Did you know about the 2002 One Piece Collectible Card Game?

Update 16/07/2024

Someone has kindly reached out to us as they have an awesome collection of cards from the 2002 One Piece Collectible Card Game! Thanks to Eevee Cards, we now have some more information on the English release and the card rarities that are sought after!

We've been informed that there have only been two English sets released for the 2002 One Piece CCG, and exclusively for the Australian market by Bandai Asia. Even though there were only two English sets, Italy and Germany received the same amount as Japan which is a whopping 19 sets! The English print only received "The Quest begins" and "Passage to the Grand Line", the second being the English release of "The Way to the Grand Line".

There were, and are still, two card rarities that a very sought after. They are the same as common cards but the name is written in either silver or gold (silver pull rate is 1:24 packs and gold is 1:48 packs). You'll notice, on the above English print Roronoa Zoro card, that his name is displayed as "Roronoa Zolo" which can be considered a direct translation from Japanese to English. This is also the case for "Portgas D. Ace" who's name is "Portgas D. Trace" on the English print of the 2002 One Piece Card Game.

Again, a very big shout out to Eevee Cards for this extra information! Who would know that people are still paying attention to a TCG that ended almost 20 years ago? We certainly are!

Original 16/07/2024

If you weren't already aware, the super popular One Piece Card Game was not the first trading card game featuring the wonderful world of One Piece.

Bandai began introducing its first One Piece trading cards in late 1999 as part of the new Carddass Hyper Battle game. These cards were released soon after the debut of the anime, and they primarily featured artwork derived from anime screenshots and concept art.

The Hyper Battle card series continued until early 2002, covering characters and plot points up to the early Arabasta Arc. The series also included promotions for each theatrical film up to "Chopper's Kingdom on the Island of Strange Animals," as well as every video game release up to "Grand Battle! 2."

Between 2000 and 2001, Bandai's well-known Carddass Masters series also included several One Piece sets. Like the Hyper Battle cards, these sets used artwork from anime screenshots and concept art. However, unlike the Hyper Battle series, the Carddass Masters cards had no game mechanics. Instead, they were designed for collectors, featuring "treasure maps" and other interactive elements when arranged in 3x3 grids.

In 2002, Bandai introduced a dedicated card game called One Piece Collectible Card Game with a more complex layout and set of rules, along with more original artwork. 115 cards were released and could be bought as 32 card starter sets (two to choose from and the set included some action counters, and a rule sheet) and 10 card booster packs. The booster packs included five common cards, three uncommon cards, one rare and one parallel holofoil card.

The first expansion was "The Quest Begins" and followed by these other expansions:

2002

• Path of the Pirate King
• Champion of the East Blue
• The Battle of Alabasta
• The Powers of the Sea
• Assault on Baroque Works
• The Way to the Grand Line
• The Kingdom's Revival
• Alabasta Kingdom's Endgame

2003

• The Straw Hat Pirate Flag
• Justice on the Open Sea
• Treasure Sheet
• Skypiea's Holy War
• Pirates' Bond

2004

• A Vow Between Adventurers
• The Golden City in the Sky
• Davy Back Fight Trap
• Devil Fruit Rhapsody

2005

• The Ship of Heroes

Two players build a deck of 32 cards and battle each other with pirates, abilities and tricks. Given that the average deck size for most TCGs is 60, this was incredibly small which possibly had an effect on how the game was played.

In terms of how the game plays out, you and your opponent put 6 cards in the log, and then you draw a 7 card hand. You take up to 3 character cards—the maximum amount you can have on the field at any given time—and you assign one of them captain, and the others comrades. The log poses in the top left of your cards, between the 3 characters you start with on the board, they can only have a collective total of 6 or less, because you bring characters out to the board with cards from the log corresponding with the number of log poses that they have here.

You can take 3 actions per turn: additional draws, putting cards in the log—which you can use to summon other comrades, putting comrades on the field, and of course, attacking. Your captain can attack anyone, meanwhile your comrades can only attack whichever of your opponent’s comrades are in front of them, and if your opponent doesn’t have 2 comrades on the field, then the captain as well. And presumably since both players can start the game with characters on the field, there’s no summoning sickness or any equivalent to it in this game, so you can just attack as soon as your first turn if you want to.

To win in one of these battles you have to either equal or greater their power; and power can be upped when you attack with various technique cards (abilities/tricks) and reinforcements which you can bring in from your hand. But ultimately, the damage you deal is based on the damage counter. The damage counter indicates just how many logs, effectively, you remove from the opposing character, and they’re removed from the board once they’re out of logs. Each time one of these logs is removed, you take one of the cards you set down to bring the card out. The game ends when someone’s decked out, when someone’s captain has been taken out, or when you’ve taken out 6 log poses worth of your opponent’s comrades.

In terms of playability, this One Piece card game reminds us of Cardfight Vanguard, particularly the format around the mid-2010s. There's superficial similarities to the 2022 One Piece Card Game but we'll go into more details below.

The game had a mulligan rule that, when you mull your hand, your previous hand goes to the grave which is called the ocean in this game. It's a questionable rule as what if you don’t open with any characters, but you got some really good ability/trick cards? Whilst it's unlikely, it could happen at some point or another but the small deck size would just make this all the more likely. And at this point, you’ve already put 6 cards in the log—that means that minus the 7 cards you’re sacrificing by mulling, you now have a 19 card deck—12 cards after you’ve pulled your hand.

You do lose if you have no cards left to draw in this game, and at the end of each turn, you’re forced to draw until you’ve reached 4 cards. You also draw at the start of the turn if you have 4 cards or less in your hand. You put yourself at a very real risk of losing due to no cards, but especially if you decide to mull. Drawing cards, mulling, and needing to have 4 cards at the end of each turn are weird mechanical choices because they just feel super unnecessary whilst playing.

This sounds a lot more confusing than it actually is but as far as the starter decks go, the Luffy deck (from The Quest Begins) is by far the best deck to choose from if you can get your hands on it. The Luffy deck has better cards because it has more generic tools—the Alvida deck just has a lot of buffs meant for specific characters.

Overall, is this game fun to play and how different/similar is it to the 2022 One Piece Card Game? A few players of the original CCG have described it as dull. A lack of marketing and being a One Piece card game in the West at a time where One Piece wasn’t super popular was the cause of its downfall.

The One Piece collectible card game series ran until early 2005 as it couldn't live up to the hype of other TCGs that made their way from Japan to the West, such as Pokemon and Yugioh. However, without this we may have never got the 2022 One Piece Card Game which, for that, we are all super grateful and tip our hats to the 2002 One Piece Collectible Card Game!