How to Play the One Piece Card Game: A Beginner's Rules Guide

The One Piece TCG brings all of the bombastic swashbuckling chaos of the beloved Shonen Pirate anime from the screen straight to the tabletop. If you’ve ever wanted to assemble your own pirate crew, or you’re just a massive fan of Luffy and all of the other Straw Hats, then you’ll definitely want to give it a chance. This beginner’s rules guide will outline how to play the game and get you ready to start your own adventures across the Grand Line.

Setup

In order to play the One Piece TCG, each player needs the following components.

• 1 Leader card
• A deck made up of 50 cards that are the same colour (or set of colours) as their leader card.
• A DON!! Deck containing 10 DON!! Cards.

Once you’ve got these, you can get set up for the game by undertaking the following steps…

1.     Place your leader card into the leader area.

2.     Shuffle your 50 card main deck and place it into the ‘deck’ area.

3.     Place your DON!! Deck into the DON!! Deck area.

4.     Randomly determine which player will go first.

5.     Draw 5 cards from the top of your deck.

6.     Any player who doesn’t like their hand can shuffle it back into their deck and draw a new set of 5 cards.

7.     Place cards equal to the life value printed on your leader card facedown in the life zone.

Once you’ve completed these steps, you’re ready to begin.

The Phases of a Turn

Every turn in the One Piece TCG is separated into 5 phases.

The Refresh Phase

1.     Return all attached DON!! Cards on your field to the cost area (we’ll talk about what this means during the ‘main phase’ section of the guide).

2.     Return all of your rested cards to an active state.

While the refresh phase isn’t skipped on the first turn of the game, there won’t be any rested cards to make active, or any DON!! Cards to return.

The Draw Phase – Draw the top card from your deck. This phase is skipped by the first player on the very first turn of the game.

The DON!! Phase – Transfer 2 cards from the DON!! Deck to the cost area, flip them so that they are face up. On the first turn of the game, only one DON!! card is transferred this way.

The Main Phase – The most important part of a turn where you’ll be playing cards and attacking. Refer to the main phase section below for information on how this operates.

The End Phase – The turn ends andplay passes over to the opponent, who starts their refresh phase.

The Main Phase

During the main phase, there are four possible actions that a player can undertake. You can perform these actions in any order, and more than once if you are able to.

1.Rest a number of DON!! cards (turn them sideways) equal to the cost of a card from your hand in order to bring that card into play. Characters go into the character area. Stage cards go into the stage area. Event cards perform their effects, and then go into the trash.

2. Attach DON!! Cards to your character cards, or to your leader. You do this by taking active DON!! Cards from your cost area and stacking them up underneath the character or leader that you want to attach them to. A character or leader gains 1000 power for every DON!! card attached to them.

3. Activate effects. Many characters possess a variety of effects that can be activated during the main phase. Some of these require DON!! cards to be attached to them, or for you to return Don!! cards from the cost area to the DON!! deck.

4. Attack your opponent’s characters or their leader. Let’s break down how that works…                                                    

Attacking and Combat

When you attack, rotate the character or leader that you are using to attack sideways. This is called resting them, and it transitions them from an active state into a rested state.

As you attack, you need to declare a target. That target can be either your opponent’s leader or one of their rested characters.

Your opponent then has a chance to intercept the attack. If any of their character have the ‘blocker’ ability, then they can rest them in order to make the blocker the new target of your attack.

Your opponent also has the opportunity to send cards from their hand with ‘counter’ effects to the graveyard in order to increase the power of the card that you are attacking.

After this, if your attacking card has equal to or greater power than the opponent’s card, then you win the fight. If you’re attacking one of their characters, that character goes into the trash. If you successfully attacking their leader then they tale one damage, and add one of their life cards to their hand. If any player’s leader is defeated in combat, and they have no life cards remaining, then they lose the game.

Characters and leaders cannot attack on the first turn that they are played, unless they have the ‘rush’ effect. Speaking of effects…

Important Effects

Cards in the One Piece TCG have a variety of effects that influence gameplay. Here are some of the most prominent effects…

Rush: Cards with rush can attack on the turn that they are played. Unlike other cards, which need to wait a turn.

Blocker: Characters with blocker can be rested when an opponent attacks, in order to switch the target of that attack to the character with blocker.

Trigger: When a card with trigger is added from the life cards to its controller’s hand, it activates an effect.

Banish: When a character with banish damages the opponent’s leader the life card gets trashed without going to the hand, and no trigger effects can be activated.

Double Attack: When a character with Double Attack damages the opponent’s leader, they take two damage rather than one, gaining two of their remaining life cards.

On Play: These effects activate as soon as the card is played from the hand.

Activate: Main: These effects can be activated during the main phase.

Your turn: These effects can be activated during your turn.

End of your turn: These effects activate during the end phase of your turn.

Counter: These effects can be activated during combat when the opponent is attacking you.

Once per turn: These effects can be activated once per turn.

DON!! xN: An effect that can be activated when N or more don cards are attached to a character. So an effect reading DON!! x1: would require 1 or more DON!! cards to be attached to a character.

(N): An effect that can be activated by resting N DON!! cards in the cost area. For example, a (2) effect could be activated by resting 2 DON!! cards.

DON!! -N: An effect that can be activated by returning N DON!! cards to the DON!! deck. These DON!! cards can be in the cost area, or attached to characters. It doesn’t matter whether the DON!! cards are active or resting. For example, an effect that reads DON!! -1 would activate by returning 1 DON!! card from play to the DON!! deck.

Card Types

Frequently asked questions

Can you attack an opponent's active, upright Character card?

You can attack your opponent's Leader card while they are active, but you aren’t able to attack character cards that they control while they are active. You can only attack character cards that are in the rested (horizontal) position.

What happens if a player runs completely out of cards in their main deck?

Like in many TCGs, In One Piece a player loses the game if their deck runs out of cards. So if your opponent draws their final card, they lose the game. This applies immediately. A player loses the moment their deck empties, not when they would go to draw a card from an empty deck.

Can you mix different card colours inside the same deck?

Every card in your 50 card main deck must be one of the colours in the colour identity of your leader cards. Multicoloured leaders allow more cards to be played, but they typically have less maximum life than monocoloured leaders.

Getting One Piece of the action

The easiest way to leap into the One Piece TCG is to grab a starter deck. It’ll give you a complete ready to play set of cards right out of the box, including a leader, a 50 card main deck, and 10 DON!! cards. You can assemble a deck of your very own by cracking open booster packs, or ordering singles, if you’re looking for an alternative way to kickstart your pirate adventure.

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