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A
Sam, This is the One piece podcast, episode 919 for the week of Monday, May 18, 2026. My name is Zach. We're going to do something a little different this week, so to join us for this, first, I'll go in the reverse order. I normally would. We have TikTok sensation golfer Gare. How's it going, Golfer?
B
Howdy. How you guys doing?
A
Good. How are you?
B
Another great day.
A
Yeah, we're going to talk about some card gaming. We also have. They do a lot of the Sonic covers. They are an artist. This is why I asked before if there's anything specific.
C
You're all good.
A
We have Chris Dobbins with us again. How's it going, Chris?
C
Howdy. Howdy. Doing all right.
B
How about you?
A
Good. Another great day. Apparently. That's why I heard from someone. We also have, I guess my MC for the evening. Yeah, mc, not like main character, but like with the em. Whatever. We have Sam Leach at our anime recap host. How's it going, Sam?
D
Some might say we're all the MCs of our own lives.
A
That.
B
What brilliant.
A
Everything Sam says needs to be on, like a postcard or something.
D
But when you're the emcee of somebody else's life, that's what it's like. You're. It's like you have two lives.
A
Sam, what are we doing today?
D
I'm going to be very honest, Zach. I'm still not entirely sure.
A
Me neither. So this is perfect. This is. This is good podcasting.
D
We are. We are structuring our podcast live in the moment.
A
So to be fair, I, like, I. I am the, like the. The foreign entity in this equation, because I don't really have experience with our topic today, but why don't I start with Golfer, since I do know that you have a passion for it and I. I want to have a passion for it, so I'm going to learn today. But Golfer, we're talking about the card game, the One Piece card game game today. You want to tell us your experience with that in your life?
B
Sure. I've always loved the show Pawn Stars, so buying and reselling stuff is a passion of mine. And not necessarily like scalping and just trying to get the top dollar, but just being around a bunch of people that enjoy the same hobby. And obviously it started with Pokemon. I've been into Pokemon my entire life, buying and selling and then playing the actual game. And then when One Piece had a card game starting up, I bought the starter decks as soon as they came out. You couldn't find a single loose pack or booster box to buy as soon as the game dropped back. With OP01 is what they'll call it. Romance dawn all the way through. I took a trip to Japan. I walked around card stores like I was a kid in a candy store. I bought the op oh.5 Luffy the gear 5 Luffy. It was a really big deal when it came out. The manga card started exploding in price. Ever since it came out I've gone to and from card shows buying and reselling One Piece cards. I've graded them. I've got a pretty healthy collection and I absolutely love the collecting side of it. I've on and off played the game. But it takes. I think this game takes quite a bit of investment. It takes a little bit more than Pokemon. Pokemon's pretty easy to come in and out of the One Piece TCG has a bit of a different rule set and so in and out of playing the game. But it's really fun to have something that you can collect like Pokemon. Like that was such a unique thing about one Pokemon's TCG is that it related so much to collect them all. Gotta catch them all with One Piece. It's just I can buy every Chopper card and have all of these Chopper cards on my shelf. And then when I want to play the tcg we have a phenomenal sim that we can jump in and out of. That is not sanctioned as far as I understand. It's. It's a fan made thing. But it's an absolute wonder of a game and it just goes to like serve the purpose of like how much One Piece has grown. A lot of. A lot of different TCGs never get anywhere. So many different things. Have had a million different kinds of TCGs. I think Dragon Ball has probably had five or six of them over the years. To have one that actually stays around has value on the collector side and people love playing it. I think it's just such a testament to how much of a joy one Piece is and how much people will put into it.
A
I'll. I'll say just like as the layman today it like astounds me more than even like the popularity of One Piece generally. I think just the ubiquity of the card game in the States in particular has consistently surprise me. Chris, what about you?
C
I'm still an extreme newcomer to card games. For most of my life I didn't even have the patience to play Uno
B
I that draw four.
C
My unfortunate circumstance is I work at Gamestop and my boss at my My previous store is extremely into the gathering, so they started teaching me magic when the Final Fantasy set came out. And then our store started getting in one piece bit by bit, and I decided to start buying. All we were getting were booster packs. We weren't getting any actual decks or anything, so I started grabbing booster packs. And then I found online the starter decks for Gear five, Luffy and Yamato. So I bought both of those. I've played maybe two games because I don't know anybody else who has the card game or wants to play the card game personally. But the two games I played I had a lot of fun with and I've just been collecting the cards since. I have a binder that's just like. It almost feels like an art gallery. Just flipping through and seeing so many different artists and their takes on the characters.
A
Yeah, the art is consistently fantastic. That. That is like the one thing that I have definitely absorbed because I have to, because I'm. I do this podcast. Sam, what about you?
D
Oh boy. Where to begin. So like it. I'm. I'm probably like in a weird middle ground where like I've never been like super ingrained in.
C
In the.
D
Or like I have it like kind of a tertiary relationship with kind of the competitive scenes of like. Of like Yu Gi.
B
Oh.
D
And stuff like that. And I think like it's. I'm less of a. I'm less somebody who's like invested in the competitive scene as much as I am like hyper invested in the weird technical realities of card games. Like, I love like turn based RPGs and I love card games because I kind of love the idea of distilling like grand abstract ideas like the battles and the powers and stuff like that and trying to represent them into like rules. Like there's something very fascinating about that and I have like endless imagination for it. I remember one of my project, one of like my Covid projects early in Covid was I was basically like making my own trial version of a one piece card game.
A
Yeah.
D
And like, like I. There was a. Yeah, there, there's some webs like I was like play testing with. With my friend and whatnot. And like that it's really fun to see like kind of where like some of some of the ideas I was having had some overlap with what the final card game ended up having. Maybe I can dig some of those up because I. I was. Did put a lot of effort into it. Even though it was basically just two decks.
A
It was Covid. Yeah. No, I mean that makes sense.
D
Yeah. And another, another Covid project I had gotten into was like getting really into. I had a stint for a while where I was like figuring out how to like actually code like custom Yu Gi oh cards in some of the like online fan made sims that they had. Like, I was like just like the, the being compelled of like okay, how can I represent one piece characters or represent like Jujutsu Kaisen characters in. In Yu Gi oh rules and then also like have them as like coded cards that actually function correctly in the, in the thing. So that, that's like, like I just like have this mind for, for you know, trying to make, make those kinds of things happen. So with the one piece card game I was excited that was coming out. The early stages of it were not super thrilling just because like the, the art's kind of underwhelming or the design's kind of underwhelming, but like it's obviously the early days and it picked up steam from there. And then like getting into the online sim and then discovering that you can upload like custom images to the sim was like a huge revelation to me. So like you, you know, like the thing like alternate arts is already a big part of the game. And so like choosing which arts you want to have representing each card is you know, part of the fun of customizing it. But then that goes to another level where it's like oh, you can design your entirely own original custom designs for every single card. And so that's what I've been doing the past few years. I've got like 1300 custom cards that I've personally made because you can get. There was like some, some discord groups where people had got a. Made the proper nice like Photoshop templates that you can make your own stuff. And so like I more than I've even played the game, I've just stared at the, you know, the, you know, the blue onplay box is like seared into my retina like an OLED burnt in OLED screen. So just like, like thinking about just like the realities of the card games, thinking about the weird meta reality of card games. Those sort of rules that govern the rules like the minutia there is just like stuff I am obsessed with I think about all the time.
A
But before we started, Golfer and I were talking a little bit and I have said on the show I'm a pretty terrible nerd. Maybe the better way to put it is like a nar focus nerd. But I'm like as I'm listening it's kind of the same for all media. With me in that it's really hard for me to get my foot in the door to something, but once my foot is in the door, I am so in it, like, as. As if I like it. I'm in it to like the nth degree where I'm doing a podcast about for 17 years. Like, that just has to be how that ends up. So for me, like, board games, I think are a much bigger and a better probably example of like. I agree with you, Sam. The I. I've always been interested in creating like my own games into like that kind of thing always piques my interest. That's why I like trivia and stuff. But so. So today I think I figured out how to open the program. So step one, you're gonna. You're gonna teach me how to play, I think because I'm apprehensive as how
D
this is gonna come across on through audio.
A
Yes, I am also apprehensive, but I really.
D
I really hope Delaney just chops it up to the. The most. I want Delaney to make it sound insane. Like. Like explaining like the Cones of Dundershire or whatever it was called in Parks and Rec.
A
So yeah, yeah. Dunshire. The Cones of Dunshire. Of course.
B
I can do my best sportscaster impersonation if we need to as well, to fill the dead air. I can. I can do my best Ernie Johnson. I was wondering too. Do we need to send you some.
D
I have no. I have a deck list for him.
B
Okay. So he's already got some in there. Okay.
A
The rules are the part that's most difficult for me to like. Once I get it and grasp it, I'm usually into it. So this is kind of my accountability. Like you're gonna make me do this right now.
D
If you can highlight everything I just sent you in the text, copy it, and then hit the import deck.
A
The problem here is Zoom. No, does it. Let me copy on Zoom. That's the other problem because we didn't
B
send a yellow deck, did we, Sam? We didn't send.
D
I sure did.
A
I don't know what that.
D
I was. I was play testing against myself to see how this work. I'm really quite stunned at how fucked up yellow is right now.
B
So import deck from Clipboard Zach to give you an idea, each of the colors.
A
Oh, here we go now.
D
And now. Now give it a name and save it before anything else so you can just like, like.
A
Yeah, Sam did this to me.
D
Okay.
A
Okay.
B
Every color has a different style of gameplay. So yellow is a Lot of effect cards. And you'll see the word trigger on there. That's if you draw it from your prize cards. That will. Or is it prize cards? Life cards? Yeah, they're life cards in life cards in one piece.
D
You can use that effect price cards in Pokemon.
C
I feel like we need to start with the basics.
A
Yeah.
D
We're going to get into a game
B
first before we get into the meta.
A
Before we even do that, we should say this is my first card game ever of any card game. Uno I've done and games with regular. Oh, I played Palatro I liked a lot. So that's. That's a game watch.
D
Is good.
A
Is fantastic. I would become on play right now that I mentioned it. It's not that addictive. I don't know what you're talking about.
D
All right, I'm going to let you go first.
A
So we're just going to see.
D
Yeah. So you get to choose if you. You can go first or second.
A
Oh, I'm gonna go second.
B
Oh, no. I mean, that's the better move. You always want to go second.
D
I think with this deck, it was first was probably better.
A
Does it matter that you could see what I have or you're just not even looking at my.
D
I don't care.
A
Okay. Because I'm about to kick your ass.
D
Okay.
A
I don't know what I'm doing.
D
So. Okay, what do we have?
A
Is this entertaining at all?
D
So I. Oh, I also gave. I also wrote like a little how to play guide in that same Google play.
A
I did see that. And I. I think I mentioned before I started that my brain powers. You are.
D
You are free to. To rely on that. I. I think it.
C
I have the how to play that they include in the decks.
B
Exactly. What we'll want to do is we're going to mulligan most of your hand. So in this game, you have. You have energy essentially, which is your dawn cards. Because you're going second. You're going to get two dawn cards. You have four cards in your hand that are. Four cost. You're not going to be able to play anything except for your event card where you see Luffy, we've gotten stronger, I think is the one. So you're going to want to mulligan your hand. You're gonna have no options on your first turn if you keep this hand. Now, you don't necessarily need to play anything your first turn, but you want at least some type of option in your deck. You're gonna have different character cards and you want to Be able to at least put somebody out there or have a plan of what you're gonna do in your next turn. Now, we could keep this hand because the 4 cost will come up the next time. You'll have 4, and you'll be fine. But let's go ahead and hit Mulligan for this hand. I. Yeah, I would recommend.
D
You were looking for Lilith in your.
A
For in your opening is Lilith. This is Sam. This is Sam's deck. I. Okay. I need to think like Sam. Yeah, yeah.
D
I wrote. I wrote.
A
If I wrote I have two kikus, I have to. Okay, whatever. I guess I'll mulligan my two kikus.
B
Go ahead and mulligan.
A
Okay.
B
All right. That's a way worse hand. Okay.
A
Why am I listening? I had two kikus and I lost their. So cover Akuma.
B
The one cost. So this would be a character that you can play firsthand but doesn't have any effect. So hover over the card that he just put out.
A
Did you make these all, Sam, or are these, like, actual cards?
D
It's a combination of completely original designs and like. Like, remastered designs where, like, I found the source images and, like, cut them up manually. So base basically everything except for the ones that still say sample on them. I, like, put in, like, some considerable amount of work.
A
Yeah. What about this Jim Bay? Nothing. Okay, so what am I doing?
D
Yeah.
B
Now that Jim Bay looks better than any Jim Bay card out right now.
A
Whoa.
B
Hover the Jim Bay. Jim Bay has been sorely overlooked in the Straw Hat crew.
A
This is why his ranking in the WT100 midterms was so low.
B
Like, he's in 30.
C
He's 30?
A
Yeah, he's the lowest. Straw Hat. He's too low. Jinbe's great. People forget how great Jinbe is, especially in his, like, Yakuza look from, like, the flashback. Anyway. Yeah, go ahead. Sorry.
B
So hover over the card that he put out. So the card on his character area, this one down to the right. So see where it says character area on your side? It's the so he's got Saint. So you're just looking to see, is this a blocker card? Does this card have any attack? This is a Zero Attack card. This is purely for the effect. So you're seeing on play. Look at three cards from the top of your deck, reveal up to one Celestial Dragon. This is a. A draw engine. This is so that Sam could take something from the top of his deck, put it in his hand, and then trash the rest of them. Now he's Playing Black. Black usually has the ability to pull from their graveyard. So if you hover over the graveyard at the top left, you'll see one of the best arts in the entire game. That is Gege from JJK drew that art. Oda put him into a different hospital when he got sick during the end of jjk because the hospital he was in wasn't doing a good job. And his payback to Oda was to draw for the one piece tcg. That is a draw.
D
Incredible. Like five Elder Deserts.
A
Yeah, that looks great.
B
Incredible. I have all of them, but not in the most expensive version. I have the cheaper version of all of these, but they look absolutely incredible. But what you'll want to keep in mind is he's going to shovel cards into his graveyard because that allows him to pull them back into his hand or put them into his character area is usually what black cards will do. He also has a leader of Emu is what you'll want to hover over next.
A
Yeah. Look how adorable Emu looks with his little butterflies.
B
I'm sad that Bunny isn't on this one, because Bunny made one called Bunny on too. We'll have her on, but she made Emu uwu. The card's adorable. It's absolutely fantastic. Has a very long leader ability, but
A
I mean, that makes sense.
B
Pardon me. So we'll go over that when it's more relevant. Sam will walk us through that while he's using that ability. But that's what Emu does. But you'll notice Emu has attack power. Your leaders are essentially a permanent character with a permanent ability that you can tap into when the circumstance shows up. And what is usually stage is if you look at what Sam has there, the stage can alter your cards and how you use them. It can alter event cards, or it can alter character cards.
D
Locations are stages, and then they just kind of stay on the board and do whatever the card says they do. And Imu, long story short, Emu has a unique effect that he can start with a stage on the. On the field before the game even starts. So I basically just cheated that out. And IMU's other effect is that once per turn, I can trash one of my Celestial Dragons to just get a free draw, which I'm going to do.
A
I do want to say. So is that your Saint Shalia card? Or does that like. That must be an actual drawing someone did for the.
D
I mean, that is the art that is for the. This is a custom full art that I've made. The original art is like boxed in with a white border.
A
I was just gonna say, the one thing about the card game is that these characters who don't deserve time or effort put into them get these beautiful cards. Like, this character sucks, but nice art. Whoever did that. Okay, so what's happening?
B
You're starting your turn. So you're going to hit Draw card. So let's go ahead and hover over that Robin.
A
So Sam, what?
B
You'll see more.
D
Chand is the artist of this. Shall we? So I do keep the artists credited on the side.
A
Yeah, we should say that, actually. Although no one's looking. Well, I don't know if we have video of this or not, but if
B
we do, down in the bottom right, go ahead and hit Draw Dawn. So these are your energy cards. You're going to get two dawn here. Now, if you look in your hand, you only have one card you could actually use. The top left number is how many dawn it costs in the cards in your hand to play them onto the character area or play them onto the stage or play them into an event. So go ahead and hover over the card with one cost. The guy in the middle, whatever his name is, with the blue hat.
A
Yeah, you don't know. Kumasi.
B
Kumasi, Kumasi. So we can deploy him. The other thing you can do with dawn cards is apply them to characters that you already have on the field, including your leader card. So we can take a Dawn card and apply it to Luffy and make it so that he has 7,000 attack. You'll see, at the bottom of the dawn card, it says your turn plus 1000. So that would give Luffy plus 1000. So you would add those two and it would be plus he would have 7000 attack. And that's when you would attack Sam's emu directly. And then you would take one of his life cards there on the right. Now he draws that Life card. It's kind of like a prize card in Pokemon where you. This one, you get your life card. That's his dawn deck.
A
Oh, okay. So.
B
So see where it says four right there? That's how much life he has left. So you need to get rid of those four cards and then attack him directly with where he cannot counter it. We'll get to counters when we actually get to counters. But hover over Luffy one more time. I don't remember. If you have two or less life cards, draw one card and trash one card from your hand. Okay, so that's just your draw towards the end. Yeah. So what you could do right now is either put Kumasi on the field or you can attach two to Luffy and then send an attack towards Emu. If two.
D
Two things he. Neither of our first turns can be used for attacking, so he would not be able to attack. And I also think that Kumasi is a bad deployment in general.
B
Correct.
D
He's more of a counter in your hand.
A
So you're playing. Wait, he just told me I can't do either of the two things then.
D
Correct.
A
Right.
B
So I was trying to wait till we got to counter, but I can't.
D
Well, you can do one of them. I would recommend not doing it though.
B
So you're gonna see something on the left side of the card. It says counter plus 2000. If someone attacks you, you can add that card as a defense card, but you're sacrificing it. And then you can add to your total attack power. And so once we get to that point, we'll get to that. But also, you shouldn't. Also, I'm not sure if you have ways to send cards back into your life. Because if it's in your life. Okay, so Kumasi not a good card to put out. You're playing yellow. Your triggers are very important and it looks like play up to one Thriller Bark Pirate type character card with a cost of four or less from your trash rested. So if you draw Cooma Sea from your life cards, you can pull a card from your trash deck and put them straight onto the character area. No dawn required with a 4 or less cost.
D
Yeah. So one of the tips is that your Thriller Bark pirates are great fodder for counters and throwing them in the trash because they will revive each other easily.
A
That makes sense. So the reason I wouldn't be using him now is because there's no one in my trash. Is that part of the reason?
D
Well, he's a weak card and his utility is mostly defensive and for his trigger.
B
So you would just end your turn here. We are going to run into this timer real quick.
D
I guess there's a timer.
A
Why did you put a timer there, Sam? Just because people don't want us explaining it.
B
It's default.
A
That's fine.
D
It can probably be turned on.
A
Can I ask what's the goal like? Is it just most points or is it just get rid of all your
D
opponents life to zero and then hit them for damage while their life is zero?
A
So the life is the.
D
Yeah. When you successfully attack my leader and and you overpower my leader, then I. I take Damage by taking a lifeguard.
A
So once you have zero life cards,
D
that's when specifically you have to be.
C
Then you get attacked.
D
Yeah. So you have to take a. You have to take a hit of damage while you have zero.
A
Okay.
D
So it's your return and your yellow. Luffy is really strong because he starts with six Life, which is like, kind of absurd.
A
He's Luffy, the main character. He's the mc.
D
This is like. Yeah, because this yellow deck is going to heal like a. Like a motherfucker.
A
So what are the differences between the different colors of deck? Golfer could explain. Well, Sam, I don't want to distract you.
B
Sam, go ahead and take your turn. There's so like I said, black uses a lot of milling. So you're going to send stuff to your graveyard. You're going to pull it back into the field of play. You're going to sacrifice things going back and forth. Sam, correct me if I'm wrong. Red is beat stick where you are just trying to.
D
Red is like fast and strong, and it cares about the power stat in a lot of its effects. Green is like resting. Yeah, resting. And green is like resting and unresting. Blue is usually like bouncing to hand or deck.
A
Yep.
D
Yellow is like life and triggers. Black is. Is trash and cost manipulation. Purple is like you're sending dawn cards back and ramping dawn cards out of your dawn deck faster.
B
Purple is a lot of give to get. So you're playing this like, delicate balance of like how much energy you have with your dawn cards versus what you can bring out right now. So you can speed up really fast or you can hold off and then try and pull back. So Sam is attacking you with EMU for 7,000. Now what you can do is do something like sacrifice Robin or Kumasi for 2000. Counter. Sam, correct me if I'm wrong. You have to match the number or do you exceed the number?
A
If.
D
If I match the number, I win. So the attacker wins if the numbers match. So you have to. You have to buff yourself to at least 8,000.
B
So this is actually. You're actually in a bit of a conundrum because you would be going way above what you need to counter. So Jimmy gives you 2000. Robin gives you 2000. Kuma gives you Kumasi gives you 2000. So you'd end up hitting 9000 if you hit the counter number that you need to hit. Go ahead, Sam.
A
Wait.
D
In many cases, taking damage is. Is. Is a perfectly sound strategy because you. You do want to make your hand bigger by drawing Life. And you. You start with so much life that you can afford to take.
A
So how do you draw life?
D
So you. If. If you just like, let the attack go through rather than countering.
A
Yeah, if you.
D
If you just say no counters.
B
So you would hit no blocker on the bottom right. And you're playing yellow. So more than likely you're going to have a trigger card. And then you would hit Resolve Attack. So you hover over the card that we're looking at. You may trash one card from your hand instantly. Play this card. I would go ahead and use this trigger effect. Wait, hang on. It also has an on play. So we need to trash one card from your hand so we can probably get rid of the other eight cost Gecko Moria.
A
I was gonna say, how many Morias do we really need? Oh, and so then I get four new cards.
B
Well, hold on. Look at the Sanji real quick so I can check the effects.
A
Where did Sanji go? Oh, there he is right there.
B
So look at the top four cards of your deck. Reveal up to one Straw Hat Crew. Add it to your hand and place it right over. So any of those four cards. I think the only Straw Hat Crew there is gonna be Nico Robin on the far right. It gives you all four cards, but you can actually only select that Robin in this point. Unless Bonnie counts. No way. She's Straw Hat.
D
No, if it doesn't say Straw Hat Crew.
B
So hover over the Robin above your hand on the left.
A
Oh, this one.
B
So see how it says Straw Hat Creep at the very bottom?
A
Yes.
B
Look at four cards. It's like kind of like your card's typing outside of the color.
A
But that's such an adorable one.
B
So you just click it and you get it. You're. You're good.
A
Yeah, that's the rest. Oh, I. Oh, I keep it. Oh, okay. Sorry. I thought that's to trash. Sorry.
D
The other three are going to the bottom of your deck.
A
This is the Robin from the color spread for if people are listening from. What is it? That's the one where they're like, Nami's hitchhiking.
D
Oh, yeah. The five cost Nami and the seven cost Robin are two of my favorite of my customs. It's from the Hitchhiker color spread.
A
Are those completely yours?
D
Yeah. I took that color spread and I made the custom cards.
C
I wish they were real cards. It's so good.
A
Sam should be in the business. If you're listening. Okay, Sam. What do I do? Return. Do I do now Return cards to the deck. Yep.
B
Yeah.
A
You. You.
D
It matters very little.
A
You.
D
You are allowed to order them on the bottom of your deck, but it. It's going to matter very, very little.
A
So, like, I can move these guys around?
D
Yeah, like. Like, if you expected to draw through your deck so much that you'd be seeing the ones at the bottom again, then. Then maybe you'd care about the order, but.
A
All right, I'm slightly getting it. I'm slightly getting it. Okay.
D
That.
A
I mean, I am. I am playing with your cards and your roles without knowing what I'm doing, so I know I'm losing, but you're doing good because.
D
So that trigger, that Sanji Trigger just gave you a free body. Basically, you now have another, like, 5,000 attacker on your.
A
So do I draw here? Is that.
D
Yes.
A
Okay. And then draw Dawn. Did I just get the same card again? Yeah. Okay, so now I have 4,000 dawn. Is that what it is that you have four?
D
You can. You can play up to a cost four character, or you can give your Dawn. Uh.
A
Oh, no. Was I not supposed to end this, Zachary? What? Was I not supposed to end it? Was I supposed to have done something?
D
You're supposed to have played your turn.
A
Yeah, it said it only gave me one option. What am I supposed to. Okay,
D
As a gentleman, I will pass too.
A
Okay, now what am I doing? Draw my drawing again.
C
Yeah, you draw every turn and then
A
draw the dawn to Don. Okay, so that's the Bonnie from before and the Robin from. So now I'm just deciding what to do here, whether to attack you or whether to. Whatever options.
D
Options you can play cards you can buff up your guys with by giving them Dawn. So basically, do you want to spend your dawn playing characters or do you want to spend your dawn making your current.
A
Oh, so the dawn is like the amount of plays I could do?
B
Yes, the amount of energy you have, essentially.
A
Oh.
D
And then the amount of dawn you have to spend per turn is going up by two.
B
Each turn you have two robins in your hand. So those robins. Have we explained counter cards yet?
A
Or blocker? Yeah, you talked about it a little bit.
C
Counters. Yeah, but not blocker, I think so
B
Blockers can block a character from attacking. So if your card is rested or if it's your leader, no matter what, Sam can attack it. If you have a blocker, you can redirect that attack to the blocker. So you usually want to have a blocker on the field. You don't necessarily have to use it, but you want it there as an option to Let Sam know at any point in time if he thinks he has some type of wincon or can get rid of a really important card. You can always turn and stop it if a character card is defeated. He doesn't. You don't. You don't give up a lifeguard. It just gets rid of the character card. So usually it's a good idea to get one of these out early and to have one on the field ready to go.
A
Okay. So should I deploy it then? Or her?
B
Is that how I would go ahead and deploy. Because you have two extra life. You have a couple of cards in your hand. But like that Jim Bay has no effect. And then the only other card that you could play is Kumasi. That isn't a Robin. And that gym is super important as a trigger card. So we want to try and get that into your life deck. If we have one of those abilities where we send cards to your life deck. Especially if it's face up. Sam. Are there any cards here that send it face up?
D
So the one that's gonna like give you the Gecko Moria is the only one in this deck that's gonna let you choose what life card you add to the top.
B
Okay.
D
So I would say that that Jinbe is for. You know. If it just happens to be in your life. Great. If it's in your hand then it's best as a counter.
A
Okay.
B
So we would go ahead and play the Robin. We'd hit the deploy there. We're just gonna leave it. When you summon a card it has summoning sickness so it can't attack immediately. What we'll do is hover over the Sanji for me real quick. There's no other effects. So what we can do is throw out the Sanji and the Luffy at the emu if we want to try and swing as quickly as possible.
A
Okay.
B
Granted. Because we have five minutes left. So we're gonna try and win this as fast as possible. So what we'll do is we'll swing with the Sanji and see how he returns. Does he have any counters in his hand? Or does he let it go through? So you hit attack on the bottom. Right?
A
Would I be able to use these? Or is that for the Dons? Or are those only you can.
B
But we want to assess what he's going to do first. Because we now have a blocker on field so we can block an attack if he sends it at either. He may have cards that don't have summoning sickness where he can attack immediately. But we want to test and see what he's willing to throw out of his hand. Granted, he's playing black so there's always a chance he can resummon them. But we're trying to win fast. So go ahead and hit the emu because I believe you have even Attack. So now he has to do something in response. Granted, he has five dawn ready to go, so it's probably gonna be pretty easy for him to stop that. So now we go ahead and apply the two Dawn. Because you have no event cards in your hand, apply that to Luffy by clicking on him. Now go ahead and hit the Click the Luffy and then attack the emu. Do I put Attack Attack and then click the emu?
A
Okay.
B
So now he's got 7,000. Let's see if he has any other events. Again, he has five cards in his hands. He's got to add up to a 8000 encounter.
A
I want to see that art from the other one. But whatever.
B
So now he's down to four cards in his hand. We have no other options. We're going to go ahead and hit Enter.
A
So what does it mean when a card is tilted on its side?
B
So that means it's rested. He can attack any rested card. He can always attack your leader. Unless you're gonna block with some kind of blocker. Or there's a card that has an effect that stops that. But he can always attack your leader. But now he can also attack your sanji.
A
No, not my Sanji. What? So now I'm kind of forgetting what I'm gonna ask. Oh wait. That's what I wanna see. The Mio's Guard. Yeah. That is a way too patriotic. Sam. That looks. I know you didn't draw it. That looks like a propaganda poster for St. Mio's Guard that you would have in like a totalitarian regime. Yes. Saint Mio's Guard fought the battle against a hundred of his. Yeah, whatever.
D
Get that.
A
Yeah.
D
I mean Kayakan Serena is the artist of that one who also does the. The Gecko Moria art that you're looking at.
A
We should. You should send me this art. So if people are not watching, which I assume they're not because I don't know if we're doing video or not. Even so, we could post those in the description or something. Because the art is all right.
B
So I mean summoned most people's favorite. He brought out St. Saturn. So let's see what Saint Saturn does.
A
Wow. That is play.
B
Look at five cards at the top of your deck. Yeah.
A
I guess.
D
Yep. Yeah. All the five other ones.
B
Yeah, you will. Generally, this effect happens across a ton of cards. Where you look at X amount of cards, you get one. Put the rest at the bottom of your deck. You can usually arrange them in the bottom of your deck. You'll notice that his deck is going to be shorter than yours. I imagine with all the cards he's played of that so far, some car or some decks are going to mill through their deck really, really quickly and then re. Add stuff back to it really fast. So how you order the cards that get put back into your deck that sometimes comes into play. It also has. If you have seven or more cards in your trash, this character cannot be removed from the field by your opponent's effects. So the only way you could get rid of St. Jay Garcia Saturn is by attacking him directly. Granted he has summoning sickness this turn. He's not going to be able to attack you.
A
I'm just looking on play.
B
So he's gonna attack your Sanji. You're gonna need to get 8,000 out. So we can definitely get rid of. What I would do is block this. So you still have an attacker available. So you would get rid of your Jimbe
D
or I. Are you. Are you past the screen where you. Has he. Has he moved past the blocker phase?
B
He is not. He is not.
D
So blocking with the Robin is an option. And like. So what you want to be thinking about is if you lose the Robin, you're losing one card. If you. If you had to throw a 2000 and a 1000 from your hand, you're losing two cards. And. And so, like, you know, the. The opportunity cost is.
A
Yeah.
D
What you want to be thinking about.
A
I think I. I think I understand. So I could do this. Would resolve the attack. I guess so. Because she's.
B
That's correct.
D
But you're sacrificing Robin to do that.
A
Yeah. I have two. I have three Robins.
B
But you do have to summon Robin. So you're gonna have 8 dawn next turn. You are going to have to spend half of your energy to send out the same card you just put out.
A
Oh.
B
So the question becomes what's more valuable while you're through the game? Your dawn or the cards in your hand. We're probably never going to play that Jimbe. That's why we would have countered with the Jim Bay and the Kumasi. Because more than likely, we never would have played those two unless we have a way. No, Sam's right. In a lot of different regards. Like, if we're. If we're at the point where we have 10 don every turn, it's a little bit easier to get your blockers back out there if they're a four cost blocker. But when we are ramping up our dawn, that usually takes a little bit longer. And granted, I'm not used to playing yellow, so there's a little bit of. It's okay to have your leader hit a few times because you're gonna get
D
trigger effect and especially like, like, did you guys say you had the seven cost Robin?
B
He does have a seven cost robin in there.
D
Yeah. What. Play that and watch what happens.
B
So go ahead and play the robin. Okay, so we deploy and then use card action on the bottom, right? Yep. So we can.
A
Oh, great.
B
We're using the trigger put up to one driller bark type character with a cost of four or less.
D
No, that's the cost of her effect was to send one card on top of your life and then you get to replace it with two from the top of your deck.
B
Oh, that's a good to go ahead and hit gain.
D
Yes. So now you're, you're, you're, you're. You're in life profit right now.
A
Right.
B
And then you also have a card with 8,000 to attack. Does Robin have an on attack effect?
D
No, she has an incredible on KO effect.
A
On KO do your opponent basically meaning I don't want.
B
So he never wants to have St. Jay Garcia Saturn rested. Because if you attack that Saturn, he now needs to get 4000 damage onto Saturn as long as like you haven't added any dawn. So he never wants to have character cards rested now against that Robin.
A
So what, what causes a card to rest?
B
Attack.
D
So the, yeah, the, the, the declaring an attack causes it causes it to rest. Also lots of effects will cause it to rest.
C
Green.
D
Green is a very like resting via effects kind of a color.
B
Okay, hover over that Lilith for me. Let me see. We have one dawn left. So on play, look at the four cards that reveal what with a trigger other than Lilith and add it to your hand that place it to the rest of the bottom of your deck in any order. So one way we can work this is we can go ahead and mill the top of your deck. Go ahead and play this real quick because we have 30 seconds left. Hit deploy. We're going to look at the top four cards of your deck. None of those worked out the way that I hope, but grab that Robin on the far left. Sorry, I'm kind of just trying to keep Us from hitting time.
A
Yeah.
B
I didn't realize there was the return cards to deck. We may just want to go ahead and scoop and re go.
D
Yeah.
B
Now that we're going to be able to. We can't speed chest this one. Okay so go ahead and just hit concede on the top right back to main menu. Oh no.
D
Oh, did you just connect?
B
I had him concede. Sam, if you want to set up a lobby where or does it keep you in the lobby if you're already in it?
D
There was. It gave me the option to rematch but I didn't get.
B
Well I didn't know that rematch would give a timer. That was my question was is it automatically going to place the timer on there? So Sam's gonna set that up. Okay, so go ahead and do the same thing we did last time. Multiplayer private. Oh, copyright.
D
Can't do it without the timer.
B
Right, right, right. No timer, no timer.
D
Let me. Let me take a look. Let me take a look.
B
Is it making any more sense now?
A
Yes. No, I like actually Balatro I feel like is the best through way for my brain to kind of get my. Get my brain around this. I really should capacity today but does. Yeah no, I think this is more making more sense. Chris. I want to. Well first I want to bring you into the conversation more because I feel bad but second, so I know you're at GameStop and I know there's always crazy shit happening with the card game just as like a. As your sai indicates. Tell us about your experience.
C
I have people coming in constantly asking if we have one piece cards. I tell them no because we very rarely get them in and we don't have pre orders open my experience like because obviously we also sell Pokemon and Yu Gi. Oh and any sport cards. People go fucking crazy for this shit. People go absolutely crazy for Pokemon and One Piece for example. The previous store that I worked in with that boss that I mentioned, it was in a mall. We got in about 47 booster packs for the. What was it? The Azure Sea release. That happened not too long ago. I kind of remember we got in 47 booster packs. Another store in the mall sent somebody in to buy them and resell them at their store for double the price. Wow, there's that. I get in a lot of people. Cause gamestop also does they send out cards for PSA grading. I get a lot of people bringing in one piece cards for PSA grading which I actually did myself. I do have one that I'm waiting to see if it'll be worth anything. Let me grab it real quick.
A
So sorry for the. No, while you're. No, that's asmr. That's why we're here.
B
Hang on. I'm pulling up Chris's screen. I'm going to help out with this. Put your hand behind it when you put it up. Yes.
C
Well, so I'm trying to get it without the reflection on the screen.
B
So it's the Dawn. It's the Koby Dawn.
C
Yes, it's a golden Koby Dawn. Some dawn cards have alternate art based on characters, and then some of those dawn cards also have golden borders. That makes them more rare and more special. I have one that I got PSA graded. It's a 10. I'm trying to get it without on the screen. Yeah. So it has Kobe's glasses on it.
B
Oh, I've got a Japanese at 130, which means English will probably be around 150 to 200.
A
I've been calling this, like, Gen Z millennial 401k account. The card game.
C
No, for me, it's just paying my bills into next week.
A
Yeah. Wow.
C
They mentioned cards having specific colors. There are some cards that also have two colors. I have this Leader Yamato card. It's both green and yellow, so they'll hold it.
A
Does Tenno about this?
C
I'm pretty sure he does. This is the leader card from the Yamato starter deck. But that means that Yamato's deck has both green and yellow cards. So it has two different methods of play within that deck.
A
Okay. I'm starting to get it.
C
And then I also have. Wherever he went, I have this Leader Gear five, Luffy. This one's from a red deck, but I have like a whole binder of different, like, art that I just find absolutely gorgeous. Let's see if I can find some.
A
I've been thinking a lot about the friend of the show, Jeff Thew's video about the PSA thing with. We were talking a bit before about, like, manga collecting and like the. I mean, I. I'm. I'm. I'm almost certain that, like the. For the reasons you mentioned too, that like, the One Piece card game community has been infected with people who are probably just like going to try and like, speculate the market and.
C
Oh, people have come into GameStop openly saying they are scalpers and they love scalping. I have had several people come in and buy whatever they can. Whatever the limit is, people will bring in. GameStop has been implementing limits on Pokemon cards, and they've also recently started with one piece. I've had people come in and for Pokemon cards, they will bring their kids and wait at 6am even though the store opens at 11. And they will use their kids as an extra body to buy extra boxes.
A
Wow.
C
Yeah. No, there's an inherently deplorable.
B
There's an inherent gambling aspect to it that it's like. It's like the seedy underbelly aspect of gambling that gets brought into everything. It's not even just opening the packs, but seeing the line go up because there's a million different apps now to chart out. Okay, I bought three booster boxes of Shrouded Fable. Okay. When I bought them, they were at $300 apiece. Now they're at 350. My line went up. So everyone, every aspect of it is gambling. When it comes to the grading, the manga part, that's the part that I like. Even as far as I understand the speculation of all this stuff, that makes no sense to me because there is. There was somewhat of a market for graded comics, but when it comes to the. The garbage printing of weekly Shonen Jump, especially in the early 2000s, like they're basically printing on recycled newspaper.
A
Right? Right. Like, I actually do collect some of those, but mostly for me. Not for or if something awful happens and I need to get a lot of money quick. But I own. I don't really think I'm making a lot of money from these. I mean, they are. They are even the most valuable issue of Shonen Jump is painted on garbage paper. And the one. The original one piece issue was reissued with the JoJo issue. Like I have the reissue of it. But I don't think if you're grading it, you're never going to actually know if it was the genuine article because you can't open it.
C
I will say you mentioned graded comic books. You mentioned earlier. I am a cover artist for the Sonic the Hedgehog comics for idw. If I ever see one of my comics graded, I am cracking that slab myself.
B
I can find it on cgc. I would bet somebody's.
C
Please don't.
B
I don't want to know.
C
I really don't want to know.
B
You were showing off your. Some of your cards earlier, so. Oh, oh, bring it up. Pull it up.
A
So there's. This is the double issue for the.
B
Still in the cellophane.
A
It is still on the cellophane because I've been afraid to open it for the reasons that we're mentioning here. So it's from Kino, so they cellophane everything. So it's not like even the original cellophane that you buy it in at 7:11. So it comes with also the original JoJo's, which is also cool, which I think it was for its 20th and 30th anniversary respectively. And then. Okay, this one is not in the original. This is the 10th anniversary one piece issue from 2007 that I got from a friend who is gracious enough. And it has the shiny straw hat on it.
C
Oh wow.
B
Does it. Does it have Greed island in there? Does it have Hunter X Hunter? Ooh, that's Greed island in 2007.
A
That's C2000. This is I think the earliest issue of jump. I have. I have a lot from 09. When I. When we started the podcast, I used to buy them a lot.
B
Also, Chris was showing off their One Piece card collection.
A
It starts with Absalom getting his ass kicked by Sanji. So that's excellent. Oh, and an ad for One Piece Movie 8, everyone's favorite of the One Piece movies. But you could see how garbage this looks like.
B
Oh, it's horrendous. It is purely owning it's time capsuling things.
A
Yes. That's why I and I think just being able to see what's in the Jump. Okay, so there's the chapter of Bleach. I think we're in Hueco Mundo there. All right, let me see. So this is One Piece.
B
I said it in the TikTok as well. If Logan Paul was like I watched. Here's a video. Four hour long video of me watching everything. Okay, now I went and got stuff graded. I think the response is a million times different if he actually hops into the conversation. As much as I despise the guy already for, you know, tax evading.
A
He stole Steven and mines my surname.
B
Just being a garbage person as it is very much. Even if he. If he watched all of One Piece or read all of One Piece and then did what he did, the reaction to it is not nearly the same. It's the fact that he doesn't care about One Piece at all.
A
Gintama of course Naruto is. See, this is way past where I was reading in Naruto. I have no what number is this?
B
Is this Pain Arc?
A
It is chapter now we're going down a different road. 363 I have no idea. There's a lot of stuff. Why don't I look at the table contents in the back? I always forget Sket Dance Reborn is there Hunter X Hunter Bleach de Gray Man. I'm only Reading the ones I could read. Kochikame.
B
You know what? I know you said it came out in 2006.
A
Seven.
B
2007.
A
So this is issue 34 from 2000. That's. Yeah, of course it's 34 because. Yeah, that's the. It's the anniversary. It's the 10th anniversary. I should have really put that together quicker.
C
Zach, real quick. I wanted to show on camera these two Sabo cards. I'm not a huge fan of Sabo as a character. I just don't really care for him. But these are two of my favorite.
A
No, they look great. Oh, that's cool. And they like.
C
Yeah, it's. Let's see. You can actually. There's codes on the bottom right of each card where you can look them up specifically by that code. So it's OP 13120 and OP 071 18.
B
We were deep in the Chimera Antarctic in 2007 for Hunter. Hunter.
A
But it's not. I mean, Hunter. Hunter takes more breaks than like. I don't think it was. I don't think I saw it here. I mean, I could look at.
B
So it says issue number 34 for Shonen Jump is moral versus Cheetu inside of Cheetu's domain.
A
I am not. I have not read Hunter X Hunter. I'm sure I would love it. I'm just like, yeah, it's a total
C
blind spot for me too.
A
It's because Yu. Yu. Hakusho is one of my favorite anime of all time. Definitely. Let me.
B
What is Hunter X Hunter? Well worth the read. The show's pretty good. It's made with a lot of love and affection.
A
Read the manga, Takashi. Right. What is. What is his. Do you remember what his avatar is? Because I don't see.
B
It's a dog. It looks like a little dog.
A
Oh, it's just like a German Shepherd.
B
No, no.
A
That's a different one. I guess. There's several dogs. There's one that looks like a little cat with glasses.
B
The dog with glasses and a tongue. Tongue sticking out. That's Dogashi.
A
Wait, no, I don't think he's in here. Here, I could show you.
D
Unless he went through.
A
Unless he's avatars. I don't know how visible that is. And I don't know how good radio this makes. It's also in this crappy.
B
Wait. It probably would have been gone in the mascot of the chapter.
A
That's why I was looking. Because, like, I know enough. Oh, it's. This might be it. Because there's An X in the middle. But this is. Does not look like his avatar. It's like a skull of some sort of. Was there another series with an X in the middle of it? Let me look at the page. 243. Does this actually have page numbers? No, it doesn't. This is completely useless. Okay, we could start playing if you want.
B
We can start playing.
D
All right.
B
So you're playing the same. You're playing the same matchup. So you've got. When you're looking at your hand, what do you think you would do? You've got a 4, 9, 1, 7 and 4.
A
Sorry, I was still looking for Hunter. Hunter. Okay, so I'm against Emu still. That bastard. And so what was the reason for mulliganing at the beginning?
B
You just had little options in your hand.
D
Yeah. So you. You get. You get one mulligan before you start the game to decide if you. If you think you can work with your. Your starting hand generally what you're looking for.
A
Oh, you just get rid of them and you work with.
D
Yeah, you work with what you got. If your second mo. If you're. If your second draw doesn't get you anything, then you're kind of stuck.
A
But this looks good, right? Because I mean, this one was great.
D
You want to make sure you have low costs early. So like, like.
A
Oh yeah.
D
Lilith is like your early searcher.
A
So wait, the top number. I should have asked this to begin with. What does that mean?
B
Your top left is the amount of dawn it takes to summon that card to your character area or use it as an event. So you have. It's gonna take you because you're going second. You're gonna have two turns before you can play anything that isn't Kumasi. And Kumasi not a good card to play. So I think.
A
Look at that guy. No one likes him except for Perona. And Perona doesn't really.
B
We can work with it. What does Kiku do or not Kiku?
A
What doesn't Kiku do? Jim Bay. I have two Jim Bays and two Kikus in Akuma. See this I feel like is not.
D
When your opponent is 3 health or lower, then she has an on Ko effect that. That gives you an extra life. So she. She heals you by dying.
B
Nice.
A
What a samurai thing to do. Okay, so what should I draw?
B
Should you go ahead and draw your card? Oh, you're going first. You don't go.
A
Oh, I think second.
B
I would second hit draw dawn. So you don't have anything that you can do Other than play Kumasi. So I would just go ahead and end your turn. I wouldn't do anything.
A
Oh, not even.
B
I wouldn't. I. There's. He's.
A
Because I would waste a dawn on it every time I say that. Adon. It's a don. Anyway.
B
Dadon da Dan.
A
I'm gonna also look through my manga collection as I do this. Because now I'm like, what do you guys want to see? Shonen Jump stuff. Weird stuff that I have. Weird stuff. Rare stuff or so Tonka Bone. Yeah, go ahead.
B
You can probably. So he's attacking you. You would need to put up 4,000 points worth of block. Now you have that in your hand, but you probably want to keep that for later. Again, you're playing yellow. Yellow can take a few attacks before it really becomes a problem. And you want the trigger effects that come from it. So I would actually just take this attack outright and keep those. You've got those two gym bays in your hand. I would keep those two gym bays for another point where you need that amount. Yeah. That's when you need those. Those counters. That's what I'm looking towards is those gym bays.
A
So how do I resolve this?
B
Bottom right.
A
Oh no. I meant generally. Oh my God. How many gym bays do I have?
B
What does it say?
A
3 liters.
B
So go ahead and use this trigger effect. This is what those Jim Bays are in your deck for. So now you get a free 5000 attack point card. Because your leader is Monkey D. Luffy. Now again, Jinbei is a beat stick. So he's just going to hit stuff. He has no effects that he can do. So hit draw card.
A
This is just like Jimbe Blasphemy out of context here.
B
So hit draw Dawn. Look at your peronas on play or on KO up to one of your opponent's characters.
A
Kumasi on camera.
D
I think the Hawaiian shirt over Jim Bay's kimono is very funny.
A
Yeah.
C
It's a really good look.
A
It's the egghead Jinbei look is great.
C
I'm shocked. I haven't seen like actual button up shirts of that design made.
A
Yeah.
D
I.
B
There's got to be close enough, right? With a Tommy Bahama.
C
Well, what I mean is like they make ones of like Sanji's egghead button up or Luffy's dress. Rosa. Like where's that one? I would buy that in a heartbeat.
A
Like I have to say the. One of the things that the biggest merch missed opportunities generally is that for me at least if I'm Buying apparel for one piece. I want it to be apparel from the series. Yeah, like, that's a great wink and a nod to the many people who know one piece. Like, oh, you have that. It's from that arc that did it when the. Oh, you're wearing Jim Bae's Hawaiian shirt. Obviously, I'm a real fan. I know that. Plus, it looks better than a lot of the stuff. Anyway. Go ahead. What am I doing? Throwing a lot of Peronas at people. So I have double Kiku, so double gym.
B
You can trip. Your options are either put a Kiku out or put a Perona out. Now, your Perona has an on Ko effect, so it's good to attack with your Perona.
D
And Perona has. Has an on play and an on Ko.
B
Right.
D
But it's most useful when I already have a character out, so. So she. She would be able to freeze it.
A
A Ko is when one of the characters in the character area get beaten or when they. When, I guess when she gets beaten specifically.
D
Yeah, like when she. When she loses a battle and goes to the trash. That's. That's a Ko. But there's some rules lawyering. There's some rules rules lawyering, where some cards will have, say, like that send to trash rather than Ko, and those technically don't count as Kos for, like, on Ko effects.
A
Okay, I'll try a Kiku because what could go wrong?
B
Is it as hard to become a judge of one piece as it is for Pokemon, where you have to go through the professor program?
D
I don't know.
A
Do I intern?
D
I know, I know. Like, because, like, I come from, like, I play a lot of, like, modern Yu Gi.
B
Oh, okay.
D
And like, that's. That's like. Like, that's like snorting crack cocaine.
C
I got back into Yu Gi. Oh, recently after 15 years of not playing, and I kind of wish I didn't.
A
Am I ending the turn?
B
I would attack.
D
No, you want.
B
For the fun of it.
D
You want to be swinging while you can.
A
You see, the problem is I just see a big end turn button, and I'm like, I must be done now. Attack with Luffy.
B
Attack with Luffy. I mean, that's no dawn to add, so just go ahead and hit. Hit that emo.
A
Okay. As. As one does. We're tied, though, so. Oh, Sam's doing something times.
D
Yep. I blocked with a counter.
A
Why did you do that?
B
He blocked it. You can attack with Jim Bay. I mean, the value of Jim Bay being alive is to literally just hit things.
D
Yeah, that's what he's there for.
B
So just go ahead and hit with Jim Bay.
A
People are really being mean to me. I am not taking this Jim Bay slander.
B
I love Jim bae. Jim Bay finally did what I always wanted him to do. Lee lead the weak. The weak half of the Straw Hat Pirates to victory. That. That was his whole job for so long and he did it off screen.
A
Which. Which ref. I feel like he does that a lot though. Like in Whole Cake island, he kind of does that, doesn't he?
B
Kind of. But like, he's not a part of the straw hats in Whole Cake. Kind of part of the straw hats
A
in Whole Cake, he's basically.
B
But in Elbaf, he shows up like in Elbaf he's like, all right, guys, let's go ahead and just deal with this problem. And he does it. We love Jim Bay for that. So just go ahead and hit Jim Bay. Hit emu with Jim Bay.
A
Wait, did I do something? Oh, okay.
B
There you go. Now you're forcing him to counter or to use an event card. He has no dawn, so he can't use events, so he just has to counter. And now you go ahead and hit enter. He's going to be a lot more protective of his life. Sam, do you have anything that recycles life for you or is it all like you have what you got?
D
I have what I got.
B
So you're. We're pretending that you understand this meta already. Zach, you know, any life you take from him, that's a w. That's. That's what you want because he cannot
A
put any more time Samson. I try and take some life out of him by making him do the anime recap. I'm joking. The anime is great. That was joke. I wasn't being facetious.
B
Look how locked in he is. He's. He's focused.
A
Sam is focused.
B
He might attack your gym bay here because he's got 7,000.
A
How fucking dare you. How fast.
B
He's gonna attack your jinbe so you don't have any way to pull that attack away so you have no blockers.
A
I'm thinking of. Here's the thing. How very dare you. And it is true.
B
Now what you would have to do is get rid of a Jimbe and a Perona and you could stop this attack.
A
Okay, so how do I just I
B
this one and that's if you want to.
A
Oh, do I want.
B
I'm trying to leave the. I'm trying not to just play Sam through you. So I'm trying to leave the decisions in your hand,
A
so.
B
Because it's kind of like. Okay, it's kind of like I'm playing Sam with other hands.
A
Yeah, you're met. Yeah. No, that's not meta playing. What is the. So let me ask. On both ends, what's the consequence if I just let this happen? It's that I get another card.
D
Yeah, you. You have lost one body that you'll be swinging with on later turns.
A
But I bring in a new card to my deck.
D
Yeah. So. So, like, you. You're kind of playing a game of like, you know, like your. How your. The size of your board, the size of your hand, the size of your life are kind of like a triangle. They're kind of pushing and pulling.
A
Right. And I want to. And the people in the character area are blocking you from getting people in my life area. Right. Like, that's part of.
D
Not necessarily. I could have attacked Luffy if I wanted to. But having to make. I. I'm making a decision that I want to be fighting fewer guys on later turns.
A
Oh, so you don't play Musso games. Okay. Sorry. I guess that
D
because especially once characters are like 5,000 and they can just freely swing at my leader.
B
So you probably want to keep that Jim Bay alive. That Jim Bay Granite has no abilities, but you're going to struggle to get out another 5,000 attacker for a little while because you have two Jim Bays in your hand. So get rid of that other Jim Bay.
A
Wait, I didn't even mean to do that.
B
Yeah, it's already gone. You have to. You're committed. Now go ahead and click the other gym.
D
Bay is a good one to throw away for the trash because, like, Moria will bring her back.
B
And get rid of that gym bay.
A
This one too. Down here.
B
Okay, that's correct. And then hit Resolve Attack. It will let you pile up counters way past the point that you actually need to. This game is not very on rails.
A
So why does putting things in the trash help stop an attack?
C
Because you're using them as counters.
D
Yeah, the count, the. The left. The number on the left, the counter.
A
So when you put in the trash, it uses it as a count. So I did five.
C
Well, you use it as a counter.
D
Yeah. You're buffing your defending card with the counter number on the side of the. The cards in your hand.
B
Correct.
A
Oh, the 2000. What is it? Two and two and one. So I did 3000 on top of. What was it? Whatever. I had 5000.
B
Okay.
D
So if you really want to take a life, if you really want to take a life or you want to take a character?
A
Boy, do I want to take a life.
D
You want to be hitting like 2000 power over the defending card as often as possible. Because that guarantees that they will have to get rid of two cards out of their hand to protect.
A
Okay, we'll see if I can understand that. Let's go ahead and draw after. We're recording at some point too. So I will. Okay. Draw a Dawn, draw a Don, and
B
then go ahead and draw a Don't run. Right? Six.
A
No, I'm joking.
B
That time you're at six total Dawn. So you still don't want.
D
The card you want the most is 5 cost. NAMI. I'll give you that tip.
B
Hover over the throne one more time.
A
Where is that even?
D
It might not be.
B
You don't have one yet.
D
I'm not looking at your hand.
A
It's in your deck. So what do you want me to
B
hover over the Perona one more time?
A
You just want to look at Perona. No denial.
B
So you'll want to go ahead
A
and
B
play this. So what we can do here. All right, so this is where we're starting to get into the complexities of the One Piece tcg. If we play this Perona, we can freeze his Saturn. If we freeze his Saturn, he can't attack next turn. And then we can essentially swing at him freely and not really worry about that other card. But we're not worried about it. But eventually we would want to get rid of it. The other thing is, is if we can somehow funnel him to Kiku by not swinging with Jimbe and only swinging with Kiku and applying dawn cards to it, we can force him to either attack that Kikuyu or forced to go straight to Luffy. And then you're a yellow card deck. So then you have effects coming off. So we're hitting the point where the game actually starts to hit. Like real complexity here, where you're trying to figure out what he's going to do and what he wants to do. Because at the end of the day, it's get rid of your life cards. But if he can minimize the amount of characters you have, that makes his life a lot easier as the game moves on. Because if you have a full character area and he's trying to wade through that, you're gonna be able to have options where you can hit multiple times. He has to get rid of a bunch of cards from his hand. So what we want is to flood the board. Go ahead and put
A
not Gym Bay or Gym Base.
B
Now we want to. We want to force him into a position where he has to use that. Oh wait. Does Kiku have 4,000 or 5,000? Attack six. 6,000 six. Play another Kiku. Hit that. Deploy.
A
Wow.
B
Call for in the middle. So that middle Kiku. That one. That's. That's active. Go ahead and attack his emu now. So he's gonna have to probably just use one card here, right?
A
The Dawn.
B
Attach two Dawns that you have to your Luffy. Now attack with Luffy at emu. So now he's got to use. So he took a life card. So you're going to go ahead and hit Enter.
A
Hoping this makes sense for someone not watching. Yeah, because it doesn't make sense to me and I'm watching. But yeah, no, it makes a little sense. It's making a little more sense.
B
You get what I'm saying here? Where if he wants to try and clear your board, he's going to have to attack Kiku, right? We didn't freeze his status.
A
We know.
B
But you don't want to attack the Kiku. So he's going to have to attack Luffy. Unless he is willing to do that. So we could also.
D
Yeah, I don't want to attack the Kiku because her On Ko effect is.
A
I was gonna say she gets. She gets me another life. Is that what it is? Or.
D
Yep. I'm at the threshold now where that's relevant.
A
And he's playing this what you're doing or what? Correct me if I'm wrong. Let me try. Are you just trying to get more in your trash so that Saturn stays there without me being able to do anything? Or is there also.
D
Sorry, repeat the question.
A
I'm trying to figure out your strategy. Is that completely wrong? Golf.
D
You are not ready for what IMU does. I'm gonna let you know that. Right?
B
We're trying to end the game before Imu really gets activated. Because that's kind of the problem.
A
Okay, wait. You may trash one of your Celestial Dragon type characters or one card from your hand. Right? Because then this. Well, what else happens? I'm trying to like figure out what the hell you're referring to.
B
So he's more than likely got a bunch of cards in his deck that are going to allow him to summon cards from the graveyard for a very cheap cost.
A
Right?
B
Like, more than likely he's going to be able to bring a lot of characters out. That's why we are also flooding the board. Now I'm getting a little apprehensive because we don't have any blockers. Blockers are always important. And I'm not 100 familiar with this yellow deck. I never liked yellow decks. I don't like the reliance off of trigger effects. But what we want to do is keep his character area as small as possible. So we're at somewhat of an advantage in the fact that he is going to rest that Saturn unless he can unrest that Saturn, which I don't know of black does very often you can unrest cards. By the way, Zach.
A
That.
B
That's an effect that happens.
A
But what you can do for that to do that or does that just usually green effect?
B
Yeah. An on play effect.
D
And a car. Yeah. And a character that can. That can. That gets rested when it attacks. And if it can. If it can get stood up, it can attack again that same turn.
B
Right.
A
I don't think it's fair that you get Gege AKA to me. Akutami. Sorry. Akatomi Akatami cards that are also, you know, kick ass. That's just seems right.
B
There's a lot of bullshit going on in jjk, so bringing that over to the one piece TCG is quite a bit.
A
I need to read jjk. I know Sam is also a huge
B
JJK fan, so JJK fucking rules. JJK is awesome.
A
Yeah, that's a blind spot. I have many it Chief.
B
What I would do if I were you is I would resolve this attack because you cannot. Okay, here's the problem that you're running into as well. Again, this is where the meta game is coming in. He has all of his dawn active. He has decided to attack before he has actually played any move. So he has unlimited options based off of your perspective from here. So he could attack you a whole lot more. But what we'll do is accept that attack. Because now that that Saturn is. Is rested and upon the next turn. Oh, what's the. What's the effect on this? Sanji, Let me trash one card from your hand. Play this card. Go ahead and use that trigger effect. Trash that Jimbe.
A
This one?
B
Yep.
A
In the. In the deck. I'm trying to be descriptive for we
B
are drawing one card. What was. What is that? Look at the four cards when you're
A
doing the trigger effect.
B
Other than we don't want the trigger effect, we could just flood the board with a bunch of Kikus and force him to attack one.
A
Yeah. And then I'll live forever.
B
And then we'll get into the eight cards. What's the Bonnie do? Bonnie is a high cost, but she also has if your leader has the egghead type, this character gains rush. Look at Luffy has egghead on this one. Right? Hover over Luffy outfits. Take that, Bonnie. Granted, he can't actually see this, but you know, I'm trying to get into his head a little bit.
A
Wait, how do I.
B
Straw hat card. It has to be a straw hat, so you have to take the fucking Jim bay again. Damn it. Okay, put that body slide. Click that Bonnie, and slide it to the left. And then. That's good. That's good. That's going to put it as high as it could possibly go.
A
Okay.
B
All right, let's see. Let's see what Sam does.
A
Murder me. Sam.
B
We're waiting on Sam at this point.
C
He was given some cocky looks while y' all were explaining everything.
A
Sam just gives cocky looks constantly. That could mean anything. Sam is like the master of saying saying a lot with very little. Well, I have no blocker, so he's hitting.
B
He's hitting for 9,000. That's gonna be a massive pain in the ass to counter. So we're gonna hit Resolve Attack if he's gonna put that much into it. So what is Bonnie's trigger effect? Look at Bonnie. That yellow. If you have one or less life card, rest up to one of your opponent's characters with a cost of seven or less. Oh, he recycled the Saturn. Oh, don't tell me he can just move the. Okay. I've not studied up enough on I. I own all of the the five Elders cards, but it looks like he can move the five Elders in and out, so.
D
So my emu's activate main effect is I can. I can trash anything. I can trash a Celestial Dragon card either from my hand or my field for a draw one.
B
Okay.
D
So I basically said, I'm done with this Saturn. I'm gonna just like, build my hand with him.
B
So he's preventing us from killing that Saturn. So now he has another fresh Saint Marcus Mars on the ready.
A
That is a great. That is an excellent. I'm just really. That art is really good.
B
What happens if you click Use trigger effect? Because that effect is not accurate.
D
It would whiff. It wouldn't do nothing.
B
You just sent it to the graveyard. That's on me. Zach. I didn't mean to do that. I was asking Sam.
A
I don't really care. I'm not winning this.
B
That's okay.
A
I know that.
B
That's okay. No, I'm trying to win this, Zach.
D
Oh, I mean, like, like, like I am. I. Those. Those Kikus and Jim Baes are a threat to me.
A
Golfer within 20 minutes. I'm not trying to play this through you. I am going to kick his ass right now.
B
Draw a card. Let's. Let's see what we got.
A
You could play against your.
B
Draw your Dawn.
A
Yeah. Yeah.
B
You can actually make that instant as well. In the effects where you don't have to hit those.
A
That's fine. That's how you learn. It's just doing something 10,000 times.
B
We have that Robin. That seven cost Robin again.
A
Yeah. Let me trash one curve from the top of your line.
B
So we want this. We want to go ahead and deploy this.
A
Yeah.
B
And we will trash the. Does it require it to be a straw hat card? Hover over her one more time on the top.
A
Right.
B
You may trash one card from the
A
top of your life cards. Though. Isn't that this one? Or is it this one?
D
Yeah. You're basically sending one to gain two.
A
Right?
B
So we're gambling that we're about to put enough on the board to win the game in the next turn.
A
Right. And. But we don't know which one. Do I get to choose any? Or I need to just.
B
So what you can do is you can use card action.
D
There's no reason not to. There's no reason.
B
Gain two life.
A
It doesn't matter what's in these. Right? Or it does. Do these ever.
D
I mean like you. You might care. But like for the most part, like you get to the point. You get to the point where like the hidden information. Like. Like it's. It's all statistics. It's not about controlling exactly what's on there.
A
That's a line coming. So to speak.
D
Just like what statistics. Like. Yeah, exactly.
B
So swing with both of those Kikus on Emu.
A
Like that. Yep. And then.
B
So he has no Dawn. So he has no effects again. I don't think Black uses very many effects. If I remember correctly. Sam.
A
And then. Okay. Both Kikus. Kicking emu's ass I assume. And that's how the series ends.
C
I wish.
B
Oh. Was Mars a blocker? Did I miss that?
A
Yep.
B
So apply that one Dawn. Because you have no effect cards in your hands to Luffy.
A
Yeah.
B
Swing with Luffy.
A
That emu.
B
Yep.
A
I guess. Who else am I gonna. Oh after? Okay.
B
So this is only a one. If he has a plus 2000. This is only one. But we're putting it in the graveyard.
A
Oh, look at that.
B
And then I'm looking at. Oh, dude. The gay arts look so good.
C
They're gorgeous.
A
However, their names continue to be Awful. They're really, really bad names. No, but after the planets. No. I am an astronomy nerd. These are terrible names. They're too much. Top man. Okay, maybe I do kind of like it. I'm thinking about it very Kojima.
B
My only thing is, is like, it's. It's almost a hat on a hat. With having them look like historical figures and be named after the planets. Like, did we need to go that, like both directions with that?
A
They're not like. They're kind of like historic. They're like a amalgam of a bunch of different ones, you know?
B
Yeah.
A
Like, this is Gorbachev. That's what we used to call him. Yeah. We said Warcury was. Was Gorbachevy. Do the others. I don't know.
B
What's the one looks like Gandhi.
A
Yes, we used to say he looked like. Although he is extremely white right in the. Well, he's Japanese too. In the.
B
That's there a single character in one piece that doesn't. That isn't extremely white.
A
In the modern anime.
D
No.
A
King is also extremely white. The thing that, like, was really pissing me off. Whatever volume cover King was on is that Oda drew him the same exact shade as like everyone else on that cover. And I'm like, what are you doing here?
B
A real Oda blind spot.
A
It's a real
B
need to. Yeah, he needed to be an actual conduit for the. The fan base when he talked to Oda that one time and be like, hey man, can we. Can we get some darker skin? Like Ichi the Witch can do it. Can you? Can't do it.
A
It's so confusing because Oda seems to lean into it with his like. Like his producing on the live action. But then in the actual manga, he's like, forgets he has a copic marker for that.
B
Is it a pen and paper blind spot? Like this? Is it literally like an artistry? I'm speculating at that point, but I don't know.
A
Chris would better know that, like whether you could have a blind spot that gigantic. Not saying. Chris, you specifically have that? Because I don't think.
D
No.
C
Yeah.
A
Like Sonic looks like the right colors, I think.
C
Well, yeah. Anytime I have to color anything, I get the reference.
A
Right. Well, I guess you're not creating. Well, you must create your own stuff.
C
I do. And I'll still use my own reference.
A
True, true. But his. I guess all the voters. I don't know the. It's the reference that's the issue. What are we doing? Card game.
B
Hit enter Hit enter.
A
That's my fault. Sam kick golfers.
B
The. If we were trying to teach you, like, the Pokemon TCG right now, it'd be like a thousand times easier because Pokemon is just swing until you win.
A
Yeah. Except that Pokemon knowledge is at the. Below the ground. I know very little.
B
Fair enough. There's also, like, leader Pokemon and stuff like that. Whereas, like, I am.
A
I think I am getting it. I think if I never say this because, like, I actually prefer, like, reading digital stuff for work and stuff like, versus printing it out. Like, lawyers especially are very old school. And, you know, they. And by old school, I mean old. So they need things printed out. But, like, for this, I do feel like I would probably benefit holding it and like, actually, which I think, you know, is its original intended purpose as well. But I think I would get this. I would just, you know, the first few times, you're slow at it. But you know what? This reminds me of Minority. I've some of my board games, I've been playing a lot of Wingspan, and they kind of feel similar to that.
C
I haven't played it. I watched a streamer play it a while ago, but I've been wanting to get it. It seems so cool.
A
It's like, well, I'm a bird nerd. Is that a thing?
B
Yeah, absolutely. Bird nerds are. Yeah, absolutely.
A
Well, I didn't know if it was a phrase if that was a thing, but, yeah, I know. Casey, also friend of the show, is a bird nerd. I've also accidentally turned my son into a gigantic bird nerd. But birds are cool. Anyway, I. Not to get into the bird thing too much, but wingspan is kind of that, you know, you have a special attack of the. Or not attack. It's a lot less. Oh, no, there are a lot of attacks because they're predatory birds. But it does feel very similar to this. That's probably the closest. And it's also very complex. But once you get it, you like it's. It's a. It's. But there's also probably, like 1,000 less cards. Okay, it's my turn.
B
So the. The question is, you are being attacked. 6,000 to 5,000. What do you think you should do?
A
Ooh, not putting it on me. Well, I have no dons. Wait, 6,000. Oh, I. Well, first I need to resolve it. Right. Because I can't. Is there anything I could do?
B
You can counter with the Coomassie. Oh, that thing's kind of useless. So you can prevent this attack. Well, we clicked it. We're good. To go. Okay. Resolve that attack.
A
I forgot that clicking automatically makes it happen. It's draw, I assume.
B
Then draw your Dawn. You need some cards in your hand.
A
Yeah.
B
So that, Sanji is a good idea. Yeah.
A
Yeah. Okay. I'm starting to get it. I would.
B
Oh, this is looking for a straw hat. That's the Nami that you're looking for.
C
Such a good art. I love that illustration.
A
That entire color, it's the same color spread. Excellent color spread.
C
The hitchhiking.
A
The hitchhiking one. Yeah.
B
Which People got your board filled up. So what we're going to do is grab that, put those robins at the top, Just move the Kiku all the way down to the bottom.
A
No more Kikus. Okay.
B
And then return. So at this point, if he doesn't have the cards he needs in his hand right now, you can win. So wait, now this would be a very convenient win because you can't summon any more characters, right? You are maxed out at this point.
A
Yeah. I see.
B
So what you would need to do is be able to put the amount of damage that you need to onto each card and attack and guarantee hits every single time. Now, he does not have a Mars, so he can't wait. Hold. Hover over that one. If you have seven or more cards in your trash, this character cannot be removed from the field by your opponent's effects and gains. Blocker. He does work here. He has blocker. So you would need three. You would need four total attacks. Now you have five total attacks available to you.
A
Except this guy. Except Sanji is.
B
Well, you have the four characters plus Luffy.
A
All right.
B
So what? You.
A
Okay.
B
All right.
A
And how did he get this stage? I don't have a stage.
B
He starts with it.
C
Yeah. Imu starts with a stage.
A
Ema's dramatic.
B
And he's got four cards in his hands, and he's got one dawn card. Now, again, Black does not have a lot of event cards, right? So what you would. What I would do is you've got a 6000 attack Kiku in there, right? I would just go ahead and swing with one of the Kikus and see what he does. Does he receive the attack? Does he take the damage? Because you're holding on to your dawn for essentially as long as you possibly can. Now, what he's probably gonna do is allow you to attack until he's down to zero, and then he's gonna try and block with Mercury. So I'd go ahead and attack with Kiku again before applying any dawn, because you have your biggest Attackers. Actually, you could probably attack with Luffy, but that'd be too easy to counter. I would go with Kiku and force him to apply Counter.
A
Now, golfers just. I mean, I'm getting. I'm getting what you're saying.
B
We're metagaming right now. Like between. Like, it's.
A
Yeah. Well, I mean, we're on a podcast. You have to describe everything that's going on.
B
So he's got the plus 2000. So what I'd go ahead and do is put on. Jinbe has 5,000. Attack.
A
Yes.
B
And Luffy has 5,000.
A
Yes. He should have 5,600. That would have been more. Yeah.
B
I'd put two on Luffy. It'd be really easy for one hand to come out or to block. Let's force him to use a card. So do one on Luffy.
A
Wait. Cancel.
B
Hit cancel one on Luffy and just put.
A
Okay.
B
And then attack Emu.
A
Always attacking emu. I see. Boring. Okay, so it's 6,000 versus 5,000.
B
So he went ahead and put. He tried 6,000. Oh, I thought he's down to 2,000. Two cards in his hand and you need two attacks to win. We're in a sticky spot because he's already got a blocker.
A
There is no cancel for this. I do know it is, Sam. Like, if you make a mistake, I'd
B
put two on Jim Bay and go ahead and attack and see if he blocks.
A
Two on Jim Bay.
B
Yeah.
A
Oh, just because he's like raw power and we're. Oh, five, six, seven. Oh, because he has one on there. Okay. I'm just trying to get it.
B
Well, no, because those. Those dawn don't count towards defense. So he did that. He's going to block.
A
Why did I put two on?
B
To see if he was going to use any counters. He would have to hit X amount of counters to stop this attack. So you've got five characters on your board. I just go ahead and end turn. You know he's going to block with Warcury.
A
I mean, that's why it is. Oh, here's Ju Peter. Oh, no. Okay. Ju Peter is. Did I say Venus Jero is the Scandi.
B
So he wants to get rid of your Jim Bay.
A
Why would he do that?
B
Because Jimbe is a live attacker and he's a beat stick.
C
Don't be so rude.
B
Sorry. Apologies. Look at your cards real quick. You can get rid of that. You can get rid of that. Pull up Perona.
A
Wait, this one?
B
Yeah.
A
And then what do I. How do I do that?
B
Sorry. You have no blocker. So hit no blocker.
A
Yeah.
B
And then counter with that Perona and then her resolve attack. Force him to try and get rid of something on your hand right in your.
A
I'm trying to.
B
On your side.
A
He was hitting me 5000 to 5000. So this was hitting the. This was the 5000 back that was countering it. The. Sorry, I should explain The Perona. The Perona 5000 was blocking his St. J. Garcia Saturn 5000.
D
The Perona. The Perona buffed your. So the perona has a plus 1000 on the left. Yeah, that buffed your Jim by 1000, which brought Jim B up to 6000, which meant my 5000 wasn't enough.
B
I want to say Lilith is plus 1000. If you look down at your bottom left.
A
Why do ties. Do they. Do ties resolve towards the defense or attacker?
D
If the attacker wins a tie, tie
B
goes to the runner. So what you're trying to do right now is keep all of your attackers alive because he has one blocker and he's going to have four cards in his hand unless he's able to pull more out. So if we walk into next turn with six total attackers, more than likely we win. So hover over that lilith. That's a +1000 click. So hit no blocker and then click that Lilith.
A
Oh, because. So that adds 1,000. I'm just trying to.
B
It's going to add 1,000 to your gym.
A
6,000. Okay.
B
And then I'd hit Resolve attack. Now he might swing with his emu on your Jim bay.
A
How dare he.
B
To try and get rid of that Jim bay again. He is trying to minimize our chances of being able to swing on him as many times as we want. That's the big thing. So now he's up to five cards in his hand. He's gaining more utility. We're looking to hold on to as many attackers as we possibly can.
A
Yeah, basically, don't let him kill these guys.
B
Right. He can kill the Kiku if he wants.
A
How dare you.
D
I don't. I don't want to.
B
He doesn't want to.
A
Right.
B
Kiku would just strengthen our position. He's delaying the inevitable at that point.
D
Okay, I need you guys to imagine some pentagrams on the ground.
B
Oh, boy. We're about to hit a. Oh, no.
C
Oh, boy.
A
So do you want to explain for the audience, Sam, what the hell he's
B
about to put out every single one of them. So, Zach, we have to win on the next turn, by the way, because how many of them have Block.
D
Two of them are blockers.
A
Two.
B
Wait, wait, wait.
C
Can you fully explain what you just did?
A
Yeah. Sam, you have to actually.
C
The card effects and everything.
A
Yes, because people listening are not gonna get.
D
Because I'm still resolving some of my effects.
A
I also want to look at the art from. From Gege A Kutani. That's really good.
B
He. He makes them way scarier than they ended up being. Like they're terrifying in his artwork.
C
So good.
A
Saturn in the manga. I thought that always got across some of the others.
B
He's pretty good.
D
So my Empty Throne card, My stage has an activate main that says you may rest a stage. And three of your dawn cards play one of your Black 5 elders type character cards with the cost equal to or less than the total number of dawn cards on your field from your hand. So basically what the Empty Throne does is it allows me to bring out much bigger stuff for only three dawn, as long as it equals the max dawn on my field. So once I'm at 10 dawn, then I can spend only 3 dawn to bring out my 10 cost. If you look in my trash, there's a 10 cost 5 elders card and it's all 5 elders on one. And then his effect, or their effect is I can basically blow up my board to summon every one of each of the five Elders from my trash.
B
Well, black. Black decks, man. Yeah, black decks. Just. Just. They're basically necromancy.
A
Well, I mean, that makes sense with these characters. How dare you.
B
He's gonna. He's gonna swing on you and he's penalizing the Jim Bay.
A
How does. Is that the effect when attacking? Minus 2000. Okay. God. Ethan Baron. What a stupid name. That's all I have to say.
B
So we want to go ahead and let this resolve. So no Blocker Resolve attack. We're just gonna have to sacrifice this Jim Bay. Love Jim bae. That's great. We want him attacking you or those Kikos.
A
Assange disappeared too.
B
So he's got plus 9,000. It's not worth trying to defend that. No Blocker Resolve attack.
A
Oh, there's.
B
What's the Sanji effect?
A
You could trash a card from your hand.
B
Use the Trigger effect. And then we're going to trash that Jim Bay. And then we're going to draw the Robin. And then we're going to return the Nami to the highest point. It's already there.
A
Yeah.
B
Return cards to deck.
A
Okay,
B
so now it's ours. Draw a card. We don't need any more Dawn. So now we've got four cards that are Available to attack. He's got two active blockers. We need to land one hit. Zach, we have to hit one time.
A
So the gamble is he's not even here.
B
Do we play for the next turn and play Robin, which is the 7 cost, or do we swing for the fences and try and stop him in his tracks right now? Because he can block us twice and he has to block us. So he either needs to block or counter from his hand. He has not had very strong counter cards in the entire deck. That's not what this deck is built around. He's probably got something in his hand. He's probably holding on to something to make sure we can't win.
A
You know what?
B
But we have five total attacks.
A
We gotta swing for the fences. This is the One Piece podcast, and we always end our card game battles every week that we do with the most climactic or anticlimactic finish. So. So the. So what do I start with?
B
So what you want to do is swing with one Kiku first, because they have 6,000, so no matter what, they beat anything unless he puts a counter on it.
A
So am I going after Imu the
B
whole time still imu every single time. So we're going to attack with one of the kikyos. Now. He's going to either block or counter. If he counters, he's losing stuff out of his hand, so he's lost.
A
That the propaganda Meow Scourge.
B
I'm thinking he has enough counters in his hand hand to make this really frustrating for us. So what I'd like to do is we need to put on two dawn to the next Kiku.
A
Okay. So two Dawn.
B
Now attack Emu with that Kiku. He's gonna block this with one of his blockers because he's going to hold those counter cards as long as he can't. Unless he has an event card. Oh, my goodness. I didn't think he had one.
A
Oh, you did. There's your sport announcer voice right there. Okay. Do you want to explain? Yeah. So he still got.
B
He's still got two blockers.
A
It's Felucio.
B
I'm in. I need to win this mode. I'm not in. I'm not in. Figure the game out.
A
I'll read it while you. While you contemplate the never existed in the first place. You may rest one of your dawn cards. If your leader.
D
So I use the counter effect. Events can be used like counters, like characters can. If they. If they say though, if they have the red counter tag like that.
A
If your leader is emu up to one of your leader or character? Oh. Gains 4,000 during this battle.
C
Jesus.
D
That's very. Yeah, it's a very good one.
A
Proxy by Elsie Sam. I don't know who that is. Original art by Ichiroda don't know who that is either. Okay. Have you. Have you gotten your wits about you, golfer?
B
Yes. Just basically, if he does not block this next one. If he counters the next one, we lose instantly.
A
So this is how the series ends. Just be honest with me, Sam.
D
I don't know.
A
Too honest.
B
Now what we could do. How many dawn cards you have? Eight. We could. We could delay this another turn.
A
Okay, but am I certain to lose if I do that?
B
No. I just don't know what he could do. We just had.
A
Okay, what are the choices? So I could put all of the dons on what? Luffy?
B
Well, no. What you would do. You're trying to bait out this last. Whatever he has left in his hand. Is the point of what we're doing here. Where if we attack with Luffy and Sanji, does he have to block with the cards on his field? If he does, then we put everything on to Robin. And he can't possibly counter Robin. And Robin swings for the win.
A
I see.
B
But the problem is, is if he has something in his hand that disrupts all of that. If One of our 5,000 card attackers gets nullified by that card without having to use a blocker, we lose.
A
So let me ask this question. How do I lose all? Is it just because these guys are so op.
B
The we essentially. We have no way to stop him from swinging.
A
Okay.
B
The other way to play this is to play that Robin gain two Life cards and we can play basically another
A
turn and also Kiku Life cards. Right? Wouldn't I get those? If he hits those, he's never going
B
to hit your Kikus.
A
Yeah, but doesn't he have to to? Or he never. He doesn't even have to.
B
He would just swing straight at your Luffy every time.
A
Okay. And then that would eat into the life.
B
We would have to beat one. We would have to win one. Counter battle. Next turn.
A
Does he have no Life cards on his turn?
B
He has no life cards. That's the thing. That's the conundrum here is we can swing for the win. But if he has a way to stop it.
A
Where did the Life cards go? I didn't even notice them leaving.
B
And he's only played one of that
D
event card hold game.
B
If he. He only has one of that event card. You can have up to four of the same card. So he could have another one of those in his hand and be able to use it right now. Yep. So I think it's only one cost.
A
I think we should swing to the fences.
B
Swing for the win.
A
So what, am I putting all of these on Robin now, or am I.
B
No, you would swing with. You would swing with Sanji with nothing applied.
A
Look for. Why? Why?
B
Because you're trying to see if he. If he can counter from his hand. Oh, well.
A
Oh, because it's 5,000.
B
You could. You could actually. You could do one Dawn. Three. Yeah, you could actually put three on Sanji, and that would force him to a point where he can not possibly counter it. And he'd have to block it if he does not have the kind of counter in his hand like the card, which, granted, we could also do plus 10,000, but then you know that at that point, he can just block it. And now we don't know what. What that card was. So we need to see. So just go ahead and attack his emu. Let's see what he does.
A
Oh, another.
C
He had another one.
A
Two Lucias.
B
There's only one.
A
There's only one Leloucha.
B
I knew it.
C
I knew it.
B
I knew it. I knew he had it. We needed to play that Robin.
A
Wait. So, okay, why. At this point, so why can't. What can you explain to me why we're certain to lose and that what's going to happen if I have a lot of health?
D
I don't feel confident that I can definitely 100%.
A
Well, can you?
B
So I can explain that. We. So what we can do right now is swing and force two of those cards to block, and we'll get rid of two of those cards, which is great.
A
Okay.
B
The problem we're running into is you have three life plus one extra. We don't have a lot of counter in the hand. Now. He doesn't have anything to bolster his moves because he's going to have one card in his hand unless he uses some draw mechanics next turn. So the awkward place that we're in is that if we survive the next turn, we probably win. So he's going to probably try and kill us the very next turn. So we're going to be. We're going to need to plan out where he attacks. We can't block anything. So we have to figure out what to take in and what our trigger effects are going to do to help us in that regard. Because he's not going to swing on the kiku. Even if he swings on the Sanji, it's not really going to change what happens the next turn.
D
So
B
I would say go ahead and, and for the fun of it, let's go ahead and swing on him with. With. Throw all five of those on. On. On Luffy for the fun of it.
A
Okay, Definitely. And then emu.
B
And yeah, just attack. Emu. He's just going to block it with one of his cards and then do the same thing with Robin.
A
How do you get one?
B
You got a life card from.
A
And then do what? Just attack with Robin.
B
Attack with Robin. We're, we're getting rid of his blockers right now. So he's gonna have three total.
A
That was these two total cards in hand.
B
Right.
A
But can he bring these guys back
B
from the trash and then end turn if he draws the right card? Well, there's some randomness in here. He's just got so much attack that it's going to be really, really hard to stop anything that he does.
A
So now I'm just letting Sam do his thing. Sam, you want to narrate?
D
Yeah, because I don't know what I want.
A
Golfer, Golfer is, is actually in this.
B
So I get so competitive so quickly.
A
No, I do too. I just, I, I, I try and avoid that when I certain to lose. So that's why I.
B
No blocker, no counter resolve. Resolve that. Yep. What's the trigger effect? Play up to one thriller bark type card at the cost of four or less from your trash. Use that trigger effect. We have something in the graveyard here. So what am I doing on the right? Use trigger effect. We have. Yeah. What's the, what's the Perona?
A
Kumasi's on the Perona character.
B
Go ahead and play the Perona.
C
He was with us all along.
B
Play the Perona. Okay, we're going to select hover over the. The worm God. What's his fucking name?
A
Jupiter.
B
To the left.
A
Jupiter.
B
Saturn.
C
Does he have a clown nose?
B
To the right. Nasjuro.
C
Look at that above the lips.
A
Is that a note? Does he, does he have eyes?
D
I don't know.
A
He does. They are. They're on the side. They're on the side. Do you know an interesting thing? So at my son's party that we had, which is why I'm so tired and my brain's not working, was also like nature focused. And they said the nature expert, whoever it was, said that prey always have eyes on the side and that predators always have eyes in the front. So telling me a lot about Saint Shepherd, Jupiter, Peter, who Is definitely prey.
B
Actually, look at Nasriro.
A
Also. Saturn is the predator here.
B
Resting. Any of these does the same thing for any of them. So just go ahead and do Nasjaro. Did you know he's the finance minister of the One Piece world?
A
Yeah, I do that one.
B
Horrible job.
C
Also a horseman.
A
Yeah. But he's the finance minister. Was the godhead of finance. I do love how boring some of their jobs are. It's incredible. That's my favorite kind of.
B
It's kind of like how in Star Wars.
A
Right?
B
Palpatine actually still had to do the job of the emperor.
A
Yep.
B
He's still approving parks.
A
Yeah.
B
Like, he's still like.
A
Yeah.
B
Yes. This highway expansion is definitely necessary. Like he was about the minutia Rest that Nasdarro. Click. The Nasdarro can't attack.
D
That's.
B
That helps us a lot. That helps us quite a bit. That Perona play from the graveyard. Come on. He's going to recycle him.
A
You're. You're a very good sportscaster. I'm, like, genuinely impressed.
B
It's from all the beer pong I played in college. I was sportscasting beer pong all the time.
A
That's why you asked me if I could have beers. Yeah. I was gonna say your Texas is like. It's showing.
B
It's. Oh, it's showing.
C
Huh?
A
I'm a New Yorker, so I could spot it.
B
I'm so nervous. Like Sam. There's wind conditions in here.
A
You were playing on his turf.
B
No blocker resolve attack. We cannot stop that attack. Ooh, hang on.
A
Luffy. Counter.
B
No trigger hit. No trigger effect. Oh, we have.
A
What? Oh, he's.
B
I didn't leave any dawn for us. Oh, okay.
A
Hit.
B
No hit. No trigger effect at the bottom right. It's not gonna do anything. He's got.
A
This doesn't.
B
He's got two more attacks. We. We are looking for a Hail Mary here. No blocker resolve attack.
A
What's the Kumasi? I'm just. Every time I see him. I.
B
We can't. It's just. No trigger effect.
A
No trigger effect.
B
Yep. No trigger effect.
A
Bakumacy.
B
All right. So sacrifice Kumasi. We need 5000 Kumasi.
A
No blocker first. Right? No blocker resolve attack.
B
Kumasi.
A
Oh, Kumasi.
B
Lilith.
A
That's interesting.
B
And then the Nami on the far left. No.
A
Do I have to do the Linami on the far left?
B
We lose it either way.
D
I love how close that was.
A
What? Oh, that. We still.
D
That was a great game. That was A fantastic game.
B
That was a phenomenal. It really came down to.
D
I was like, oh, I'm gonna lose. I'm just. I'm just gonna, like, be as intimidating as possible though. Like, just make a good show out of it. And then.
B
Did you draw the second lulusia? The lulusia is what saved you, I feel like.
D
I think. I think it was just like. I think you just got too psyched out. I think you just got too psyched out a couple turns ago.
A
It's like we mourn Zach and his loss. I'm like, guys, I'm still sitting here. I'm alive.
B
I wish I had. If we had.
A
I can't put anything else in the trash to.
D
You have.
A
No, I'm just asking why. I. I understand. I have.
D
Because there's nothing else with counters.
A
Oh, these don't have counters. Okay. That's what I was asking. I was just. So I have to resolve attack.
B
See, this is why I stopped playing One Piece and went back to Pokemon. It's so cerebral. This game is so crazy.
C
Do you play magic? Okay, I play magic.
D
I've never played magic.
C
Is that Magic is a lot like this.
B
See, I played Magic Standard when I was younger. Like much younger. But I know Commander is the big thing nowadays.
C
Yes, Commander is very much like this. Imagine if you had to use your Don to be able to play your Luffy like your leader. And then if Luffy is attacked and sent to the graveyard, you have to pay 2 extra don on top of what it already costs.
A
So I have a question. If I actually wanted to buy cards, is that possible?
B
Yeah.
C
Yeah.
B
What we would probably do. What Generally what you're going to do is if you're going to buy cards, if you want to go for a specific deck, like if you wanted that Luffy deck, you would one need to know your local card shop's rules.
A
I'm also asking that for the people listening, presumably.
B
Yeah. The. The local card shop, wherever you live, will either allow proxies or they won't. Just depends on which one it is. If they don't allow proxies for the most bang for your buck, you can min rare out your deck. You can go buy the cheapest versions of every single card that you need. One piece. I'm not entirely sure about magic anymore. One piece is significantly more expensive than Pokemon. Pokemon. You can get the world championship winning deck for $50. Because of the min rare cards. Some one piece cards only came out with movies. There was a Gordon card that only came out with I have a Ton
A
of cards because I have the magazines. I don't even know what some of
B
those cards are worth. $70 a piece and they're integral to certain decks. But some of them, the deck will be relatively cheap. Sam, have you built out any physical decks within one piece?
D
I stopped after like OPO too, so I stopped buying cards.
B
Okay, I know you can min. Rare it out. Go ahead, Chris.
C
I have like both the. Like I mentioned the Yamato and the Gear five Ex Luffy.
A
When did they start doing the cards in the magazine?
C
I did also add cards into each of these decks to like beef them up. Compared to what? They were just out of the box.
A
Sorry, I'm looking through my magazines now. Oh, it must be
B
the Gordon got cheap again.
A
We sh. Oh, I think this is the first one. Oh, this is a Boichi Ace 5. It's a. Do you need the number? P028 Boichi Percosti. So that's from volume 16 of of the magazine. Oh, this one is a. This is a Yamato one from. What is it? P046. That's a.
B
What does it look like?
A
Well, I'm not. I have not opened it because I would never ever take that out of its mint condition pack.
C
I'm looking at an image of it on TCG player. That's a really gorgeous Yamato.
A
It is a very gorgeous Yamato.
B
Is it the one in the traditional.
A
Yes, here on the front is. Yeah, I'm showing it on our screen.
B
He's kind of got like the.
C
The. The geisha hairstyle with a kimono.
B
Okay, so you've got the $48 Yamato card.
A
Nice. I'm making. No, to be fair, I think I probably paid around that for that.
B
Right, Your kids college is paid for.
A
Yeah, that's how much it costs.
B
Right.
A
This. I feel like these all had them after a certain point. Oh, we. We were supposed to talk about the old card game. I don't know if any of us. Oh no, these are just Zoro Sanji stickers. I mean Zoe San stickers are also worth 75 a piece. I would hope. Does this one have one? This is stickers. I mean that's pretty cool too. I think the latest two also had. I gotta look. Yeah, the original card game I was looking at because Alex did want us to mention this. So I'd be remiss if I didn't. And it is hilarious because they are just like the VHS and DVD DVDs that 4Kids released and just in card form. They Look a lot like those old DBZ card game. Like I do remember those, and they are very reminiscent of that. So if you want a Rowanoa Zolo, what does it say? Behold the meaning of the three swords. I want to find that out. Or Nami the Navigator. My judgment is always right. That's her famous catchphrase.
C
That's your catchphrase?
A
Yep. Poor custody trace. You haven't changed at all, Luffy. You know, good or bad Chopper. Shut up. How's your fever? We have the laughing pirate, which is Luffy. Let's go. I'm so excited. I need to find more of these. These are all incredible. I could just read these all day
C
real quick. One of the things I do love about, like the current one piece card game is I get so many cards for characters that I just don't know. I'm holding one in my hand right now for Terry Giltayo from the Revolutionary Army.
B
I don't know who that is.
A
Can you show me a picture? Oh, yeah. Thank you.
D
He's like the guy who answers their phone call.
A
Yeah, we thought. Yeah, yeah. Oh, yeah, he's in. He's like the end of Marine for. Oh, no, he's at the end of Ennis Lobby. I think he's like one of the
C
ones know this man
A
we're gonna find. Was it 2000?
D
He's in the Kuma flashback a little bit.
C
Okay.
A
Yeah. He shows up. He's not. Yeah. I want. I want the super obscure I want my glove Shit beards. That's what I want. I want my glove Shit beards. Which, by the way, we have to go through the latest. I think we're just doing this all as one segment at this point. That's. Let's see the results. Where are we on our Glip Shit Beard tournament? So I don't know. Golfer Chris, you're aware, I think beer tournament that Ken has put together. So we're putting together Club Shipyards or our just the most ridiculous, like Club Shit. Yeah. So it's just like the most. Who cares about. So it's a big bracket. It started with how many Was this? Like 100 something. I feel like we're in the semifinals and the results just came out. So we had in our top four, we had Whoopslap versus Sar Funkel and King Baum versus the Satanists. Golfer. The reason the Satanists are there is because a lot of us at the podcast voice the Satanists.
C
Some.
A
Well, some, like myself, not as well, but still great. So somehow Sarfunkle beat Whoopslap. I'm actually legitimately surprised.
C
I don't know Whoops. I don't know who most of these are except Sarfunkle. So I gotta start looking on Whoops.
D
The person who knows the person who knows Sarfuncle but doesn't know Whoopslap.
A
Yeah, that is kind of a. You are a diamond.
C
Well, it's a more recognizable name to me.
B
Oh, the Simon and Luciaville.
D
Right?
A
So he's the joke we've always had on the podcast. He did get into the WT100 the last time because of a meme vote, which we are very in support of, of course, because it's Woke Slap. Our joke was always. He always would say, I wonder what Blank would think of this Luffy doing this. Like, he just would always come in as, like, this dour. I don't know. It was very funny at the time in 2010. Plus, he was wearing a Master Roshi shirt, so that's. That's cool. And then Kim King Baum did beat the Satanists. I mentioned why we like the Satanists. I don't have to mention why we like Sar Funkel. I mean, obviously when that joke dropped, that was Gaimon and Sar Funkel and Simon and Garfunkel.
C
That's why I know that character because of that name.
A
It's. But like, we had gaiman for, like 13 years without the Sar Funko part of it. So it was like either Oda planned this somehow or, like, just came up with this really amazing pun at that moment. It was. It was excellent. King Baum is hilarious because of his really bad puns that Steven did an excellent job with for many, many, many years of whole Cake Island, I want to say. Um, but so now I need to get. Is there a King Bound card out there or a Whoop Slap card?
C
Let's find out.
D
There's definitely Whoopslaps. King bound.
A
Whoopslap. Yeah. Because the WT100, I'm sure. And what does it do? What is a. Where are you looking this up, by the way, Chris?
C
I'm looking on tcgplayer.com and yes, Kingbound does have a card and it actually looks pretty cool.
A
Oh, wait, I'm looking at this right now. King Baum.
C
It's OP03 100.
A
Oh, I have to. Wait. Do I have to look specifically? Oh, I should look in one piece because King.
B
Oh, King Bomb. All one word.
A
Oh, it's all one word.
B
Yellow. Big Mom Pirate. Oh, there used to be a very popular deck with Katakuri as the leader for Yellow.
A
Look how menacing he is.
C
Yeah, it's really cool art.
A
Yeah, it's too cool for him. He's funny because of how stupid he is. He's like, mostly a stump for, like, this is him in his full tree form. Yeah, he was in the. Was he in the Seducing woods at first, too? That, like, that part everyone forgets about. Whole cake island. Hey, it's only two bucks. Well, we're going to get that price up there. Speculator market or whatever I should see. Who was it? Is there a Sar. Funkel? There must be a Sar. Funkle. Am I spelling her name right now? It was El. Oh, yeah, there is. It's one Cent.
D
Oh, yes, there is.
A
Yep, it's one Cent on. On.
B
On.
A
On this website. Okay, well, I have to. I'm gonna just buy all my glub shit beards and make a deck out of that. Is that reasonable to do? I mean, I don't think I'm gonna get very far, but it feels like the right thing to do. Look at Sarfunkle. So happy. Play up to one Gaimon from your hand. You know, I think I've learned a lot today, and that's that I'm gonna invest all of my money in just awful, awful cards. But you know what? I'll know which cards are awful to invest in. At. Golfer. Great game that you played through me, but I did learn a lot. I really do appreciate you guys teaching me. I feel like we could teach a class in this. We should. We should get something together.
D
We're gonna hope that's presentable for the. For the podcast in any way, shape or form.
A
Yeah. I hope this was. I hope this was entertaining. I don't. I really don't know because there's the visual element to us, but there's really no way to.
D
Well, did you record the. Is the visuals getting recorded in zoom? It usually does.
A
It should be, yeah. I just don't know how. We'll see if we could use.
D
What are we gonna do with them?
A
I don't know. I don't know. Or we just.
B
The ringer does video pods for all their stuff now at this point.
A
Okay, then on Spotify, we'll try and release that then. I'm trying to think.
D
I hope Delaney gets creative with all that.
A
Yeah, we could. I mean, we could put something together, Sam. And it depends if Kirby had any. Anything to draw from for this episode too. No pun intended. But the pun is very good. Chris. Where could people find you?
C
Hrisdobbinsart. On Blue sky and Instagram. Always taking commissions and stuff like that. Right now, my big thing is next month. I think it's out. June 10, Sonic the Hedgehog number 87. I did the B cover. We're doing this huge arc leading up to the 100th issue. So there's a mysterious thief going around stealing all the Chaos Emeralds. And this issue has Sonic, Tails and Amy go to angel island to try to warn Knuckles that they might steal the Master Emerald.
A
Awesome. Sam.
D
They can find me on bluesky@lcsam golfer.
A
Where could people find you?
B
You can find me on TikTok Golfer Gare Bear as well as YouTube under the exact same name. I. I glazed Steal the Celestial Shadows Today. Guys are familiar with that one. Nope, Nobody is. That's the point of the video. Nobody's heard of this damn manga. And it's so good. It's incredibly good. It's in Big Super Weekly or whatever. The thing is, the wherever Enio Asano puts his stuff out, it's the same magazine. It's on Viz.
A
Oh, it is on Fizz Me. It's on the Fizz manga app.
B
So it's on the Viz manga app. You never heard of it and it's incredible.
A
What is it again?
B
Steel of the Celestial Shadows.
A
Okay, so I've been really enjoying Daemons of the Shadow Realm. The series. And both of those series are the most generic sounding like. I'm not saying it because I love daemons. This is excellent show. But God, are they generic names for shows?
C
Yeah, it's got a really bad name.
A
It's the demons of the plane of existence that we're in. God, I'm so gone. Thank you. Thank you. Thanks everyone. This was really fun. As I said, I hope it. I hope everyone out there enjoyed it as well. If there is a video version of this that will be on YouTube@YouTube.com One Piece podcast. I tried. I am very sensitive to the audio only listener because I am always. I'm always. Almost always one of them. So I hope that this was accessible in that format as well. If not, I apologize. But we'll try. We're. We're gonna do another TCG episode for sure. We'll hopefully have Bunny on for that in the coming one at one of the coming breaks in the manga. Hopefully we could record that ahead of time. So if you want a more in depth discussion with people who really know about it, maybe even I will be one of those people in the future. We'll see. Check that out when it comes out next week. We're going through chapter 1183, but until then, you can check us out. One Piece podcast. Patreon.com One Piece podcast. Wherever you get your shows, your podcasts. Oh, my God. Yeah. Ice. And we'll see you next week, everyone. Goodbye. Bye.
D
Bye.
C
See ya.
Release Date: May 18, 2026
Host: Zach (Maji Media)
Guests: Golfergare (TikTok creator), Kris Dobbins (artist), Sam Leach (co-host & anime recap host)
In this special episode, the crew does something different: they dive deep into the world of the One Piece Card Game (OPCG/TCG), with Zach (the host and a complete newcomer) learning and playing the game live, guided by resident experts Sam, Golfergare, and Kris. They cover the basics, mechanics, collecting, strategy, the card game’s art, and the wild state of the card market, while keeping the fun, irreverent, and self-deprecating tone the podcast is known for.
“We are structuring our podcast live in the moment.” – Zach (02:10)
“Some might say we're all the MCs of our own lives.” – Sam (01:38)
“To have one that actually stays around, has value on the collector side, and people love playing it? I think it’s just such a testament to how much of a joy One Piece is.” (04:57)
“It almost feels like an art gallery, just flipping through and seeing so many different artists and their takes on the characters.” (07:03)
“The blue onplay box is seared into my retina, like an OLED burnt-in screen.” (10:40)
“Thinking about the weird meta reality of card games–rules that govern the rules–is just stuff I am obsessed with.” (11:24)
“The rules are the part that's most difficult for me. Once I get it, I'm usually into it. So this is kind of my accountability. Like you're going to make me do this right now.” (13:27) “Is this entertaining at all?” (16:01)
“You get rid of all your opponent’s life and then hit them for damage while their life is zero.” – Sam (26:50)
“Blockers can block a character from attacking. If your card is rested or if it’s your leader, Sam can attack it. If you have a blocker, you can redirect that attack.” (35:23)
“Jim Bay is a beat stick. He just hits stuff…that’s his whole job.” (66:33)
“People go absolutely crazy for Pokémon and One Piece...I’ve had people come in and, for Pokémon cards, use their kids as an extra body to buy extra boxes.” (51:21)
“I have one that I got PSA graded. It’s a 10. It has Kobe’s glasses on it.” – Kris (48:31)
“The five-cost Nami and seven-cost Robin are two of my favorite customs. It’s from the hitchhiker color spread.” (31:35)
“These characters who don't deserve time or effort put into them get these beautiful cards. Like, this character sucks, but nice art. Whoever did that.” – Zach (22:10)
“I get so competitive so quickly.” – Golfer (111:22)
“That was a great game. That was a fantastic game.” – Sam (116:24)
On game mechanics:
“When your opponent is 3 health or lower, [Kiku] has an on KO effect that gives you an extra life. She heals you by dying.” – Sam (60:54)
On card collecting frenzy:
“People go fucking crazy for this shit. For Pokémon and One Piece, for example, another store sent someone in to buy all our booster packs and resell them for double. That's how it is.” – Kris (47:56)
On the thrill (and absurdity) of deep fandom:
“Look at Sarfunkle—so happy. Play up to one Gaimon from your hand. I think I've learned a lot today: I'm gonna invest all my money in just awful, awful cards.” – Zach (128:19)
On the game’s art:
“I wish these were real cards. It's so good… Sam should be in the business.” – Kris (31:53)
On the complexity of OPCG:
“If we were trying to teach you the Pokémon TCG, it'd be a thousand times easier, because Pokémon is just swing until you win…This game is so cerebral. It's so crazy.” – Golfer (87:31, 117:17)
On the outcome:
“That was a phenomenal, fantastic game. I was like, oh, I'm gonna lose, I'm just gonna like, be as intimidating as possible though. Just make a good show out of it.” – Sam (116:26)
“It's like we mourn Zach and his loss. Guys, I'm still sitting here. I'm alive!” – Zach (116:50)
Kris Dobbins:
Sam Leach:
Golfergare:
The One Piece Podcast: Committed to One Piece, its fandom, and its many weird subcultures—one arc, one card, one glub shit beard at a time.