The six OP-17 Leaders and what they change about the format
Six Leaders in one set is a large wave. Here is what each one appears to want — and the honest reason nobody knows yet which of them is good.
The short version
- OP-17 reveals six Leaders, one per colour: Edward Newgate (Red), Shanks (Green), Rocks D. Xebec (Blue), Kaido (Purple), Monkey D. Luffy (Black) and Charlotte Linlin (Yellow).
- Six Leaders in a single set is an unusually large wave, and Leaders drive demand for a whole archetype rather than for one card.
- Rocks D. Xebec is built around the Rocks Pirates trait, cheating multiple characters into play from hand for a combined cost.
- A Leader's strength depends on the depth of its supporting trait across all legal sets, not just on its own printed text.
- Leader evaluations written before release are guesses; two or three weekends of real event results are worth more than every preview article combined.
Character cards make decks better. Leaders make decks *exist*. That is why the Leader wave is the part of a set announcement that actually moves the format, and why OP-17 printing six of them — one in every colour — is a bigger deal than the card count suggests.
The six Leaders
| Leader | Colour | Theme it points at |
|---|---|---|
| Edward Newgate (Whitebeard) | Red | The Whitebeard Pirates and high-power aggression |
| Shanks | Green | Red Hair Pirates; rest and re-stand tempo |
| Rocks D. Xebec | Blue | The Rocks Pirates trait, deploying multiple characters at once |
| Kaido | Purple | Animal Kingdom Pirates and DON!! manipulation |
| Monkey D. Luffy | Black | Cost reduction and expensive blockers |
| Charlotte Linlin (Big Mom) | Yellow | Big Mom Pirates and Life-total play |
The lineup is thematically coherent in a way that most sets are not. This is the previous generation — the Emperors and the crews that fought at the top of the world — which is exactly what a fourth-anniversary set built around Elbaf should be.
Rocks D. Xebec, the headline debut
Xebec is the character the set exists to print, and the Leader reflects that. The reported design draws a card and puts up to two Rocks Pirates characters with different names from hand into play for a combined cost, which is the sort of effect that reads as absurd and plays as conditional: it needs a hand full of the right characters, and it needs those characters to be worth deploying together.
How to evaluate a new Leader before results exist
A sane process for judging a Leader
Count the supporting cards, not the good ones
Search the legal pool for the trait the Leader names. If there are fewer than about twenty playable cards with that trait, the deck is a shell rather than a deck, no matter how strong the Leader text sounds.
Check the Life value and cost curve
A Leader with 4 Life plays a different game from one with 5. Lower Life pushes you toward decks that end games early; higher Life lets you absorb damage and grind.
Ask what it does on a turn where nothing goes right
Strong Leaders have a floor. If the Leader's ability does nothing when your hand is bad, the deck will lose the games it was already losing rather than stealing them back.
Check it against the current top decks
New does not mean better. A Leader has to beat what people are already playing — read our guide to reading the meta for how to find out what that actually is.
Wait two weekends
Real event results from two or three weekends tell you more than every preview and pre-order price combined. Prices for new Leaders are at their most speculative in exactly the window where information is thinnest.
What a six-Leader wave does to prices
Six new archetypes compete for the same player attention and the same wallets. Historically that spreads demand: instead of one Leader spiking hard, several rise modestly and then diverge sharply once results land. The Leader that wins the first major event tends to double while the other five drift back toward their floor.
If you are buying to play, this argues for patience. If you are buying to collect, note that Leaders in alternate art are among the most reliably desirable cards in the game precisely because they are the face of a deck — but that demand shows up over months, not in launch week.
A Leader is not a card you play. It is a set of instructions for what the other fifty cards have to be.
Once you have picked a Leader, our deck building guide covers the ratios, and the colours guide explains what each colour is actually trying to do.
Frequently asked questions
- How many Leaders are in OP-17?
- Six, one per colour: Edward Newgate (Red), Shanks (Green), Rocks D. Xebec (Blue), Kaido (Purple), Monkey D. Luffy (Black) and Charlotte Linlin (Yellow).
- Is Rocks D. Xebec a new character in the card game?
- Yes. OP-17 is his debut as a Leader, alongside a wider Rocks Pirates theme, which is a large part of why the set generated so much pre-release attention.
- Which OP-17 Leader is the best?
- Nobody knows yet, and anyone who says otherwise is guessing. Leader strength depends on the supporting card pool and the rest of the format. Wait for two or three weekends of tournament results before buying into an archetype.
- Do I need the alternate art Leader to play?
- No. The base printing of a Leader is identical for tournament purposes. Alternate arts cost substantially more and change nothing about how the deck plays.
- Can I use an OP-17 Leader in Extra Regulation?
- Yes. Every card is legal in Extra Regulation unless it is banned or restricted, and new sets are legal in Standard on release. See our [rotation guide](/en/blog/one-piece-tcg-rotation-block-system) for how the two formats differ.
Sources
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