OPO3 BanList + Strawbeard Research (Updated July 28th) (Patreon)
Content
For the people who have not seen it yet...
https://en.onepiece-cardgame.com/rules/restriction/
Edward Newgate, Blocker Marco, and Radical Beam have ALL been hit to one!!
(Goodbye Whitebeard)
But unfortunately the OPO3 is looking doomed at the moment. This banlist would have been incredible in OPO4(where colors outside of red actually exist), but for the time being, I imagine the meta to look a little something like this...
(I put the decks that I think will be most important)
It is no exaggeration to say that Zoro is likely to be by far the best deck. Now that it does not have to worry about the existence of Whitebeard, Fire Fist and 4 Vista in combination with Gordon might destroy any deck. Zoro also gets the opportunity to play greedy hyper aggro lists like the one that recently got first place.
(Deep Patel's First Place Zoro List from the July Core TCG Online Regional)
Law is very strong in the sense that it beats almost every deck in the list, but it is now weak in the sense that it will probably scoop to the Zoro players that can now comfortably run 4 Vista and 4 Fire Fist. A huge reason Vista and Nico Robin were not played in Zoro lists, and the same reason that not many Fire Fist was ran in Zoro was because these cards were bad against Whitebeard. Now Zoro is able to play them in peace..
(Do you hate Law Players Bandai?)
Black is now a notably weaker color since it's best matchup(Whitebeard) will no longer be present in the meta. The deck will be strong, but I don't see much incentive to play it. Plus I have already been hating on Lucci, I actually had a gameplay video against Lucci coming out in 2 days, but I guess that may need to be cancelled haha.
Yellow is now a notably stronger color since it's best matchup(Whitebeard) will no longer be present in the meta. Yellow is easily one of the top 3 decks in the game, and is probably what a lot of Whitebeard players will move to, since it's lowkey the second easiest deck to perform well with(well I suppose it's the first easiest now)
Blue Nami should be better as a whole since Whitebeard was one of it's worst matchups(from my understanding). I think Crocodile and Doffy will maintain their positions as I have never believed them to be very strong against strong Zoro players in the first place.
Whitebeard is technically still technically B tier because it's likely that the rush version of Strawbeard that plays no 9beard will still be competitively viable, but they will have to play Red Hawks over some of the radical beams.
Ace has not only lost radical beam, and 4 cost Marco, but has also lost Whitebeard which was one of it's best matchups.
(Goodbye for the second time)
I will start releasing deck lists as I start testing this new format, but for the time being I will leave y'all with the first draft of the new Fire Fist Zoro list I will be testing.
(May god help us all)
That's it for this article! If there any further questions about my opinion on this new banlist, or my thoughts on the new banlist, just ask me :)
Tier List Update July 22nd
Tier List hit at like 1 AM my time, and I think I kind of just forgot about Strawbeard lmao.
Strawbeards realistically makes Whitebeard still A tier or top of B tier at worst. The only reason I put it in bottom of A tier is because I don't know all of it's matchups, but what I do know is that Rush Strawbeard has a better matchup into Black and Law than normal Whitebeard.
Black becomes a better matchup, because rushing them down with 7s and having events to counter with is much more effective than the 9Beard strategy due to blacks removal. Back in OPO2 I beat my AZ homie(who got Top 8 with Smoker) with Rush Strawbeard a lot more consistently than with 9Beard Strawbeard.
Law becomes a better matchup because Rush Luffy and 4 copies of Ace are broken against Law. As I mention in my Law guide, I believe Law consistently beat 9Beard if you knew how to play into it. At the regional I won in Illinois, I got hit with Triple 9Beard twice and I beat both of those players. 9Beard is just so ineffective against Law because even though they're leader becomes 8K, we can pressure them with Starter Deck Law while establishing defense, on top of having applied incredible pressure in the early game.
If you've followed my YouTube from OPO2, there is a Rush Strawbeard deck that I posted back in the day, but Strawbeard with 9beard became more popular. I believe there was 2 reasons for this, 1.) Rush Strawbeard was unexplored by NA and 2.) 9Beard was Rush Strawbeards worst matchup. With the exclusion of Blocker Marco and 9Beard from the format this deck is free to be played in peace.
I'm excited to see where Rush Strawbeard goes, I think it's fairly likely that it can keep up with Rush Zoro decks due to the 6K Base leader, and you just take all life early. then guard big attacks using guard point, red hawk, and the 1 of radical beam. The only matchup I am unsure of is Yellow to be honest, but I will be testing it out soon and let y'all know.
(Update: July 23)
Here is my current favorite Strawbeard List for reference:
(Instead of Izou + Whitebeard Pirates, it's now Nami + Sabaody!!!)
General Mulligan:
(Going First): Nami, Buggy, Sabaody, 5 Cost Luffy(If you have this and another Luffy or Ace keep that hand)
(Going Second): Nami, Sabaody, Buggy, 4 Drop
General Die-Roll - Choose to go Second
Take almost all your life, guarding about one attack to life on average and then leave up don to defend, also don't play Chopper until the very end of the game
Deck Commentary
(Who made this card? lmao)
Buggy Strawbeard feels like it is the peak of Rush Strawbeard decks. I originally played this deck with Izou, but it felt so weak. Izou was dead at the end of the game because there was nothing I wanted to search for. Compare it to Buggy, and Buggy is an additional searcher for all of our powerful counter events, AND it can be a pseudo-Nami by searching for Sabaody!
(This card makes Buggy's search 10x Stronger)
Outside of making Buggy's search stronger, I do want to clarify that the other huge reason I run 4 Sabaody is to make Buggy's chance of hitting a target more consistent. If you look at my Zoro decklists you will see a trend of me generally having 13-14 targets for Buggy. After playing a lot of Law, I found that 14+ targets is the ideal search range for each searcher, 13+ is satisfactory, 12 is pushing it, and then 12- is just sketch. I want people to keep this in mind when using Buggy, it's not as simple as just throwing in all the good defensive events, but you also want to find useful targets so you can get up to at least 12 targets.
[Update July 24th]
We getting good feedback so far!!!
I really think that Buggy is probably the main build because it's so defensive, but since I can't see many ways to expand on the Buggy version of Strawbeard, I'm going to start exploring Izou Strawbeard some more and we will see where that goes. There is also a world where we do Izou + Buggy, rather than Nami + Buggy. The combo would be interesting, rather that being hyper defensive like Nami + Buggy, the Izou + Buggy combo would still have a defensive searcher(Buggy) while Izou allows us to run more powerful units and have a searcher for Ace.
Let's see what happens.
Strawbeard V2 [Added: July 26th]
After playing against some of the other decks in the meta, I have come to the conclusion that Nami + Izou, was the best combination all along. Rather than doubling down on defensive searchers with the Nami + Izou package, or having to run unnecessary events to get Buggy to 13-14 in the Buggy + Izou Package, the Nami + Izou package, allows us to have Nami, a defensive card that can search for 9 defensive events, Chopper Blockers, and 2K Counters, and Izou, a searcher that allows us to search for powerful units such as 5Marco, Ace and Thatch. I think Izou in particular is very important to this deck, because I imagine the amount of Ace and events seen are what decide the mirror between Whitebeard decks. I am currently uninterested in pure Whitebeard, because it seems like it loses to this deck, because they have similar deck power, except this deck has higher chances of seeing defensive events and more cost efficient blockers.
(This is the Latest version of Strawbeard!)
I decided to reduce Otama to 2, and make a total of 4 Strawhat 2ks(Brook should be Sanji due to the Nami matchup, but normally you never field either 2k). If Thatch becomes more popular in the mirror or 8Kid with a lot of blockers becomes popular, then it may be necessary to raise Otama to 3-4 copies again to efficiently clear these units.
(Rare footage of Strawbeard vs Nami)
A lot of people think Thatch is no longer necessary due to 9Beard being out of the format, but I think this card is still the strongest.
- Thatch is still insane in the new Whitebeard mirror match, and Ace can only reduce its power down to 5K, making it convenient to defend if necessary(this is one of the biggest reasons, I decided on Thatch instead of Kingdew)
- Law will have a difficult time clearing Thatch because 1 Otama can only reduce Thatch to 6K, and if they don't draw Otama then 💀
- Zoro's new plan of keeping up with any of the Whitebeard versions is trying to clear units on the board, but 1 Gordon is only able to reduce Thatch to 5k, making it a very hard body to defeat
- 8K Power is no joke, and naturally swinging 2-3K above every leader in the game, makes this card a force
Honestly, Thatch is the main card that changed my perspective on running Izou again, Thatch seems too powerful after re-testing it, it's difficult to defeat and has a ridiculous amount of board presence.
I decided to include Blocker Marco, as a 5th Blocker and 7th Copy of a 4 drop that I can play turn 2 of going second. There's not too much to say about this card, I personally think it's still strong in all the red decks. It's unfortunate that it's only at one, but when you do see it, it defintely makes it's presence known.
This is it up for my updated Strawbeard build. I think the only other change I can think of atm is including some amount of 5 Cost Marco, but it's difficult to find space and Rush Luffy has felt so powerful. The inclusion of Crossfire may also be interesting, to use against Hawkins, Restand Law, and to combo with 5 cost Marco, but this card is so bad against Kid leader, and I think that deck(Film Kid in particular) may rise in popularity.