Why OP14 Dracule Mihawk Deserved The Errata

Two Effects That Shouldn't Be Together

A few days ago, the official social media Bandai accounts for the One Piece TCG declared that a new one piece banlist was going to be posted on the 24th of September 2026. Many Youtubers were quick to make prediction videos on what cards were likely going to be affected but it ended up that only 1 card got banned. A simple ban of the OP14 leader, Dracule Mihawk.

While it's always a shame when a card you like goes away, when the designers misstep the effect design of a card, it's the only way to go. The Azure Sea's Seven or OP14 released at the start of this year and was the last set before the first card rotation of the one piece tcg. It's commonly understood that cards get stronger in most tcgs as they progress; but even when we factor that OP14 Mihawk's design was wrongly unbalanced from the start.

I immidiately had these thoughts on the card when OP14 was going to come out. Mono color leaders usually don't have 2 effects; even the newer ones. Even if they do, it's one thing to have 2 good effects on a leader and another to have 1 great effect along with 1 advantage-win effect. Mihawk's effect to get a +1000 power boost on every Slash attribute leader is a symbolic and sensible effect when in the lore the character is the strongest swordsman in the series. The problem is, if you're going to give him this effect, you can't give him another mega broken effect. Why you ask?

The boost effect against all Slash leaders is going to be situational, but when you can have it in your game it is extremely powerful. It's a win condition right there. A 5 life leader that is always at 6000 power with no drawback is a major effect. Every leader that has ever had a base 6000 power has always had some kind of condition. Getting this buff at no cost gives this leader the role as an anti-Slash leader. Meaning he automatically gets an advantage on all Slash leaders and that would be the major incentive in running him in a format.

From there, you should also give him another minor secondary effect and some cards that only work exclusively with him. Done. You now have a good leader that has the potential to be meta but isn't going to be overpowered. Instead, they gave him a DON!! re-use effect that would have made any leader very strong if they had that effect alone.

When you have that and you also have the automatic Slash boost, you cut down (no pun intended) any potential leader that could have had a good match-up against him if they didn't have the Slash attribute. And that's not the only problem. Since OP14 Mihawk is so good with his second effect anyway, you're put in a position where he's meta, players know he's meta, and as a result of that popularity are dissuaded from using Slash leaders to avoid an inherent major disadvantage against him in that match-up.

This makes things even more complicated, as now the designers would have to make Slash attribute leaders even stronger so that they wouldn't be irrelevant on debut to stand a chance against Mihawk, but then that makes it more unfair for other non Slash attribute leader. Meaning you REALLY have to buff the whole game and before you know it we get the power creep that occured when Pendulum cards released in the Arc-V era of yugioh. Then you really can't go back.

So to conlude, it is my position that they never should have made his second effect so powerful when his main advantage was likely intended to be an anti-Slash leader. With the new errated Mihawk it seems their thinking is the fist effect should go altogether and the second effect needs more limitations too. I can't say I completely agree with that but no doubt the original leader card needed to be addressed. That about does it for my thoughts on the matter, thank you for reading this post and Wazzuuup!!