Hello friends. It's been a heck of a year, huh? The beginning of the year was a slow churn in the production of One Piece cards, but coming up on the end of the year we've had a fair amount of goodies roll out with Legacy of the Master releasing on August 22nd, Premium Booster 2 releasing on October 3rd, and Set 13 - Carrying on His Will - coming to the table in November for those of us on the Western format. Time has flown by for me... but as close to a new set as we are, why not take a look over the recent Leaders from Legacy of the Master.

As the name of this set would suggest, this set focuses on Mentors who helped guide powerful figures within the world of One Piece. There are six leaders in Legacy of the Master, with three of them being mono-colored leaders and the other 3 being multicolored.

We'll start off with Silvers Rayleigh (001). Silvers Rayleigh (001) is a Mono-Red leader with the standard stats of 5000 power and 5 life, but he comes with a rules stipulation. This stipulation is "Under the rules of this game, you cannot include cards with a cost of 5 or more in your deck." Otherwise, he has the leader ability: "[Activate:main][Once Per Turn] Up to 1 of your Characters with 4000 base power or less gains +2000 power during this turn."

Silvers Rayleigh (001) represents a to-the-letter, text book definition of a "Red Deck Wins" (RDW) leader: cheap costs, fast damage, and draining your opponents' life quickly. The only issue is you need to win fast or not at all. A few good support pieces for this leader from this set are Monkey.D.Luffy (015) and Boa Hancock (014).

Boa Hancock is a 2-cost 3000 power character with two separate abilities. Her first ability is "[On Play] Look at 5 cards from the top of your deck; reveal up to 1 [Monkey.D.Luffy] or red Event and add it to your hand. Then, place the rest at the bottom of your deck in any order." Her second ability: "[Activate:main] You may trash this character: Give up to 2 rested DON!! cards to your Leader or 1 of your Characters."

With Rayleigh's ability, if you are going second, you can swing Boa in for 5000 power on turn two and then send her to the trash to buff your leader for a 7000 power swing. It's entirely possible to play Boa, reveal Luffy, swing Boa, play Luffy, trash Boa, buff Luffy or Rayleigh all within 2 turns.

Monkey.D.Luffy is a 4-cost 4000 power character with +1000 counter; he has the static ability of "If you have a total of 2 or more given DON!! Cards, this Character gains +2000 power." and the ability "[On Play] You may reveal 2 events from your hand: Play up to 1 red Character card with 3000 power or less from your hand. Then, give up to 1 rested DON! card to your Leader or 1 of your characters." In Theory, you could also play a Boa Hancok off this Monkey .D. Luffy for a bigger buff on your board. Both of these characters support a Red Deck Wins blitz toward victory with Silvers Rayleigh.

Carrying on down the list of leaders from this set, we have Koala (081). Koala (081) is a Black/Yellow leader with the standard stats for a multicolored leader of 5000 power and 4 life. Much like Silvers Rayleigh, Koala also has a static ability, but hers is "When this Leader attacks your opponent's Leader, if you have 2 or more characters with a cost of 8 or more, draw 1 card." Koala's leader ability is: "[Once Per Turn] this effect can be activated when your opponent plays a character with a base cost of 8 or more, or when your opponent plays a character using a character's effect. Your opponent adds 1 card from the top of their life cards to their hand."

Koala represents the opposite side of the spectrum from the quick Red deck, wanting your opponent to make it to the late game while also... punishing them for playing higher cost cards? It's an odd situation to be in. Clearly, your opponent won't get any triggers from their life pile since they aren't drawing it from life due to damage taken, but even so it allows you to apply pressure to your opponent while also having them reconsider playing that high cost character or trying to widen their board... like Silvers Rayleigh does.

There're some excellent higher cost support cards for this leader in the form of Nico Robin and Monkey .D. Dragon.

Nico Robin is a 6 cost character with 7000 power and a static ability of "If you leader is [Koala] or [Monkey.D.Luffy], this character gains [Blocker] and +3 cost." The plus three cost essentially makes it so Nico Robin is harder to remove from the board. Nico Robin also has the ability "[On Play] You may trash 1 card from your hand: If your opponent has 5 or more cards in their hand, your opponent trashes 2 cards from their hand." Alongside Koala, Robin isn't just a beefy blocker but also hand disruption that allows you to thin down potential counters that could stop you from chipping away at your opponent's life pile.

Unlike the cards that pair well with Silvers Rayleigh, Dragon and Robin don't synergize with Koala as much. Dragon is an 8 cost 8000 power character with the ability "[On Play] You may place 3 'Revolutionary Army' type cards from your trash at the bottom of your deck in any order: If your Leader has the 'Revolutionary Army' type, play up to 1 character card with a cost of 6 or less from your trash." Yes, in theory you can play Nico Robin off this ability, absolutely. But Dragon interacts with... so much more. He doesn't specify Koala as the leader that is required to trigger this ability; you could be playing red-black Sabo as your leader and you would still benefit from Dragon's on play ability. You could also get other high reward revolutionary army cards from your trash back to the field with Dragon. This, of course, is on top of the fact that after you play him he is a 8000 power attacker next turn.

Swapping back to one of our three mono colored leaders, let's look at Roronoa Zoro (020). Zoro upholds the standard stats of 5000 power and 5 life for a Mono-Green leader, and has the following leader ability: "[DON!!x3][Activate Main][Once Per Turn] If this leader battles your opponent's character during this turn, set this leader as active. Then, this leader cannot attack your opponent's characters with a base cost of 7 or less during this turn." Leave it to Zoro to promote yet another aggressive strategy.

With Zoro, you can swing into one of your opposing creatures with a minimum of 8000 power and then turn around to swing at the opposing leader for 8000. Zoro certainly has proven himself to be one of, if not the strongest, leader coming out of this set. But does he even need a whole lot of support the way this leader is structured? Regardless, Legacy of the Master actually brought us an excellent package for any form of Slash attribute deck. We won't go heavily into that right now, but I want to highlight some impactful cards in Tashigi and Mihawk.

Mihawk is an 8-cost 8000 power character with "Blocker" and "[On Play] Set up to 4 of your DON!! cards as active. Then, you cannot play character cards with a base cost of 7 or more during this turn." This ability essentially makes Mihawk a 4-cost 8000 power blocker that allows you to repurpose your DON!! to either get a cheaper character out or utilize the re-activated DON!! for a more aggressive purpose.

Then there's Tashigi. She is a 5-cost 7000 power character with the ability "[On Play] Rest up to 1 of your opponent's characters with a base cost of 6 or less. Then, give up to 3 rested DON!! Cards to your 'Roronoa Zoro' leader." Tashigi is nowhere near as versatile in her ability as Zoro is, given her ability only benefits Zoro leader, but she does enable him to go in for the kill on a midrange character while also immediately attaching rested DON!! onto Zoro so he can swing into the opposing pieces twice.

Back to the multicolor leaders, lets take a look at Sanji (041). Sanji (041) is a blue-purple leader with 5000 power and 4 life with two leader abilities. Sanji's first ability is "[Activate Main][Once Per Turn] DON!! -1: Activate up to 1 'Straw Hat crew' type event with a base cost of 3 or less from your hand," while his other ability is "[When Attacking] If the number of DON!! cards on your field is equal to or less than the number on your opponent's field, add up to 1 DON!! card from your DON!! deck and rest it." So, unlike some of the leaders we have previously discussed, Sanji seems to be much more reliant on events. Sanji also allows you to get DON!! onto your field as quickly as possible, especially if you are going first, but let's talk about Sanji's first ability by going over what event cards are available to us in Legacy of the Master.

Let's start with what I think is the best event for Sanji, Boeuf Burst. Boeuf Burst is a 3-cost event that reads "[Main] If your leader is multicolored choose one: Return up to 1 of your opponent's characters with a cost of 4 or less to the owner's hand OR If you have 6 or less cards in your hand, draw 2 cards." Sanji wants to be able to shift through the deck to try and find the pieces you need against specific matchups, but this event is not leader locked to just Sanji and you can play it with any multicolored leader touching Blue. This card lets you straight up return something to your opponent's hand, say a low cost blocker so you can guarantee to get a hit in, so it's nothing but gas as far as I am concerned.

Another event worth taking note of is Concasser. Concasser is fairly straightforward; a one cost event that reads "[Main] If your Leader is 'Sanji', draw 1 card." and "[Counter] If you have 4 or more events in your trash, up to 1 of your leaders gains +4000 power during this battle." So, while this event's isn't fully restricted to Sanji decks, the counter is definitely best with Blue/Purple Sanji leader by benefitting from having 4 or more event cards in your trash.

Let's talk about our final mono-colored leader in the set, Kuzan (040). Kuzan is a Mono-Blue leader with the regular stats you would expect of 5000 power and 5 life. Kuzan has a leader ability of "When a card is trashed from your hand by your 'Navy' type card's effect, draw cards equal to the number of cards trashed." There is no time restriction on Kuzan's ability, which gives him a versatility on when this ability will trigger. Sadly, prior to Legacy of the Master there are not a whole lot of cards with the "Navy" type that require you to discard cards to activate an ability. Luckily for us, Kuzan got some solid support in Legacy of the Master. Let's talk about Kuzan (the character) and Monkey .D. Garp.

Kuzan is a 6-cost 8000 power character with a static ability of "If you have 5 or more cards in your hand, this character gain +1 cost." and the ability "[On play] You may trash 1 card from your hand: up to 1 of your opponent's characters cannot attack until the end of your opponent's next End Phase."

So, Kuzan is kind of a brick house. You play this huge body on your 6 DON!! turn, stop one your opponent's big attackers from going in, replace the card you pitched in your hand, and next turn you swing for 8000 power and hopefully you stay on curve and play Monkey .D. Garp immediately after. What does Garp do you ask?

Monkey .D. Garp is an 8-cost 8000 power character with "[On Play] You may trash 1 card from your hand: Play up to one Blue 'Navy' type character card with 8000 power or less other than 'Monkey.D.Garp' from your hand." So, for the grand cost of 8 DON!! you could play out yet ANOTHER Kuzan from Garp's ability, really tapping down one opposing characters and ensuring they dont swing in for damage any time soon. There are other characters you can also play off Garp but I'll leave the hunt for those up to you.

Last up on our list, and certainly the underdog of Set 12, is Donquixote Rosinante (061). Donquixote Rosinante (061) is a Yellow/Purple leader with 4 life and 5000 power with two leader abilities. The first of Rosinante's abilities is "[Once Per Turn] If your 'Trafalgar Law' would be K.O.'d, you may add 1 card from the top of your Life cards to your hand instead." and his second ability is "[Activate Main][Once Per Turn] DON!! -1: The next time you play [Trafalgar Law] with a cost of 4 or more from your hand during this turn, the cost will be reduced by 2."

Rosinante promotes a very heavy Trafalgar Law tribal strategy. We've seen a fair share of good Trafalgar Law characters in these colors in previous sets, and we certainly can get a lot of use out of our Laws with this leader reducing their costs and keeping them around. Let's take a look at some support for Donquixote Rosinante coming out of this set.

First, we have the DonQuixote Rosinante character which fills the beginning of the game searcher slot for our leader. He is a 1-cost 2000 power character with the following ability "[On Play] Look at 5 cards from the top of your deck; reveal up to 1 [Trafalgar Law] and add it to your hand. Then, place the rest at the bottom of your deck in any order," and has a +1000 counter. One of my favorite things about this searcher is that he isn't locked to the leader. He is limited on what he can search for, of course, but that's okay. There are PLENTY of Law Characters to play with within the One Piece Trading Card Game.

Second, let's take a look at the purple Trafalgar Law character coming out of this set. Trafalgar Law is a 7-cost 8000 power character with the following ability "[On Play] If the number of DON!! cards on your field is equal to or less than the number on your opponent's field, add up to 1 DON!! card from your DON!! deck and set is as active. Then, all of your 'Donquixote Rosinante' and 'Heart Pirates' type characters gain +1000 power until the end of your opponent's next End Phase." This character, like most things in Purple, does rely on the amount of DON!! On your field as opposed to your opponent, but allows you to ramp more DON!! onto the field and buffs characters that would in most cases remain relevant to DonQuixote Rosinante leader.

Which of these leaders speak most to you, fellow seafarers? Might it be the hand filtering Kuzan, or does the low cost aggression of Silvers Rayleigh speak most to you? 'Till the seas do us part next time, fellow seafarers!