Team Introduction
Valentín: Hi everyone, Valentín Marchant here from Chile. I’ll be the one writing most of this article on my team’s behalf. I don’t have any history playing TCGs other than playing Pokemon with my brother and cousins with fake cards bought in the market haha, I’m just a big One Piece fan since 2014, when I heard that the One Piece TCG was coming up I was very excited and I fully entered into the TCG world since the super pre-release.
I don’t consider myself to be a pro player at all, but I’m not a terrible one either, here are some few achievements in the game:
– 1st place at local’s Super Pre-Release Event
– Top 32 at Latin America Deck Limited Battle
– Top 32 at Latin America Treasure Cup August
-1st place at Latin America 3on3 Cup (in Chile)
Angelo: Hi I’m Angelo, 17 years old and this is the first TCG that I’ve played, I played purple Kaido during OP01 and OP02 and I’ve been playing Katakuri since OP03, I love the anime Love Live and the one achievement I have in my record is to make top 36 in the last Latin America Offline Regional in Chile, besides the 3 on 3 where we managed to get the first place.
David: Hi! My name is David, I’ve always liked to play cards and to collect them, and on this occasion, I entered in the world of One Piece. This is my first big tournament, so I don’t have other “achievements” in this side of the world. I started playing One Piece in September 2022 in Japan actually, and I played occasionally over there for almost a year, over there I’ve met nice people from whom I learnt a lot of things, now I’ve returned to Chile (for now). In my return to Chile I was welcomed by the team ASL and thanks to them I was able to enjoy this wonderful experience.
2. Will you share with us about the strategy of the team, deck choice before the tournament?
It wasn’t that difficult to be honest, Angelo have only played Katakuri since OP03 so he really knew his deck and matchups,
I (Valentin) played Strawbeard (Whitebeard with Straw Hats engine) for OP02 and a good part of OP03, for OP04 I tried B/Y Queen leader, it was really fun but I knew that it wasn’t the most competitive deck, so I returned to the good old Whitebeard with only one OP04 tournament with the deck, but it was very similar so it wasn’t difficult at all.
David was struggling between Nami and Law, having more experience with Nami (he played it in Japan) but knowing that it wasn’t the most competitive deck (considering that we have a lot of Katakuri players in Latam) and recently a friend borrowed him the Law deck, he had experience with it but he didn’t feel that confident, we told him to play whatever he wanted as our main objective as a team was just to have fun, at the end he decided to go with Law since it has better matchups with the actual meta here. David was crazy and was convinced to put a 8 cost Kid or a 10 cost Doffy into his deck, me and Angelo were really supportive and we were like “just follow your gut and have fun”, so he ended putting two 10 cost Doffys in his deck, and it was nuts, I’ll talk more about it in the next section.
We think that the combination Law, Whitebeard and Kata was the most solid for the actual meta, our original plan was for me as Whitebeard to be the number #2 player, since my matches are mostly always the same and really quick, so I would be able to be easily aware of each of my teammate’s match, but we registered the player randomly (we thought we were going to decide the order on the day of the event), so the order ended up like this.
Player #1: Whitebeard (Valentín)
Player #2: Law (David)
Player #3: Katakuri (Angelo)
And to be honest, I think that it was the best that it could happened to us, because most of the teams thought the same, so most of the matchups were favorable for us.
3. How was the matchups result for each deck?
With the main objective of having fun and getting the top 64 Chopper, which was mostly free, since there were only 84 teams, we managed our way to the perfect 7-0 with only two critical and hard rounds in my opinion, I will talk about those rounds and the final one in greater depth.
The matchups were balanced and quite varied I think, and the team performed really well, each of us won the matches that we needed to win, and those were key for us to win the tournament.
Valentin (Whitebeard) R1. Strawbeard: W R2. Zoro: W R3. Katakuri: W R4. Zoro: W R5. Law: W R6. Rebecca: L R7. G/P Doffy: W
David (Law) R1. G/P Doffy: W R2. Whitebeard: L R3. Yamato: W R4. Whitebeard: W R5. Zoro: L R6. B Crocodile: W R7. Law: L
Angelo (Katakuri) R1. G/B Sanji: W R2. Katakuri: W R3. Whitebeard: L R4. Katakuri: W R5. Katakuri: W R6. G/P Doffy: W R7. Whitebeard: W
In round two sadly we faced a group of friends, we thought that we were gonna ran to each other but further ahead in the tournament not at the start (greetings to Los Tios, our second team). David (Law) was nervous in his match against Whitebeard and he turned out to face one of the best Whitebeards in Chile in my opinion (Franco Ossa) and he lost, Angelo was facing a mirror match and he barely won by playing 10 cost Big Mom and putting blindly a Bege into his life (besto trigger), and from my side I was having a tough match against Zoro, he pushed all my cards in hand with 6k attacks with small bodies, and he made me attack his characters with my big bodies because otherwise I would lose in the comeback, at the end he had like 2 cards in hand and 2 lifes, and I had 1 card in hand and 3 attacks (my leader, a 6k vainilla Luffy and a 6k Marco), so I had to go for game, we took our time with my team and calculated the best way of attacking, and we barely made it. Cheers to our opponents Matias Segura (Zoro) and Francisco Gonzalez (Katakuri), great players both!
In round six we ran to the team that made it 2nd in the tournament (greetings to Team Wanted, great guys), I faced Rebecca, and I literally couldn’t do a thing, my opponent killed or sent to the bottom each of the characters I played, managed to take some life but it was just a matter of time, that is the only match that I lost. Angelo faced G/P Doffy, the Doffy player failed 3 Nami searches and that was it. So, everything was in David’s hands, facing a Blue Crocodile who was controlling the board with his on-play effects and recycling events with Ms. All Sunday, David was able to push his opponent to have only 2 cards in hand, 1 life and two bodies on board, while he had only a Makino on board, 3 lives and and 3 hands in card and , but with a secret surprise in hand, the craziest tech, the 10 cost Doflamingo character, nobody and I literally mean nobody was expecting that to come on board, he played it, freezed a 9 cost Mihawk and the leader and that was it, the opponent had to concede. It was pretty wild, that Doflamingo appeared with a perfect timing.
For our final match, I faced a G/P Doffy, he played a lot of blockers, but he ran out of counters in his hand, and when I was able to play the 9 cost Whitebeard, that was it, nothing really dangerous. Angelo faced a Whitebeard, a really unfavorable matchup for him, but he won the dice, went second and played his curve perfectly, his opponent couldn’t do much. At the same time David was facing a Law mirror, with the most bricked hand I’ve seen for a Law player (like 2 Zoros rush,2 Luffy rush and 1 Law blocker in his hand after mulligan), so he was struggling, but the other two won our matches before him, so it was already decided that we were the winners of the tournament!
We would like to greet our other friends and teammates that we ran into during rounds, in Round 4 Rodrigo Villa, Francisco de la Fuente and Boris Cisternas, and in Round 5 Jose Rodriguez, Walter Burgos, Milton, all great people and players!
4. Share with us your thoughts after this 3on3 event, are there hints to tips?
The whole tournament was a great experience for the three of us, it’s an interesting and super fun format, it really gives you that sense of nakamas in your team. Like I said, our objective was to have fun, and that’s our best tip we can give to future teams that are reading this article, we were able to control our nerves by having in mind that this is just a game and in the worst scenario we would have 2 teammates that can help you choose the better way to win the match.
Leaving aside the kitsch haha we recommend to train with your team, try the format of communicating to each other during a match, face each other and give each other feedback to improve in the game. Also talk about each other best and worst matchups, so you can know when to be more aware of the match that is happening to your side, communication is key before and during the tournament!
Conclusion and Acknowledgments
Valentín: I would like to thank my formal teams, ASL and Los Tios for the support during the tournament and the tips shared, also would like to thank Third Impact, my local store where I run the store tournaments and where I’m judge, great community there. Finally greetings to all the guys from PiedraBruja, that’s where I mainly play and practice, all of them great players!
David: A big hug from the distance to Eduardo who still lives and Japan, and thanks to Milton and Raul for starting the friendship that made it possible for me to be here in ASL and winning the tournament with these guys.
Angelo: Greetings to my friend Guaton Paulo, who has been supporting me since always and between each round he asked me how I was doing.