Introduction
Hello to everyone, I am Antonino Borzi from Italy, living in Barcelona(Spain). First of all, I wanna thank the whole OP Top Decks team for giving me this opportunity to share my list and my experience with that in the last European Treasure Cup organised by Raid’n’Trade with 1024 participants.
I started playing One piece Card game since the start here in Europe but initially I was also interested in collecting the cards as I’m a huge fan of One piece in general. After playing a few local tournaments to get the promo cards I started to really like the game and decided to continue playing it. Here in Barcelona the level is very high and I'm not afraid to say it's one of the strongest communities in Europe, for this reason and for my desire to get every promo card to collect I decided to play it more serious and became quite competitive giving a lot of efforts and patience to get better every day believing always in myself.
In the last two months I managed to make top 8 at Treasure Cup Barcelona with Red Luffy, top 16 at Regionals of Bologna with Black Lucci CP, and I recently achieved the 1st place at the 1024 players Online Treasure Cup with Red Whitebeard.
The reason why I decided to bring WhiteBeard was because post restrictions my friends and I decided to test the deck to see how it performed and to make people understand how WB wasn’t dead at all. After the first tests we quickly realised how the deck was stronger than before. Just look at the pre and post restrictions tops in European tournaments to see how much WB instead of being nerfed, had improved. This is because the Zoro matchup which pre restrictions was a very bad matchup now has become a much easier matchup.
Also, I am well known for being bad with dice rolling and for this reason before a tournament I test my deck thousands of times with the most unfavourable curve, which at the Bologna regional rewarded me considering that I won only 2 out of 9 dice with Lucci CP, a deck that is very dependent on going second, but fortunately I was already prepared. With WB this is not relevant since the deck going first or second has a very strong curve anyway and winning or losing the die is not that important except at most in mirrors, but even there you play in two different ways depending on going first or second and a good part of the post restrictions mirror is skill gap.
Finally, I never liked playing overly broken decks and taking "the easy way" to make a top but the idea of being able to do well with a deck that everyone expected to be dead or generally suffered a big nerf tempted me.
Decklist
This was the “V2” of the first list that me and my two Italian friends (Alessandro Magni and Matteo Longhin), also well known for their results in other tournaments, builded after limitations as our “V1” did already amazingly good the week before with a 2nd place(9-1) and 4 8-2 of our friends at regionals. I did very few changes only to try to counter mirror, adding a 9c WB, one more blocker searchable by Nami (Chopper) and Red Hawk.
Mulligan/Turn order
I usually mulligan for searchers so that I can adjust my hand according to the curve I’m playing (First or Second) but there are also few exceptions such as when you already have your hand adjusted with the plays on curve. Talking about turn order as I have already mentioned before you choose to go second or first depending on the MU you face, so if your opponent’s deck is better going second you want to go second and vice-versa.
Matchups (Treasure Cup)
Won 4 dierolls out of 10 / Final result 10-0
R1 – Whitebeard – Win
R2 – Kinemon – Win
R3 – Magellan – Win
R4 – Katakuri – Win
R5 – Zoro – Win
R6 – Whitebeard – Win
R7 – Katakuri – Win
R8 – Whitebard – Win
R9 – Whitebeard – Win
R10 – Whitebeard – Win
Now I will go through every matchup I faced explaining how to face it, key cards etc.
Whitebeard
Mirror is possibly your worst matchup but fortunately it is quite skill-based. Basically, you need to test this matchup a hundred or a thousand times to understand and face all the different scenarios you may face and how to deal with them otherwise you will find this matchup very overwhelming if the opponent knows already how to play it.
- Set the field with your 6k+ bodies and don’t attack with them if your opponent in the next turn is able to play ace because you will lose all of your board, and this will mean instant loss.
- Ace as mentioned above Is a very strong card because he is the only card that allow you to clean the board and go there instead of lives
- 9C WB is one of the cards that even if restricted to 1 I decided to put into the deck because I felt that in mirror was strong. I’m still not sure if it’s true or not as I won two mirrors without playing it and the opponent yes. It only carried me once in the first mirror as it was the answer to my opponent 9c and without that 2k+ more I remember that I wouldn’t be able to counter the 20k swing next turn. My recommendation is to never commit too much for playing it, then if you can play it, it’s only a plus and mostly of the times not game changing.
Kinemon
In this matchup you clearly want to go second as Kinemon has a better second curve. It wasn't a matchup I expected to encounter, which is why I hadn't tested it before, but as in op2 it continues to suffer a lot from Whitebeard.
- Go second and try to put as much pressure as possible because you don't want that Kinemon arrives in the late game with enough lives to play Oden safely.
- Oden is the only threat you can face in this matchup so try or hope to have blockers on the turn he starts attacking or enough counters to counter the double swing. Most of the times he doesn’t have also the tempo to play it and even if it does in the next turn you are also able to menace lethal
I remember that this was one of the two matchups where I only played 9c WB and I risked that for playing it impulsively because I wasn’t able to counter the double swing of Oden(I didn’t draw neither blockers nor events) two turns after, so I went lethal in my next turn and fortunately Kinemon is a deck that many times find itself with no-counter cards so I ended up winning with a perfect calculation of the attacks.
Magellan
This is possibly one of the worst matchups of Whitebeard as it has access to cards that can break your curve and plays many counters and blockers. Whitebeard being a deck dependent on playing on curve could see his gameplan ruined if going against a Magellan.
- Go first so you start to pressure first and avoid his double 5c Magellan on curve.
- 5c Marco is strong in this matchup as it can’t be killed by 6c King and if 9c Kaido kills it you may revive him trashing an event.
- 5c Luffy Rush is a card that you want to see or search for most of the times when playing against Magellan and Purple in general as it is the only card that allows you to play around blockers.
Katakuri
This is your free matchup, the easiest one. It doesn’t matter if you go first or second, if you play the matchup perfectly is not possible to lose this even if yellow triggers everything such as two thunderbolts, two Brulee and three Shirahoshi (that’s also a reference to my round 7).
- Put as much pressure as possible in the early or mid-game and always attack with your characters. 7k attacks are always appreciated if you have enough dons to go for them as you don’t want to let Katakuri breath every turn.
- This is one of those matchups where seeing 2c Sanji on curve makes you very happy. Saying so, if you go first and you can search it with Nami take him, so you are able to play it in your next turn. If you go second, and you have him in your firsthand always play it at T1.
- Blockers are the key cards in this matchup, Fossa is better as it cannot be killed by Streusen such as Chopper and only Thunderbolt can remove it. Most of the times Katakuri arrives even with 0 lives in late game so it cannot remove that in any way.
Zoro
Both with mirror this is one of the popular worst matchups you may face but me and my friends are still not sure if it’s so bad because during testing if you play against Zoro even with an anti-whitebeard list without making any misplays you never lose. Going first or second it doesn’t make much difference. Some Zoro players prefer to go first while others prefer to go second depending on each personal build.
- One of the few matchups when you may counter his attacks in the early/mid-game more than once. You just have to calculate and think after each of its attacks whether taking that life bearing in mind that the next turn you will go to X lives with Y don. By testing the matchup many times, you will realise yourself that this action will become almost automatic and let you understand more when taking that life or not is correct.
- 5c Marco is the key card of this game as being your only removal it allows you to pop off their 1C characters, especially buggy, and if he is killed by one of the many removals that Zoro plays, he can be resurrected by trashing an event card.
- You want to see as many searchers as possible in your firsthand as they are your only answer to Zoro’s ones if he tries to buff them with Magura/Makinos
- Never rest your characters until you are at zero lives and unless it is 5c Marco because Zoro in the next turn can remove it with their 1c or 2c playing an Otama or Gordon to reduce their power. If your characters remain active, you will force him to Use an expensive event such as pistol or fire fist.
- Red hawk is one of the cards I added in this last version of the deck mainly for this matchup and the law matchup because I felt it was strong against these two matchups and having a +4k counter in your deck was really good.
Conclusion
In summary, I think that WB is a very strong and stable deck and even with the restrictions the deck became stronger than before. As the round progressed, I felt the deck was really dominant and consistent and my performance during the tournament helped to prove that as I never did any misplay or miscalculations and took always my time for every play, especially in the late game when the decision was difficult(except for that Kinemon play) . I would say also that WB is the best deck in the format but at the same time I would not say it’s an overly broken deck as it’s not brainless as before because you need to calculate every play you do to avoid misplays that can cost you the entire match and it’s more difficult to be piloted well. This version I builded is so aggressive that put so much pressure early and even matchups such as black which were tough before became easier. Hope you found the article interesting and may help you in your journey with this awesome game. Thank you for reading and good luck in your next tournaments.
SHOUTOUTS
I will take this space to mention the guys from my group of testing in Italy (I Sassofonisti) which are one of the best players I ever knew, and I wish them the best in their next tournaments; my closest friends and players from Italy such as Luca de Luisa, Mattia Bano, Armando Baci and Riccardo Angeli. The whole Spanish community from Barcelona and my closest friends such as Juan Mendez(Law Master), David Melendo(Best Yonkou in the world), Marc, Monaru, Victor and the whole Zoro Farming Group.