Heya everyone! In today’s guide, I’ll be going over OP16 Black Yamato—a deck built to play aggressively, pressure the opponent’s Leader, and push them down on Life cards while setting up a strong finishing turn to close out the game.
Black Yamato revolves around Land of Wano–type cards as a core part of its strategy. The deck has a powerful mid-game, with the 6-cost and 8-cost Yamato working in sync with your Leader’s effect to maintain pressure and tempo. Keeping your key Characters on the board is crucial for transitioning into the late game, so you’ll often want to protect them whenever possible and set up turns with multiple attacks.
Leader
Black Yamato is a 5 Life card Leader with an effect that allows you to give the Rush keyword to a {Land of Wano} type Character that has been played from your trash. This means we need cards that synrgize with our Leader effect to get the Rush attack online and start threatening immediate attacks. Cards like 6-cost Yamato and 9-cost Kouzuki Momonosuke can play Characters from your trash, enabling your strategy.
Yamato Decklist
How to Play
1-cost Plays
Nami lets you look at the top 4 cards of your deck and add 1 Land of Wano-type character to your hand, then you get to trash the rest. This makes it easier for you to set up your combo pieces, as we’ll likely be looking for a play to make on the upcoming turns, and we’re glad to see an 8-cost Yamato getting trashed so we can replay them from the trash later on.
As for the Nico Robin, she’s trashing a card with 8-cost or more from our hand to draw us 2 cards, which makes the 8-cost Yamato a perfect target so we can get them from trash later in the game.
Turn 2 Development
Kin’emon is a massive early play, adding pressure on the opposing player with his 6,000 Power attacks, and acting as a searching that looks at the top 5 cards of the deck to add 1 Land of Wano type Character. We’re also trashing the rest of our cards, so it’s perfect for setting the combo pieces and even having Ground Death online later in the game.
Yamato Win Condition
The 6-cost Yamato is the centerpiece of our strategy. When played, you can draw a card and trash a card from your hand. Usually, you’ll trash the 8-cost Yamato if you don’t have one already in the trash or go for a card you least need, or a 2-cost or less Character you’re planning to play out later on through the 8-cost Yamato.
Once in play, you can trash the 6-cost Yamato to play one of your 8-cost Yamatos, who will enter the board with the Rush keyword thanks to your Leader’s effect, threatening an 8,000 Power attack on the spot.
The Unblockable Yamato can be a major win condition, especially as a finisher. Your opponent’s blockers will be rendered useless, forcing them to rely on their Counter cards to stop your Yamato from closing out the game. The main advantage of this Yamato card is its KO effect, letting you play a 6-cost or less Yamato from the trash. This essentially creates a loop, forcing the opposing player to ignore your 8-cost Yamato or find other means to deal with them rather than just KOing the card.
Since we’re essentially never losing Yamato to attackers thanks to the On KO effect, we’ll be fine allowing her to die to save on counter resources. However, if we expect that the opponent can remove the 6-cost Yamato immediatly afterwards, we’ll then have to protect the 8-cost Yamato to ensure we keep our high-power attacker in play.
As for the 8-cost Yamato, they can also be played from the trash to threaten an 8,000 Power Rush attack. When played, Yamato lets you add a 6-cost or less Land of Wano Character from your trash to your hand, so you can go for the 6-cost Yamato to keep more threats later in the game, or go for a Counter card to protect you from attacks. 8-cost Yamato can also cheat out a 2-cost or less Character from your hand, so you can either go for a searcher card or something like Luffy to give your Character the unblockable keyword if you’re planning a winning turn.
Late-Game Momonosuke
The 9-cost Kouzuki Momonosuke is a 6,000 Power Blocker, perfect in the late game to tank an attack and buy us an additional turn. When played, Momonosuke lets us play a 6-cost or less Land of Wano Character from the trash. This means we get to play our 6-cost Yamato, attack with 5,000 Power, then trash them to play the 8-cost Yamato and go for another attack, setting up an aggressive turn to try and burn the opponent’s Counter resources.
+2,000 Cards
Otama is a searchable +2,000 Counter, which can be used for the -2,000 Power on an opponent’s Character, but in most cases, you’ll be using her for the Counter.
Shinobu is another searchable +2,000 Counter. You can trash her to draw a card and give one of your Momonosuke Characters a +20 cost. This is usually a combo play with the 5-cost Momonosuke, fulfilling his condition to play a 9-cost Momonosuke from your trash if you have a total of 9 Don on the field.
Luffy can be used as a game-winning play to give your attacker the Unblockable keyword and start ignoring blockers.
Events
Ground Death as a counter play to protect yourself from an attack, or to negate the effect of a Character with 5-cost or less, which can be useful if you want to shut down a blocker. You need to have 10 cards in your trash to activate the Counter, but in the later stages of the game, a +4,000 Power can prevent a heavy swing from going through,
I’ve Come Here… To Cut Those Chains!!! can be played to get access to the 6-cost Yamato, letting us attack with her on the turn she’s played before
Other Cards to Include
- Shimotsuki Ushimaru is a low-cost Blocker that you can play through your 8-cost Yamato to protect you from one of the opponent’s attacks.
- Sanji is a searchable +2,000 Counter.
Mulligan Tips
We want to find early searchers like Nami and Kin’emon to shape up our upcoming turns. Since the 6-cost Yamato is a center piece of this deck, we also want to find her or have one of our searchers look for her.
General Tips
- Play aggressively. The Black Yamato deck wants to take Life cards and put the opponent in a vulnerable spot, forcing them to play defensively or try to race you.
- Don’t hold off on 6-cost Yamato. Having a 6-cost Yamato in play means we can trash her to play the 8-cost version. If we don’t activate it on the same turn, we’re giving the opposing player an opportunity to remove her, basically removing our chance of dropping a big Rush attacker.
- You have a lot of counter resources. Since we have a lot of counter resources, we can easily protect our Leader or key Characters from attackers. In many cases, we’ll ignore board control and focus on the opponent’s Leader, relying on our counter cards to prolong the game.
Closing Words
The Black Yamato deck has been seeing a lot of success in local tournaments and even bigger events. The fact that you’re potentially shutting down the opposing player’s ability to control your side of the field means you force them into a race to see who can end the game faster. With your Leader’s Rush effect, you have an advantage here and can even remove the opponent’s attackers and slowly chip away for the win.
