Never played a card game? Start here.

A trading card game (TCG) is a strategy game played with cards that each player buys, trades, or collects. Both players bring their own deck of cards. The game is played in turns: each turn, you draw cards from the top of your deck, hold them in your hand (private to you), and play cards from your hand onto the table to score, attack, defend, or set up bigger plays. The goal is usually to reduce the opponent's resource to zero — in some games that's life points, in some it's prize cards, in OPTCG it's life cards. Each TCG has its own rules but the universal pieces are: deck (face-down stack of cards), hand (private to owner), table (the shared play area), turns (alternating), and a win condition. If you've never played any TCG before, that's exactly who this tutorial is for.

OPTCG (One Piece Trading Card Game) is a two-player constructed-deck card game. Each player builds a 50-card deck plus a Leader card, takes turns playing cards from their hand and attacking the opponent's Leader and characters, and wins by depleting the opponent's life to zero plus landing one more attack on the Leader.

Every card has a few fields you'll read repeatedly. (1) Name — the character or event. (2) Cost — the number of DON!! you must rest to play this card from hand (Leader cards have no cost; they're placed at setup). (3) Power — used in battle, the higher number wins (with one exception named below). (4) Counter — a number printed on most Character cards (0, 1000, or 2000) usable from hand during the opponent's attack to boost your defender's power. (5) Color hexagon — bottom-left, showing the card's colors. Your deck can only include cards of colors your Leader has. (6) Type and Traits — short labels for tribal effects. (7) Effect text — what the card does, written in a small block at the bottom; we don't enforce effects in the current engine but the text tells you what would happen in a real game. (8) Block number — bottom-right, used to determine which sets are legal in Standard format.

Each player has eight zones on their side of the table, sourced from Bandai's official Rule Manual. Your Leader sits in the centre-left (the Leader Area, face-up, immobile). To its right is the Stage (face-up, max one card at a time). To the right of that is your Main Deck (face-down, the count is public, the contents are private). Above the Leader stretches your Character Area — up to five Characters in a row, face-up. Top-left is your Life pile (face-down, secret to BOTH players unless an effect reveals — even you can't peek). Bottom-left is your DON!! Deck (face-down, but the content is open to both players). Bottom-centre is your Cost Area where active and rested DON!! sit. Bottom-right is your Trash (face-up, ordered, either player may inspect). The opposite side of the table is your opponent's mirror. The four field zones (Leader, Character, Stage, Cost) are collectively called 'the field'.

                                                                                          ┌──────┐
                                                                                          │ ❶ Ch │
        ┌────────┐                  ╔═════════════════════════════════╗                   │   1  │
        │  ❽ Life │                  ║   ❶  CHARACTER AREA  (max 5)    ║                   ├──────┤
        │ secret │                  ╟──────┬──────┬──────┬──────┬─────╢                   │ ❶ Ch │
        │ to all │                  ║  C1  │  C2  │  C3  │  C4  │ C5  ║                   │   2  │
        └────────┘                  ╚══════╧══════╧══════╧══════╧═════╝                   └──────┘
                                                                                            ...etc
                                ┌──────┐    ┌──────┐         ┌──────┐
                                │  ❷   │    │  ❸   │         │  ❹   │
                                │Leader│    │Stage │         │ Main │
                                │face-up    │max 1 │         │ Deck │
                                │immob.│    │      │         │ ░░░░ │
                                └──────┘    └──────┘         └──────┘

        ┌────────┐         ┌──────────────────────────────────┐         ┌──────┐
        │  ❼ DON │         │  ❻  COST AREA  (active + rested) │         │  ❺   │
        │  Deck  │         │  ┌──┐┌──┐┌──┐┌──┐┌──┐┌──┐┌──┐    │         │Trash │
        │ open!! │         │  │D │D │D │d │d │d │d │... up to │         │face- │
        │ both pl│         │  └──┘└──┘└──┘└──┘└──┘└──┘└──┘    │         │up    │
        │ see it │         │  vertical = active; flat = rest  │         │stack │
        └────────┘         └──────────────────────────────────┘         └──────┘

Both players place their Leader card face-up in the Leader area. They shuffle their 50-card deck, place it face-down, and draw a starting hand of 5 cards. They may mulligan once (shuffle hand back, redraw 5). Each player places 5 cards from the top of their deck face-down as life cards in the Life area. Roll or flip to determine who goes first; that player does NOT draw on their first turn.

Each turn has five phases: Refresh (untap all your tapped cards), Draw (draw one card; skip on first turn for the player going first), DON!! (add DON!! cards from the DON!! deck to your DON!! pool; 1 on first turn, 2 on subsequent turns), Main (play cards, attach DON!!, activate effects, attack), End (resolve end-of-turn effects).

DON!! is the game's resource. Each player has a separate 10-card DON!! deck. Each turn you add DON!! to your active pool; you spend DON!! to play character/event cards or to attach DON!! to your Leader/Characters (giving +1000 power per attached DON!! that turn). At end of turn, attached DON!! returns to your active pool.

Combat in OPTCG is four sequential steps. Step 1 — Attack Declaration: rest your active Leader or Character; choose target (opponent's Leader is always legal, OR one of opponent's rested Characters; active Characters cannot be targeted). [When Attacking] effects on the attacker fire here. Step 2 — Block: defender may rest one of their active Blockers to redirect the attack onto itself. Step 3 — Counter: defender may discard Counter cards from their hand (each adds +1000 or +2000 power to the defending unit for this combat); defender may play [Counter] Events from hand by paying DON cost. Step 4 — Damage: compare effective powers. **The defender survives only if defender_power > attacker_power (strictly greater); ties favor the attacker.** If attacker wins, Character target is K.O.'d (sent to Trash; [On K.O.] fires); Leader target's controller flips top of Life Pile (resolve optional [Trigger]; card enters hand). Life=0 plus successful Leader hit = game over.

1. Step 1Declare

   Choose an active Character (or your Leader) of yours and a target — the opponent's Leader, or one of their rested Characters. Rest the attacker.

2. Step 2Block

   Opponent may activate a [Blocker] Character from their field. That Character intercepts the attack instead of the original target. (Optional for opponent.)

3. Step 3Counter

   Opponent may discard cards from their hand with a printed Counter value (1000 or 2000) to add that much power to their defender, just for this attack.

4. Step 4Damage

   Compare powers. Higher number wins. Defender wins ties — this is the rule that decides edge cases. Loser is K.O.'d (Character → trash) or takes a life (Leader).

A player wins when their opponent's life is at zero AND they land one more successful attack on the opponent's Leader. A player also wins if their opponent cannot draw a card during their Draw phase (deck-out). Drawing the final card from the deck is a draw event; the next draw that finds no card is a loss.

You've read the substrate. Now play. The /play page accepts anonymous visitors with a guest cookie — no sign-in required. **You don't need to build a deck first.** Six pre-built starter decks live at /play/starters — one for each OPTCG color (Red Whitebeard for aggression, Green Uta to outlast, Blue Doflamingo to bounce, Purple Luffy to ramp, Black Smoker for cost reduction, Yellow Katakuri for life-as-resource). Pick the playstyle that calls to you, hit Load, and the deck appears in /play ready to fight. If you'd rather build your own, /deck-builder is open too. Either way, the Play button takes you to Level 1, East Blue Rookie versus Alvida (Easy). The engine runs the turn loop, applies your moves server-side, generates Alvida's responses, and shows you the game log. The first time through, expect the action menu to feel busy — that's normal; the next-phase / +DON!! / End Turn buttons walk you through the turn structure. If you lose, no penalty — try again. If you win, the kingdom remembers your progress in this browser. Sign in to save it across devices and unlock Berries-rewards, but only when you want.