Ask a One Piece fan to name their favorite things about the series, and it won’t take long to get to the world building. Eiichiro Oda’s attention to detail is unyielding. All those details can be hard to keep track of for even the most dedicated fans. How can a major toy company manage to capture it for a trading card game? Surprisingly, the answer is better than one would think!
The ‘flavor’ of card games
An esoteric but important detail of trading card games is that the cards represent characters, locations, and more. This creates an atmosphere that separates TCGs from games using playing cards, which primarily provide information, even if they have theming. These aesthetics are how Magic the Gathering creates a sense of wizards dueling or Pokémon TCG recreates the battles of the video games. Generally, this aspect of design is referred to as “flavor.” Like a delicious meal, flavor is an important enhancer.
The One Piece Card Game does not have this flavor front and center. Card frames are very simplistic. They use white borders across all colors and the fonts are quite generic care for the back of the card. Plenty of cards also use character stills from the anime for their art – often to push players to chase alternate art versions. These weaknesses in flavor do have the upside of legibility. OPCG cards are pretty easy to read. This is good, because reading the cards is really where the hints of flavor begin to waft through.
One Piece Card Game is rich with flavorful mechanics
In all of its mechanical nuances, the OPCG delves deep into the world of the series. The exploration begins at the resources the game uses. In order to play cards, One Piece Card Game uses special cards called “Don!!” Don cards all do the exact same thing (think basic lands in Magic) and the default art is the characters of the don sound effect used in the manga. It’s a fun callback to Oda’s use of the effect throughout the manga. And, for those caught up, possibly more.
Don is but the gateway, though. What players use those cards on are even more flavorful. Every card has an amount of Don cards needed to be played. Surprisingly, this single factor is one of the game’s deepest applications of love. Play costs are something card games use to balance gameplay, but OPCG also uses it to imply willpower. It is subtle enough at first, almost as if the designers want players to feel brilliant when it clicks.
Seeing for myself
For me, it was while playing one of the Luffy themed starter decks. The deck walks players through reducing the costs of the opponents cards – which at first seems strange because these cards have already been played. Then, the top card of the deck comes up: none other than Red-Haired Sharks, with an effect that removes any cards at or below a certain cost. The card is using Conqueror’s Haki to overpower others!
Haki isn’t the only application of just this one element. A deck centered around Thriller Bark’s Perona can also leverage this mechanic. Instead of haki, her card’s ability to either weaken or disable another card reflects her ghostly Devil Fruit. To explore more, I built a deck around the spooky girl to play at local events. What I found is a diverse range of play styles, all enabled by the game’s focus on flavor.
Stories and characters on the tabletop
There are decks built around Luffy’s relationship to his adoptive brothers, using child versions of the brothers. I got my teeth kicked in by a Kaido deck that burns away Don cards to unleash potent attacks. Charlotte Katakuri demonstrates his mastery of advanced observation haki by looking at hidden cards and even swapping them out. His mother, Big Mom herself, hits opponents with her potent “Life or Death” question. Each of these examples play very differently despite a pretty straight forward rules set. Taking care to accurately portray characters from such a deep well of powers creates a healthy pool of creative designs.
This design philosophy also addresses other potential issues. Unsurprisingly, there’s quite a few Monkey D. Luffy cards. OPCG avoids becoming “Oops all Luffys” by representing his various experiences. A Luffy card depicting his time on Wano will do completely different things than a card showcasing Nightmare Luffy from Thriller Bark. A secondary effect of this allows Lutty to often be a supporting player for other decks. Using the language of card games also gives the designers ways to avoid outright spoilers. Building a deck around Dr. Vegapunk does mean you would include characters from the recent Egghead Island arc, but while caught up fans will pick up exactly why these cards work together, the text doesn’t give everything away. For hardcore card gamers, this could be the gateway into reading or watching One Piece without robbing them of its surprises.
Using flavor to draw new players
Additionally, One Piece CG‘s starter decks are incredibly inviting because of the flavor. Fan favorites like Zoro, Kid, Yamato, Film Red‘s Uta, and get the spotlight. Those decks include cards that reference their stories and relationships. Some even recreate entire story moments. The recent 3D2Y starter deck takes a player through the Straw Hats’ time skip training by powering up the crew, in turn powering up the Luffy at its center. In my opinion, they remind me of the classic Yu-Gi-Oh! starter decks that were meant to reflect character decks. However, the OPCG decks are actually decent at teaching the game, too!
Flavor is not the most important factor in a card game’s quality. Balance, design, and being fun to play are all ultimately more important. OPCG has had some occasional issues with flavor pushing a card too far. Recently, Bandai had to ban a Trafalgar Law card for being overpowering. In reality, the card reflected Lan’s potent abilities so well it was just as busted as it is in the series. That said, the game’s ban list is pretty small and has even been able to unban cards too. This is a sign of general successful design!
One Piece‘s world is so rich it begs for exploration. Of all the games that have tried to, this card game might be the most successful. By choosing to learn a bit more into flavor than other games, the One Piece Card Game really stands out. There’s still plenty to explore for both players and the designers. Here’s hoping that the horizon continues to lead to an impressive game.
One Piece Card Game is available at local game stores and major retailers. New players can try a demo via iOS or Android.
Featured images ©Eiichiro Oda/Shueisha ©Eiichiro Oda/Shueisha, Toei Animation, Bandai Namco
Travis Hymas is a freelance writer and self appointed Pokémon historian out of Salt Lake City, Utah. Known to be regularly obessive over pop culture topics, gaming discourse, and trading card games, he is a published critic featured on sites such as Uppercut and The Young Folks.
