(Pure) Whitebeard vs Strawbeard vs Hybrid Beard (Patreon)

Recently, one of my friends(Alkemst on Discord/Gabe) won a tournament with Pure Whitebeard! On my vidoes, and even on this Patreon, I tend to solely refer to Strawbeard. So today I want to talk about the differences between Pure Whitebeard and Strawbeard, and discuss which I believe is better into the meta.

Pure Whitebeard

Gabriel Isaza's First Place Pure-Whitebeard List

This is Gabriel Isaza's(aka Alkemst on Discord) First Place Whitebeard List, and as you can see it varies fairly differently from Strawbeard.

This Deck Features:

• No Nami - Izou and Whitebeard Pirates offer extreme consistency
• 2 Luffy - Luffy is a finisher rather than a mid-game play
• Whitebeard Pirates - Makes 5Marco more powerful as it's a free discard
• Thatch - Strongest card in the mirror match

Traditional Strawbeard

Top 4 OP04 Strawbeard List - https://x.com/beeeee_one/status/1685614233290149888?s=46&t=Mwv4G08ELbnTlA7Da1A-yw

This is the OG version of Strawbeard, and very few players are aware of it. It's harder to understand why this type of list is very strong if it's your first time seeing it, so I will go ahead and discuss the benefits of this deck:

• Strongest version of Whitebeard against Zoro  (alongside the unnerfed 9Beard deck) - This version is cracked against Zoro, because swinging 7s and playing rush units every turn, is way more powerful than playing quality units against Zoro

EXAMPLE:

• Going Second
• T2 4 Cost Unit
• T3 7k, 7k, 4 Cost unit
• T4, 7k, 7k, 7k, 7k

Alternatively:

• Going Second
• T2 4 Cost Unit
• T3 6k, 6k, Luffy 6K

Compared to normal Whitebeard, this deck literally just takes all it's life, and produces too many 6K units for Zoro to handle without debuffs. One of the saving graces of Whitebeard vs Zoro, is that once your opponent is at 1-2 life, you can attack their units to force extra cards out of hand, but against Strawbeard they've already taken all their life, so it's borderline impossible to get rid of their board without debuff cards. Imagine Whitebeard's at 0 life, and you attack at one of their 6K units with 10K. Either A.) They defend out of it(because they could've guarded leader) or B.) They determine it's ok to let the unit die, and they get a free 6K counter value.

Hybrid Strawbeard (Pure + Straw)

| My current version of Hybrid Strawbeard (It is fine to include 1 Crossfire)

• Nami Targets - 20
• Izou Targets - 23
• Whitebeard Pirate Targets - 25

This the refined version of the Strawbeard deck I made after the restriction. After seeing the pure Whitebeard lists, I started to lose hope in Hybrid Strawbeard, but by adding Whitebeard Pirates to the deck, I have new found hope!!

This deck features a ridiculous amount of searchable defense compared to Pure Whitebeard.

• 4 Blockers
• 8 2Ks
• 6 Defensive Events

And the Whitebeard Pirates engine has reduced the weakness of being less likely to see Whitebeard Pirate cards in the mirror! 

Which Version Should I Play?

I personally believe a refined version of Hybrid Strawbeard is likely to be the best version of Strawbeard, but I also think that experimentation with how to perfectly play Pure Strawbeard would result in insane surprise factor, and a Whitebeard deck that is more likely to beat Zoro!

The reason Pure Whitebeard is out of the running, is because I overall believe it to be weaker than Hyrbid Strawbeard. While you do get access to Otama/Makino, I think the extra defense from the Hybrid Strawbeard version is overall more powerful! The games that are unwinnable against Whitebeard, are the games where they draw too much defense, and Hybrid Strawbeard allows for this.

I also view Pure Strawbeard as a greater deck than Pure Whitebeard, because of how much better it's Zoro matchup is! I also believe that this version of the deck is relatively unexplored in NA, and could potentially cook. Personally, if I were to take Whitebeard to a tournament, I'd probably experiment around with Pure Strawbeard and try to take it to tournament, but Hybrid Strawbeard is also a likely contender in my eyes.

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This is it for the article for now, hopefully the Whitebeard copers have some new cope to experiment with. As always, if this article helped you, please like it so others know to read it!!!