Learn to play

Real cards

Start at the top and read straight down. Two sections in, the page stops and tells you that you know enough to take a turn — then hands you a guided match to take it in. Every example below is a real card out of the live catalog; nothing here is invented or generated.

1 Learn the shape of the game How you win, what you own, and the four moves a turn is made of.
2 Play a guided first match The same cards for everybody, one lesson at a time. No account needed.
3 Look the rest up as you go The mat, a battle step by step, the keywords, and the card pool.

Before your first game

Two sections. Neither of them uses a word it has not already explained.

How you win

Your opponent's Leader sits behind a column of face-down cards called Life. Take them all, then land one more attack. Press the button and watch what a hit actually does — the second half of it is the part everybody gets wrong.

Their life column

Their hand

5 face-down cards, dealt off the top of their deck before the first turn. Their Leader printed that number.

What you bring to the table

Three things, and one of them is a deck of its own.

1 Leader

One card, face up, in play before the first turn and never leaving.

It prints your Life total and your colours. Every one of your 50 cards has to share one of those colours, so choosing a Leader is choosing a deck.
50 Cards in your deck

Exactly 50 — not 49, not 51 — with at most 4 sharing a card number.

You open with 5 of them and draw 1 a turn. Some are also dealt face down as your Life, so your deck is your hand, your clock and your health at once.
10 DON!! cards

A second, separate deck of 10 identical cards. It is not part of the 50, and every deck in the game has the same one.

2 arrive each turn (1 on the very first), and each one can either pay for a card or be handed to a Character for +1,000 power. That is your entire economy.

Resting is what everything costs

One word to learn before the turn makes sense, because most of what you do in this game is paid for with it.

Active Standing up. Ready to attack, block, or be spent.

Rested Turned sideways. Spent, until your next turn begins.

Turning a card sideways is called resting it, and it is what almost everything in this game costs.

Play a card: Rests that many DON!! in your cost area.
Attack: Rests the attacker — so it cannot block for you afterwards.
Block: Rests the blocking Character.

Everything of yours stands back up at the start of your next turn, so a cost is only ever a one-turn cost. And the rule that catches everybody: a rested Character can be attacked — an active one cannot be touched at all.

Your turn

Five phases, in the order printed on the physical playmat. The first three hold no decisions, so they run themselves the moment your turn opens; End is just you passing. Everything you ever choose happens in Main.

Main phase

Rest DON!! to pay costs and play cards, up to 5 Characters on your field. Give an active DON!! to your Leader or a Character for +1000 power. Rest a card to attack. There is no fixed order and no separate combat step — the whole game happens here.

What to actually do with your Main phase

Four moves, in any order and as often as you can pay for them. The third column is the one a rulebook leaves out: when you would pick this over the others.

1
Play a card from your hand
Rests DON!! equal to its printed cost

A Character joins your field — up to 5 at once. An Event resolves and goes straight to the trash. A Stage sits in play, and only 1 of yours can be out at a time.

When: Early, almost always. A Character you play now can attack on every turn from your next one onward, so a turn spent not developing is a turn of attacks you never get back.
2
Give a DON!! to your Leader or a Character
One active DON!!, back next turn

+1,000 power until the end of the turn. You can give as many as you have.

When: At the moment you attack, not before — you are buying exactly enough power to beat the number in front of you. Giving DON!! costs you nothing permanently, but a DON!! spent on power is a DON!! not spent on a card.
3
Attack
Rests the attacker

Your Leader can attack from turn one. A Character can only attack if it was on your field before this turn began — unless it prints [Rush]. You may aim at their Leader, or at one of their Characters that is already rested; anything of theirs standing up is untouchable.

When: Whenever the comparison is one you are happy to lose. The attacker rests either way, so a swing that gets countered has cost you a card's worth of board and bought nothing.
4
End the turn
Nothing

Effects that lasted "during this turn" wear off, given DON!! come home, and it becomes your opponent's turn.

When: When you have nothing left worth doing. Unspent DON!! carries over as nothing in particular — it just stands back up next turn alongside the ones you rested — so an unused DON!! at the end of a turn is usually a wasted one.

You now know enough to take a turn

Everything below this point is reference — where cards live, what a battle stops for, what the keywords do, how the card pool is shaped. Read it when a match raises the question. First, go and play a turn: the guided match deals the same cards to everybody, offers only the moves the lesson is about, and cannot let you make an illegal one.

Play the guided first match

No account needed. It runs entirely in this tab, and you can stop at any point.

13 lessons, each one a move you make on a real board:

1 Your opening hand
2 The table
3 A turn is five phases
4 Spend DON!! to play a Character
5 It cannot attack yet
6 Attack with your Leader
7 What a hit actually does
8 End your turn
9 Defending: block, counter, or take it
10 Life is cards, not points
11 DON!! is also damage
12 Swing again
13 That is the whole game

Look these up while you play

Reference, not a reading order. Come back to whichever one a match just raised.

Reading a card

Rules text in this game is structured, not prose: brackets mark when an effect happens and what it does, braces mark a type, and reminder text repeats the rulebook. Every line of card text on this site is coloured by that structure.

What the colours mean

Two hues, on purpose. The six card colours already mean “this card is red / green / …”, so nothing here borrows one.

[On Play]: When it happens. The window the effect fires in. If you miss the window, you miss the effect.
[Blocker]: Keyword ability. A named rule with fixed meaning. Six of them cover almost every game.
[Once Per Turn]: What it needs. A gate you satisfy before the effect happens — a limit, or DON!! already attached.
DON!! −1: What it costs. A payment made on the spot. DON!! −1 returns one DON!! to your DON!! deck.
+1000: Power and cost swings. The number that decides the battle. Power is compared, nothing else.
Straw Hat Crew: Type. The printed type line. Whole decks are built on one of these.
[Nico Robin]: A named card. The effect points at one specific card by name, not at a category.
(This card can attack on the turn in which it is played.): Reminder text. The rulebook, reprinted on the card. Safe to skip once you know it.

Where cards live

One player's half of the mat. Tap a zone for what it holds and where its cards go next — the names are the ones printed on the paper mat and the ones the board uses in a real match.

Cost area

in from DON!! deck

out to Character area, Leader

Active DON!! can do exactly two things: rest to pay a cost, or be given to your Leader or a Character for +1000 power until the end of the turn. Every DON!! spent developing your board is one you cannot spend pushing damage. Learning that trade is learning the game.

One attack, start to finish

An attack is not one action. It stops three times for an answer, and two of those answers belong to the player being attacked — which is why a full hand is a defence.

1
Declare the attack
Attacker a choice

Rest your Leader or an active Character. You may only aim at the opponent’s Leader or at their rested Characters — an active Character cannot be attacked.
2
Block?
Defender a choice

The defender may rest one active [Blocker]. It becomes the new target of the attack. One block per battle, and the attack does not stop.
3
Counter?
Defender a choice

The defender plays cards from hand face-down for their printed Counter value, and may play [Counter] Events. Each adds power to whatever is being attacked.
4
Compare power
Both

Attacker power vs defender power. Greater than OR EQUAL connects — a tie goes to the attacker, which is the single rule most new players get backwards.
5
Resolve
Both

If the attack connects on a Character, it is K.O.'d to the trash. On a Leader, they take 1 life card into their hand — two if the attacker has [Double Attack].
6
Trigger?
Defender a choice

If the life card taken prints a [Trigger], the defender may fire it immediately, for free, before it goes to hand. Taking damage is not purely bad.

A 5000-power attack that fails

Attacker

5,000 printed + 1,000 from 1 DON!!

6,000

Defender

5,000 printed + 2,000 from one Counter card

7,000

6,000 is less than 7,000, so the attack does nothing at all — and the attacker has still rested a Character and spent a DON!!. One card out of the defender's hand bought the whole turn.

The six keywords

Almost every game is decided by these six words. Each one, then a real card that prints it — picked automatically as the shortest-texted card in the pool that prints the keyword outright.

When you start building decks

None of this is needed to play a game. It is the shape of the real card pool, counted, for the day you open the builder.

The card pool, counted

Every figure below is counted from the synced catalog, one printing per card number, and recounted at most once an hour. Nothing is typed in, so nothing goes stale when the next set lands.

Still stuck on something?

The coach looks every card up before it names one, so it cites real cards or tells you it does not know.

Coach

Everything above is the answer to most questions. For the rest:

Conversations are kept against your account so the coach can follow up on the deck you are actually building.