Introduction
Hello everyone.
I participated in Brunei’s Gamer’s Tavern Pirate Battle Tourney that was held on 2nd September, 2022.
There were 10 participants, but it was a healthy environment with 3 Red, 3 Purple, 2 Blue/Purple, 1 Green and myself the only mono Blue deck.
With Bruneian players favouring more on Kaido and Zoro decks, I decided to bring a different variant with Blue Doflamingo. I will now explain the basic strategy and game flow of the deck, and will proceed with explaining on how to counter the match ups I faced.
Essentials of the deck
1-Cost Perona and 3-Cost Doflamingo (To control your deck)
4-cost ST3 Gecko Moria, Dracule Midhawk, Marshall D. Tech and OP1 Boa Hancock to abuse the deck's leader Doflamingo effect.
With the above, I have incorporated a deck to deal with my opponents of each of the other colors.
Basic Strategy
Mulligan
You will always want to mulligan to make sure you have 1-cost Perona or 3-cost Doflamingo.
If you’re against Green Kid, it’s better to mulligan for a 9-cost Mihawk.
(Blue currently has no better strategy against OP1 8-cost Kid other than Mihawk to out power)
Match Start
When starting the match, the best opening is to play the 1-cost Perona, to set up for your next turn. The idea is to setup the next card you will be drawing for the next turn, and the second card would be a Shichibukai to cheat out with Doffy Leader’s skill.
Manipulating order of the cards drawn with Perona or 3-cost Doffy will always be in the odd number (1st, 3rd and 5th) and any 4 cost Shichibukai is even number (2nd and 4th).
By the second turn you would have drawn into a card for setup or an event card to stabilize. You will have 3 Dons ready so when battling with Doffy, Don x2 him and attack, and using the 1 Don to play our top card Shichibukai down rested.
The strength of this deck is to cheat out bodies for the low cost of 3 and the fact that the power of 7000 is advantageous on our side. With Shichibukai bodies cheated out rested, it gives the opponents the choice to attack our rested characters which saves our leader or leave those characters only to be attacked by them.
The Will Of 7000
I have discussed this with other players, 7000 power is a magic number in this game, opponents will usually have to waste 2 or more cards if not a +4000 counter to protect characters or leaders.
Tournament Matchups
Against Purple Kaido Deck
When attacking: Hit with 5000 or 7000 power.
Go aggressive! Set up your characters for a full onslaught. There is a high possibility that there are many +2000 Counters used in purple decks
Therefore, attacking with just 6000 would just get countered by a single +2000 counter, which doesn’t do much. Keep hitting with 5000 power if you want, but try with "The Will of 7000", it will reduce a lot of the opponents hands and you can press the advantage.
It’s usually a race when going against purple, cut their life down before their high cost characters appear.
Do your best to protect your characters on field, as the early stages of Purple Kaido wouldn’t really go for your leader, so it’s best to protect and keep attacking.
It’s best to counter their Kaido Board wipe, have Kuma on the field and keep it alive when opponents try to remove him. A Pacifista replacing Kuma after a board wipe gives us the upper hand.
Blue-Purple Kaido will fall in the same play-style as Purple Kaido.
Against Red Zero Deck
Protect your life, set up blockers
What I realize about Zoro decks is that they cannot counter properly, and they are always in desperate need of bodies on the field. In my opinion, their strength is Hasty characters, 3-cost OP1 Zoro and 5-cost ST1 Luffy are a menace.
DO as much as you can to preserve life, set up blockers and dominate their board. As a basic fighting method, save dons with Doffy leader effect to place characters. Always continue to remove their characters and eventually with an almost empty board and almost empty hand, they will not be able to defend against our Shichibukais on board.
Their weakness is hand replenishment, which we have with Boa Hancock and 5-Cost Mihawk.
Another thing to note is that when fighting against any Red decks, if you see OP 1 Nico Robin, try your best to KO Nico Robin. Do not leave that card unchecked.
The will of 7000 comes into play against red decks too. 7000 power characters can avoid the ever powerful event of red decks: Jet Pistol.
You can watch my game against the Zoro deck on the youtube link below:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6lY62Km91VM&t=846s
Our match actually went to overtime, and I won since I had the most life. My opponent wanted to finish the game anyway to see the outcome and I still won.
Against Green Kid
9-cost Midhawk VIP
I did not get to face a Kid deck that night, but I did prepare a strategy and I have play tested against them.
The only problem faced when against the Green Kid decks is, of course, the 8-cost OP1 Kid.
Unfortunately, there are not much counter measures at the moment against that, so Mihawk is the only one which can fight with power now.
Therefore it’s necessary to put in 3-4 Mihawks in the deck to make sure you can draw them.
One strategy to adapt is to save your attacks, against these matches, your Perona can actively attack herself, then use Perona to knock out the opposing ST2 searcher Bonnies.
It’s also a race when fighting Green Kid. Actively remove opponents life before 8-cost kid comes down, and remove their characters when you can.
Play a bit of a tempo route and bounce their characters back to their hands, especially their blockers (for example: St2 Capone Gang Bege).
Also to note, against Green Kid, don’t expect to be able to block occasionally, there are so many "Resting" ability characters in their deck, so expect to use more of your counters when defending.
Summary
Blue will still be one of the weakest colors for this current OP1 meta, but that does not mean it cannot fight back.
It takes a lot of practice to master the blue deck, especially getting to know the cards and effects. It’s never easy to play out a tempo deck properly.
Blue Doflamingo is not as popular as the other decks, especially with Green and Purple dominating the scenes a lot these days, not just in Brunei, but in other Asia countries as well. But the idea is to practice and have fun with it!
Give the deck a try as I highly recommend it. Let’s hope for better blue cards in OP2 and even more 4-cost or less Shichibukais!