Red/Purple Law - The META-DEFINING Deck of Mesquite (Mesquite Deck Introduction)

Intro

Hey guys, Cross (@Cross_Aii) here, and today we are going to be looking at Red/Purple Law! 

This is certainly going to be THE deck at Mesquite. If your deck loses to R/P Law, you have very low chances of winning the tournament, and for all we know R/P Law might just win the whole thing…

These series of deck articles that I am releasing between today and tomorrow will be rather short, so the comments will be open for any questions.

Position in the Meta

This is roughly my thoughts on the meta going into Mesquite, and as you can see, R/P Law is at the very top!

The fact of the matter is, R/P Law has the potential to beat every meta defender EXCEPT Gurple Doflamingo, which doesn’t seem to be very popular in the first place, and likely won’t see much play.

Matchups like Whitebeard actually aren’t that bad as long as you don’t don minus twenty times, defend life properly and you realize you can clear rested Aces by attacking into them.

Matchups like Moria was bad, but now we have more 3-drops to help us expand our board by 1 extra character when going first, and they have no more great eruption, which makes them run out of resources faster. There will also be X amount of people, who just run less Luccis & Ice Ages, which will also be in R/P Law's favor.

There’s some changes to consider when looking at R/P Law after the banlist, so let’s go ahead and check out the decklist.

Decklists

Standard?

This is what I expect to roughly be the standard list going into Mesquite format! Some people may opt for no Zorojuros, and some may opt out of Miss All Sunday as well, let’s go ahead and analyze.

I’m going to talk about “Spice” first that wasn’t always ran in Japan, then we’ll talk about the other cards.

2 Sanji - This card is mainly used as a tech against Enel, and honestly, I probably wouldn’t be playing this card if I was playing R/P Law. 

A lot of the times I’ve played against RP Law players playing Sanji, they slam it on the board without using the effect, and then I just pop it the following turn. It makes me question whether their reasoning for adding Sanji made any sense in the first place.

This just goes back to my problem of people just playing cards because they sound sweet, without even knowing how to use them. But Sanji would definitely have a bit of Merit, if its affect is used immediately.

But the reason I question Sanji’s merit in the first place, is because I don’t think you need it’s effect to beat Enel at all. As long as you don’t dp minus 20 times, and don’t swing every turn for no reason. 

I actually played against Kai’s OP07 Enel a while back (when I first started R/P Law, I wasn’t even nice at the deck yet), and I won majority of the games even though he was SACKING like crazy. The matchup seems clearly R/P Law favored, as long as you play it right.

3 Miss All Sunday - This card is the actual QUEEN of the deck. People originally didn’t want to play this card, because it was more non-counterless, but it seems like people now universally respect this card for it’s value.
People often say “if you don’t draw X amount of Reiju you can’t win.” Not only does this card get us closer to our Reijus, but it’s basically another Reiju itself due to how it replenishes hand! 

Against various decks, it’s actually strong to just play Ms. All Sunday on 5-don and pass. Now you drew an extra card, and you have 8-don to work with on the following turn.

Against decks with removal, I’d even argue it’s THE best 5-don turn play. And we then worry about establishing 5Kid later in the game.

Now for the rest of the deck:

4 Ain - I don’t see myself reducing this card anytime soon. Due to already having 4 BonClays & 4 Shachi Penguin, 3 copies of Ain may be possible, but I’d have to see the math-diff between 11 and 12 don plus. I also think playing Ain on 4-don and passing turn comes up in a lot of matchups, so I’ll likely never reduce this below 4-copies. 

If you have too many Ains in your hand, count how much don you will go to next turn if you play Ain vs. Shachi Penguin, and consider playing Ain instead of the Shachi Penguin!

4 Otama + 8 Gordon/Raise Maxes - This is standard amount of DP minus that gets combo’d with out leader skill. I don’t know the actual math on it, but 12 intuitively seems like a good number, and it’s the standard for most R/P Law lists.

4 Zorojuro - This is easily the strongest 3-Don turn play when going first. Decks like Whitebeard have to attack into it, or else we will keep on ramping. And getting an extra don in the early-game against one of our worst matchups (Moria), is very strong as well. I think 4 copies is strong, because you really want to see it.

This card also compliments Ms. All Sunday really well.

3 Shuraiya - Shuariya is another 3-don turn play when going first, and against most matchups, I think this decks ceiling raises if we do get to establish one extra body on our 3-don turn.

Aside from being 3-cost, it’s effect is particularly strong against decks like Whitebeard, BY Luffy, RG Oden, etc. It’s just a very defensive card that helps make up for our life being 4, and it can also be very aggressive against these 6K power leaders, due to it being able to become 6K itself.

Knowing when to attack vs. when to block with Shuraiya, will significantly affect your games.
I personally like having more than 3 blockers to call off leader skill, especially against decks like Whitebeard & BY Luffy, so this ratio may increase in the other lists you see from me.

4 Reiju, 4 Shachi & Penguin, 4 Kid & Killer - I don’t believe I will be reducing any of these any time soon.

4 Bon Clay - God tier ramp card. If your opponent doesn’t answer it, or isn’t playing a deck that can answer it, it gets to hit extremely high numbers for no reason. It’s also a god card against 9Beard in general, playing this the turn before their 9Beard turn is too strong.

Ramping a don active is also very relevant when aggroing the opponent with 7K swings.

2 Queen - This card used to be a 3-4 of, but with the addition of Miss All Sunday, it is now more common at 2-3 copies. This card is still extremely bad in the early-game, but only gets stronger as the game goes on. Just like Miss All Sunday, its arguably “another” Reiju, and it’s a blocker to help protect us in the late-stages of the games.

4 5-Cost Kid - This has been one of the strongest blockers in R/P Law since it’s release. The ability to permanently change our leader skill from minus 3 to minus 2, is too strong. 

I’ve never tried less than 4 copies of this card, but it’s something I would consider if I ever wanted to raise my Miss All Sunday or Queen count. Most the decks in the meta don’t actually have a way to answer 5Kid. So it’s difficult to justify less than 4 copies.

Now let’s look at some other variants.

Cross’ Standard List

This is the list above, but 2 Sanjis were swapped with 2 blocker Chopd]pers. As I said above, I think the Enel matchup is already favored without Sanji(assuming you play properly), and people don’t seem to know how to use Sanji strongly in the first place.

But is blocker Chopper better than a different 2K like Kamazo? Or just running Sanji anyways?

Let’s talk about Blocker Chopper.

Another 3 Cost Play - As mentioned by me earlier, I believe being able to establish a 3-Cost character on 3-don is too strong against most matchups. Especially Moria, who just lost great eruption, playing a 3-cost arguably has way more tempo than attacking for 8K.

There’s also random spots in the mid-game where you randomly have 3 extra don, and having a 3-drop to play in those spots are fire.

Another DP minus - Don minus 2 is a bit heavy, but it’s very strong when it’s strong. Specifically against Whitebeard, R/G Oden, Uta, etc, the extra dp minus is very relevant. It makes it easier to attack into 8 Cost Kid, clear 7000 power attackers, or for aggro turns against pesky blockers like 7Luffy.

Another Blocker - When it comes to preventing lethal or putting opponent in awkward spots, it’s nice to have a blocker that can be played off leader skill at the end of the game.

I think this mostly came up against Whitbeeard & Uta for me. Being able to do Kid/Queen + blocker off leader skill was very nice.

Tl;DR A combination of Chopper being 3 cost, a blocker, and a dp minsuer makes me a huge fan of it.

It’s possible to play Toy Law in this slot, but then there’s slightly more 3-drops than I’d like. It’s also possible to use 7Ace or Fire Fist in this slot, but we’d have to likely reduce at least 1 Raise Max to counter-balance the amount of non-counter.

Some other RP Law lists

7Ace List

| -3000 to a rested character, and attack into it, and -3000 to a standing character and bottom deck it! 7 Cost & 7000 stat-line is also hard to deal with. |

This is probably the list I want to try the most. Prior to getting real R/P Law testing, I read this Japanese note about a month ago. It spoke of the concept of running Ace, and defined it as a card “you always want to play 4-of,” because the only timing to play it would supposedly be at the start of the game.

But after testing RP Law, I’m not sure if this is true. I find that it’s very frequent that I will play Ms. All Sunday on 5-don and pass without playing any units, or I’ll play an Ain/Bon Clay on the 4-don turn of going second, and pass without playing any units.

If you take this strategy then you will end up with 7-8 don when going first, and 7-don when going second.

Now let’s do the math. If we are at 7-don, and we subtract 3-don, then now we’re at 4-don. But if we play just one card that plusses us don, then we’ll actually go back to 7-don. And if we repeat this cycle, we actually will end up going back to 7-don for quite some time!

This means that contrary to what that Japanese article spoke of, we can actually be at 7-don for quite sometime.

Now this depends on matchup, and maybe my approach of gaining more don before don minusing isn’t the most optimal, because it’s arguably less aggressive. But it’s been working pretty strongly for me so far, and this also gives us timing to consistently play Ace, without having to sack into 5Kid/Sunday + Sachi Penguin on curve every time.

Fire-Fist List

| I can finally hit 7000 power units without Gordon |

The other list that I am a huge fan of is this fire fist list. Fire-Fist is a card that I think becomes very strong post-ban, thanks to it’s ability to hit 7000 units. Some Moria players want to adopt 6Sakazuki because of the 7000 stat-line, decks like R/G Oden, Ace, and Ivankov also feature 7000 power units, and even Ace in the mirror is 7000 power! So having a 1-card way to respond to these cards has a lot of merit.

But these cards come out in the early-game, and firefist is only a 2-of, and never a mulligan standard, so it may be too highrolly to want to include.

But it does have a bit of merit past the early-game, it can combo with Gordon to bottom-deck 10,000 power units, and it can make 8Cost Kid 4K power, and 8Moria 5K power 4K power.

It’s an interesting card that I think is definitely worth testing, but certainly not necessary.

The Card I don’t like

This is the card I like the least right now. My meta-read on this card might be wrong, but I’m sure you don’t need this card to beat any deck, including Enel.

If y’all watched my Blue Doflamingo stream, then y’all will notice that I tried to take Pudding out of my deck like 20 times. (I’ve decided to use it for the time being, but let me explain why).

I absolutely hate winmore cards. If I can beat most my matchups by just playing better instead of including cards that make up for me being bad, then I won’t play them, and will instead try to tech as much as I can for the bad matchups.

That’s the reason I didn’t use Pudding in Sakazuki. And the reason I’ve decided to use Pudding in Doflamingo, is because it seems to mesh too well with the deck. Doflamingo is very aggressive and pushes a lot of cards to your opponent’s hand in the early-game, and it provides a notable advantage against BY Luffy.

R/P Law on the other hand doesn’t seem to need R/P Law.

My testing so far has led me to believe that I don’t NEED Blocker Law to beat Whitebeard or Enel. 

Is it obviously a good card against decks like Neel & Whitebeard? YES. But do I believe I need it to consistently beat Whitebeard or Enel? NO. And do I believe the games between Whitebeard/Enel are do close, that I’d like a card like Blocker Law to clearly tip the matchup cleaely it in my favor? Typically No.

Once again my read on this may be wrong, so I’d advise y'all to first practice against Enel/Whirebeard without Blocker Law, that way you learn how you can win without Blocker Law. And then you can shift to playing the mu with blocker law, and seeing if you want to keep it or not.

But since I currently believe I don’t need it, I would rather include a card like Blocker Chopper, which provides me more 3-drops that would be strong when going first against Moria (which is one of the sketchier matchups). And it’s also a card that happens to be quite strong against Whitebeard, and decent bait against Enel (when Enel wants to use 8Kata or 9Yamato against us, they can only target one unit.) So it’s decent bait, so our 5Kid, or smth like that may live instead. Or if Chopper lives we get an easy botdeck on their big unit.

Even Ace/FireFist  in that slot is more interesting to me  as well, due to their benefits I mentioned earlier.

Blocker Law is obviously a very strong card, I just don’t find it necessary in the current meta.

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That’s it for the article for now, thanks for reading! More articles coming for other decks between today and tomorrow, so stay tuned!