How One Piece Cards Are Inspired By Duel Masters

The One Piece TCG exploded in popularity from day 1, and it has continued that momentum till now. Players from other tcgs jumped in, general one piece fans jumped in and people that just want to exploit the market for profit, sadly have also jumped in. I'm confident in saying however, that the majority of one piece players would be ignorant in this interesting little piece of trivia. That is to say that many one piece cards are direct adaptations from Duel Masters cards. In this artcile I'll highlight some excellent examples and also expand on what other cool adaptations One Piece cards could get from Duel Masters cards.

The following cards are the most obvious adaptations that any person that's also a harcore Duel Masters fan would notice. For the longest time Terror Pit gained iconicity as one of the best darkness civilization cards since it could destroy any creature, but more imporatntly than that since you could gain the whole of this strong effect by some good luck on a shield trigger. In the One Piece TCG, the trigger mechanic is a bit more balanced seeing as many cards have a different trigger effect from their main effect. In some cases the trigger effect may even be better than the main effect but more often than not these cards are balanced by a weaker trigger effect. Gum-Gum Red Roc is an almost identical copy of Terror Pit in its cost and effect, however it is in the end more balanced with the trigger effect havning much weaker range than the main effect.

On the other hand, Negative Hollow and The Ark Noah copy Ghost Touch and Holy Awe even more faithfully, as even the trigger effect is fully copied. What's interesting to note is just like Terror Pit, Holy Awe was also regarded as one of the strongest light civilization spells and could even prove more game fatal as a trigger than Terror Pit. And yet, its One Piece counterpart, The Ark Noah has seen very little popularity and success in high tier play by comparison. I could bring up even more examples but instead I want to bring up cool Duel Masters cards that could make for great One Piece cards too:

Death Smoke is another very iconic darkness spell from Duel Masters and while it certainly isn't as strong as Terror Pit given its limitations it can also accomplish the same result as Terror Pit with a much cheaper cost if the circumstances are right. You can also destroy any creature but it will have to be untapped. In One Piece terms, that would be destroying a character card that's not rested. It also has no trigger effect which was another big contributor in why Terror Pit was overall more useful. In the One Piece TCG, even though more and more character cards now have protection effects against removal; a straight adaptation of this card with no changes would probably still be too strong, but maybe I'm overestimating it. The best way to balance it would probably be for it to cost 5 Don! and also give it a handy trigger effect like Red Roc.

We have several cards in the One Piece TCG (usually blue color) with effects that will put your opponent's characters at the bottom of the deck. But, I don't think we have many if any removal cards that will specifically place a card on the top of your opponent's deck. This specific placement is very strong as it essentially prevents your opponent from drawing a fresh new card on their next turn. Sure, they don't lose their draw at the start of the turn but they get back the same card you just removed. In many situations, they may not even mind that; but no doubt this is a very strong effect if you understand card games. Corile would eventually get limited to 1 copy per deck in the Duel Masters TCG if my memory serves me correctly. Despite them trying to balance this effect with low attack power for the cost of this creature it still ended up as one of the strongest water civilization cards at the time.

If they balance this effect properly, I think it would also make for a powerful but neat card addition in the one piece tcg.

In the Duel Masters tcg, it wasn't uncommon to see cards that would have a lot of attack power for their cost, balanced out by undermining effects. In this card's example, it can never attack the player. For the one piece tcg that would be the equivalent of not attacking the leader. Therefore, while excellent at beating other cards down, if this was your only creature then you'd be unable to damage your opponent's life. Now in the one piece tcg you always have your leader to attack so this effect would still likely need to be a lot more balanced than even how it works in the Duel Masters tcg. Perhaps not as high of an attack buff or a higher playing cost. It would definitely be very interesting though to get some cards like this as I'm sure we currently have no cards right now that mimic that in the one piece tcg.

This card was always one of my favourite spells in the duel masters tcg. It wouldn't be a great idea to run a million of them in your deck given it's specific effect, but it made for a great tech card for sure. Critical Blade will destroy any creature, no matter how strong as long as it's a blocker. The cost is so much cheaper than Terror Pit and Death Smoke making it the ultimate counter to very strong creatures that also happened to be blockers. As if this wasn't great enough already it is also a shield trigger card too. I can't really think of any cards in one piece currently that mimic this card to this extent and I think it would be a really sweet addition. Imagine using an event like this to effortlessly deal with your opponent's OP13 Whitebeard? I will admit, it would be a lot more overpowered in the one piece tcg so the best thing to do would be to add a power limit or just increase the cost to 4.

Double Attack is basically the Double Breaker version of Duel Masters; if you attack your opponent's life and they don't block the attack they will lose 2 life instead of just 1. At least so far in the game, this mechanic hasn't been as significant as it was in duel masters. I suppose that could really change if they made a really strong boss character with high attack power, an additional effect and the Double Attack paired with it. Nevertheless, we have some Double Attack characters in one piece but we still haven't received any Triple Attack characters to mimic Triple Breakers from duel masters. Not like I've done any game testing, but I think if handled badly this effect would be a lot nastier in the one piece tcg compared to duel masters but it's an obvious card type to notice which they haven't tried yet. In duel masters, these cards didn't even take that long to enter the game, just 5 sets in and we started to get them.

That should do it for this fun little post. Do note I thought of several other duel masters cards that could make for good one piece card blueprints but I think the above examples make my point on the variety of different effects yet to be explored in the one piece tcg. We also have to keep in mind that a lot of mechanics from duel masters wouldn't transfer over well in the one piece tcg even if they could technically still mimic them. For example, I thought of talking about slayer cards, but seeing as the battle rules are different in the one piece tcg in how characters are killed, slayer cards may actually prove to be too weak depending on how they're printed. Anyways, I could go on for hours about these little details; I hope you enjoyed reading this article and I'll catch you on the next one. Wazzzuuup!!