The tides of the One Piece card game shift as Bandai releases news revealing upcoming card sleeve arts, updates on the rules of the game, and finally announcing their Treasure Cup tournament circuit for 2025.
The Value of Art
Slated for release on March 21st, new One Piece card sleeves will be released in official outlets. Featuring popular One Piece characters such as Chopper and Usopp -using his alter ego, Sogeking- these sleeves will most likely be sold out quickly.
Over at the second-hand market, a buyer would be hard-pressed to find these kinds of items. Most stocks of card sleeves are sold out quickly. Even ones available for purchase are priced at more than double the suggested retail price (SRP) of $8.
For example, one card sleeve design featuring Nami—a main cast member of the story—was averaging $13 per unsealed pack of 70 sleeves before climbing to a recent average of $16. This includes some recent individual sales over at TCGplayer.com, where this particular item was already being sold for around $29.
One Piece TCG Rules Update
Players looking to get into the game, or even those experienced with how to play, should know that Bandai has updated the rules. Skimming over the details, we can start with leader cards and their, “At the start of the game” effect. So far the One Piece Card Game doesn’t have any leader cards who have this kind of effect.
The update mentions that if more than one player has a leader who flaunts this ability, the player who won the right to choose to go first or second, will be able to resolve their start of game skill first before passing over the chance to their opponent. Should any of these effects make any changes to the deck, the deck must then be shuffled once again.
The next, and probably the lengthiest update, would be on the end phase and how end of turn processes are to be carried out. The game has two main effects types that happen at the end phase of a turn. One is, “End of Your Turn” and “End of Your Opponent’s Turn”. The main point is the order in which the effects are activated. For the active player, they get to process all their “End of Your Turn” card effects in the order they see fit. Afterward, priority shifts to the non-active player who’s given the same courtesy in activating their “End of Your Opponent’s Turn” effects.
Once both players have satisfied these effects, players need to resolve any lingering abilities that had been activated earlier in the turn or a turn prior. Again, priority is given to the active player to resolve these processes before priority is given to the opponent.
Then we have some game terminology updates differentiating one-shot effects, continuous effects, and auto effects. The first is a designation of abilities that only affect the game at the moment of its activation while the second are effects that are active for any specified duration. The third are effects that occur when a card moves to a different play area of the board (DON!!, deck, hand, etc.).
If you want to learn in detail what the changes actually entail, you can find the official rules over at the One Piece card game website. All updates in the pdf file will be in red text to help indicate the changes.
The Treasure Cup is Real
Lastly, the Treasure Cup circuit has been announced. Starting this coming May, players from all over the world will compete for various prizes ranging from complimentary booster packs from the game to promotional alternate art cards.
Personal glory aside, these promotional art cards may entice avid collectors. Past copies, such as Borsalino or Perona (circa 2023 and 2024 respectively) are commanding a respectable price range of about $500 for a normal or foil version.
Players interested in attending these tournaments should know that they will be held both online and offline. More information can be found in the official website, here.