(OP06) Green/Black Perona - Tokyo Championship Deck Building Diary (Patreon)

Tokyo Championship Deck Building Diary

Hi again,

It’s me, Kai.

On December 9th, I went to the Tokyo Championship after qualifying through the preliminary round a few months ago. My results were 7-2, as you can see here.

https://twitter.com/ikailakai/status/1733660607092842800

I decided to bring Perona, a leader that is very uncommon in the current meta consisting of Moria, Sakazuki, and a whole lot of yellow. In this article, I will be documenting my thinking and process that led to me choosing my deck, and also the fine tuning to bring what I believed was the best version of the deck possible on the day.

As of now, OP06 is still only 2 weeks old, so this article will go through my entire thought process throughout the ‘cooking stage,’ up until the championship day. The first part of this article is a sort of diary on deck choosing and deck building for the championship, and the second part is a more traditional tournament report.

I find this to be very interesting, so I hope you do too. It won’t be super often that I post content on the Japanese meta, but when I do, I hope that you find it worth your time. Please let me know by @ing me on Twitter or Discord if you want more things on the Japanese meta as it’s happening.

This article will just be on deck building and the tournament report, but the next article will be a more traditional guide on Perona. Writing from the future, I do not think that Perona is top tier, but it is a fun deck with enough potential to win a tournament, like it did at the end of OP06 in JP.

Pre-release:

The Groundwork

Unlike the English version, we obviously don’t know all of the cards 3 months before they release. The full set always reveals exactly 1 week before the set is officially released. Many people will try to make YouTube videos with incomplete data, but I like to wait for the full list to drop as something like the stage for Reiju, massively changes everything, and I don’t want to waste my time on something that might be useless practice.

This being said, the leaders, and the SRs that come out, are generally good indicators of the strength of the cards.

The 6 new leaders this set, and their usable SRs were the following

🟥🟪Uta:

[When Attacking] You may trash 1 FILM type card from your hand: Give up to one of your opponents' characters -2000 power until the end of turn. Then, add up to 1 DON!! from your DON!! deck as rested.

🟩Hody:

[Activate: Main] You may rest this Leader: Rest up to 1 of your opponent's Characters that cost 3 or less, or 1 of their DON!!. Then, during this turn, you can not add life cards to your hand through your own effects.

🟩⬛Perona:

[Activate: Main] [Once Per Turn] Choose one:

• Rest up to 1 of your opponent's Characters with a cost of 4 or less.
• Give up to 1 of your opponent's Characters −1 cost during this turn.

🟩🟨Yamato:

[Double Attack] (This card deals 2 damage.)

[Activate: Main] [Once Per Turn] If your opponent has 3 or less Life cards, give up to 2 rested DON!! cards to 1 of your Characters.

🟦🟪Reiju:

[Your Turn] [Once Per Turn] When a DON!! card on your field is returned to your DON!! deck, draw 1 card.

⬛Moria:

[DON!! x1] [When Attacking] ➁ (You may rest the specified number of DON!! cards in your cost area.) You may trash 1 card from your hand: Trash 2 cards from the top of your deck and play up to 1 {Thriller Bark Pirates} type Character card with a cost of 4 or less from your trash.

I won’t go over the text of every single SR, but let’s talk about them as we go through the leaders.

When a new set comes out, it’s important to not just find what is best from the new set, but to find what can actually fight with the top of the old set. For example, Rosinante is actually a very strong leader. Aside from Sakazuki, it could contend with essentially every deck. In isolation, Rosinante is honestly pretty insane. However, as Sakazuki is completely unwinnable, the deck is not allowed to exist. Conversely, Sabo does well vs the old meta, and people were saying that it was the strongest deck in OP05 pre-release, but it was never, ever good when the set was released due to its matchups in the new world.

Going into OP06, OP05 was very solved. 40% Sakazuki presence, then Katakuri, then Purple Luffy, then Enel. Of these decks, it seemed like they all were contenders to survive in the new meta, as what they were doing in OP05 was a bit insane.

With this baseline, we went in looking at just the leaders and their SRs, which are generally shown a little earlier to drum up hype.

Uta’s leader ability seemed like Bandai playing it safe after what Luffy was doing for a few months in Japan. The one big merit was that there was already a big line up of red and purple film cards. However, none of them are leader locked, and none worked exceptionally well with Uta’s leader ability, so it would come down to the new cards to save Uta. Red got 2 SRs in Shuraiya, and Shanks. Shuraiya is an insane card, being at least a 3 cost 5000 blocker with counter. However, this card doesn’t have any leader lock, meaning other decks such as Red Purple Law can most likely use this card more effectively. Shanks is a 10 cost film card, meaning that it was searchable, usable with Uta’s leader ability, and was an end game goal for Uta to reach with her ability to speed up her Don. However, Shanks looked very mediocre. Most decks spread out wide, and Shanks could only target one character. It was a little too little, so my hopes for Uta were low, even though I love Uta.

Hody has a similar thing where he seemed like a worse version of another leader, but unfortunately, that other leader came out in the same set and is called Perona. I’m not sure when Hody will ever be good as the drawback on his leader ability seems quite heavy for the return. However, he did get the most insane SR in the set, Hody Jones. Hody Jones again, does not have leader restrictions, and is the first green card with rush. The drawback of drawing your life isn’t the biggest punishment when considering that you are just trying to end the game with a card like that. As Hody, you can take a more board controll-y approach with the 7 cost Hody, but still, there’s probably a better deck out there than Hody.

Perona was the clear winner of the OP06 leader card text next to Yamato. It gives Sakazuki vibes, and can use strong green cards such as Ryuma and X Drake in tandem with cost lowering from black. Being able to choose between cost lowering, or resting gives Perona a massive amount of flexibility. Additionally, Perona has access to the new black SRs, Perona and Moria. These 2 cards just seemed simply insane, so Perona was the frontrunner for hype in Week -1.

[Retrospective Side Note] Speaking from Week 1, Perona saw 0 play from day 1. The reason for this is because she was similar to Sakazuki. However, Sakazuki is the strongest version of Sakazuki. Perona was redundant, and not as strong as Sakazuki with what she was trying to do.

Yamato was the clear Bandai favorite of the set as not only is it a leader with Double Attack, it also has a strong extra effect, and 2 new insane Wano SRs that only Yamato and Arlong are allowed to search. Hiyori lets you put any card from your hand into your life, and Momonosuke could put the Hiyori into your life for you to retrieve it. These two cards work exceptionally well together, making many people worry that yellow would be broken. Yamato seemed exceptionally strong, but the question of the hour was if it was better than Katakuri or Enel. However, Yamato also has access to Green, which means that she can also use Hody! Yamato’s leader ability (both parts) synergize extremely well with Hody, so Yamato will be interesting to see how she turns out. She seems like the type of leader that will be popping off in the early meta, and fall off after a month.

[Retrospective Side Note] I was wrong, she was just as strong as she seemed and didn’t fall off.

Reiju is a bit interesting in that the effect is very broad and not significantly substantial or obviously strong in the same way that Yamato or Perona are. However, Reiju is one of the few leaders where we were shown all of her supporting cards before the rest of the cards were fully shown. Reiju’s suiting up gimmick with the big and small Ichiji, Niji, Yonji, and Reiju lets her cheat out characters earlier than she should, that also have strong effects and give Reiju a card draw. Reiju was one of the leaders that seemed clearly and obviously strong even before the full list dropped.

Moria has an effect similar to Arlong and Blue Doflamingo. The difference, however, is the insane consistency of the leader ability. It only gets easier and easier to use throughout the game as your trash piles up, so it will come down to just what 4 cost cards we will end up getting for Thriller Bark. I think Moria has the potential to be a monster.

From my first impression, my thoughts in terms of potential were

Moria > Perona > Reiju > Yamato >>> Uta > Hody.

With this cautiously in mind, the list was dropped.

The set comes out on November 25, my championship is on December 9, and the day is November 18, when the full list drops. I will refer to the day not by the date, but the number of days until my championship, T-21 meaning 21 days until the Championship.

T-21

The Drop

All of the cards are out, and all of the cards are reviewed.

• A few cards stand out: Arlong, another powerful Fishman card
• Tashigi, a blue Navy searcher
• Ama no Murakumo, Lucci but an event
• Reject, 4 cost guaranteed damage to leader

Unfortunately, Perona did not receive any more cards, and Yamato and Sakazuki were given some insane tools.

When building a deck, while yes it is important to make the best version of the deck possible, it’s more important to make sure your deck is accounting for other decks in the meta.

T-21, my goal was to try to figure out the coming meta as soon as possible, and find a deck that does well into it.

T-17

Play testing

I have a very casual group of friends. None of them try too hard to win, and most of them are playing the game for the love of the IP, and not the competitive aspect. I am more competitive myself, but I appreciate their company and ability to just chill and play regardless of results. This set however, they all decided to play new meta leaders, which was quite helpful for me. Three of them were keen on playing Yamato, Two were keen on playing Reiju, One was ready to play Moria, and One was going to continue to play Sakazuki. It’s quite rare that all of my friends pick a leader that’s good practice, as it’s more likely to see them pull out Blue Purple Crocodile, Blue Green Sanji, and Red Black Garp before a normal leader. As black was clearly strong from OP05, I started with making a prototype for Sakazuki, Moria, and Perona. These are those decklists.

Honestly, the Moria list was not too bad, but the others were tried and failed experiments. Though obviously Sakazuki is stronger with Rebecca, Hina, Lucci, it was important to try EVERYTHING to come to the same solutions as others, rather than just copying. The idea behind this Sakazuki was to permanently clear the board with events to set up Aramaki and 10 cost Kuzan to permanently wipe the board and finish the game. The issue with this was not that I couldn’t draw what I needed. In fact, it was very consistent. It was that I burned my hand too fast. If I could do this without losing hand, then it would be excellent. I still think that Aramaki is a very good card.

Moria felt insane. This is probably due to the fact that the list was far more complete in these early days than the other lists, but as such, Moria was my frontrunner in contention for the deck to bring to the championship. I was beating Sakazuki, I was winning the mirror, Yamato wasn’t an issue because I had 5 life, and I was beating Reiju as well. The deck was, and still honestly is, quite solid. Moria had another type of Moria that was more standard for the time, going all in on Thriller Bark, using Oars, Jigoro, Shadow Asgard, etc. I did not try this at first as I was deathly afraid of the Sakazuki matchup, where he could simply KO or bottom Jigoro before I use Shadow Asgard and make my leader 8000. I borrowed a friend’s deck to test the matchup, and it went as I feared, so I stayed with a more standard KO focused Moria.

For Perona, I had 2 ideas, which would utilize either side of the leader ability better. Firstly, I wanted to test one of my worries in that Perona could just be worse Sakazuki. I knew if I did Rebecca Hina Lucci things, it would 100% be a worse Sakazuki and Perona didn’t have the same consistency of draw that Sakazuki has. Therefore, the first list I tried was a concept where 5 cost Law would be used to efficiently reuse cards such as Hina and control the board. Although Sakazuki had higher consistency, perhaps Perona had more board and KO power with the help of 5 Law, Ryuma, Xdrake, and Killer. I tried the list above, and I loved the idea, but it did end up feeling strongly like a worse Sakazuki.

T-16

Retrying

As I mentioned I had 2 ideas for Perona’s list. The first list was a more Sakazuki like list utilizing Perona’s cost -1 effect similar to Sakazuki’s cost -1 effect. The second idea was to use the resting effect of Perona’s ability to its fullest and make a more midrange-aggro type of Perona. As Perona’s consistency was quite low, I utilized the Thriller Bark Package to try to aim to cycle through my deck with Inuppe. This felt closer to what I wanted to do with Perona, but my main issue was still the consistency. It was hard to get both Inuppe and the Stage to start letting me play Sakazuki. Although the concept felt better, the Thriller Bark package did not feel like enough to shore up the weaknesses that I was trying to mend.

I looked back and found some of my early thoughts on Discord. Though I was wrong, I was not completely wrong.

T-14

Release Day

From here on out, each day will be written on the day in first person as a snapshot of my exact thoughts at the time.

Today is release day. I brought my small group of friends to Shibuya to buy some boxes and play some games. It turns out that it was also the release day of a new Battle Spirits set and YuGiOh set, so it was immensely crowded. I only bought one box because I’ve never had good luck, and as usual, nothing good (Japanese boxes are half the size, half the price, and have half of the ‘hits’). I didn’t get any of the SRs I wanted, and the Parallel (Alt Art) I got was Absalom. At least I’m using Moria, but fuckkkkkkk.

As for gameplay, we couldn’t find a place to play for a really long time, and I only brought Moria.

Moria 2-0

Sakazuki 4-0

I haven't lost with Perona yet, but also people are terrible at deck building, lol. Moria mirror is pretty weird, we just threw Absalom at each other 3 turns in a row. I don’t feel like that’s the correct way to play that. Sabo feels important to the mirror if that’s really how it’s gonna play out.

Meta Status:

1. Sakazuki: Still seems like the best deck in the meta. This has not changed and probably won’t.

2. Yamato: Seeing a lot of play, but I feel like it’s going to fall out of the meta after about a month.

3. Moria: I think it’s insane, and it seems other people think that too, but presence is low at the day 1 tournament

4. Katakuri: Still seems like the second best deck. I thought that Moria might kill Katakuri, but Reject is pretty crazy.

5. Reiju: Everyone was talking about how insane this leader is, and I agree, but there were so few today and none of them made top cut. I feel Reiju should probably make a comeback and be strong for about a month before falling out of the meta again.

6. Perona: Presence is close to 0, as expected unfortunately.

7. Purple Luffy: Still seems quite strong, could be in a better spot than in OP05 since it apparently can beat the OP06 leaders. That would suck.

Tokyo Championship Predictions:

Sakazuki 20%, Katakuri 15%, Reiju 15%, Yamato 10%, Purple Luffy 10%, Moria 10%, Enel 10%, Rest 10% — Spice Pick RP Luffy, RP Law

T-13

Bird Watching

Thankfully, though I haven’t managed to play for much, there have been unofficial tournaments everywhere.

I actually think I’m going crazy stalking Twitter. How does one tournament have 23% Katakuri, and another one has literally 0 Katakuri. I swear some tournaments are just flipping a switch on if they’ll have 40% Yellow, or 40% Black.

Moria's presence is going up. I saw people posting lists like mine and I’m like hehe. I saw two different people using Koby instead of Lucci, and I really don’t get it, but I’ll try it.

It seems like Katakuri, Sakazuki, and Yamato have a pretty equal share if you average everything out? But Sakazuki has a higher number of wins.

T-12

Confusion

I don’t get this Koby in Moria thing. The man got me all hyped up with a Tweet like “EVERYONE USING LUCCI, PLEASE GIVE KOBY A TRY IT WORKS SO WELL WITH 4cREBECCA”

Like bro I know it’s good with 4c Rebecca, I used the Leader Rebecca for half a year. But if you’re gonna play Moria like this, just play Rebecca.

Gonna see if I can cope Rebecca in OP06 again.

[Retroactive Edit] I deleted my Rebecca research because it ended up that she seriously cannot beat Sakazuki or Reiju anymore with insane cards like Ama no Murakumo, or Judge. It was a very long and uninteresting dead end of research, so I won’t bore you. If Sakazuki and Reiju fall out of the meta, I’ll give Rebecca a go.

I still prefer my current Moria, there’s a lot of similar ones out there that aren’t using the Stage, and I’m not sure about it either, but being able to play Sindry or Cerberus for 1 don every turn is still pretty insane I think. Yamato seems pretty rough without Cerberus so I’ll need to test that matchup more.

(I remember I had 4 Ice Age in my Moria list above at some point, but I don’t remember what I took out for that space, and I didn’t save a picture of my exact Moria list at this time, maybe Sabo?)

I’ve brushed up my Sakazuki list to a point that I’m happy with, but I haven’t taken the time to play it too much yet. Many people are still only running Brannew, or just 2 Tashigi, but I really don’t get in. Having more opportunities, and more bodies to find and use Hound Blaze is terrifyingly strong, so I don’t think I would reduce Tashigi or Brannew. 3 cost Tashigi is strong, but I believe that the searchability of Vergo is better. Vergo is searchable off Brannew, Tashigi, and retrievable from Rebecca, so I think this is the right choice, but I don’t see anyone using it yet so maybe the value of Tashigi’s effect is too valuable. I still think I’m going to bring Moria, but it’s between these two. Sakazuki seems like the best deck to bring, but I cannot play 9 rounds of that deck perfectly from 9 in the morning. Aramaki still feels insane. It’s not great in the mirror, but vs basically every other matchup, I think it’s fine? Even as a one of. I hate that this deck is still allowed, and I hate that the cards that are good in the mirror are the opposite of the cards that are good in other matchups.

Enel won two unofficial tournaments in a row which makes sense. It seems like the only deck that’s hard winning vs Yamato. I really don’t want Enel to come back into the meta. Games take so much longer.

Meta Status:

1. Sakazuki: Still seems like the best deck, presence is #2 now though.

2. Yamato: Still going strong, seems like there’s two types of Yamato: Wano, and Fishman. Idk if Fishman is a meme but having a searcher just for Hody seems good and bad at the same time. I’m surprised no one’s tried Sky Island stuff.

3. Moria: Presence is now #1. Didn’t expect that at all honestly. Seemed like a deck that would slowly pick up after the first championship. However, I may have been overcomplicating the list. Using stage makes it a lot more technical and tight with Don, but the deck still works fine without stage, and might be a stronger Sakazuki thanks to the Don efficiency of the leader ability. Not having the -1 cost on leader ability is significant though so I can’t say which is better.

4. Katakuri: Presence seems to be tied with Yamato for 3rd. I feel like there should be a lot more Katakuri than Yamato or Enel since it beats both of them, but Yamato is surviving.

5. Reiju: There’s like no Reiju??? but it won some 3v3 tournament today, so maybe the play-rate will climb.

6. Perona: Presence is 0

7. Purple Luffy: Presence is close to 0 now. My friends lied, he does lose to new leaders.

8. Enel: Presence is reasonably high. Yellow as a whole has about 50% presence

Tokyo Championship Predictions:

Katakuri 20%, Moria 20%, Sakazuki 15%, Yamato 10%, Reiju 10%, Enel 10%, Rest 15%

T-11

Perona

Yesterday I was talking to a friend and got the idea for a Perona.

For the 0.1% of people who have thought about Green/Black Isshou you might remember that XDrake, and Rosinante are searchable off of Brannew. Vergo is also searchable off of Baby 5. Realizing this, I thought that mixing the 2 into 1 deck could be worth a try, as my issue was consistency with Perona.

Rosinante and Vergo, both Don Quixote Pirates and Navy, really help with the search hits. Ngl If I can bring this deck to a viable level, I would want to bring it to the championship.

I hate that I can actually play Moria, and Sakazuki, and still decide to pick the random off meta leader. I do this every time. Someone stop me.

[Retroactive Side Note] I did end up bringing Perona, so I’ll take some time here to go into more detail on how I decided on this first 50.

To start, I needed to fill out the deck with 50 cards.

Donquixote Pirates:

Baby5 4

Doflamingo 4 (I would never run Baby 5 and not run Doflamingo)

Navy:

Brannew 4

Kuzan 4 (Cost reduction for KO)

XDrake 4

Both:

Rosinante 4

Vergo 4

Neither:

Ryuma 4 (There’s no point to playing Perona if I don’t use this card)

This was the absolute core. Only cards that I know will be helpful no matter what. However, this is only 32 cards.

When I make a deck, I usually struggle to find 50 cards that fit in in the beginning, rather than struggle to cut cards, as my standard for cards being utilized is very high.

The deck at 32 cards only had:

16 Donquixote Pirates

16 (searchable) Navy

12 cards without counter

4 cards with 2000 counter.

The first obvious point to remedy was the 2000 counters. I’ll bring it up to 12 as a baseline an tune from there.

As Brannew only looks at 3 cards, I decided to put in 2 of the strongest Navy 2000 counters in Tashigi and Tsuru to make sure that it was still searchable. The -2 cost was helpful, but not significant as most characters were 4 cost or less, and not 6 cost or less. For this reason, I also chose not to use Great Eruption.

Next, Brannew has Xdrake that can be searched and synergizes well with Perona’s leader ability, but Baby 5 doesn’t have a very good midgame proactive target. I didn’t really want to put in Trebol, as he doesn’t have counter, but 2 could be reasonable occasionally.

I was struggling to find good cards to fit into the deck, so I looked at other decks in the meta to think about cards that could be strong into them. Sabo and Borsalino were effective against Moria and Yamato, as well as Sakazuki occasionally, so I chose to utilize Borsalino as he was searchable off of Brannew as well. With this, we had 16 4-5 costs. Half of them were KO cards, and half of them were proactive board building cards. This seems like a comfortable balance for now.

The last 4 slots were difficult to decide on. However, As Baby5’s search targets were still low, I wanted to find a good Donquixote card to round out the deck. Looking through them however, I found out that the Donquixote cards suck. As such, I utilized the black Rosinante, and the 0 cost event to make the matchup that I worry about, Yamato, easier.

This is how I decided on the cards, but the core concept of the deck was not as scattered as the card choices seemed.

The concept of the new Perona deck was to have high consistency through overlapping searchable targets to enable me to have a solid early game with Kuzan, Borsa, Ryuma, and XDrake, and a solid late game with 10 cost Dofla. Every card except Ryuma is searchable by something, so the consistency problem is fixed for Perona. Perona’s leader ability allows for a more ‘OP01’ fighting style of fighting for hand resources, then 10 Dofla locks the game and finishes it. 10 Dofla is the anchor and the cards around it are just supporting his purpose, similar to most green decks. This deck could not function without 10 cost Doflamingo as a finisher. The goal of the deck is to hold and control the board until 10 cost Doflamingo locks, and finishes it. Without a finisher, I think it would fade into having the same problem that decks like Belo Betty or Yamato have. When the start is oppressive and explosive, but the end is nonexistent.

When making a deck, it’s good to work yourself backwards in this way, or another way. Finding cards that synergize really well together and forming a concept just around that, or finding a powerful finisher that breaks the meta, and making a lineup of 50 cards that support that finisher fully. Baby5 was able to fulfill both of these core deck building principles in my mind, being able to overlap searches with Brannew, as well as access 10 Doflamingo, so without even testing it, I felt very good about the idea.

T-10

Grind

The Perona deck feels insane.

As of now I am

4-2 Yamato

3-1 Katakuri

4-0 Moria

3-0 Pluffy

2-0 Belo Betty

0-4 Enel

I just really hope Enel doesn’t get more popular. The matchup feels unwinnable.

But aside from that, everything just works. People are asking me how to play it in my friend group and idk if it’s because I’ve been dedicated to Green for the entirety of the game’s existence, or because the deck is actually easy, but it’s all automatic. I worry that if the deck gets strong, then the mirror will suck.

If 4 cost or less, Then rest and hit, Else, hit leader.

If opponent defends 4 cost, Then play Ryuma or XDrake, Else, play Borsalino or Kuzan.

Just dick around for a few turns and play 10 Dofla and I just feel like I win.

Trebol just feels bad though, but having KO cards searchable off of Baby 5 is good I guess.

It’s a 6 cost 6000 with no counter, that KOs a 5 cost with no additional effect as Perona essentially.

Perona only reaches up to 4 cost, and if it’s rested already she can reduce cost instead so I feel like Trebol’s power budget is misplaced. If It just had 1000 more power, or 1000 more counter, or 1 less cost, I would use it no questions.

As of now, I think that I’m either bringing Perona or Moria. I need to decide soon, but I really don’t know. Like I would imagine this is one of the first things people would try with Perona, but no one’s using it, so either I’m crazy or it’s my little secret gem.

T-9

Killing Trebol

So I thought about Trebol, and have a few options for the spot.

The options seem like

Krieg - KO 2, not searchable

Trebol - KO1, searchable, makes Baby 5 more worth it

Sakazuki - can KO up to 6 since it doesn't have to be rested, searchable

Brook - can kill 4Borsa, or mess with trash, not searchable

Another thing to consider is I might not need more KO cards considering I have 8 already.

Sakazuki seems like the strictly better option.

It’s much too hard to have 2 good targets for Krieg, the Double Attack is not necessary to win.

Trebol just sucks in every way.

Sakazuki loses hand.

Brook is a funny boy, but has potential because he can clear 4Borsa.

As of now, there’s 30 Navy targets for Brannew, and 21 Don Quixote targets for Baby 5, bringing it to 94.2%, and 94.4% respectively. I don’t need to worry about searchability, so I would want to look into other options. My main issue with the deck is I don’t have a strong Body to slam down on 7-9 don to make 10 Dofla even stronger. Some ideas I have are: Isshou, Moria, Hody, 8Rosinante.

I threw in Moria today in the Trebol spot as well to see how it would feel, but I could never get my trash big enough to have good choices, or choices at all. I did Brannew Rosinante from trash twice. Card doesn’t feel great in Perona.

Isshou seems solid to work well with the other cost-lowering things. It just sucks that you can’t use its effect on the same turn as 10Dofla. Maybe in a more controll-y style it could work better.

Hody seems like the right choice currently as there’s only 2 spaces floating right now. The others feel like something to play on 8-9 Don, which would warrant increasing the counts. I’m afraid to reduce anything quite yet, but I should really try reducing the black 2c Rosinante and seeing if I can still consistently beat Yamato. The card is pretty useless in other matchups. Hody though, could just be a decent finisher to squeeze out an extra bit of damage and get over stuff like Sabo.

Rosinante. It’s Navy and Don Quixote, so it looks like it should be perfect, but I cannot find any good 5 cost Green Cards that actually work well with the deck. There’s no great 5 Law targets (plus it doesn’t have counter) and the secret rare Yamato would be a bit random in the deck if added just from Rosinante. It sucks that all of the good green 5 costs came out in OP01 and never since. Also makes me more sad that Trebol is 6 cost and not 5. The card just seems like worse Moria, but it is searchable.

Also, through all of my testing with my friends today, one of them just gave me the Perona Leader Parallel. I’m still not sure if I’m gonna bring it, but I feel I kinda have to now. He did this to me in OP04 with the Rebecca Leader as well. I’ll never forgive him.

This list is an idea I’ve been messing with to make sure the Yamato matchup isn’t bad. Arlong felt great, but it was pretty useless vs my actual bad matchup, Enel, and pretty placebo vs my good matchups. I would like to put Arlong in, but the counterless cards are a bit too worrying. The hit rate on Baby 5 is statistically a bit low, but I haven’t been missing it yet, so I’m not changing it yet.

Currently my matchups feel as follows:

Winning:

Moria, Sakazuki, Katakuri, Reiju

50-50:

Yamato

Losing:

Enel

For Moria, my matchups feel like:

Winning:

Katakuri, Yamato

50-50:

Moria, Reiju, Sakazuki, Enel

The first Miyagi Championship is in 2 days so that’ll help decide the meta.

Meta Status:

1. Sakazuki: Presence is falling, is not winning much

2. Yamato: Someone did the Sky Island Yamato ^^ yay. Yamato is still doing well, but there’s a lot of different styles.

3. Moria: Presence is still #1. It seems like the clear winner of OP06 early meta.

4. Katakuri: Presence is a little lower now, but I don’t think it’s representative of the Championship as people are going to try to win the Championship, not have a good time.

5. Reiju: After Reiju won that tournament, her playrate went to 20% for 1 day, then 0% of them made Top Cut, and then her playrate tanked again. Maybe Reiju is just the kind of leader that’s good in 3v3s but not in 1v1s. Still surprised.

6. Perona: Presence is 0

7. Purple Luffy: Presence is 0

8. Enel: Presence is wavering, but decreasing a bit.

Tokyo Championship Predictions:

Moria 20%, Katakuri 15% Sakazuki 15%, Yamato 10%, Reiju 10%, Enel 10%, Rest 20%

Usually there’s 1-2 decks that make up 50% of the meta. Usually how I deck choose is to make a deck that is highly winning vs 40% of the meta, and 50-50ish vs about 40% of the meta, and pray I don’t hit the bad matchups. That way, if I hit that 40%, I can turn off my brain and use my mental power for the other 60% of games. This strategy isn’t optimal to win if you are a great player, but I think it’s a good way for decent players to place higher than they usually would.

However, the meta feels really even. There’s about the same % of Black as there is Yellow, so it seems like the best deck to bring isn’t some gimmicky targeting deck like Green Kid, but just a standard meta deck that does decent vs most things.

T-8

Cracking Enel

Enel was the one matchup I could not find a way to beat as Perona, so today I played 16 games in a row vs Enel until I figured something out.

8c Moria is absolutely needed to win this matchup. It’s not even funny how unwinnable to winnable it goes. I was about to be put in a mental asylum after losing the Enel so much, but once I figured out the matchup and deck, I went 5-1. I think I was downloading the Enel matchup way faster than my friend was downloading the Perona matchup, so it still feels 50-50, but now I don’t think Perona has any bad matchups.

I think as long as the meta doesn’t change, this is the deck I’m bringing.

I kept in Tashigi for a while because you could pretty easily deal with Reiju with Tashigi, but Reiju’s presence is low so I think I’m finally ok with moving it to DonQuixote cards.

My main problem now is that the games where I get 2 Moria stuck in hand don’t overlap with the games that I get the 0 cost event in hand, and sometimes I struggle with the number of Moria I draw and lack of counter.

Brannew Targets: 26, 89.7% hit rate

Baby 5 Targets: 19, 92.0% hit rate

I’m not trying to make the hit rates perfectly even anymore as I noticed I use Baby 5 a lot more than Brannew. A lot of decks like Yamato just can’t afford to hit Baby 5 when they need to close out the game.

I’ve been testing a lot of cards in the background but none of them feel great. Arlong was amazing, but it couldn’t take the spot of Moria. There’s no good cards in black or green that have counter man.

Question: Why did Moria feel bad before, but feel good now?

Answer: I was using it poorly. I was playing the deck automatically, and looking at my trash at 8 Don for the first time each game, and noticing I didn’t have any targets. For Sakazuki and Moria, you can afford to look at your trash later and have a few good choices to pick from.

Perona cannot easily drop cards into trash, so she needs to set up, like purposefully letting Kuzan die, or using Borsalino for counter, or even using the 0 cost event to drop Ryuma into the trash. With setup, Perona actually uses 8 Moria significantly better than most leaders.

However, I think Ice Age has a lot of potential with 8Moria.

Ice Age, Ryuma for a 5 cost 6000 KO a 9 cost, or Ice Age, Moria -> Tsuru + Ryuma and KO up to 10 cost. This seems like the hidden spice. Tomorrow is the Miyagi Championship, so I pray no one brings Perona. I’ve seen murmurs about the deck, but I need it to stay a secret for just 1 more week.

Though I don’t want it to happen, I have a feeling Enel is going to win tomorrow.

T-7

Miyagi Championship

• 5 Moria
• 3 Sakazuki
• 3 Katakuri
• 2 Yamato
• 2 Enel
• 1 Newgate

Aside from the Whitebeard, this seemed to be more or less what everyone would have expected.

[Retroactive Edit] @ophirata made a graph with as much data on the Miyagi Championship as he could find. It’s not a census, but is the data of 427 of the 1208 players on the day, so it gives us a decent amount of data to extrapolate from. This data came out a few days after the championship, but it makes more sense to look at it now.

17.8% Moria

14.8% Katakuri

14.1% Yamato

13.1% Sakazuki

9.1% Enel

8.7% Reiju

22.4% Rest

I thought that Yamato would be less popular, but yellow is generally the most popular color to play regardless of strength historically. Still regardless, these percentages help us tell which deck was most represented in the top16 compared to its total share.

Of the top 16,

31.3% 5/16 Moria

18.8% 3/16 Katakuri

18.8% 3/16 Sakazuki

12.5% 2/16 Yamato

12.5% 2/16 Enel

6.3% 1/16 Newgate

Aside from Moria and Newgate, every leader’s representation was roughly the same as their main stage representation. Moria was represented a disproportionate amount, and one Newgate made it all the way to the finals.

Though I don’t think Newgate is bad, I do not think it’s the deck that people should be using to win consistently in the current meta.

The takeaway from this tournament, however, was that Yamato won. I didn’t think this would happen honestly, but the fishman Yamato was consistent and strong.

Yamato winning made me rethink my deck.

If Yamato increases, then Enel will increase. If Enel increases, then Katakuri increases. If Katakuri increases, then Moria increases, and the only thing that changes in the meta seems like it’ll be that Sakazuki goes down. Not because it’s bad, but because it’s not a direct part of this chain reaction.

I have an unofficial 3v3 tomorrow and no one has sent me their deck lists yet to submit.

I’m bringing Perona, one friend is bringing either Reiju or Whitebeard, and the other is bringing Yamato or Enel. I feel like we’re going to do well.

This is my list for tomorrow. I think it’s in a very strong spot.

T-6

Rebuilding

So I went 1-6 with Perona.

I could tell I was just not playing at a normal level, but still.

Sakazuki ⭕️

Katakuri ❌

Sabo ❌

Yamato ❌

Katakuri ❌

Katakuri ❌

Enel ❌

Sorry team.

I had the win in game 2 and messed up my counter and lost. From there nothing was going right and it all went downhill.

I had it all calculated, if I let through the 8000, he could hit me with 14000 if he had 2 Amaru, and I counted I had 14000 counter in hand, so it was safe to take the first hit.

Stupid as fuck mistake to blank that 14000 doesn’t defend 14000. Because of that the team lost 1-2 to the eventual winners of the whole tournament. We really should have won that but I fucked it up and I’m sorry. I think that broke my mental and I couldn’t play after that.

The Ice Age did not work how I wanted it to at all and it got stuck in my hand every time I didn’t use it in the first few turns. Gone.

We ended up going with Perona, Reiju, and Enel, and my 2 friends on my side did reasonably well, but I just could not function on the day for some reason.

Sorry friends.

T-5

Bird Watching 2.0

I decided to take the day off to watch gameplay videos of especially Moria in the case that I needed to bring that instead of my failed experiment of Perona.

T-4

Disaster

I am sick today, so nothing going on today. I have 45 cards basically locked in, but I want to change the Ice Age to something, and I don’t think I need the Tashigi anymore. 10 2000 counters feels like enough as I’m clearing the board very quickly. I want more playable cards so that I don’t have a situation where I only have counter in hand..

I went to the doctor, but they said I’m negative for the flu. Although I’m very likely to get it with my symptoms, they couldn’t legally give me flu medicine, and asked me to come back tomorrow.

T-3

Influenza

I went back to the doctor and I have Influenza. I have some weird medicine that should get me better in 2 days, so let’s pray.

[Retroactive Edit]

From here until literally the day before the championship, I was sick in bed and unable to do anything with cards. So let’s go through how I play the game in my head to test things without having to meet with people or play the sim. I don’t like to use the sim’s online feature, though I love the sim, as the level of play of players online vary massively. When I used to use the sim, I’d be frustrated if I lost even 1 game out of 10 on the sim, so I only play with friends mostly on the sim. That being said, I couldn’t get the energy to do so at the time, and my friends were all working and busy, so it was up to me and my head to complete the deck. No more playtesting, no more breaks.

At this time I considered Uta as I know how to play film well, and Uta seemed to be the best deck that uses 9 cost Zoro. As my read was that there would be a lot of yellow, Uta seems like a strong choice.

One development in the meta came in the way of Moria now utilizing 5 cost Sabo. I think it was very well known that his card was good in the mirror, but people didn’t want to be the one to put it in first for some reason. Once people started to put it in, everyone was forced to to not lose the mirror. 5 cost blockers are a little annoying for Perona, so I decided to try to find space to put it back in too to make sure that the Moria matchup was still winning. I imagined that putting in Sabo would also help with the Yamato matchup, and had counter. I tried Sabo before, and it wasn’t bad, but the timing for playing it did overlap with my other timings a bit occasionally. Sabo helped 8Moria be stronger as it enabled me to drop the cards I wanted into trash. However, on the 6-7 Don turn I would often prioritize playing a KO card, and didn’t have the time for Sabo. However, the chance of being able to play Sabo occasionally, and having counter meant that there really was no better option.

Down to the last day, I considered this list:

I still loved Arlong, and the card was honestly very good into the meta. It could stop Yamato and Moria from using their ability. The only issue was that it was not searchable, and had no counter. I could not justify putting in more than 2, but to balance the effect of adding in Arlong, I added in the 0 cost event.

This isn’t to fix any counter problem, but rather that I was worried about the hand trash effect. In matchups where I can use Arlong well, it’s no problem as I can trash a card with no counter, to prevent the leader from Attacking, meaning I effectively turned my trashed card into minimum 1000 counter, by ‘defending’ a hypothetical 5000 attack. The issue was vs decks where I couldn’t find the timing to play Arlong, I needed to find a way to get it out of my hand. The only choices to me were the 0 cost event, and Sabo. While I could see myself moving them to 4 Sabo, I could not see the 0 cost event going above 2 copies. With the last few spots, I squeezed everything in with the hopes of making a more high roll-y deck.

If the stars align at the championship, then I’ll do great. If they don’t, it was rough from the start. I generally don’t like these kinds of lists. I encourage people to seriously try your best to make it 12 4ofs, and 1 2of, or 11 4ofs, and 2 3ofs. The difference in consistency between someone who can just settle on which card to bring, is so much stronger than having both “just in case.” Many times when you put in 2 options, you end up just drawing the worse one when you needed the other one. It’s significantly more consistent to try to maximize the number of 4ofs in your deck. I was out of ideas, and wanted to use Arlong because he was a cool character, regardless of my own deck building principles you can see in my test lists above. The 4ofs aren’t a lack of creativity, they’re a guideline I force myself on no matter how tempted I am to put in 16 different cards.

T-1

Midnight

Maybe some Europeans might recognize my sleeves, but yes, I am on Yamii Corp!

It’s the night before the championship and I’m finally feeling better. I decided to not take the mentally weak route hoping for a highroll, and go for pure consistency. I moved the 2 Arlongs to Sabo, and the 2 0 cost events to Viola and Kuzan. I still think the 0 cost event has potential to be better than Viola, but Viola is guaranteed 2000 counter, and if the 0 cost event is not used well, it could be a 2000 counter that hand-deaths you. As I couldn’t test out both, I went for the safer route of 2000 counters.

If I had more of the 0 cost event, I would have added more Moria. I was still afraid of the fact that I could draw 2 just as likely as I draw 2 Ryuma if I put in 4 Moria. I am happy to get 2 Ryuma, but I’m unhappy to get 2 Moria. However, in some matchups, I really wanted to draw Moria early and likely, so I still don’t know if I want to run 3 or 4 Moria. I think If I were to run 4 Moria, I would need to put at least 1 or 2 0 cost events, but I couldn’t find the space. As a result, this is the deck I brought, and these were my results.

Moria ❌

Yamato ⭕️

Katakuri ⭕️

Enel ⭕️

Moria ⭕️

Enel ⭕️

Enel ❌

Moria ⭕️

Reiju ⭕️

Side Event:

Uta ⭕️

Luffy ⭕️

Yamato ❌

Katakuri ⭕️

Tokyo Championship Tournament Report

I wanted to wait for @ophirata to post the deck spread for the tournament, but he never posted the data for the Tokyo Championship, so I’ll do my best to discuss the meta going into the championship.

Going into the tournament, I thought that it would be

Moria > Sakazuki > Enel > Katakuri = Yamato > Reiju (though looking back at what I wrote before, I was definitely over estimating Sakazuki)

The result felt more like

Moria > Enel > Katakuri = Yamato = Sakazuki >>> Reiju

For the most part I was right but Sakazuki’s presence was a lot lower than I expected. This worked well for me, as as I write this, a week since the Championship has passed, I’ve come to feel that Sakazuki is a bit of a difficult matchup. I believe that the reason I was winning was because Sakazuki just didn’t know what to expect at all. Now, Perona’s list is known to the public, so people know what’s coming and can prepare. Perona feels like a small part of the meta now, and I hope I played a part in this. However, this means that people know the contents of my deck, and are better prepared to fight it. At the time, however, Perona felt immortal.

I will put my current list at the end, but it hasn’t changed much.

Round 1 - Moria - Lose

So for those who don’t know how Moria works, Moria plays like Blue Doflamingo to spam out 4 costs, except they are active, and you get to choose from your whole trash. The consistency is insane, and the SR Perona is terrifying. However, as Perona can rest a 4 cost for free, this is a naturally winning matchup.

We flipped our leaders, it was Perona vs Moria, and the person next to me was also playing Perona vs Moria. Both Morias asked to read the leader ability, and we had a good laugh, but this is the last time we laughed. Rock Paper Scissors goes to my opponent, who chooses first.

The game starts as usual, he plays characters off of leader ability, and I rest and attack them. The goal for me is to attack his hand, by not attacking his life. His only two choices are to reduce hand size, or let it die. People who don’t know Perona well, assume that if they let their character just die, then Ryuma will come out with no target and lose value. However, as I run 4 cost Borsalino and Kuzan, if they simply take the 5000 hit, then I get to play Borsalino or Kuzan and push my lead harder. In many ways it’s a lose-lose for the opponent, which is why I think Perona is strong. My opponent is clearly afraid of Ryuma or XDrake, so I get to kill his 4 costs for free a few times in a row. Borsalino is strong in this matchup as it can’t be KO’d so I play him with priority over Kuzan. However, in this game, I didn’t draw Kuzan early anyway. This is fine as usually it doesn’t stay on the board vs Moria, but it means that I won’t have an opportunity to kill the 8 cost Moria, and Kuzan is my only form of cost reduction. 8 cost Moria is played as normal on curve, but is the only card that can stay on the board. I play my own Moria 1 turn late from a good top deck, but I don’t have Ryuma in my trash, so I can only play Borsalino and Rosinante. Rosinante is a 2 cost blocker, with the added effect that when a rested character dies, he can defend them and go to the trash instead. As this works off of KO effects as well, it’s a situationally strong card. I could see that my opponent wanted to play Lucci out of his trash, so I should have defended my Rosinante better. Instead, I just used him to block the Moria attack, when I should have just countered out of hand. This let him take back some of the board with the Lucci that came out as expected. I finally draw Kuzan, and although late, seems like the best option at the moment as I had Sabo in hand, and 3 life still. I can invite him to hit me, then lock his board with 10 cost Doflamingo and push back in 2 turns. This is the plan.

He only has 3 cards in hand, not enough for me to attempt to kill his Moria, but enough for me to check if he has any 2000 counters. I put a don on my Moria, hit his rested Moria, and ask him through my gameplay how much counter he has. Unfortunately, he has a 2000 counter. I hit his life for the first time in this game, which he happily takes, and ignore the Morias on the board, taking only the 4 cost or less characters, as I have been doing habitually. He responds with Rebecca and Sabo to lock down his defense. I expected this, which is why I didn’t play 10 cost Doflamingo early, as I would run out before I could kill him. He decides to ignore my board for the most part, and put me down to 1 life. The next turn, I am getting ready to drop Doflamingo. I have a ton of counter, as I didn’t want to counter or block the 9000 attacks from Moria, and should have countered before on the Rosinante turn. I have 3 2000s, 3 1000s, 1 Doflamingo, and 2 Blockers on the board. There is no way for him to win.

I hit with Kuzan to reduce the cost of Sabo, to rest and lock with Doflamingo, and he takes the hit. I rest Sabo with leader ability, as he’s 1 cost now……. but my opponent doesn’t let me. He said that I said Absalom, as the target for reducing with Kuzan, and couldn’t rest Sabo. Firstly, I point at everything I do. I point and say that I’m hitting the leader, and point and say the target to reduce. Secondly, there’s no reason for me to reduce Absalom to 0 cost, when he’s already 4 cost. We quarrel and call the judge. I explain the situation and they let him reset up to the point that Sabo is reduced. There was 6 minutes on the clock at this point, and 3 minutes after the judge call. He absolutely did this on purpose to stall time. We reset and he puts his life back that he had drawn. Although it’s unfair that he got to see his life, I am going to win next turn no matter what, and I just need time. Instead of taking the 5000 hit, now he counters with 1000. Thinking about it now, there’s no logic in taking the first 5000 if he had 1000 counter, so there is a chance that the 1000 he used was the card that he drew from life, and he put back a different card. At the time I was just panicking over time and didn’t notice. I play the turn extremely fast, play Doflamingo, and pass. He doesn’t have enough blockers to survive the next turn, or attacks to end the game this turn. He thinks about it for a WHILE, hits slowly, and checks the clock. I already know it’s doomed as I see it tick to 20 seconds left.

At 11 seconds left, he says “Ahh I guess it’s over to time,” and starts to pack up everything a few meters away from a judge that was watching to make sure that we end on time. I assume this meant that he scooped, and was packing up to give me the win, so I started to pack up too. When I opened the app to input the results that I won, he had already input that he won. I hate arguing with people, so I tried to explain to him that there’s no way he could win from that scenario. But as he had already packed up, we couldn’t call a judge or anything.

However, he refused to change the result, explaining that if the time is over, then you both lose, and for the OP%, it’s better for one of us to win. He would only accept a double loss, or him winning, and although in hindsight I should have just taken him down with me, I let him have the win, as I thought it would matter for my OP%. Spoiler: it didn’t.

As it was the first game of the day, and at the time, I didn’t really feel anything weird about the guy until he input the match results, I was blaming myself for playing slowly and letting it go to time. I decided to speed up my play for the rest of the day so that I wouldn’t make that mistake again, but none of my games went even 20 minutes for the rest of the day, leading me to realize it was purely my opponent’s doing. I don’t even know how he used that much time. It was the first time I’d been fucked over like this, so I didn’t even realize everything horrible he did until later. It was a weird experience, and not one I wanted to go through at 9am, but c’est la vie.

Edit: I completely forgot about this, as I didn’t even know it was a form of cheating, but my opponent was also deck stacking. After he shuffled his deck, and before he passed it to me to cut it, he looked through his deck and moved a few cards around. At the time I was like “Oh, he’s just making sure it’s well shuffled,” but thinking back, he was clearly reordering them. Like what the fuck was this guy even. And my OP% was miserable, so he definitely bombed early anyway despite the free win I gave him. I’ve never met someone so disgusting in a tcg before, that I couldn’t even comprehend it until I tried to write it down. What the fuck.

Anyway!

I’m here with a few friends, and after every round we met up and said hi to check in. I will abbreviate their names to Ha, S, V, Hu, and K (me). Though there were about 30 people I know at this tournament, they were meeting up with their own group after every match. As when you get 3 losses, your run is automatically over, it was fun to see how people were doing and how people slowly went home.

Ha (Perona): 0-1

S (Enel): 1-0

V (Yamato): 1-0

Hu (Moria): 0-1

K (Perona): 0-1

Round 2 - Yamato - Win

This is a dangerous matchup, as if I draw well, it’s easy, and if I draw poorly, I have no chance. I lose Rock Paper Scissors, and Yamato chooses First.

I look at my starting hand, and it’s Rosinante, Borsalino, Sabo, 2000 counter, and 10Dofla. It’s literally perfect.

I play a blocker every turn, keep myself at 4 life until 10 Don, play Doflamingo, and it’s just over, in 8 minutes. This matchup relies heavily on the number of blockers you draw, assuming you’re going against the aggro Yamato, and if you draw those blockers, then it’s just gg.

Ha: 0-2 (dropped out)

S: 1-1

V: 2-0

Hu 0-2

K: 1-1

Round 3 - Katakuri - Win

The Katakuri matchup is pretty difficult. Not that it’s losing, but that it needs to be played correctly by Perona to win. I lose Rock Paper Scissors, and Katakuri chooses First (Katakuris recently pick first and don’t even run 10 mom occasionally to go for an extremely aggro plan). My goal is to KO everything that’s played before 10 mom, and lock 10 mom with Doflamingo.

The first few turns have nothing much. On 4 Don I play Kuzan as I don’t have Borsalino. The correct move for her would be to KO Kuzan. She plays Kikunojo after getting me to 3 life instead. On 6, I ignore Kikunojo and go for her leader, as if I try to starve Katakuri the same way I start Moria, I’ll eventually lose to 10 Mom. I rest Kikunojo and KO it with Ryuma. Even though Katakuri gets a free life, it’s better than her getting a free hit every turn. I attack with Kuzan as there are only a few options in this scenario. The choices for her are to either, A. play 7 mom, and hit for 5000, or B. hit for more and not play 7 mom. Regardless, she cannot have an 8000 power unit survive this turn. She hits Kuzan for 5000, and plays 7 mom, which I decide to trash my life. If I’m being pressured hard, I usually give life to Katakuri, but I was in a good spot, as I knew I could KO 7 mom, so I decided to trash my own.

The next turn I hit with Kuzan, reducing the cost of 7 mom, and rested it with leader ability. She is a bit confused how my leader ability works so after explaining it and apologizing for not being clear, I KO her 7 mom with Ryuma and play Borsalino next to him. I’ve done everything I’ve wanted to, and she’s done everything I’ve wanted her to do, so it’s quite straight forward from here.

She plays another 7 mom (I give life), but as I don’t have anymore KO cards, I use Kuzan and leader ability to rest it while locking it with 10 Dofla. There isn’t much she can do now except get lucky triggers, or Reject/ Amaru to go for lethal. As I knew I would win the next turn in most cases, I gave her life, and went for her life more safely, being careful of triggers. She did end up getting Sanji, meaning that if I wasn’t careful I could just lose to Reject and a full punch.

But as I took these precautions, all was well, and I won the match.

S: 2-1

V: 3-0

Hu: 1-2

K: 2-1

Round 4 - Enel - Win

The matchup I was dreading the most. I finally won Rock Paper Scissors, where it matters the most, and took second. In every match except the Yamato match, the opponent has given me the side I’ve wanted, but I couldn’t keep relying on my opponent's bad matchup knowledge.

Luckily, if I’m going second, then I can do something similar to what I just did vs Katakuri. If I’m going first, there’s a high likelihood that my Kuzan gets buried by Katakuri, letting me not be to kill Enel’s high cost characters.

The other worry is that I cannot kill Yamato with just 1 Kuzan, so I need to lock it similar to 10 mom. As Enel has a lot more defensive capability compared to Katakuri, I need to play a slower game, and not drop 10 Dofla on curve, but rather wait until I can calculate the amount of time the opponent has left.

In this matchup I want to keep Enel at 2 life for as long as possible to prevent him from being able to go for lethal with Amaru. As such, any 4 cost that was played, including Kikunojo was immediately rested and hit with leader, even if I had no intention of KOing it. My opponent wanted me to hit their life, and instead was refusing to play 4 costs at all. I had 4 Kuzan on 6 Don, and my opponent couldn’t play 7 mom. He instead put all of his Don on his leader and hit me for 12000, putting me to 2 life. Though usually this is a bad play, because it was Enel, with 2 life, and I only had 2 small bodies on the board, it scared me. In this matchup, if I don’t have Moria, it can be very hard to close out the game, as I simply don’t have enough damage. Thankfully, I top deck Moria on 8 Don, and spread out blockers from trash. I hit life on this turn, as even if I get an unlucky trigger, and put him in Amaru + Reject range, I still have enough counter to be fine, and drop 10 Doflamingo the next turn. Thankfully he doesn’t go for this plan, and instead plays Yamato to recover life and KO my Rosinante. Thanks to Moria, and I have a 9000 power attacker left on the board with my opponent at 1 life. As his board only consists of Yamato (active) and the leader, I decide not to play Doflamingo, and instead use Kuzan Tsuru and XDrake to KO Yamato, and set up another blocker.

The next turn is much of the same, but I play Kuzan, as I can see the game is going to be over next turn. It goes as planned, he complains about not getting triggers as you do, and I take the win.

S: 3-1

V: 3-1

Hu: 2-2

K: 3-1

Round 5 - Moria - Win

I talked about Moria a lot earlier so I won’t go over that again, and this game was a very straightforward clean win. I won Rock Paper Scissors, and although I felt like going second was better, Moria loves to go first. My lack of preparation was showing, and I didn’t know what to take, so I took first.

The match was fine, and nothing was difficult to deal with. I used Baby 5 to great effect to absorb his leader’s hits in the early game, and was given enough time to play 10 Doflamingo. I didn’t get 8 Moria this game, but his was late as well. Had he had placed 8 Moria on curve, I would have been in a lot more trouble. At the moment, I was playing out many scenarios in my head, and realized I would be in trouble if he had Moria, even though I had played the early game normally. Comparing it to my first game (which was winning the entire time,) this game could have been scary, even though it was going as planned. I quickly took a mental note after the game to take second from now on vs Moria.

S: 3-2

V: 4-1

Hu: 3-2

K 4-1

Round 6 - Enel - Win

To my dismay, I fight another Enel. Thankfully I won Rock Paper Scissors again and chose second. I won’t go over it much as it was very similar to the Katakuri game. He played something, I KO’d it, eventually I played 8Moria and 10Doflamingo, and won (It was not easy). I was able to beat Enel trying both styles of fighting. A more Katakuri style of aggro, and a more defensive Enel, so I was feeling very good on the day, despite hitting a few arguably losing matchup.

However, this Enel’s draws were insane. He played 9 Yamato on curve without increasing his life, which gave me the green light to hit him a bit more, as surely he wouldn’t have more than 2 Yamato. He ended up playing 7 Mom > 9 Yamato > 8 Katakuri > 9 Yamato > 9 Yamato > Little stuff > 9 Yamato. He played 4 9 Yamato. With Moria and an early Doflamingo, I switched my plan to fighting for board control, hitting his Katakuri and Yamato to try and survive until he ran out of Yamato. I was setting up for lethal, and he top decked another Yamato, over and over, continuously pushing my further and further back. At this point he’s played 3 Yamato, and I’ve played 2 Doflamingo. Thankfully Doflamingo wouldn’t die thanks to his size, but Yamato was slowly pushing me out of the game. The only chance that I have to win is to draw a 3rd Doflamingo.

And I do.

Things were looking good. He played a 4th Yamato, but I had too much damage on the board, and won.

We had a laugh about how absurd the game was and he told me that his starting hand had 2 Yamato.

Additionally, I don’t remember what turn it was on, but I made a brutal misplay. My plan was to hit and play Borsalino plus another mid cost, but I top decked Sabo. I should have switched my plan to playing Sabo to be safe from triggers, and had the extra don, but got careless and attacked first. He got Onami (which was the trigger of Thunder Bolt) from life, and KO’d one of my characters. Feeling too bad to play Sabo after he already got a trigger, I played Borsalino instead for no good reason. Then, the next turn he plays Yamato and KOs another one of my characters. If I had played Sabo, I would have defended 2 characters. But instead, I fucked very hard. After this point I zoned into the game much harder and chose the correct targets to attack to survive just long enough and hold out for another 10 Doflamingo. I got saved, but I shouldn’t have won that, despite how lucky he was.

S: 4-2

V: 4-2

Hu: 3-3 (dropped out)

K: 5-1

Round 7 - Enel - Lose

Finally my luck dried up, and he won Rock Paper Scissors, taking second. I knew that if I didn’t draw either, a million Baby 5 to stall and play 4 10 Dofla in a row, or a good value 8 Moria, I’d be in trouble. My starting hand with Mulligan had neither Moria nor Baby 5. I tried my best, and was still able to pick up 2 10 Dofla, but I didn’t draw 8 Moria. I was permanently behind on board, and had no chance of going for life. I had 1 10 Dofla on the board vs Katakuri, Yamato, and Katakuri, and accepted my defeat. My dreams for the next round were over, and I was handed my first actual loss of the day.

I couldn’t draw the pieces I needed, so I would reevaluate that maybe my deck needs 4 8 Moria.

S: 4-3 (dropped out)

V: 5-2

K: 5-2

Round 8 - Moria - Win

Learning from my mistakes, I took second, and it was very easy. Mysteriously, again, my opponent failed to play 8 Moria on curve, despite playing leader Moria, a deck that can basically look through half of their deck and retrieve cards from trash. I drew my Moria on 8, and he didn’t and it was very easy after that point.

V: 6-2

K: 6-2

Round 9 - Reiju - Win

I didn’t know this, but apparently people feel that this is a hard or even unwinnable matchup. I won Rock Paper Scissors and took second, as it’s both of our preferred sides.

Reiju can play high cost characters for cheap and get lots of cards from her leader ability.

My plan was to first and foremost, stop her from playing Ichiji on 5 Don. If I don’t have Tsuru and a KO card, then I can’t deal with Ichiji.

He plays the stage on turn 1, and starts the Reiju parade.

I know he has Niji in trash, and the baby Niji in hand, and can bounce any 4 cost I play. But rather than not playing anything, and letting him play Ichiji if he has it, I play 4 Kuzan to force him to bounce it. He bounces it as expected, and I’m handed back the turn. I have no way of killing Niji as it’s 5 cost and active, so I try to set up my defense. Part of what makes Sabo strong in this deck is that he can trash cards for Moria to use. Although I didn’t have any Ryuma in my hand to put into my trash to set up for Moria, Sabo was my only choice, as my trash was 0, and I was going to play Moria next turn no matter what. From the Sabo draw, I get Ryuma, and put him, and Kuzan in the trash to have more options, and get rid of cards without counter. On Queue, he plays Ichiji and runs a 7 cost 7000 into my leader while reducing Sabo’s power by 2000. By the way he spreads his Don, I am forced to take 1 hit, and lose a lot of counter, putting me at 2 life. I counter in a way to make sure that I get Rosinante in my trash, and now my trash is set up for Moria. I use my leader ability, minus the cost of Niji to 4, and play Moria. Off of his effect, I play Ryuma to KO Niji, and Rosinante to block.

He is still on 7 Don due to playing Niji and Ichiji, so I know Judge is not coming yet. He plays another Niji to weaken my board, and pass back. I’m on 10 Don now, with 2 decent targets for Doflamingo, so I play it early, despite not seeing lethal yet, as I feel I can pressure him out of playing Judge the next turn. I go aggressive on his life, and play Doflamingo. With the stage, as if on queue, he trashes Judge to go looking or new cards. Perhaps he should have played the judge anyways, but maybe the counter in his hand wouldn’t allow him to survive the next turn. He plays Reiju and Ichiji to try to rush my life down, but I’ve set up a situation that’s very hard to fight back from. Due to the draw off of Reiju’s leader ability and the SR Reiju’s effect, I am afraid to go for lethal, and hit his board, and lock the rest to a point where mathematically he can’t win even with another Ichiji. He plays out his turn anyway, passes it back, and I beat him.

I don’t know what he could have done better, aside from maybe playing Judge. It felt like the perfect storm of moves from my end, but still people call it a bad matchup for Perona. I can see it being difficult going first, but there are a lot of ifs. Either way, I won the last match, and technically, it was up to my OP% if I made it to the next round.

V:6-3

K:7-2

If I place in the top 32, I get to go to the world championship finals. If I place in the top 16, I get into the top cut and immediately win a card worth several thousand dollars. I had low hopes due to my first round, and was just hoping to get into the top 100. As the tournament had over 1500 people, the range for 7-2 was anywhere from I believe 28th to 104th, meaning I did have a chance, however statistically unlikely, that I could make it to the top 32 and qualify for the Japan Finals. Unfortunately, I did make it, due to my loss being in Round 1. Regardless, I’m satisfied with the result, as it’s a deck that I made from scratch. If I went 7-2 with a deck like Sakazuki, I’m not sure how I’d feel.

Perona is a deck that feels like it can go 0-3 just as easily as it can go 9-0. Perona is very good vs the top of the meta, but mediocre vs the mid tier leaders. Thus, dropping a game gives you a higher chance of losing more as you face mid tier leaders potentially. Despite the R1 debacle, I pulled through, and although it sucks to think that my R1 opponent (I remember your face and name, don’t let me find you ((I’m kidding legally))) might have screwed me out of thousands of dollars in prizes or a chance at the world championship. Had I gone 8-1, it would have been guaranteed, but I am happy that one of the judges, and well known player, Yamakawa Hiroaki, came up to me after my 9th game, and congratulated me on winning and making the full run.

The championship was fun, and although Japan only has a few that you can only choose to go to 1 roughly every 6 months, I hope to come back stronger at the next one. As promised, this is my current list:

This is quite a unique list, but it is the list I prefer at the moment. Although there’s many Navy characters, and it was core to the original concept, the cards that I am looking for more often than not (Sabo, Kid, Moria, Doflamingo) are not Navy characters. By running Inuppe, I get to cycle my hand and find cards that I need and make my hand stronger more reliably. As the deck doesn’t run Brannew anymore, we can run cards like Brook finally, that let us clear 4 cost Borsalino unconditionally.

8 cost Kid is utilized as it makes the sometimes scary Katakuri matchup very reliable. Although there is worry about drawing specific cards, as I only run 2ofs of Kuzan, Perona, Brook, and the 0 cost event, I don’t see them as 2ofs.

Kuzan is the 5th and 6th Borsalino (a card that I can play on the board at any time to gain value.)

Perona is the 9th an 10th 2000 counter

Brook is the 5th and 6th Ryuma (a card that can KO a 4 cost or less on the board.)

Kid and the 0 cost events are cards that I’m happy to get if I do get them, but are not crucial to the game plan. Additionally, Kid is another card that can be played in the event that I don’t draw 8 Moria. In a sense it’s like a 5th and 6th Moria, but the role is different, so it’s just a 5th an 6th option.

The 2ofs in this deck are actually to add consistency to drawing 1 of the 6, rather than drawing 1 of the 4.

I like this list, but Brannew is still more popular. If you play Perona, make sure to try both, as these are the only 2 viable versions of Perona.

Thanks for reading,

Kai (@ikailakai)