Starter Deck Methodology

Cambridge TCG's play module pre-loads a starter deck for any visitor who arrives without one. This page explains how those starters get picked, where the decklists come from, and what the rookie flow deliberately does not do.

The fun-first boundary

The play module lives in the game-economy, not the real-economy. No card prices, no deck value, no commerce nudges anywhere on /play, /play/starters, or /deck-builder. The catalog data behind a starter (rarities, card names, leader effects) is game-economy; the wholesale price of acquiring the same paper deck is real-economy. We surface the first and hide the second.

The four-tier surface

The rookie flow is a four-tier funnel, designed to fit four player kinds without forcing any of them through the wrong gate:

1. Tier-1 Quickstart — /play auto-mounts the default starter for visitors with no saved decks. One click to a PvE match. Zero choices required.
2. Tier-2 Pick-a-starter — /play/starters shows six color tiles. One choice (color), one confirm, one click to Play.
3. Tier-3 Guided build — /deck-builder with the role-coverage panel. For players who want to tune.
4. Tier-4 Free build / paper import — Same /deck-builder with full search + paste-decklist affordance. For paper-OPTCG veterans and agent operators.

The full architectural reasoning lives in docs/research/deck-builder-rookie-flow-design.md (sister to two more research docs covering the cross-game UX survey and the OPTCG starter catalog).

The six tier-1 starters

The tier-1 cohort is Bandai's 2024 reboot starter line — ST-15 through ST-20 — explicitly designed by Bandai for new players. Each one is a single color with a simple Leader effect. The 2025 cohort (ST-23 through ST-28) ships next-step starters; we expose those as tier-2 once a visitor has played their first match.

Decklist sources

Each starter carries a decklist_source field declaring how its card list was authored:

• bandai-official— Hand-encoded from Bandai's published decklist (cross-checked across onepiece.gg, TCGplayer, and the official Bandai product pages).
• ctcg-minimal-playable— A v1 minimal-playable card list using cards from the same starter's set in our wholesale catalog. Enough to satisfy the PvE 10-card minimum and play coherently in the leader's color, but smaller than the official 50-card deck. The surface shows an amber "v1 minimal list" pill when this mode is in play. Future iterations will encode the full Bandai lists.

What we don't do

• No paywall. All six tier-1 starters are free. No sign-up gate, no purchase prompt.
• No prices on the rookie surface.The deck builder doesn't show the wholesale or retail value of any card. The starter exists in the game-economy only.
• No competitive ranking on rookie surfaces. Win-rate stats live on /play/compete (when shipped), not on /play or /play/starters.
• No daily-login bonus or starter rotation FOMO. The default starter (Red Whitebeard) is pinned. Visitors can switch to any of the six at any time.
• No meta-deck push.A new player gets a beginner-friendly Bandai starter, not the current tournament-tier-1 list. The competitive deck-builder is a separate tier for players who've voluntarily climbed.

The four-question transparency checklist

Per Cambridge TCG's transparency doctrine, every user-affecting value answers these four questions. Applied to the starter selection:

1. What is this value?The tier-1 starter list is Cambridge TCG's editorial recommendation — not Bandai's.
2. How did we get it?Hand-research from public sources cited below. Each starter's source_url field on /api/v1/play/starters carries the URL.
3. Is it live, snapshot, cached, or synced? Snapshot.The compositions reflect Bandai's published lists at the time we encoded them. We refresh manually when Bandai issues errata. The tier classification is editorial-static (changes require a PR).
4. Could a user reasonably ask "why does this say X?" — and where does the answer live? Here, on this page. The <WhyLink> primitive points here from every rookie-flow affordance.

Source citations

The decklists, editorial tiering, and beginner-recommendation framings draw on these public sources:

• ST-15 (Edward Newgate): https://onepiece.gg/st15-cards/
• ST-16 (Uta): https://asia-en.onepiece-cardgame.com/products/decks/st15-20.php
• ST-17 (Donquixote Doflamingo): https://asia-en.onepiece-cardgame.com/products/decks/st15-20.php
• ST-18 (Monkey D. Luffy): https://asia-en.onepiece-cardgame.com/products/decks/st15-20.php
• ST-19 (Smoker): https://asia-en.onepiece-cardgame.com/products/decks/st15-20.php
• ST-20 (Charlotte Katakuri): https://asia-en.onepiece-cardgame.com/products/decks/st15-20.php
• ST-01 (Monkey D. Luffy): https://en.onepiece-cardgame.com/products/decks/
• ST-23 (Shanks): https://en.onepiece-cardgame.com/products/decks/
• ST-24 (Jewelry Bonney): https://en.onepiece-cardgame.com/products/decks/
• ST-25 (Buggy): https://en.onepiece-cardgame.com/products/decks/
• ST-27 (Marshall D. Teach): https://en.onepiece-cardgame.com/products/decks/
• Industry pattern survey: TCGplayer's ranked starters, Eneba's 2025 guide, TheGamer's starter rankings
• Cross-game UX patterns (Hearthstone, MTG Arena, Marvel Snap, Pokémon TCG Live, YGO Master Duel, Legends of Runeterra, Lorcana): documented in docs/research/deck-builder-ux-survey.md

Machine-readable

The catalog is also available as JSON for federation clients and agent operators:

• /api/v1/play/starters — list of all tier-1 starters
• /api/v1/play/starters/[id] — per-starter detail with cards resolved against the wholesale catalog

Related

• /play/starters — the rookie picker
• /play — the auto-mount entry surface
• /play/welcome — the audience door (which player kind are you?)
• /deck-builder — free build + paper-decklist import
• /methodology/play-module — the play module's fun-first stance

Six starters, six colors, pure fun. The first deck you play should be a deck that wants you to play it back.