G5 is, as someone already mentioned, amazing vs BY Luffy and basically wins that matchup on its own in most cases. Additionally, the reason G5 was played during 05 was because nothing ever stuck to your board and it was also your sole wincondition vs Saka, as everything else didn't get a turn in most games. In 06, the Leader wasn't played because 1: Saka got much stronger for no good reason and there was no way to win against that Leader if the pilot was even remotely competent. 2: Reject - That card single-handedly deleted RP Luffy from the game, as you very often are forced to go to 1 life due to the sheer incosistency of the deck. 3: Yamato Leader, as 1 hit already has you in Reject range. 4: The Leader got literally nothing out of the set, not a single card. The same issue of it being bad vs Enel is still present though, so I guess if you lineup all the matchups you're going to face, Shanks probably is ahead. I'd personally cut a 7Kid, a Shanks and 1 Zorojuro to fit 3 copies of it. Also would never play 5c Kid in this Leader, the 3c Baccarat is better and can transform bricks into 2ks and the original 2 Jeans are also strong, I'd even do a 3/3 split between that and Zorojuro, as he's very often gone before you use him. I don't see how G5 is not strong in 07, as the same reasoning it was strong in 05 applies 100% to the 07 meta, but you cannot run both him and Shanks and 9gate and Dragon and 7Kid, that's far too much bricks. I'd be really curious to see what the matchups were. Still, an amazing showing for a deck that is heavily reliant on drawing the right cards with 0 ways of actually getting to those.
Thank you for the great analysis! After reading it ill probably follow your advice and find room for 1 or 2. Also, noted on the baccarats for kid switch. The matchups for the flagship winner were 2 enel, 1 green uta, 1 gecko, and 1 mirror. So if gear 5 is bad into enel they lucked out with matchups then.
@@johnny_tcgThe added reason why G5 is good that I didn't mention is the fact that it's your ONLY big drop you can actually search for in the deck which already struggles finding the right plays at the right times. Shanks is still the stonger card vs everything except for black, so again if we try to reason what to do and you know your tournaments aren't heavy on black, Shanks is 100% the choice. And vice-versa, if you know you're up against a lot of black, G5 is the correct choice with probably a more aggressive list, sacrificing the 7Kid for the 5c Rush Luffy as an example, but these are all points of preference, as Dragon does bring a lot of aggression the deck didn't use to have. I'd definitely say that they lucked out in terms of both choosing to prep for Enel and dodging all BY Luffys as well as all black matchups sans the sole Gecko, for 8 rounds that is amazing, but he might've already known that since you generally know what your TS competitors prefer to run.
@@johnny_tcgBecause it's not don-efficient, it has low immediate impact and the ability almost never goes through in a relevant way, as it gives the choice of action in your opponents' hands and in many cases, people will simply not block and switch their blockers to aggressors and in some cases, the KO doesn't even matter (as that was all you needed to survive the turn and you still got lethal next for example) or can't even occur, with an active Sabo for example in play. The main reason is that it's a purely offensive card in a deck that always needs to have defensive options open (like a don for Beam and you'll not always have a 7Kid to allow for that). It is one of the weakest 10c cards that exist in the game and only mono-red leaders could potentially play it, if anything. Shanks in comparison atleast gets rid of a major threat immediately (that could equal having a don for beam or even be better), something ST10 10c cannot do unless it's a rested character that your opponent cannot counter out, which again are too many criteria that Shanks ignores. For example, a single 9c Zoro usually is a loss if you cannot win in the following turn. Shanks just shoots that and swings the game very, very hard. It did see play very shortly after the immediate release of ST10 and before the release of OP05, due to the fact that there was simply nothing else, and even then 9c Kaido was better in most scenarios.
