About me
Hello, I am Michael E, also known as CrossAi. I recently won the Peoria regional, got top 8 at Long Beach, and 3rd place in deck limited battles! Today I will be breaking down the red/green Law deck I used to win Peoria.
The Leader
For those of y’all who haven’t seen Law before it’s effect may seem mediocre, and the 4 life may be a turn off, but this leader is extremely powerful. There are plenty of powerful 5 cost units to call, and plenty of low cost units to flood the board with! 4 life is kinda lame, but this leader might be tier -1 if it had 5 life. Realistically this deck's defensive options easily makes up for the 4 life.
Why Play this Deck?
This deck is ridiculously strong in this meta, I believe if piloted at a high level it can potentially beat any deck. The deck is complex but because there’s so many different lines it feels like you can potentially play out of any position.
If zoro floods the board with units, Vista their board.
If Whitebeard had a billion events, hit them for a billion twice with restand Law.
If 8 cost Kid comes out, Otama + Jet pistol. If control tries to pop your bored, utilize Makino, cheap attackers, and big bodies off shamble to rush them down.
There’s just so many different options, obviously it’s not as simple as the scenarios I gave but there really are a wide range of answers to any situation. This deck is basically an EVERYTHING deck, it can do control, aggro, midrange, etc..
Bonney
Bonney is easily the best searcher, this card searches all of the units you want to shamble into. A huge note I need to leave for ANY Law player is to use your bonneys wisely. Do not field it early game against a matchup where it can get popped, because you will be losing your engine for the rest of the game until you see another. Even if bonney is the only other 1 cost unit I can play, I won’t field it unless I can’t help it early game. I typically like to bonney on turn 3/turn 4 and return it back to my hand with shambles.
Nami
This is another one of the key searchers in this deck, being a 1 cost unit that instantly replenishes our hand is very strong. It’s search isn’t as powerful as bonneys, but with the inclusion of radical beam, it’s become a very powerful defensive searcher. This card can also help grab jet pistol against green, and it grabs Zoros to play off of blocker Law. At least for the first 3 sets, I would never run less than 4 of this card in Law.
Chopper + Bege
These are just 1 cost blockers, due to Laws leader ability it’s nice to have many 1 cost units to flood the board with. The only blocker between these two that could ever be reduced atm is bege. I am a big fan of it at 4, and having 8 1 cost blockers was relevant a lot for me at peoria, but if you figure other cards or systems to provide a crazy amount of defense for the deck, then it may be worth reducing.
Otama
Otama is the most insane 1 drop in this deck utility wise, being able to shrink cards on the board is relevant against too many matchups, and you can combo it with Law and Jet pistol in order to pop bodies greater than 8k. I don’t think I could ever run a Law deck without this in the forseeable future.
Dadan
Dadan is another key card to the deck, being able to search out otama this format is one of the most ridiculous buffs to this deck, and being able to dadan > nami > chopper/brooke, is essentially 3 bodies off of 1 card which is always very broken. I personally think that this card is always a 4 of, and it’s very powerful defensive option late game, as you can grab 7 2ks, 4 blockers, or 4 namis that can also search for defense.
Zoro(s)
Zoros are another crucial part to the law deck. These cards are always staple because they provide so much pressure when called off of blocker Law. I liked the 2 rush Zoro 1 st Zoro, but there’s definitely merit in either 3 rush Zoro or 3 st Zoro.
Vista
Vista is a very strong card in this deck, it wasn’t active all day because I played no mirror matches, and only one Zoro. Honestly this card probably should have been at 4 in the case where I played against a lot more Zoro, so if you are expecting more Zoro definitely bump this card up.
Blocker Law
This is the heart of the deck, never run less than 4 of this card. This is the card that allows us to do all our comboing, it can bounce searches back to hand that can be replayed for advantage when we lose our board. It can play Zoro in order to produce more attackers in the board. It can reuse Vistas to pop a bunch of weenie cards. It can combo with Otama in order to shrink down big units. The list just goes on and on and on and on and on.
1 thing I do want to mention about this card for new Law players is that you should not be afraid to swing with this card, of course you need to evaluate the situations where you shouldn’t swing with it, but for the first half or maybe even 3 quarters of the game I would definitely be attacking with this card.
Jet Pistol
This is one of red’s strongest control cards. Japan doesn’t use it in set 2 but that’s because there’s virtually no green in their meta. If you aren’t expecting green you can cut this card, but if you are expecting green you should definitely have this.
Radical Beam
This card was one of the huge mvps of the tournament, since the board sometimes gets too full having a pseudo 1 cost blocker, that I could play out of hand was absolutely amazing. I’m reevaluation how many of this card I wanna use just because I would also like to adopt some utility 2k counters, but I think this card is very strong.
Mulligan rule
The mulligan strategy for this deck is very very simple at its base. You basically want to keep blocker Law + Searchers, or you want to keep Bonney + anything (because Bonney can search for Law). The first unit you want to shambles into is almost always ideally blocker Law, so a mulligan that allows you to achieve that is great.
This mulligan expands a little bit based on matchups, like you can get a little greedier if you open a good hand into the matchup, such as Vistas against Zoro and the mirror. But with the exception of Vista in those matchups, this mulligan is more or less what I said.
Tournaments Matchups
Zoro W
Kaido W
Smoker L
Kid W
Smoker W
Smoker W
Doffy W
Doffy W
Strawbeard W
Top 16
Doffy W
Top 8
Strawbeard W
Top 4
Kinemon W
Top 2
Moby Dick Whitebeard W
These were my results for the days, I only took one L in swiss to smoker, but then I beat it twice later that day.
Matchups
Regardless of the matchup, I would generally only start defending and pressuring once your opponent has taken you down to 2 life.
Zoro – Slightly Disadvantageous (Go First)
Zoro is probably the hardest matchup for this deck, imo this matchup is very coinflippy, i believe that whoever goes first has the advantage. 9beard on curve is very troublesome for Law to deal with, and they force so many attacks early on, that we were forced to defend with key units out of hand. If you draw into vista I believe you can potentially sauce this matchup, but without vista it’s kinda rough.
Whitebeard – Slightly Advantageous (Go Second)
If you poke 6ks throughout the whole game while producing bodies with the remaining don I think you can win this matchup. The hardest part to play in this matchup is the end of the game, where you need to do close to perfect math or else you will lose. If you are inexperienced in this matchup, then it might be overwhelmingly whitebeard favored, but if you learn how to play it and practice then I think the matchup is Law favored. The Strawbeard version is harder to beat than the Moby Dick version imo, just because they string so many 9beards together. In the last round of swiss, homie played 3 9beard back to back to back and I thought I might’ve lost!
Kaido – Advantageous (I always lose dieroll to Kaido so I’ve literally only went first)
Last set Kaido was easily Laws worst matchup(although I did manage to beat Kaido a lot whenever I tested or played at locals with Law), with this new build of Law including 4 restand Law, I think that this matchup has become very very easy. The only way you lose is if you only draw all ur low end, but your goal is to spam blocker laws to reuse rush zoro, and restand laws to restand blocker laws and just keep hitting face.
Smoker – Slightly Advantageous (Go second)
Smoker is a favored matchup once you understand what they can pop, and when they can go for game. For example, if you have only 1 blocker on board and your opponent has 2 units you will lose to a meteor volcano to pop your blocker into, a 9k, 9k swing, so just make sure you have enough counter value in your hand. This is one of those matchups where it’s common to shambles smth back to hand late game and play nothing, just so you have additional counter value in hand. Outside of that rush zoro is very strong in the midgame, and its common for me to swing 5s with dadans and vistas in order to pressure the opponent. In the game I lost in swiss( I saw only 1 top end unit(which instantly got popped)), but I almost won the game because I kept pressuring with my dadans and vistas.
Kinemon – Slightly Advantageous (Go Second)
A lot of people think Kinemon is Laws worst matchup, but I think it’s favored once you learn the matchup. I was clapping up some of my friends trying to learn Law with Kinemon, but then I did some test games against Thomas Nguyen(who has topped multiple times between law last set and this set), and I lost the majority of the games by far. The only way Kinemon consistently beats Law, is if the Kine New list goes crazy. But, in this matchup you want to use pistol, and otama + pistol, in order to clear units, if you saw my game 2 in top 4, I otama’d his Law, even though I knew he was going to play kid later on, but that was fine because I can just otama Kid and swing into it. So if you are in a situation where you get a lot of value out of pistoling, even if they have oden, 7kid, or 8kid, just use the jet pistol. Otama + Vista is also very powerful early game in order to pop Okiku. The goal in this matchup is to just build a board so powerful that the green player simply can’t respond to it.
Doflamingo – 80% Free (Go First)
When I played 8 cost Kid in Law in set 1, this matchup was 100% free, but without 8 cost Kid I would say it’s only about 80% free. In this matchup once you see otama it becomes pretty free because you simply clear their board too easily. Make sure to swing at board whenever they have a rested unit, the only exception is a) if they’re at 2 life or less, then you can start pressuring face more, or b) the unit has a billion power(so if mihawk is rested, typically just ignore it).
Kid – Advantageous
Law has to easily be Kid’s worst matchup, otama + jet pistol is just too strong against Eustass Mid(manga joke). When I got top 8 at Long Beach, I played Kid and I actually lost to the only Law player in top 16. Kid hasn’t really had any new tools from set 2, and Laws only gotten stronger.
Shoutouts
Huge shoutouts to everyone in the Lab, these are a group of players from Arizona and they are all very strong players. As well as Egman (youtube.com/@TheEgman/) , who is another AZ player, for streaming the event and gassing me up. I also have a prediction that another AZ player will do extremely well in an upcoming tournament…
Huge shoutout to my Uncle Abim for helping me get to and back from the tournament.
Shoutouts to my homie Karrar for making top 16, and the homies Jackson Hoang and Thomas Nguyen for inspiring me to take Law, so I could show them I’m also cracked at the deck.
Lastly shoutout to my youtube channel CrossAi, youtube.com/@Crxssai/ , https://twitter.com/Cross_Aii , Law guide coming soon, and I’ll also be doing a super in-depth guide on patreon so stay tuned for whenever that’s released.
With that being said, Kine New, and I’ll catch y'all in the next One. Piece.