Cards Of The Week #11

Portgas. D. Ace (OP13-119)

As cool as all the full art variants of this card are, I have to say it's one of the weaker secret rares we've seen out of more modern sets. No matter how I look at it, this Ace card is worse, less flexible rush character than the ST21 Luffy super rare. If you're not at 3 life then he won't even get the rush; essentially making him a card that's meant to be run in OP13 Red Blue Ace or maybe some other 3 life leader. Obviously you can still squeeze him in a 4 life leader deck but you get what I mean. The rested DON!! is nice but you're only getting it once unlike the ST21 Luffy or other cards.

The most unique effect here is the cost 5 removal in hand but there's a big catch. Your opponent has the option to play another character with a cost 4 or less. Now you could get lucky and your opponent can't play anything, but if not then you really haven't accomplished much with this effect. And your opponent will have the opportunity to gain an on play effect during your turn. This effect really ruins this card for me the most and with all the competition I personally don't see why you would run this card over other rush characters in Red Blue Ace.

SaberWolf's Rating: 3.4/5

Hound Blaze (ST14-057)

I like to think of this card right now as one of my "secret techs" although I don't know exactly if that's even accurate. Perhaps many other players have also thought of its utility right now. For the longest time even as an OP07 Boa player; I didn't bother using this card in that deck or anywhere else for that matter. That's because the removal range is very limited turning this into a situational card. Of course you also get to boost a card by 3000 power, but if you don't get the removal effect it still ends up as a very underwhelming trade-off.

Fast-forward to our current format with a broken Blackbeard leader from OP16. All of a sudden now this card might be at least decent. Now you can use this card to remove a pesky low level Blackbeard replacer, that Blackbeard would have used to block and gain another effect for free. The trigger effect isn't the most amazing either, but it can still play into countering Blackbeard by bouncing a low level character back in hand.

Naturally this can be a handy removal card against other decks, not just Blackbeard but it stands out to me as a mini counter.

SaberWolf's Rating: 3.8/5