The Blue Buggy Leader received new supporting cards in Starter Deck 25, giving the deck overall better and more consistent performance. This deck focuses on developing multiple Characters in a single turn, aiming to swarm the field with Cross Guild Characters to pressure the opposing player.
You’ll find yourself trashing a lot of cards to activate your effect, but the list includes various cards that draw, helping you refill your hand and maintain resources.
Leader
Buggy is a 5-Life Leader who synergizes with Cross Guild Characters. By resting 5 DON!! and trashing 1 card from your hand, you can play a Cross Guild Character directly from your hand, regardless of its cost. This lets you cheat out powerful, high-cost Characters as early as turn 3, and continue doing so later for just 5 DON!! each.
However, each activation costs you a card from hand, so in the late game, you’ll need to weigh whether developing your board for less DON!! and stronger plays is worth the resource loss.
Buggy has multiple powerful targets for this effect, including 7-cost Buggy, 7-cost Crocodile, and 10-cost Buggy, each offering strong effects that can hit the board earlier and cheaper than usual.
Importantly, Buggy’s effect is not once per turn. If you’re at 10 DON!!, you can activate it twice to play two big Characters, just keep in mind that this will cost you 2 cards from your hand, which can quickly drain your resources.
Blue Buggy Decklist
How to Play
Searcher Cards
Mr. 3 looks at 4 cards from the top of your deck to add 1 {Cross Guild} type card or card with a type including “Baroque Works” other than [Mr.3(Galdino)] to your hand.
As for Cross Guild, it also looks at the top 4 cards of your deck to add 1 {Cross Guild} type card to your hand. Its Trigger effect lets you play it for free without having to rest 1 Don.
The searher cards help you plan you future turns, finding you the Characters you need to combo your plays and develop multiple Characters in one turn.
Draw Characters
Alvida‘s On Play effect draws you 3 cards and lets you trash 2 cards from your hand. So you’re adding a card to your hand and filtering for better cards. She’s a 5,000 Power Characters who gains +1 cost if you have 2 or more Characters in play with a base cosrt of 5. This can make Alvida harder to remove for certain decks, but she’ll also enable you to activate certain effects like 4-cost Mohji and 10-cost Buggy that rely on you having 5-cost Characters in play.
6-cost Dracule Mihawk is a 7,000 Power Blocker, perfect to protect your Leader and can become an attacker to pressure the opposing player. His On Play effect draws 2 cards and trashes 1 card, adding more resources and fixing your hand.
Going Wide
Before we dive into the going-wide strategy, it’s important to highlight how the 4-cost Buggy empowers this deck and certain combos. He’s a 4-cost Character with an effect that lets you trash a card from your hand and trash himself to cheat out a 6-cost or less Character from your hand. This enables you to bring out the 6-cost Dracule Mihawk, giving you a 7,000 Power Blocker while also drawing you a card.
You can use 4-cost Buggy early on if you’re at 4 DON!!, but the deck usually aims to combo him with 7-cost Crocodile or 8-cost Crocodile & Mihawk. These let you cheat out the 4-cost Buggy, who can then bring in Dracule Mihawk to join them on the board.
7-cost Buggy‘s On Play effect lets you play a 6-cost or less Character from your hand, but on the downside, he can’t attack. Although he doesn’t get to attack, you are developing an additional Character through him and shutting down all cost 3 and 4 Characters from attacking. Since Alvida can gain +1 cost, she can get out of this effect’s range and go for an attack.
The 7-cost Crocodile lets you play 1 {Cross Guild} type Character or a Character with a type including “Baroque Works” with a cost of 5 or less from your hand. The list has multiple options to choose from, but we’re usually going for either 4-cost Buggy or Alvida. If we don’t have either of those, we can choose one of your +2,000 Counter Characters like Cabaji or Mohji.
8-cost Crocodile & Mihawk is a 7,000 Power Character with an effect that lets you draw 2 cards, trash 1 card from your hand, then cheat out a 4-cost or less Character. The usual targets here are 4-cost Buggy or Alvida.
As long as Crocodile & Mihawk remain on the field, you can protect your Characters from a removal effect once per turn by trashing a card from your hand. This helps you maintain strong board presence and forces your opponent to find alternative ways to clear your Characters.
The Biggest Buggy
The 10-cost Buggy is this deck’s strongest play, but we rarely ever pay 10 DON!! to play him. Instead, we use our Leader’s effect to cheat him in for just 5 DON!!. When played, the 10-cost Buggy lets you choose one of your opponent’s Characters and place it at the bottom of their deck. This can remove a key win condition and swing the game in your favor.
However, he comes with a drawback: Buggy won’t stay on the field unless you have five Characters with a cost of 5 or more in play. If you don’t meet this condition, he will still remove an opponent’s Character, but then sends himself to the bottom of your deck.
Thanks to our Leader’s ability and combo pieces, we can often go wide and set up four high-cost Characters before playing the 10-cost Buggy. Still, there are times when we’ll choose to play him even without fulfilling his condition, since the removal effect alone can be powerful enough to justify it.
Events
Since we’re trashing a lot of cards, having Sanji’s Pilaf can be a game changer, drawing us two cards to add more resources to our hand. We’re hoping Sanji’s Pilaf is in our Life Area so we can activate its trigger effect and draw 2 cards without having to use any Don. If we can’t afford to use Don to activate Sanji’s Pilaf, we can instead use it as a trash fodder for one of our effects.
Gravity Blade Raging Tiger is a great control tool to remove two 6-cost or less Characters by placing them at the bottom of the deck, slowing down opponent’s upcoming turn.
+2,000 Counters
These are +2,000 Cross Guild Counter cards that are searchable and can be cheated out on the field if needed. 4-cost Cabaji and Mohji are blockers, protecting you from an opponent’s attack, whereas 5-cost Cabaji can act as an attacker, ensuring you can keep the attack pressure going.
Mulligan
- Going First (preferred): Searcher Cards, 6-cost Mihawk, 7-cost Buggy.
- Going Second: Searcher Cards, 4-cost Alvida, 4-cost Buggy, 7-cost Crocodile, 8-cost Crocodile & Mihawk.
General Tips
- We want to go wide on the field and protect our Characters whenever possible. Since the 10-cost Buggy needs to see 4 other Characters with a cost of 5 or more in play, we’ll try to keep our field wide to make it easier for us to play him. We’re fine using Counter cards to protect a rested Character when possible.
- In some cases, we’ll play 10-cost Buggy just for the removal effect to slow down our opponent’s pace.
- Trash cards you don’t expect to play on your upcoming turns. We have multiple cards with a trash effect, so make sure to trash the cards you’ll need the least while also valuing Counter cards.
Turn-Based Gameplay
Going First
- Turn 1 (1 Don): Mr. 3 or Cross Guild.
- Turn 2 (3 Don): Sanji’s Pilaf.
- Turn 3 (5 Don): Activate Leader effect to cheat out 7-cost Buggy, 7-cost Crocodile, or 8-cost Crocodile & Mihawk.
- Turn 4 (7 Don): 7-cost Buggy, 7-cost Crocodile, or Activate Leader effect.
- Turn 5 (9 Don): Leader effect for 7-cost Buggy, 7-cost Crocodile, or 8-cost Crocodile & Mihawk + 4-cost Character or Sanji’s Pilaf.
- Turn 6 (10 Don): You can activate Leader effect twice to go wide and ply 10-cost Buggy.
Going Second
- Turn 1 (2 Don): Mr. 3 or Cross Guild.
- Turn 2 (4 Don): Alvida or 4-cost Buggy.
- Turn 3 (6 Don): Activate Leader effect to cheat out 7-cost Buggy, 7-cost Crocodile, or 8-cost Crocodile & Mihawk.
- Turn 4 (8 Don): Leader effect for 7-cost Buggy, 7-cost Crocodile, or 8-cost Crocodile & Mihawk and play Sanji’s Pilaf.
- Turn 5 (10 Don): You can activate Leader effect twice to go wide and ply 10-cost Buggy.
Other Cards to Include
- Richie is a low-cost blocker to protect you from an opponent’s attack.
- Mr.1 is a vanilla card with high Power, which we’ll often want to cheat out through 7-cost Buggy or Crocodile.
- 5-cost Alvida can be played through 7-cost Buggy or Crocodile. When KO’d, Alvida lets you cheat out a 5-cost Character from your hand, making sure you keep a formidable board presence.
Closing Words
Blue Buggy is looking way stronger with the new Starter cards, giving the deck more consistency in its “go wide” game plan to have the 10-cost Buggy stick on the field. This deck can overwhelm opponents with its ability to develop multiple Characters in one turn, forcing them to shift to a defensive playstyle.
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