Stage 1
DON!! explained for complete beginners
Your resource, your buff, and your tempo clock — all in one deck of ten cards.
5 min read
← Learn the basics
Stage 1 of 5
Learn the board
Every area on the board and what sits in it, before you worry about winning.
From the official rules
What you need for a game
Each player brings one Leader, a 50-card deck and a 10-card DON!! deck. You draw five cards and may redraw your whole hand once, then set aside cards from the top of your deck as Life, as many as your Leader's Life value.
Source: Comprehensive Rules 5-1 and 5-2
From the official rules
How a turn runs
Every turn goes through the same five phases. In Refresh your rested cards stand back up and any DON!! you gave out return to your cost area; you then draw a card, add two DON!!, take your Main Phase and finish with the End Phase. The player going first skips that first draw and adds only one DON!!, and neither player can attack on their own first turn.
Source: Comprehensive Rules 6-1 to 6-6
Lessons
Every lesson in this stage
Lessons with a guide link to it. The others carry a short note drawn from the official rules, with the section it comes from, until I write them up properly.
Leader
Read the guide →Deck
Your 50-card deck sits face down and stays secret: nobody can look through it or change its order unless an effect says so. You draw from the top, and if it ever runs out, you lose the game.
Life
Your Life cards sit face down beside your Leader. Each time your Leader takes damage, the top one goes to your hand, or you can use its Trigger instead. You lose if your Leader takes damage while you have no Life left, and also if your deck runs out.
Characters
Characters are your crew. You play one by resting as many active DON!! as its cost, it arrives active, and it can't attack until your next turn unless it has Rush. You can have five on the board at most, so playing a sixth means trashing one of them first.
Source: Comprehensive Rules 3-7
Stage
A Stage sits in its own area and stays in play. You can only have one at a time, so playing a new Stage means trashing the one you already have.
Source: Comprehensive Rules 3-8
DON!! deck
Read the guide →Cost area
The DON!! you add each turn land here, active. You rest them to pay costs, choosing whichever ones you like, or give them to your Leader and Characters for power. At the start of your next turn the given DON!! come back, and everything in the cost area stands up again.
Source: Comprehensive Rules 3-9 and 6-2
Trash
K.O.'d Characters and Events you've used go here, face up on top of the pile. Both players can look through either trash at any time, and you can reorder your own.
Source: Comprehensive Rules 3-5
Guides
Written up so far
Stage 1
5 words I wish I knew before my first One Piece TCG game
Leader, DON!!, Counter, Blocker, Life — the five words that made my first game make sense.
6 min read
Rookie Glossary
The slides that go with this stage
Each term from the Instagram glossary, on a real card. Click a slide to see it full size.
From the Rookie Glossary
The board, card by card
Leader
The face-up card that represents your deck and stays out of the 50-card deck. Its colours decide which cards you can use, and its Life value is how many Life cards you start with.
Character
Your crew on the board. You pay a Character's DON!! cost to play it, and once it can attack it goes after the opposing Leader or a rested Character.
DON!!
Your resource and power boost. You gain two each turn, except one on the very first turn; rest them to pay costs, or give them to your Leader or a Character for +1000 each during your turn.
Damage / Life
When a Leader takes damage, the top Life card normally moves to that player's hand.
K.O. vs Trash
Every Character that gets K.O.'d goes to the trash, but not everything in the trash got there by being K.O.'d.