Hello again fellow Seafarers! 2025 was an exciting year for the One Piece TCG with plenty of ebbs and flows. We witnessed our first ever round of unique bans, introducing Paired Bans, as well as our first unbanning of a leader with the return of Sakazuki. Certain seafarers' cries were heard by the team at Bandai and Nami leader from Set 3 was banned, which removed the first and only leader with an alternate win condition.

2025 had six releases while also introducing a slew of starter decks and a "Learn Together Deck" set that was intended to bring new players into the One Piece TCG. The "Learn Together Deck" contained three prebuilt, ready to play, One Piece decks with their respective leaders Luffy, Zoro and Nami.

But these are just a few of the thrilling goodies we were treated to this past year. Today, I'd like to go over some individual cards that really made their presence known at game tables in 2025. I'm looking at this on a per Set basis, so I'll be looking at one card from each set released in 2025 that really stood out.

And we're starting off with OP-10 Royal Blood and the Character Eustass "Captain" Kid!

This Character, paired with the Eustass "Captain" Kid leader, was an absolute, underappreciated menace. Drop this Kid on turn four/five, rest him and take a life from your opponent, or just give him blocker for a 9000 power wall: It's easier to remove this Kid than to try and get past that bulky blocker. Additionally, the majority of the new leaders released at the time were multicolored, meaning if you hit your opponent even once you'd be one life away from his End of Turn ability (Mutlicolor leaders at the time started with 4 life). It's not always about the raw power of the card, otherwise big vanilla characters would see more play.

Next up, we have One Piece Set 11 Fist of Divine Speed. This set had a fair amount of good cards, including Blue/Purple Luffy which rose to the top rapidly; but, I think it's safe to say the Monkey .D. Luffy secret rare REALLY had an impact on the game

This character, much like the previously mentioned Eustass "Captain" Kid, synergized extremely well with their leader counterpart. However, this Character was strong enough and well-rounded enough to work in any deck featuring Blue. Luffy is a huge body with Rush, which you don't see a whole lot of in Blue outside of maybe Usopp from Set 3: Pillars of Strength. On top of being a huge rush body in Blue, Luffy also had the ability to bounce a character back to the opposing player's hand.

So, as long as you had a few of them in your deck, he was more often than not the right thing to drop once you hit eight DON!!

Extra Booster 2 would be next up, but EB02 but it didn't shake things up much after the release of Set 11, so we will be omitting it from this list and moving on to One Piece Set 12; Legacy of the Master.

Set 12 brought a much narrower meta to the table. There was wiggle room in Set 11 and Set 12 for creative builds to shine, but Set 12 was really Aggro's time to shine. Extra Booster 2 brought potential for Green to become a true menace, but Set 12 cranked the knob all the way to the max. So, without any question in my mind, the memorable card from Set 12 isn't a character but a leader; Zoro.

Roronoa Zoro has had some powerful cards printed in the past, like the 9-Cost Zoro from Wings of the Captain which allowed for a beefy 9000-power character to swing in three times! That's one for each sword!

Leader Zoro, however, took the concept of "Three sword style" to different heights. This Zoro allowed you to attack twice with him as your leader once the requirement of attaching 3 DON!! to your leader was met. Luckily for all of us on the receiving end of this leader, this can only happen once a turn and the second attack couldn't target a character with a base cost of 7 or less... so there were limitations. But right out of the gate, this leader proved to be a powerhouse. Many of the crucial pieces for this leader fall within what most would consider "Budget," so he isn't a hard deck to build; but, that menat he was able to quickly take over the meta.

This is only a fraction of the power that One Piece Trading Card Game brought to us in 2025, however! Let's dive into our final set for the year, Set 13: Carry On His Will.

In any other article, this would be an auto fill-in for the ENTIRITY of the Imu deck, but I'm only highlighting one card per core set... which throws the leader, Imu, and all five of the Gorosei cards out of the running. But those cards are absolutely worth "Honorable Mention" status as that deck is meta defining.

Instead, I am throwing this character into the ring: Edweard Newgate.

Edward Newgate is a beefy blocker, and when this set came out, a Mono-Nlue starter deck for Ace & Edward Newgate had just released with an 8-cost event that allows you to cheat out any Edward Newgate.

While this card requires you to draw one from your life, you can cheat out this HUGE blocker a turn earlier and buff your leader ON TOP of the buffs Edward Newgate is already going to provide. Paired with any Mono-Blue leader, Marco or ESPECIALLY Ace, this is an immediate include. Whether he should be a 4- or 3-of, that's up to the deck builder, but he is such a quick power house when paired with this event it's impossible to deny the impact he had on release.

And just like that, we've quickly slipped and slid through 2025. What cards do you think might've missed the cut? Are there any memories you're reflecting on from your time at the tabletop this year? 'Till the seas do us part in 2026, fellow seafarers!