Gurple Doflamingo - The Better Perona Deck that was never tested (Mesquite Deck Introduction)

Intro

Hey guys, Cross (@Cross_Aii) here, and today we are going to be looking at Gurple Doflamingo! This is a deck I assumed was not good, but actually seems to be one of the strongest choices going into Mesquite when you consider all the variants for it.

I doubt this deck will have any real play at Mesquite, but I think one of its biggest incentives is being able to demolish R/P Law.

And some people will tell me “if you don’t draw Bird Cage you lose,” and I want to tell those people that we have a total of 8 searchers for Bird Cage. The problem is most of y’all decide to only play 4 copies of the searches, because there’s an assumption that the other searcher is bad for whatever reason. And I also see a lot of 3 Bird Cage lists, while they only play 4 searchers, which also doesn’t make much sense to me.

When I looked for Gurple Doflamingo lists on YouTube, the decks looked really bad to the point where I thought the deck was just cooked.

But I burnt the kitchen down as usual, and I now think we might have a real meta-contender here.

Position in the Meta

Realistically I was personally taking GP Doffy to Mesquite before I was ever taking B/Y Luffy or Uta, so I rate it above these two. 

For the record, Uta is an extremely powerful deck (I am a BY Luffy hater, so I won’t say much about it), but I don’t think Uta is a tournament-winning deck. It’s one of those decks, that you can easily build a deck to defeat it, or you learn your best lines against it, and you can win. The deck boasts an incredible amount of advantage, but its plays are too linear, while also not being strong enough.

As I mentioned earlier, this decks kills R/P Law which I believe by itself should slow it to be placed fairly highly.

But it’s matchup spread is actually broken in general.

Thanks to the inclusion of 8Kid + Rosinante, this deck also has a very nice time against Uta as well. 8Kid + Rosinante is traditionally one of Moria’s worst nightmares as well.

I think 8Kid is also very strong against BY Luffy, but I need more testing. If 8Kid is somehow not enough against BY Luffy, this is one of the few decks in the game that can actually remain healthy enough to play 9Zoro.

And due to the deck keeping 5Costs rested for the entire game, as well as restanding 2-don, our 9Zoro turn doesn’t actually leave us defenseless for a turn!

So I think this deck is easily capable of beating BY Luffy, RP law, AND Uta  given the proper build.
Moria is currently the most difficult matchup by far. I was getting wrecked pretty bad by AwakenedTCG on most of my builds, and it forced me to re-evaluate a lot of the cards I wanted to include. I believe I have now created a build that stands the strongest chance against Moria!

Decklist

Cross’ Standard

This is the best I was able to do for GP Doflamingo going into Mesquite. As you can see there are ZERO Purple cards.

I tried Queen, I tried Purple 7Kid, I tried Ragnarok, and all these options felt inferior to 10Cost Doflamingo spam or 8Kid. The purpose of all these purple cards were to prevent BirdCage’s deletion by a turn, but this appears to be simply inferior to establishing 8Kid, and making those lower cost units irrelevant for the rest of the game anyways.

8Kid is also very strong with this Doflamingo card:

| A combo I didn’t even know existed |

8Kid is now a menace, EVEN AGAINST BIGGER UNITS, thanks to flapping thread making it 10K power for the turn. And multiple Flapping threads straight up takes us into a whole different universe.

My idea is would I rather delay BirdCage by a turn while doing literally nothing (Ragnarok & Queen is basically doing nothing, 7Kid is cool enough though, because at least our leader can go to 8K with Flapping thread, and it’s a formidable attacker), or would we rather establish a 8 Cost Kid, that can become 10-12K on the turn it’s established, and only gain more and more value as the game goes on. 

Let me show another card that people assumed was weak, that I also think goes well with 8Kid + Flapping thread.

One of the problems with 8 Cost Kid(and even 10 Cost Doffy to some degree), is we have a very limited amount of don to defend it on the turn we play it. But this card fixes that problem:

This card is very, very strong. If you have 10-Don when you play 8-Cost Kid, then you can defend the Kid, WHILE going back to 4-don to use 2 more defensive events!

And even with 10Cost Doflamingo, we go back to 3-don, and this gives us enough don to use the 1-Cost Doflamingo searcher to find another 10Doffy, or another event to defend ourselves with.

I think people read “trash 1 card,” and start tweaking out. But think of it as the “0 Cost: Discard a card and gain 3K power,” that a lot of other decks use. Except this is literally 10x better. It defends for 4K, and we got all the don we used back +1 more. It’s actually too good.

Anyway, this is not a deck many play, and synergies are probably unobvious, so let me explain the whole list:

4 Baby 5 + 4 Viola - A total of 8 2Ks. Due to the large amount of 2-Cost events, and our ability to consistently play them every turn, I believe 6-8 2Ks is the sweetspot for this deck. I currently have 8, because I also like that they can be grabbed from “Off-White,” but I could easily go down to 7 in order to include a 4th CHarlestone.

4 Sugar - A card that can forcefully rest a 4-cost (to be stunned by BirdCage), and can also rest any big units that would be played. By playing this on the turn prior to our 10Doflamingo turn, we can rest whatever big unit they play, then stun it with our 10Doflamingo the following turn

4 Baby 5 -  Grabs all our Doflamingo stuff, and is basically an extra life (opponenet’s leader must swing into it, unless they opened a searcher)

4 Rosinanate - This is the strongest card in combination with 8-Cost Kid. When combined with 8-Cost Kid, our Kid is protected from at least 1 destruction event. It also can protect our Kid, even if it gets Amaru’d

1 Monet - 5th blocker. Due to the high amount of the 1-Cost Doflamingo event searcher, and Off-White (the +4K check top 3 searcher), 4 blockers should almost be enough, but I addenda  monet for piece of mind, and to increase the chances of playing multiple blockers on 1-turn if necessary.

2 7-Cost Doflamingo - This is a card to combat 8-Cost Moria being played on their 8-Don turn. Moria struggles to clear 7-Cost units on curve WHILE playing 8-Cost Moria on their 8-don turn, so we can play this card to either delay their 8Moria by a turn, or we get to keep our character established.

4 8 Cost Kid - This card helps solve the issue of BirdCage being destroyed at 10-Don. If our opponent plays Sabo to protect their board, we can establish a 8-Cost Kid which directly punishes this play. This cards even strong without the whole 10Doflamingo engine, 8Kid + Rosinanate + Flapping Thread is too strong.

4 10Doflamingo - A godly card against black decks(they can only remove so many 10 costs), and allows us to establish real attackers prior to our 8 Cost Kid turn. I actually tried a Doflamingoless Doflamingo deck, but it was too weak against Moria. This card is strong anyways, because it gives us a good amount of time prior to playing 8 Cost Kid.

4 Donquixote Family (the 1 event cost searcher) - This card is too strong to me, I don’t know why know one wants to use it. I actually also used this card in a 10Doflamingo Perona deck earlier in the meta, and it was one of the strongest Perona decks I’ve ever played. This card’s consistency in finding us multiple 10 Cost Doflamingos is so strong. It can even search for all of our defensive events as well.

A common thing I also hear is “if you don’t draw BirdCage, you lose.” Well here’s four more ways to search for BirdCage as well.

4 Off White - One of the strongest 4K power defensive events, I actually equate this cards defensive value to the same as Bonney/Baby 5. It defends our life, while earning us an extra card

4 Flapping Thread - Strongest card in combination with 8 Cost Kid. And it also defends us against multiple 5K attacks. 6K power leaders are already strong enough, becoming 7K for the turn is pretty nuts.

This card also counters Gordon or Fire-Fist, as

3 Charlestone - Severely underrated defensive event. This card is literally the 0 Cost defensive events on crack. Being able to defend 4K, while restanding 3-don has a lot of implications. It gives us the ability to use 2 more defensive events on our first 8-Cost Kid turn, and it gives us don to use more Doflamingo searchers, on our 10Cost Doflamingo turns.

4 BirdCage - This is the card that makes are deck. Stunning every 5-Cost for the entire game has a ridiculous amount of defensive value. I think this card and leader skill, is what makes this deck way better than Perona. It’s 20 times easier to safely land multiple 10Cost Doflamingos, and even 8 Cost Kid, in a deck like this one compared to Perona.

This is also the card that single-handedly slaughters RP Law.

That’s it for the decklist, lastly I will leave y’all with the curve for this deck.

Don Curve

Going First

1: Baby5

3: Baby5 Effect + Another Baby 5 if you have it, or swing 5K with leader (Don’t swing 7K with leader, so we leave up don to use multiple 1-cost Doflamingo events and/or Off-White)

5: BirdCage (establish BirdCage now, so we can play a 7-Drop on 7)

7: 7Cost Doflamingo 

9: 7Cost Doflamingo + Sugar, or 8Kid + Rosinanate

10: 10Doflamingo

10: 10Doflamingo(if you have another) or 8Kid

10: 10Doflamingo(if you have another) or 8Kid

Once you get to 10-Don, you’re spamming Doflamingos for the rest of the game, or setting up a 8-Cost Kid.

Going Second

2: Baby5

4: Baby5(if you have another), or leave up don to use 1-Cost Doflamingo and/or Off-White

6: BirdCage

8: 8CostKid Standing or 7Cost Doflamingo

10: 10Doflamingo

10: 10Doflamingo(if you have another) or 8Kid

10: 10Doflamingo(if you have another) or 8Kid

Once you get to 10-Don, you’re spamming Doflamingos for the rest of the game, or setting up a 8-Cost Kid.

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This is it for the introduction of Gurple Doflamingo. Let me know if this deck ends up interesting y’all, and I can explain it more for future tournaments in that format.

With that, I’ll catch y’all in the next one, peace.