Heya everyone! OP15 Adventure on KAMI’s Island is finally out in the East, and players have already started experimenting with the new cards—testing Leaders and figuring out the best builds for competitive play.
We’ve already seen decks like Red Blue Lucy and Purple Enel perform well in early tournaments, helping shape what looks like a promising OP15 meta and, hopefully, bringing a shift away from the decks that have dominated the past few months—Black Imu, Green Mihawk, Red Blue Ace, and Blue Yellow Boa.
Since we’re still in the early stages of the OP15 meta, there isn’t a single “perfect” list yet. That said, this article should give you a strong starting point and help you get familiar with whichever Leader you’re looking to pick up.
Red Blue Lucy
Leader Lucy has a defensive and offensive effect, letting you trash any number of cards in your hand to gain +1,000 Power for every card trashed. This effect can be activated when you go for the attack or when your opponent attacks you. It lets you trash the cards you least need, especially dead cards for the +1,000 Power boost. However, it does drain our hand of resources, so we should use it wisely, but luckily, the deck has multiple card draw tools to make sure we don’t run out of resources easily.
As for Lucy’s second effect, you can activate it only if you “activated” an event with a cost of 3 or more, letting you draw a card to gain more resources. This means we need to add a lot of events to get access to this effect during our turn. It’s important to note that the wording of Lucy’s effect says activate not play. This means activating an event from hand with Sabo will count towards Leader Lucy’s condition.
Cavendish is perfect for the early game, developing a 6,000 Power Character that can draw us a card whenever he goes for the attack. In the late-game, we can use him as trash fodder to gain a +1,000 Power boost since he doesn’t have a Counter.
Most of our Events are control-based, capable of reducing the Power of an opponent’s Character and even removing them from the field, weakening their state on the board, and making it easier for us to take over the game. Would you let me eat… the Flame-Flame Fruit? can set up a finisher turn, helping us put the opponent low on Life cards to set up a winning play.
Purple Enel
Purple Enel changes the rules of your deck, forcing you to run a total of 6 Don cards only. However, when you hit your turn 2, you can start activating his effect to ramp 1 Active Don and add 4 rested Don. Then, you can give 4 of your rested Don to 1 of your Characters, enabling them to go for a heavier attack.
With how our Leader works, we can only run Characters with a cost of 6 or less, but since we’re ramping a lot with Leader ability, we can afford to deramp without falling behind in the game. This enables us to activate strong effects with a deramp condition without worrying as much about the drawback.
Ohm, Gedatsu, Satori, and Shura are 1-cost Characters with a Draw effect and can activate another effect if you have 6 Don or less. Since they’re only 2,000 Power, they don’t offer much offensive pressure on their own, but with our Leader capable of attaching 4 rested Don a Character, we can turn them into attackers and even force the opponent to remove them.
Enel benefits from you being at 6 Don or less, becoming a tough Character to remove since the opponent can’t remove him with effect, and will gain a +2,000 Power boost, making him harder to KO through attacks. You can return 1 Don and trash a card from your hand to give Enel the Blocker keyword, perfect for protecting you from an opponent’s attack and stalling out the game.
As for Enel, he has the same first effect as Enel, but On Play, Enel lets you look at the top 5 cards of your deck to add 1 card to your hand, perfect for finding the cards you need.
The list has a lot of 0-cost spells, the majority of them with a Counter effect that gives up to one of your Enel cards a +2,000 Power boost. They also have different effects that can be used during your turn, all useful depending on the state of the game.
Green Black Brook
Usually, in OPTCG, you immediately lose the game if you fall to 0 cards in your deck. However, Leader Brook changes the rules, giving you until the end of your turn before you lose the game.
Brook lets you trash 4 cards each turn through his effect, and if you fall to 0 Life cards in your deck, you can set one of your Characters as Active, allowing you to attack with it and put some pressure on the opposing player. We’ll only drop to 0 Life cards when we can plan the finishing turn.
A lot of cards in the deck, like Chopper and Pirates Docking Six, will trash the top cards of your deck alongside your Leader, helping you get closer to 0 cards in the deck.
Nami is one of the strongest plays for going wider on the field, letting us cheat out a 7-cost or less {Straw Hat Crew} Character from trash. Since we’re trashing a lot with this deck, we can easily find a meaningful Character to play like Monkey.D.Luffy and Monkey.D.Luffy. The Character we’re cheating out through Nami will gain the Rush keyword, meaning we can use Monkey.D.Luffy‘s Double Attack immediately to plan an aggressive turn.
7-cost Luffy is a massive carry in this deck, becoming stronger the more cards are in your trash. You want to have at least 10 cards in your trash when you play him, becoming a 9,000 Power Character and gaining +10 cost, to become a harder target to remove. If you have 20 or more cards in your trash, Brook becomes a 7,000 Power Leader during the opponent’s turn, becoming a harder target to remove. At 30 or more cards in your trash, Luffy gains another +1,000 Power to become a 10,000 Power Character.
Brook can rest a card and can trash himself to set an 8-cost or less Character as Active, perfect when combined with your heavy hitters for a stronger aggressive turn.
Yellow Monkey D.Luffy
Leader Luffy wants to protect his Sky Island Characters with 6,000 base power or more. If they would be removed from the field by your opponent, you can add 1 card from the top of your Life cards to your hand instead. You’re going down on Life cards, but keeping a stronger presence on the board to keep the pressure going.
We have Sky Island Characters like Roronoa Zoro, Kalgara, Monkey.D.Luffy, and Nico Robin that we want to keep on the board for as long as possible and maximize their offensive pressure. Kalgara gives you a draw card when you or your opponent loses a Life card, so you get access to more resources when you activate your Leader Luffy’s effect.
Nico Robinis a massive play, letting us add the top Life card to our hand, then adding the top card of our deck to our Life Area. Nico Robin also lets us cheat out a 5-cost or less Sky Island-type Character, going wider on the field to set up multiple attacks.
Blue Rebecca
Blue Rebecca cannot attack; instead, you can rest her to activate her effect, returning one of your {Dressrosa} type Characters to your hand and playing a {Dressrosa} type Character with a cost of 3 from your hand.
The list has many 3-cost Characters to play through Rebecca, such as Kyros, Sanji, and Monkey.D.Luffy, each with a unique role that serves a different purpose. We usually want to return one of our low-cost Characters like Viola to our hand to play out the 3-cost Character, going wider on the field with an attacker threat. The Character we return to our hand can be replayed for its effect or used for its Counter effect.
Kyros is a Rush attacker, putting some pressure on the turn he’s played. When KO’d, you can put Kyros from your trash to your hand, which means we can continue using his Rush attack on later turns. Sanji is both a defensive and an offensive player. He acts as a blocker to protect us from an attack, but also gives one of your Characters the Unblockable keyword, allowing you to plan a finishing turn with one of your heavy attackers. Since you can play him through Leader effect, you can save the 3 Don to give to your attacker.
Sabo is a 9,000 Power Blocker that lets us activate an Event in hand. We can go for Events like Go Ahead and Use 'Em and Would you let me eat… the Flame-Flame Fruit?.
Red Green Krieg
Red Green Krieg is a defensive Leader, that needs to have only East Blue Characters in play. By attaching 1 Don to your Leader and having only East Blue Characters on your field, all your opponent’s Characters will have a Power reduction of 2,000, making it even harder for the opposing player to get attacks through, and even forcing them to give their Characters to Don to boost their attack Power.
By giving their Characters Don, it plays into your Leader’s strategy as Krieg can rest one of the opponent’s Characters that has at least 2 Don attached to it. This puts the Character in a vulnerable spot, allowing you to attack it and potentially KO it or at least force counter resources from the opponent. This goes beyond just your Leader as many cards in your deck want to give opponent’s Characters Don to active their effects.
Cards like Kuro, Alvida, and Krieg can give Don to opponent Characters and will activate their effects, either to empower you offensively or defensively.
