#and i am in the camp that actually has a good time playing tcg (am i good at it? maybe not but we're having fun!!)

[yueguis]

hello, i am tues and i love yuegui! this little carrd has all the other details about me! wahoo!

[basedkikuenjoyer]

OP TCG Musings

Cynical cash grab that will likely never have enough of a playerbase in the area to be worth the investment (if my early 30s ass even had the time) it may be...it has come to my attention that the One Piece TCG will allow one to play the Akazaya Nine from the first set. Which means naturally I will be picking it up from the first set now.

Seriously though, around 2014-15ish I had a rather hot run as a semi-pro MTG player. At least made enough in winnings I was coming out a little ahead even with a couple trips for tournaments a year. Always loved CCGs, my teen years lined up with Yugioh’s first competitive scene and I pushed the short lived but amazing YuYu Hakusho game from 2003 hard. Tricky to tell until I can get a proper feel for the game, but looking at the cards and the rules it looks like you do have a solid deck out of the Kozuki. Like, I mean it could be a breakout competitive one if there is a scene for that. 

If that sounds like a topic that interests you, I’m going to pop off with a deep dive gut reation from that vantage point.

First off, one of the best things a Kozuki/Akazaya deck has out of the box is options. From Japan we know the first two sets and starter exclusives. Only looking at what we’ll get for inital releases. This is hilarious, but the Akazaya have options for one amazing reason off the bat; an actual choice between leaders. Because the Akazaya cards check if Oden is your leader...and Yamato counts as Kozuki Oden! 

Awesome, but it means in this early stage we’re one of the camps who has a choice to make. A real one. Oden’s ability is being able to discard a Wano card to reuse the like, mana/resource thing. That plus support cards that let you draw cards and a certain sibling pair who are phenomenal, aggressively costed creature control? Pretty solid base for a control deck. Especially since Ashura piggybacks well off of Kiku/Izo’s abilities as a big attacker. Denjiro also plays nice with Oden’s ability by doing it more. 

That said...Yamato’s a tantalizing choice too. He has a very aggressive ability. Kawamatsu and Tsuru are some nifty low cost characters and you still have that cheap draw spell. I don’t think you quite have the same support here just yet, but a little bit of power creep down the line can get you the foundation of something like Zoo archetypes in Magic. Lightning fast beatdown.

Either way, Kin’emon is the magical one in either build. He gets to bring a buddy with him, Kiku being perfectly costed. In the first build, great for establishing a board presence without investing as much. Keeping more resources open. But he also seems just the right cost for Yamato to use him as a nice closeout before the game goes long.

I am also quite impressed how well all of this jives with the series and my interpretation of the group as a whole.

(Uhhh...disregard some of that. Yama’s not a leader. My bad. Akazaya are still a great early control deck though and we will get a good Kin leader in set #2)