I have been playing Rebecca since I started in August. I built a deck back in OP03 meta just to play some games but I was already focused on the OP04 meta were I knew I would play Rebecca because I really like the control gameplay of it and it seemed like it was going to be a top deck. However, compared to the Asian meta here in Europe it evolved a bit differently and I think in a more unfavorable way for Rebecca. I thought about playing something else but I also knew my months of practice with the deck would have paid out with a bit of luck with the match ups. The main reason to play Rebecca is to have a good match up into the red decks, which I knew would have been most prevalent at the regional.
I also like the match up against Queen and G/P Doflamingo which are 2 decks that people like to play to counter Whitebeard. Therefore, I was theoretically very confident of the position the deck had in the meta with only Katakuri being a nightmare to face but I figured the deck would struggle in the late rounds of the tournament due to bad match ups against WB and Law.

Strategy

Rebecca is a control deck, its main strategy is to develop a board while destroying what your opponent is presenting on the other side of the table. In most matchups, you want to play down a Kyros in the first turns which will act like your leader since it is almost indestructible, especially if you also deploy the colosseum alongside it. Kyros is fundamental against Law and Zoro as it also destroys something when it gets played and it allows you to attack your opponent characters, take cards out of their hands but also apply pressure on their leader.

With this deck you will see a lot of cards with the leader effect, but you need to be mindful of remaining with less than 6 cards in hand, so you almost always want to discard to counter out attacks and keep your life total high. If you don’t counter enough you will get into situations where you are not able to activate your leader and you are basically playing without the ability to attack and without a leader effect so you effectively lose all your advantage.

Rebecca is strong because you are able to draw 2 cards a turn, if you lose that advantage you miss all the reason you are playing the deck for and you will almost certainly end up losing. I believe the deck is very intricate and you need to know well what you are looking for because every turn you are presented with a choice to pick between 2 cards and if you make mistakes you are going to lose.

Your initial hand is also important, you want to have a 2k counter in hand to avoid the scenario I presented above and you want to use your mulligan and leader to see important cards in the match up.
These will be:
–Kyros in almost every game a part from Whitebeard were I will say it is your worst card to draw since it doesn’t hit anything important and you don’t want to pay a Don to have to attack with it;
–2k counter against WB, you want to have as a many as possible to not lose life in the early game;
– Orlumbus is key against WB and non-red decks, it is the engine of your deck and what allows you to destroy high cost characters;
– Three thousand worlds, this is a card you are looking for in your initial hand against WB and Zoro since it is the only card you can’t fetch with the leader and you need to naturally draw it to not lose to Marco.
– Sabo is key against Zoro and Katakuri since it protects your characters and cleans your hand from unneeded cards.
– Luffy is a card you want to have against decks such as Queen and G/P Doflamingo that don’t apply too much pressure. In the red matches you are looking for it only in the mid to late game and you may pass on picking it at the beginning because you don’t want to have too many non-counter cards in hand. You always have to be mindful of the possibility to mill yourself out so there will be spots in which even if you don’t need Luffy you have to take it and play it just to put cards at the bottom of the deck.

Regarding the match ups against the top decks:
– Whitebeard is I think an even match, the game will usually always develop in a similar way with them trying to pressure you and you trying to destroy what they are doing while using your 2k counter to not lose life early. To win you must get to a spot in which you drop Luffy, you maybe do one attack then you restand it and you wait to do 2 big attacks in one
turn while using your cards to destroy their blocker. Win or lose will usually depend on how many rush Luffy they will play and how many blocker they will present to you in the final turn.
– Zoro is a good match up for you but you need to not lose too many lives early to not randomly lose to a Diable Jamble in the late game.
– Law I believe is your best match up (even if I lost to it in the final) since what they are doing matches very badly with what you are doing. The fact they only have 4 life means that you can also pressure them easily and they rely on 1 cost blocker to defend themselves which you easily can get rid of.

However, I wish I have tested the match up a bit more because their deck is also very dynamic, and they can play it out in many different ways which I have to admit I was not prepared for all of them.

–Katakuri is honestly just terrible, everything that they are doing is bad for you, starting from the leader that asks you to discard 2 cards just from a 1 Don investment to 10cost Big Mom which you almost can’t destroy. In the early game Perospero is also very bad for you because if you destroy it will go look for Big Mom so you need to invest your three thousand worlds on it. A triggered character at the wrong time can also present you with one more attack you were not anticipating but at the same time if you don’t get aggressive in any way you are just going to lose. Thunderbolt is great against you because it destroys Orlumbus and blockers in the late game.

To be honest I don’t have a genius plan against Katakuri, you just do your things and hope they don’t do theirs, knowing if they do you almost certainly lose. The only thing you can do to play better against Katakuri is to build your deck differently by playing 10 cost Kuzan and more Trueno Bastardo that together​ with Orlumbus allows you to deal with Big Mom.

However, I decided not to do it since by building your deck that way you lose percentage points against your other good match ups and you only gain some points against Katakuri, it doesn’t suddenly become a good match up. Overall, especially in a long tournament like this, I think by building your deck to play better against Katakuri you are going to lose more than you win.
Finally, as I said, the deck is very complicated, you need to practice it a lot and you need to develop your observation haki to be able to look a couple of turns into the future to know exactly what your opponent wants to do.

Funnily enough, as I write this article, I realize that I’m saying a lot “you lose to” and not “you win by”, but I think this is the tough reality of
how you should approach this deck. You should first understand the scenarios in which you lose in the early game because once you get to the late game you are almost certainly going to win. At the same time, I also want to note that there will be scenarios in which if​ you don’t get aggressive soon enough you may take control of the game, but you still risk of losing it, so you have to be very mindful of it.