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At the Bandai Card Games Fest 23-24 World Tour Final in Japan, the biggest tournament of the season, all decks in the top 4 were Sakazuki - and has been the top meta contender for a while since its release. At the tournament, Bandai announced that Sakazuki, Great Eruption, and Reject will be banned in the Japan version of the game from April 1, 2024.
For the English version, with the release of the new set OP-06: Wings of the Captain, Bandai decided to follow suit and ban the Leader and two associated cards starting June 21, 2024. Let's find out the why!
OP05-041 Sakazuki
This card's effect allows players to draw cards with little risk, making the ideal game plan centered around this card easily replicable. Its reliability is a strength that sets it apart from other Leaders, especially in tournaments.
In addition, the blue and black color combination affords highly flexible effects, with black serving to lower cost and blue removing Character cards at the bottom of the deck. The result is a deck that is more powerful than expected, leading to one-sided battles that ignore the use of the trash, [On K.O.] effects, and other game mechanics.
This card has a higher win rate and usage rate than other cards due to its powerful removal ability, reliability, and minimal risk, and significantly impairs the enjoyment of fundamental aspects of the ONE PIECE Card Game: the back-and-forth of attack and defense between Characters and the ability to choose from a variety of Leaders. We have therefore decided to designate this card as a Banned Card.
ST06-015 Great Eruption
While many other cards reduce cost in a way similar to this card, this is the only card that can reduce cost without consuming any cards in the player’s hand or imposing any conditions, making it powerful in every stage of the game. We have determined that this card significantly lowers the risk involved in removal for decks containing black cards.
Given the very high usage rate and win rate of decks that include black cards, and the fact that this card has the highest usage rate among cards that reduce cost, we have decided to designate this card as a Banned Card.
OP06-116 Reject
The "deal 1 damage to your opponent" effect of this card greatly improves the ability of decks containing yellow cards, which often feature [Trigger] effects, to deal finishing blows. It thereby makes these decks harder to deal with than expected and significantly boosts their win rate.
In addition, we are concerned that the cost of dealing 1 damage via this effect is low and the ability to easily ignore offensive and defensive play causes more stress for players than expected, so we have decided to designate this card as a Banned Card.
Replacement Sakazuki Card
With the Japan announcement, as a way to not completely remove the Leader, a new Sakazuki Leader card was announced. It will be distributed as a promotional card at future tournaments and events with the following new text:
Once Per Turn/On Main: You may trash 1 (Navy) card from your hand: Reduce the cost of up to 1 of your opponent's characters by 1.
This is an interesting way to handle the situation nonetheless, as it's not quite an errata! The English version will be getting an official announcement for it at a later date.
Current Banned Card List
These three cards now join Moby Dick and Cabaji in the One Piece Card Game Banned card list.
