This is going to be a unique article for all of our One Piece readers. It's an interview with a good friend of mine, and Top 8 finisher at the Orlando Bandai Festival National tournament - Gerald Orrison! Through this interview hopefully you can learn some insight at what it takes to compete at the highest of levels!

So, while I know your history in card games, some reading may not. Would you mind telling everyone a bit of your background? What got you into card games and how you landed in the One Piece TCG Realm?

Gerald: I started out collecting baseball and Pokemon cards from the release of base set and at the time I was also a big Dragonball Z fan. A friend of mine told me about the DBZ CCG and I started my collection by trading him a bowl of my mom's fried rice for a gold Goku Promo, a moment we often laugh about. After collecting the DBZ CCG, that same friend convinced me that I should learn and play the game in local tournaments. I was instantly hooked and chased the high of competition and the warmth of the TCG community ever since.

That's great. I think a lot of us share similar experiences. Since One Piece is your current game, what is it about the gameplay you enjoy?

Gerald: I love that the game from the ground floor is very simple to learn and that the decision making and matchup understanding is where the complexity comes from. Anyone can learn the game but mastering it would take work.

I couldn't agree more! So on your one piece journey, what have been some of your highlights or moments that led you to feel confident going into nationals?

Gerald: I knew that I could have a hot run as long as I was prepared. I won a treasure cup in 2023 because I was confident that I knew my deck better than anyone in the room. At the time the 4.5 bans and restrictions shifted to a deck I was playing for fun at locals for probably a month straight which was the green purple film doflamingo deck. It was one of the few times I felt ahead of most of my opponents in knowledge and it was by pure chance. I later crashed and burned at the first One Piece Nationals in L.A. and I could immediately tell the biggest difference was that I didn't know how I should be playing every matchup. I was learning on the fly because I placed bigger importance on other things in OP05. I'm not super disciplined when it comes to testing and usually walk into most tournaments with only locals and casual ranked sim but I agreed with my good friend Ricky that I'd put in the work for once and prioritize quality testing over locals. It was important to walk into Nats with as much understanding of a format as I had in 4.5 and once I did, I genuinely felt ready.

Why'd you choose the deck that you did?

Gerald: I was initially on Shanks for majority of my testing but I was really struggling to believe it had the consistency to get me through a long day. Rob Lucci was a comfort pick deck that I had on the back burner that felt really strong into blue doflamingo and purple Luffy. Shanks players were starting to cut rushers and the 5 drop portgas d ace. The average person's consensus was that black Teach had an uphill battle going into Nats, which I agreed with. At this point I put some thought into it. One of my worst matchups was trending down and my best matchups were trending up. I played it a few times vs different matchups and I was finding agency in my games which was missing in testing so I locked it in.

Take us through day 1. How'd your deck choice feel? Matchups?

Gerald: Day 1 was almost exactly what I hoped for pairings wise. I saw 3 purple Luffy, 1 bonney, 2 mirrors, 1 black-yellow luffy, and 2 doffy. I dropped a game to one of the purple luffys and to the bonney which were some of my best matchups. My deck was struggling to find the consistency I initially saw in my testing and quite a bit of my games were coming down to the wire with me having to find weird ways to win. The decision to play the deck still felt right, I was just seeing some strange variance but just enough to overcome some brutally close games.

Lastly Day 2. For people that don't have much day 2 experience how would you describe the difference in the atmosphere and games - the new pressure that's added to every moment.

Gerald: I was just happy to be there and was already proud of what I had accomplished so the pressure was pretty low for me. I knew there was a substantial difference in prize with every win going forward but once I sat down I was focused on the game. The primary differences that I did have to keep in mind was my pace of play as you are provided 60 minutes to finish up to 3 games. This added a little pressure as I needed to be decisive without error. The other big difference was open deck-list and the tournament bracket. You're capable of deducing who your next opponent is and you can see the exact list they're playing. Surprise was not going to be a factor in your game, only decision making.

What do you think contributed most to your run?

Gerald: Practice. I don't think I could have achieved what I did without dedicating the time to learning the new decks, their variations of construction and their place in the format. I cited before that this was the first time I really put a lot of time into testing and discussion about the format. There are countless moments I've been knocked out of tournaments, big and small, saying to myself "I didn't know what to do in that situation," and that was the one thing I didn't want to control my fate at this tournament.

Lastly, what is one piece of advice you'd give to aspiring One Piece players that want to be on the biggest stages?

Gerald: It's very generic advice but it's true: Put in the work and get rid of the entitlement. No one is owed a win and preparation is really the only thing that's going to set you apart from everyone else.

Thank you all for reading!