OP18 Meta Predictions: The Field After the Mihawk Ban

Data note: two Limitless online cups, ChinoizeCup #121 and #122, held October 12 and 13, 2026. 128 decks, six Swiss rounds, no top cut. Records are our sums of the two Limitless metagame tables.

OP18 meta starting point: the first post-ban field

A weeknight Swiss cup is a pulse check, not a tier list. Five games either way would reshuffle the bottom half of this table. Still, three things are already hard to ignore: Xebec is everywhere, Luffy & Ace is the popular deck that wins, and the small Slash decks are punching well above their numbers.

Image: our chart, built from the Limitless metagame tables for ChinoizeCup #121 and #122. Gold bars won 55% or more of their matches.

The Slash leaders came back first

Bandai's notice says Mihawk "significantly restricts the viability of Leader cards with the {Slash} attribute". The reason is printed on the card: his leader gets +1000 power whenever the opponent's leader is Slash. Look at who showed up once he left. Xebec and Kalgara are both Slash leaders, and between them they took 7 of the 16 top-8 places across the two cups. Two cups can't prove the ban caused that, but it's the pattern Bandai's notice points at.

That matches what r/OnePieceTCG had already measured. In a post-mortem built on TCG Match Making's power rankings, u/Yannabanana447 found Mihawk won 74% of his games against Slash leaders and 53% against everything else. Other Slash leaders fell under 1% of ranked games after OP14, and in the two weeks after the sim applied the ban, they "jumped to close to 30%" (post-mortem thread). The thread didn't celebrate for long. One of its most upvoted replies:

If you want the full ban history, our One Piece TCG banlist guide has it. For the pre-ban picture, the OP-17 meta tier list is the snapshot Mihawk still sat on top of.

One call per leader

Luffy & Ace: ST30-001ST30-001Shop on TCGplayer gives every Luffy and Ace card +3000 power on your opponent's turn, which is a lot of free defense against a field that attacks as much as Xebec does. It has the best record of anything people actually brought. We'd play it this week. The only reason to skip it is the mirror: you will see it. Our Luffy & Ace deck guide has a list.

Xebec: most played, exactly even. It's the deck to beat in the sense that you'll face it every round, not because it beats everyone. One reply on the ban thread predicted "they want a Rocks t0 meta" (u/HelmetsAkimbo). Two days of results say not yet. Keep playing it if you own it and know the mirror; don't buy into it now. Start with the Xebec deck guide.

Black Luffy: OP17-079OP17-079Shop on TCGplayer is the card Rocks players fear. A Rocks player on the subreddit asked "How do we deal with black luffy? I heard thats our worst matchup." (r/OnePieceTCG). With that much Xebec around, Black Luffy should be winning more than half its matches. It isn't, and it put nobody in either top 8. We'd wait for weekend results before trusting the theory.

Kalgara: the smallest sample in the table and the best record in it, plus the only 6-0 in cup #122. It's a Slash leader that has played under Mihawk's +1000 ever since OP14. Test it. The Yellow Kalgara deck guide is the place to start.

Red/Green Luffy: three players, and one of them went 6-0 to win the Swiss in cup #121. Too few to call, but if you already own the Red Green Luffy deck, bring it.

Sabo: OP13-004OP13-004Shop on TCGplayer kept a winning record and one top-8 place. Nothing flashy. It's the safe pick if you don't want to learn a new deck this month.

The purple decks: Pudding and OP17-058OP17-058Shop on TCGplayer Kaido both lost more than they won, and Rosinante only just broke even. Skip them for now. Purple is also where OP-18 might help most, which brings us to the new set.

OP18 meta predictions: what the new leaders could change

These are predictions from card text, not results. Only Franky's card is on an official Bandai image so far; the other texts come from OPDeckGuide's spoiler list and can still change. OP-18 releases November 20 in English. Bandai lists it as tournament legal seven days later, though the cards are fine at your store's pre-release.

Image: Franky OP18-021 sample card from Bandai's official ONE PIECE CARD GAME English account on X. ©Eiichiro Oda/Shueisha, Toei Animation.

Franky (Green/Purple): every Stage card in your hand counts as a +3000 counter, and once per turn he can pay DON!! -1 to play a Stage of cost 5 or less. That's a leader built to survive long games against aggressive decks. If Luffy & Ace and Xebec are still the two most-played leaders in November, Franky has a field to aim at. The risk is the Stage pool: the deck is only as good as the Stages OP-18 actually prints.

Luffy (Green, OP18-022): with three DON!! attached, he can set himself active and skip his next refresh. Depending on timing we haven't seen confirmed, that reads like a second attack at a price. It's another aggressive Luffy in a format already full of them, so it competes for the same players as Luffy & Ace and Red/Green Luffy.

Saint Gunko (Purple/Black): draws two and trashes one whenever a Character is played from your trash, and can add an active DON!! if you control a Character with 8000 base power or more. Nothing in the table above is Purple/Black. The purple players losing with Kaido and Pudding right now are the obvious audience.

Spandam (reported Black/Yellow): adds the top card of the deck to Life, but he rests two DON!!, himself and a CP card to do it. A Life-gain leader is the classic answer to a Luffy-heavy field. This one looks slow.

Mihawk isn't fully gone either. Bandai says it plans "to distribute a new Leader card with a new text", P-163 Dracule Mihawk, at future events. Until that text is in the official card list, don't plan around it. For the full set picture, see our OP-18 leader deck potential preview and the OP-18 pre-order guide.

What could change this read

• More events. Two online cups is a small sample. Weekend store events and the next Limitless cups will move every number in the table.
• Tier sites that still count Mihawk. OPMetagame's OP-17 page still shows Green Mihawk on top (65.0% win rate, 23.3% of decks) because it averages the whole set window. Read those pages as pre-ban until they reset.
• Who plays weeknight cups. Online Swiss events lean toward grinders on established decks. New brews usually show up later.

Our take

Pick up Luffy & Ace this week, keep Kalgara as the sleeper, and stop treating Xebec as a must-beat until it starts winning. For OP-18, Franky is the leader we'd test first: his text answers the decks this field is already full of. Gunko comes second, because purple players need something.

How we checked this: we added up the two Limitless metagame tables and standings pages leader by leader, and read the OP-18 leader texts from OPDeckGuide and Bandai's Franky post on October 14, 2026.

References

• Bandai: Banned/Restricted Cards effective from October 12, 2026
• Limitless: ChinoizeCup #121 metagame and standings
• Limitless: ChinoizeCup #122 metagame and standings
• OPMetagame: OP-17 decks
• OPDeckGuide: OP-18 card list
• Bandai: OP-18 The Dominance of God product page
• r/OnePieceTCG: Post-Mortem on OP14 Mihawk