Red Shanks Deck Building Theory

Introduction

Hello and nice to meet you. My name is TsukiUsagi (@MdaTaePraty). 
Hey guys, Kai (@ikailakai) here with the translation to English.

In this article, I would like to talk about a new leader in OP09, Red Shanks.
Shanks is a mono-Red leader with the ability to disrupt your opponent’s offense at no cost every turn. Due to its freedom and powerful leader-locked cards, it was rumored even before the release of OP09 that Shanks may dominate the game. With the character’s popularity, and simple yet powerful nature of its gameplan, the deck has maintained a significant presence in the metagame.
I will be presenting a control focused list that revolves around the Red-Haired Pirates type core that has seen a large increase in power this set. The deck’s core strategy focuses on winning out the late game through consecutively playing high cost characters that control the board. I recommend this deck to those who want to use very powerful characters in the original manga like Rayleigh, Whitebeard, or Shanks, or want to play a consistent and solid deck that maintains board control, slowly eliminating loose conditions as the game progresses.
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• 2023 Wave 1 Kanagawa Regionals, Top 32

• 2023 Wave 1 Nationals, Top 16

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“Being a Pirate is All About Going Your Own Way”

In chapter 19 of the manga, when Young Buggy invited Shanks to become his subordinate, Shanks declined with these words.
Even in card games, while many players share the common goal of “win,” the decks they choose and the way they pilot it can be attributed to a difference in philosophy. Although there is no absolute correct answer to how you should think, if the logic leading to those decisions is not sound, it becomes difficult to maintain a consistent win rate.
Before moving on to the decklist and the reasoning behind the card choices, I will first discuss my approach to Red Shanks and the logic that I am using to win with it.

Maximizing Strengths or Minimizing Weaknesses?

Shanks has the ability to, [Once Per Turn], reduce the power of a character or leader’s attack by 1000. You can interpret this as gaining a temporary +1000 counter every turn.
The straightforward power of this ability makes the leader incredibly easy to use compared to some other leaders, including other Yonko in the same set.
In a previous article (Not currently translated to English), I discussed how the value of your life, and your hand will change over the course of the game. Applying this perspective to Shanks, you can preserve your valuable resources in hand by using the leader effect to simultaneously protect your life that becomes more valuable as the game progresses.
On the other hand, while 1000 counter is gained for free with Shanks, this can be made uncomfortable for the Shanks player by just attaching 1 Don card to make the attack 6000. As such, this effect becomes less valuable as the game progresses.
For this deck, where the strength and weaknesses are two sides of the same coin, there are two main approaches you can take with this logic.

1. Maximize the time when the leader’s effect is the strongest by swarming the board with low-cost Rush characters

2. Play high-cost characters consecutively, using the strong early game leader effect to cover the deck’s weak early game.

For this article, I will be exploring the latter ‘logic’.

Decklist

TCG+

(Decklist as of September 12th, when this article was written.)
The main strategy of this deck focuses on maintaining your life advantage while preserving your hand with cards like Shuraiya or Yasopp. These early defensive cards help bridge the gap from early to late game, allowing you to safely play high-cost characters that overwhelm the board.
As this deck has natural resistance against decks that win with consecutive low power attacks due to the new OP09 SR Shanks, and Yasopp, it is good to maintain a high health from the very early game, countering when necessary, to utilize the full potential of these cards.

Card Explanations

Leader Shanks (OP09)

A new leader from OP09 with a solid and simple effect that can suppress the opponent’s attacks at no cost. This deck explores a version of this deck that covers the leader effect’s weaknesses, rather than building on its strengths. 
Fundamentally, in the One Piece Card Game, cards that are played to the field should accrue more advantage than the cost and value of being a card in your hand by means of attacking, or blocking over the course of a few turns.
In the early game, when both player’s boards are weak, it is often optimal to use all Don to play the highest cost character you can in hand. Many decks play by this theory.
The leader Shanks can strongly punish this type of play. If the opponent uses all of their Don to play characters, Shanks can protect his life without spending a single card (the most valuable resource in the early game).
Shanks punishes this kind of play, and creates time to transition into powerful high-end cards with removal to control the opponent’s number of attacks and win back the board.