Sabo EB-05 Deck: Ripley and Yamato, Still 8-14 vs Rocks

The numbers come from the nine [EB05]-tagged Standard-format Limitless Play events, October 19 to November 4, 2026: 558 players, 31 Sabo lists, all best-of-one Swiss on the simulator. Smaller untagged events are not counted. We left out the three [EGB + EB05] events (#126, #129 and #132), because they run the Extra format. The "before" baseline is the five OP-17 post-ban events of October 12 to 15, with 8 Sabo lists in 166 players. If you want the deck from scratch, our Sabo deck guide covers the OP-17 build, and the EB-05 card list has every card of the set. For the leader-by-leader table, see our EB-05 matchup chart. This post is about what changed since.

What EB-05 added

Ripley and Yamato are the only EB-05 cards that show up in these lists at scale. Bandai's text on Ripley: "This Character gains +12 cost. [On Play] You may trash 1 card from your hand: Play up to 1 Character card with a cost of 2 or less from your trash." She costs 4 and has 4000 power, but with the +12 she counts as a cost-16 Character, which turns on the "If there is a Character with a cost of 12 or more" bonuses on Usopp, Sanji, Robin and Zoro. The deck already had OP17-089OP17-089Shop on TCGplayer Jaguar.D.Saul (+12 cost, 4 copies) and OP17-119OP17-119Shop on TCGplayer Loki (+12 cost, 4 copies) for that job. Ripley is a third one.

She went from 0 of 8 baseline lists to 29 of 31, 25 of those with four copies. Yamato went from 0 to 25 of 31 lists, usually two copies (14 lists). Bandai's text: "If your opponent has a Character with 8000 base power or more, this Character gains [Blocker] and +3000 power." Black, cost 4, 5000 power.

Image credit: Bandai via the official card list (EB05-047 and EB05-046).

What left? Nami (OP01-016) fell from 1.75 copies per list to 0.32, Ace & Sabo & Luffy (OP13-007) from 1.25 to none (3 of 8 baseline lists, 0 of 31), and Brook, Jinbe, Gerd and Pirates Docking Six each lost about a third of a copy to a half. Nothing here is a rebuild. It's the OP-17 shell with two slots swapped.

The 50 cards of the best finish

The best Sabo result in the nine events was second place at ChinoizeCup #124 on October 19: 128 players, 6-1. The last column is the number of the 31 lists holding the card.

Eight cards are in all 31 lists: Zoro, Usopp, Loki, Robin, Sanji, Saul, Luffy OP17-093 and Chopper. Ripley (29 of 31, usually four copies) is the biggest change from the OP-17 build, but it is a refit of the OP-17 Elbaph core, not a new core.

Rocks: one Reddit commenter said 55-45, the games said 8-14

Rocks was already the problem before EB-05. In the thread "RB Sabo into Rocks, how?" on r/OnePieceTCG, u/CanAdministrative329 wrote on September 9 that they were "playing Elbaph Sabo and the matchup is horrible". Another commenter in the thread, u/MapInternational883, put it the same day at "a 55-45 split favoring Rocks, but 50-50 when Sabo goes second".

Our count against Blue Rocks is 8-14 (36%, 22 games): 6-12 from October 19 to 22, then only four more games, 2-2. That is worse than 55-45. The simulator events we read don't record who went first, so the "going second" half of that comment is not something we can test.

Chart: Shonen TCG. Source: Limitless Play standings, nine EB-05 events, October 19 to November 4, 2026.

The field moved to Luffy, and Luffy beat Sabo 10-5

Car D. Kaizoku's meta video of October 18, before EB-05, had Sabo near the top of the sim results: "we have both of the Elbaf decks at fourth and fifth, Sabo a little bit higher than Luffy." That "Luffy" is the Black Elbaph Luffy, not Red/Green Luffy, which the same video ranks tenth. The tournament lists that followed show Sabo shrinking while Red/Green Luffy (OP13-001) grew. Sabo had 25 lists in 272 players in the first three events (9.2%), 4 in 150 in the next three (2.7%) and 2 in 136 in the last three (1.5%). Luffy went 3.7%, 22.7%, 23.5%.

Chart: Shonen TCG. Source: Limitless Play pairings for nine EB-05 events, October 19 to November 4, 2026; matchups under 8 games are left out.

The one clean win is Rosinante, 9-3, and 11 of those 12 games were played from October 19 to 22. Our own Sabo guide, written on OP-17 data, said Sabo "beats the Luffy decks". Against Red/Green Luffy the EB-05 record is 5-10. Overall the 31 lists went 59-69 (46%) with two top-8 places out of 72: second at ChinoizeCup #124 and seventh in Rumble league #15.

What it costs

At TCGplayer's market price in the TCGCSV file published on the evening of November 7 (UTC), the regular Ripley (Rare) is $0.64, lowest listing $0.10, so four copies are about $2.56. Yamato, a Super Rare, is $11.62 market (lowest listing $9.00): $23.24 for the two copies the second-place list used. The Super Rare alternate art of Yamato is $38.72.

Our pick: Ripley is the cheap upgrade and it's in 29 of 31 lists. Don't build the deck around it. If your local meta is Rocks and Red/Green Luffy, the two decks Sabo went 13-24 against, pick a different Leader. If you already own the Elbaph core, Ripley and two Yamato is a $26 refit.

What we haven't seen

Only 6 Sabo lists exist after October 22, so the late-period records (8-6, then 2-5) are too small to call a trend. We don't have paper results. The September 9 thread is Reddit opinion from before EB-05 was in play.