Set Sail with OP-09!

Wilson dives into the Meta and excitement in collecting One Piece OP-09!

Slight spoiler warning for One Piece ahead*

 

Set sail into the latest expansion of the One Piece trading card game OP-09: Emperors in the New World! Themed around the current 4 Yonkos or Emperors in the One Piece world, look at the latest leaders for Luffy, Shanks, Buggy and Marshall D. Teach. Japan has given us a great view at how these new leaders play out, with Teach being a leader all players need to look out for. 

While you do lose the impact of your “on play” abilities, which heavily restricts which black cards you can use as many meta cards heavily rely on “on play” abilities, black has a lot of cards that make use of activate main instead. Nonetheless, the support in the “Blackbeard Pirates” type this set offers especially in the super rare 10c Teach, which although only once allows your to shut down the ability of one of your opponents leaders, so especially against Green Bonney decks, can throw the other deck off tempo. It is also key to note that you can continue to use the character attack negation each turn to really stall out your opponents strongest characters.

Another meta shaking leader is the new red Shanks leader. Red has lacked a lot of finishing power in the last few sets, especially finding that you can come up just short of being able to reduce the opponents power enough. With shanks able to effectively at all times keep one card on lower power, provides for a strong defence, but also opens the door for a quicker offence. Especially when paired with the new 7c Beckman or Lucky.Roux Shanks in the “Red-Hair Pirates” type, there is a lot of potential for this deck if you pair it with the secret rare rayleigh from OP-08

Some leaders like Buggy show a lot of potential when future promos become available, and Lim, a lesser known character from the One Piece Odyssey game can catch your opponents off guard with some off-meta plays. Older leaders like Belo Betty from OP-05 also see a strong resurgence with a lot of yellow “Revolutionary Army” typed card support! Something, as a Belo Betty player, I am very excited to see. 

 

On the collecting side, this is the biggest set we have seen since OP-05 last year. As the 2nd anniversary set, we have a whopping 5 manga rares available in this set, more than other previous sets. Representing again the 4 emperors of Luffy, Buggy, Shanks and Teach, these Mangas are in my opinion, some of the most stunning yet. However, the biggest chase card from this set is the newest Golden Manga Rare of the King of the Pirates, Gol.D.Roger. Mechanically, this card, which is also available as one of the secret rares for this set, is the late game power piece that red has needed for a while. In terms of collectability, the gold manga is currently and will likely continue to be, the most expensive collectable card available in One Piece boosters, with current sales (at the time of writing this article) for this card going for between 8 to 13 thousand dollars!

Be on the lookout as well for the awesome SP cards in this set, featuring some amazing cards from older sets like the OP-07 Boa Hancock, OP-04 Rosinante and the OP-05 Lucci. We also have a new set of “WANTED POSTER” SP cards covering 10c character versions for our aforementioned 4 emperors. With a more worn paper finish/colouring, these are a huge improvement on the previous “WANTED POSTER” SP cards we saw available in OP-03, so hopefully we might continue to see more of this type of printing in the future.

Overall, this set mainly provides us with some much needed counters to the current meta, shutting with the potential to shut down decks like the powerful OP-01 Doflamingo, without shaking up older builds too much. This set truly is a celebration of all things wonderful in the OPTCG and for collectors and fans alike, there is something that will spark a fire in your hearts. Keep an eye out at your local Hobby Lords or online for Booster Boxes of this latest set or spice it up and get a couple of the latest double packs which can feature either a cross guild or teach don!! card to spice up your latest deck! I must sail out now to try and find as many of the Monkey.D.Luffy cards as I can to finish my collection and maybe find treasure in the Gol.D.Roger manga while I'm at it!

 

Wilson Ludlow

Hobby Lords Dunedin