New OP Yamato is the leader that caused a lot of discussions during the the card's revealing time because its advantages.

The 1st effect that Yamato leader have "Double Attack" without any attached condition. It means that from turn-2 we can declare 2 checks and opponent may have to throw some cards from hand to counter or take 2 life (these days we don't see the low cost blockers are used in the deck, so opponent can't play blocker so early).
Yamato "Active Main" effect allow us to attach up to 2 rested DON!! to one of the characters, which equals to free upgrade 2k power every turn after opponent's life reduces to 3.

Yamato can take chance to attack to opponent's early to rush to reduce opponent's hand cards or life. Some players will just attached as much DON!! as possible if they see no blocker on board.
Because of to Yamato in OP6, we can see more blockers that are added into the Gecko Moria or Sakazuki decks.
There is no way to stop the Leader from attacking, the only card can to that for now is OP5 green Arlong.

I guess Arlong is more useful in mirror match. Stop the leader from attacking, especially Yamato leader, would be a good method to stall the opponent's plan and this is "On Play" effect, it will be played in the case where the opponent prefers to use leader to attack life.
Yamato deck draw power is not that high and no recycle trash or draw/trash cards to change hands and sometime it has to trash cards from hand to play the "trigger" card so most likely their counters are not that good. I rarely see blockers in Yamato deck and it plans is to rush to finish opponent's life.
Yamato deck also has to deal with the [ST06-015] Great Eruption to force opponent's to trash 1 card from hand in "Trigger" effect or OP06-093 Perona to force opponent to trash 1 card from hand if they have more than 5 cards.
(I won Yamato's deck sometimes because the shortage in their hand cards).


Onami and Hody Jones are vital core for the deck.
Onami "On Play" effect is to delete the "trigger" effect from opponent's life cards that can help in many ways , for example: to avoid those event cards with a threats "trigger". Onami's "Trigger" effect is also amazing because it can KO 1 opponent's 5cost or lower character. (But Well, if Sabo blocker on board then this is a waste).
Hody Jones (can appear from turn-4) is so good and is using in many many decks with a "green" leaders. First thing, Holy Jones can just simply rest 2 opponent's characters, normally they will rest blocker if there is, else it rests your active DON!! to avoid you from using event cards with "counter" effect so Yamato can goes through smoothly.
Not only that, Hody Jones also has "rush" which can do another life-check with 8000 power, and sometimes their power can become 10000 thanks to 2 free rested DON!! from Yamato leader's effect. Since the blockers are rested, how many counter cards we have to use to counter this attack?
We also see yellow event cards with low cost to play just to add more power for leader or characters (El Thor or 200 Million V Amaru).
FINAL THOUGHTS
I got a bit surprised when I played against Yamato for the first time since I can not adapt with the speed of Yamato life-check speed. But then I found Yamato is not that very strong or a solid deck. We must have enough blockers, especially Sabo, and we should try to reduce their hand size as much as possible.
It is also easy to see that Yamato's player won't play characters in early game because they want to use DON!! to give more power to Yamato's "Double Attack" so we can take chance to mulligan some blockers that we can play in turn-1 or 2.