’s been going on the Japanese meta, it’s a format that’s looking VERY top heavy. Referred to as ‘the triangle meta’, Ace and Imu from OP-13 and Zoro from OP-12 are consistently among the most represented and most well converted decks at tournaments from Flagship level all the way to Area Finals and beyond. But, along the way, there have been a few decks here and there that have popped up to challenge these three format staples so, in preparation for the Edinburgh Regionals in a couple of weeks (with tickets still currently available for!), let’s take a look at 5 different options that you could look to consider!

But Before That…

Before talking about some of these potential counter picks, though, I think it might be worth a brief moment or two to actually dissect what we mean by ‘the triangle meta’. For those that haven’t been keeping an eye on the Japanese format, there are three decks that have stood out and operate in a ‘rock, paper, scissors’ like triangle. That is to say that, in theory at least, Ace beats Imu, Imu beats Zoro and Zoro beats Ace. There are, of course, always going to be exceptions to this rule based on tech choices, player skill level, bricky hands etc but that has generally been the way the format has established itself. But what do these decks actually do and what tricks do they have? Let’s go through them briefly.

The Three Sword Slayer

 Roronoa Zoro from OP-12 will be the deck that most, if not all, of us will be familiar with as it’s the only pre-existing leader that carries through. Everyone’s favourite butt of the joke deck returns with some very scary new tools in the rare slot from the new expansion. First off, Zoro himself gets a new rare that at 4 Don lets you restand 2 Don as long as your leader has the Straw Hat Crew or FILM type. This itself is already very powerful, as we’ve seen with cards like Cavendish from EB-01 becoming a staple in any green deck that can run it as well as the return of cards like Urouge from OP-07 in Jewlery Bonney. Restanding Don and being able to either cheat out extra characters like Koushiro blockers from OP-12 or being able to use that Don to attach for a character or Leader swing provides great versatility depending on the boardstate, especially for a Leader like Zoro that needs 3 Don attached to be able to use its Leader ability. It also restands ITSELF at the end of the turn meaning that your opponent has to have some form of hard removal or resting ability to be able to remove it. With the character being a 5k base and threatening to constantly draw one card out of hand to counter, it’s a card that has given the deck an extra layer of aggro into the life area.

Speaking of versatility, the new Trafalgar Law is also a card that has some great diverse options that get activated the longer the game goes on. On Play, you can bounce one of your Characters back into your hand and then play one back down as long as it has a cost of 5 or less. These kinds of bouncing effects on Law cards have always been pretty strong; think all the way back to OP-01 Law Super Rare and the Leader itself being one of the most dominant of the early competitive days. This card has a similar kind of impact in Zoro, being able to either bounce and replay something like a Perona searcher to find your Pirate King restand event, a Tashigi to get the Leader effect ready to fire or the ST-12 Dracule Mihawk SR that can help to flood out the board. That’s already a pretty good reason to play the card but it also has serious defensive upside because as soon as you drop down to 1 or less life, Law becomes a Blocker.

Imu, The Mystery Menace

Now let’s go into OP-13 and talk about the two main decks with targets on their back. First off is Imu, the mysterious mastermind of the Five Elders. Looking at Imu’s Leader card, there is a LOT of things going on before even diving into the engine itself. First things first, you cannot play any Events in the deck that are higher than a cost of 2. So, for all traditional mono black lovers out there, no Finger Pistol. You then are allowed to start the game with a Mary Geoise type Stage in play which will be influenced by the matchup. In most cases, it will be the brand new Empty Throne which allows you to play out Five Elders Characters for 3 Don in line with the total amount of Don you control. So, for example, if I’m going second on Turn 3, I can play any of the Elders with a cost of 6 or lower using the effect of the Stage. You THEN also have an Activate:Main ability to trash a Celestial Dragon on board or ANY card from hand and draw 1. I, for one, welcome the return of our Sakazuki overlord.

So, already, the deck is starting with a tonne of gas. But then, you break into the engine itself. Each of the Five Elders Rares do different things, with Saturn being a top 5 searcher, Warcury being a conditional blocker that draws a card on KO, Mars being a removal outlet of a base 5 cost or lower, Nusjuro is a Rush Character that can reduce power on attack if you have 10 or more cards in the Trash (a feat that is VERY easy to accomplish in this deck) and Ju Peter that is not only a 2k Counter but also makes all of your Five Elders 7k base power. In and of themselves, these cards are very strong but the power is truly unlocked when you combine them. Introducing the Five Elders SR that, for the cost of a Don and a trashed card from hand, lets you play out up to 5 Five Elder characters with different names from the trash. You remember how scary the Judge turn could look for Reiju players? Now multiply that by ten! The thing that really propels this card is the stage we mentioned earlier, The Empty Throne. Instead of paying 10 Don and waiting a turn to use the effect like good One Piece pirates, we can instead be psychopaths and do this ALL AT ONCE. On the 10 Don turn, we can activate the Empty Throne, play out the 10 drop, immediately crack the effect and still have 6 Don to work with for attacks or keep up as defence for the counter events of Never Existed or World’s Equillibrium. This is the deck that I, personally, will be playing through OP-13 and beyond and will take no further questions as to why (tee-hee, 7k Elders go brrrr.)

The Spiciest Doughnut You’ll Ever See!

Do you like playing 6k base leaders? Do you like drawing a bunch of cards? How about playing out multiple Newgates for cheaper while also making your Leader stronger at base power in the process? If any of those sound good, then Ace might just be what you’re looking for! Being a 6k base and 3 Life leader has generally been a method for success in One Piece (see both R/P Luffy from ST-10 and U/P Luffy from OP-11) and Ace is no exception. With a Don underneath him, when you take damage or a 6k base power or higher Character is KO’d, you get to draw a card meaning, if its damage that’s triggering the effect, you get to essentially draw two. He also has another effect that lets you trash one card from hand once per turn to reduce a Leader or Character by 2k power during a battle. So, if you’ve got a bunch of counterless cards in hand, who cares?! Just turn it into a 2k and see yourself through to the next turn.

The core of the deck is value, value, value with a bunch of cards either drawing on KO like Marco from PRB-02, reusing rested Don like Yamato from OP-13 or just being huge bodies like and of the potential 3 different Edward Newgates you can run in the deck. These being the 9 cost from OP-02 that boosts your base power till the next turn, the 10 cost affectionately named ‘TaxBeard’ from OP-08 that draws cards out of hand if your opponent wants to attack that turn or the new ‘BlockBeard’ from OP-13 that, as the name suggests, is a Blocker that also filters and attaches rested Don to the Leader and a Character. The biggest payoff for all these Whitebeard cards is a little card from the newest Ace & Newgate Starter Deck called I Am Whitebeard. This says, if you Leader’s type includes ‘Whitebeard Pirates’ which, of course, Ace does, you get to play an Edward Newgate from hand. No cost or colour restrictions, just straight up play one. You can then add 1 card from Life to hand and boost up your Leader by 2k power till the end of your opponent’s next turn. So, say we’re playing out the OP-02 Newgate with this card, combining the On Play of Newgate and the Life take effect of the Event, Ace becomes 10k base power till the end of your opponent’s next turn which is absolutely insane! Considering the amount of cards Ace can draw as well, taking those Life cards can be quite liberally done and you can just tower over the rest of the competition.

These three leaders have made a huge splash in the format and are forecasted to do the same over here. But all hope isn’t lost for those that want to go a little off the beaten path so, lets get into the real topic of this article…some good counter picks to break this very imposing triangle.

Main Character Energy – Monkey D. Luffy (OP-05)

Mono Purple Luffy has been a Leader that has floated around in meta relevance and potency really since its release back in the first Anniversary set of OP-05 and not a great deal changes in the deck. You still have your consistency engine from ST-18 in Zoro-juro and Luffy-taro, with the former being a 6k power searcher and the latter being a way to play out an extra character alongside it for the reduction of a Don. San-goro still provides a strong draw engine and your endgame is still typically supplemented by the Purple Big Mom Pirates SRs in LinLin from OP-08 and Katakuri from OP-11. Chuck in one of the various Secret Rare Luffys for a bit of spice and you have a very capable ramp and aggro strategy.

A big reason why this deck in particular has come back into light and seen success is thanks to a previously forgotten Super Rare from OP-02. Magellan. Magellan allows you, On Play, to Don -1 and force your opponent to also Don -1, offsetting their curve and potentially putting them back entire turns. This means against Ace, you potentially offset their first activation of I Am Whitebeard and, against Imu, you severely limit the Elders than can possibly play with Empty Throne and even completely delay the Five Elders swarm combo that we mentioned earlier on in the article. And, thanks to it’s strong effect if the character gets KO’d during the opponents turn, the Character will either be completely left alone and allow you to poke for 6k or more turn after turn or burn something like Gum Gum Red Roc on it which feels great for you as the PLuffy player as Ace decks typically only run that card as a 1 or 2 of so, all of a sudden, your Katakuri’s and LinLin’s are pretty much safe from removal.

The slight downside to Magellan is that Imu players, in particular, have wisened up to this card being a big threat to their overall gameplan. So, to combat that, Imu players will traditionally start the game with the Mary Geoise stage itself as opposed to Empty Throne, so they still have a gameplan they do get Magellan’ed. Even so, its still forcing Imu to play an awkward game and one where, if they haven’t tested it enough, could really get punished.

The Queen of Green – Jewelry Bonney (OP-07)

In comparison, Bonney is a deck that’s never really felt like its gone away in terms of the meta since her release back in OP-07. The mono green control leader with her generically good ability to straight up say ‘no’ to an attack by resting something on your opponent’s side of the board for a Don can create some really tricky decisions for opponents and, in some boardstates, can even just singlehandedly win you games on occasion. With the package of Cavendish, Tashigi, Koushirou, Urouge and, everyone’s favourite power hungry Fish-Man Hody Jones to help close games out, this deck can be very versatile and allow you to play the games at your pace.

OP-13, unfortunately, doesn’t include many new Supernovas into the card pool but the 6 cost Law that we spoke about in the Zoro portion of the article can certainly see some life here. Being able to play this down, pick up something like a Bonney searcher and then play down Carrot from OP-08, for example, gives you some pretty good value and is another 6k body into the fray. However, for me, I think Bonney is going to be looking less at new cards and rather looking at cards from previous sets to make a return into the deck. Namely, Dead Man’s Game from OP-12 and, maybe surprisingly. Smoker from OP-10. Dead Man’s Game is pretty self explanatory; being able to pay 4 Don to rest two Blockers or a Blocker and a Don to block off and Imu Counter Events is great value. Especially when compared to something like Hody Jones which, yes, does do the same thing and is an 8k Rushing body but makes you take a Life to activate the effect. With Dead Man’s Game, we can get past those pesky blockers of Mars and Warcury in Imu and try and push or, in the Ace matchup, rest the Whitebeard blockers and either chip away at Ace’s monster handsize or go for game if they have been a bit too liberal with the secondary effect of I Am Whitebeard.

Smoker, though, may be a bit of a surprise pick. This choice is intended, for me at least, to target one matchup in particular and that’s Imu. Even though Imu is a mono-coloured Leader, it starts with 4 Life much like Enel from OP-05 and both low-cost searchers in Saint Shalria and The Five Elders Are At Your Service make you trash away the cards that you don’t pick. So, cards in hand can be at a premium for Imu much like it can be in a deck like Marshall D Teach from OP-09. Plus, with a lot of Imu players wanting to protect Life early and give themselves as much time as possible for the 10 drop turns again, like Teach, a well times Banish swing could really make Imu overcommit cards in hand. Especially in the early game as well where those early blockers can be rested by Bonney leader effect. Plus, the Slash typing means it’s protectable by Koushirou! It’s a card I experimented with in OP-12 but think OP-13 might be a place for it to really shine.

The King Of The Pirates Arrives!! – Gol D. Roger (OP-13)

Remember when we got our first sneak peek of the Gol D. Roger Leader at the conclusion of the 2025 World Championships and we all collectively lost our minds and went into speculation overdrive? Yeah, those were fun times! Speculate no more, though, as Roger is here and, despite a key card (which we’ll go over in a moment) still looks to be a pretty cool Leader to run at an event. For a dual colour Leader in Red and Purple and having 5 starting Life isn’t completely unheard of but, if managed correctly, could be extremely threatening. The aim of the game for this leader is ramp to 10 as fast as possible in order to unlock the 7k printed base power level; without all 10, the Leader is a 5k and must have a Don attached. So, basically the entire Roger Pirates engine ramps you. You have a Gear Two like card in the form of Guess We’ll Have Another Scrap that lets you ramp if you rest another Don, Buggy, Douglas Bullet, Kouzuki Oden and Scopper Gaban which all add one rested Don to your field as well as some having other effects. Gaban, for example, allows you to filter cards in hand, Oden is a Blocker and Douglas Bullet gains a static 2k power boost if you have 8 or more Don on the field.

This then builds up into the top end of the deck consisting primarily right now of the new Silvers Rayleigh SR that is a 9k Rush Character and can rest a 5 cost or lower if you have and given Don cards (also, shockingly, it also ramps a Don but it comes in active). You have 10 cost Shanks from OP-09 which can Rush as well as giving that blanket -1k power reduction and topped off by the SEC Roger himself from OP-09, rendering all those Blockers useless if either player has no Life cards remaining. But, let’s not forget that Roger also has a Super Rare himself that is really interesting! At 13k base power, the card On Play allows you to return 3 Don and give your Leader a 2k power boost till the end of your opponent’s next turn while also reducing the power of your opponent’s characters by 2k. This means that, in the Imu matchup, the Saint Ju Peter is essentially completely ignored and all the Elders will be brought back down to a 5k base for that turn. Any new characters, importantly, do ignore that power reduction but still a strong tool for tempo not only as a way to slow your opponent a bit, but also have a very dangerous 13k body that could be chained together with the SEC on a future turn.

Even with all these upsides, as hinted earlier, there is a key card that at the launch of OP-13, we do not quite have access to. That is the new Promo 107 Roger card that says if either player has 10 Don on the field, your Leader gets a 2k boost until the end of your opponent’s next End Phase. Already, I’m sure you can see why this card has become vital to the deck, with its ability to play on curve, still be a big body and not ruin the curve and power of the Leader by having to reduce Don like you do with the SR Roger. The card is slated for a release in December at Store Tournaments and is still, at the time of writing, awaiting official legality confirmation for Bandai Card Fest on December 13^th & 14^th. If it does get the green light, expect this deck to soar in representation. Without out, it’s still certainly competitive though and worth some consideration.

A Sneaky, Scary Snakeman – Monkey D. Luffy (OP-11)

Oh hey, look, another 6k base Leader that lets you draw multiple cards in a turn! These have quite a habit of being quite good, don’t they…That’s right, everyone’s favourite OP-11 dominant deck is back for OP-13 although, this time, may be one for more of a future pick than a ‘play this right now’ choice. A Leader and strategy that, of course, did get hit in the most recent banlist update hitting it with the Forbidden Pairing of the LinLin and Katakuri Super Rares we spoke about earlier, but it hasn’t stopped players from still using the Leader throughout the OP-12 format. Being like Roger in its early game ramp approach and having a scary top end line, what really makes the deck stand out is exactly what it does when you hit that requisite number of Don on the field. While Roger gets a power bump, Luffy is constantly a 6k base and instead allows you to search the top 5 cards of the deck for a Straw Hat and then replace the rest of the cards IN ORDER to either the top or bottom of the deck.

This, of course, then combos with the Sanji Secret Rare all the way back from OP-06 to flip and play the top card of the deck as long as it’s 9 cost or lower and not a Sanji card. While previously this would be either Katakuri to be a big restanding blocker or LinLin to heal, now those targets have become things like Dracule Mihawk from OP-01 for tempo, the Luffy Secret Rare from OP-09 for aggression or a bit of both by dipping into the OP-10 Donquixote Pirates package with Doflamingo and Rosinante. It’s a deck that can go very wide and very tall very quickly. Because of this capability, it’s also a deck that is a prime candidate for that aforementioned Promo 107 Roger card. It’s targetable by the Sanji, so doesn’t require Don commitment, boosts you up to an 8k base which will be especially important in the Ace matchup and is a 10k body to attack with next turn, again very strong in the Ace matchup even if the do use I Am Whitebeard to bump themselves up to 8k base. Even without the promo, though, being able to match that 6k base against Ace as well as having access to a myriad of strong event cards like Red Roc, Giant and even Gravity Blade for things like the Zoro matchup certainly makes U/P a strong contender again in this format.

The Format’s Worst-Kept Secret? – Lim (OP-09)

Last but not least, we have one of my favourite decks possibly of all time in One Piece which is a deck for most of us, came out of absolutely nowhere. A deck that allows you spit out 6k bodies turn after turn while also ramping can be super aggressive and allow you to play into some really great top end threats like the 9 cost secret rare Zoro and the 9 cost Super Rare Adio (yes, I still believe in that card!). With the tradeoff of Lim being that all characters coming in rested, a bunch of them can restand themselves like Doflamingo and the 3 cost Lim as well.

The real keys to why people are considering this deck again is one brand new card and one older card from the previous set. The older card is another one that shouldn’t be a massive surprise in the form of Dead Man’s Game. While we do have the capability to run Hody Jones being a Green/Purple Leader, we don’t get the full usage out of the card with everything coming into play rested. So, in that case, we’ve essentially paid 7 Don for a double rest and take the damage without the actual upside of an 8k swing. For Dead Man’s Game, you don’t take damage, still get the resting capability and have extra Don to either attach onto characters or use for the leader ability and play out a surprise Dracule Mihawk for a bonus swing.

The new card though is one that Lim fans should be really excited for and that is the new 10 cost Shanks. First and foremost, 10 cost Shanks essentially comes in for free because all your Don gets reactivated on play. The trade off, though, is that you cannot play cards from your hand during that turn. It sounds like a really heavy downside until you look into the fine print a little. As confirmed by the OP-13 FAQ, you are allowed to activate effects that state ‘play up to 1 Character card from your hand’. So, for Lim, you can play 10 cost Shanks, restand all your Don and you can STILL use the Leader ability to be able to play out an Odyysey Character on your turn. This creates an insane level of value and aggression that, if your opponent cannot answer or doesn’t respect, could see you avalanche into a victory.

To Conclude

There you have it then, five Leader ideas to try and get through the big three of OP-13! As a reminder, tickets are STILL AVAILABLE for the Edinburgh Regionals in November so, if this article has inspired you to give one of these decks a try or if you are still searching for that Finals invite, this will be one of the last chances to get it so be sure to sign up via the Tickets section of the website!

Get Your Tickets Here!