Every cost in the One Piece Card Game has a ceiling — the highest power any Character at that cost has ever printed. Most rungs of that ladder sit where you would expect, one thousand above the rung below. Cost 4 does not. Two cards stand four thousand above the middle of their band, and both of them explain themselves in their own text box. This page is about those two cards.
Quick answer
Cost 4 is the only cost where a single card owns the ceiling, and the ceiling is 8,000. OP16-017 LittleOars Jr. prints 8,000 power at cost 4 with a 1,000 counter. The next card down is OP06-083 Oars at 7,000. The other 405 cost-4 Characters that print a power sit at 6,000 or below, and 238 of them sit at exactly 5,000.
Neither card is a mistake in the cost curve. Both pay for the extra power in the text box: LittleOars Jr. loses 4,000 power unless you control a Whitebeard Pirates Character costing 8 or more, and Oars cannot attack at all until you knock out one of your own Thriller Bark Pirates Characters. Strip the condition and OP16-017 is a 4,000-power card, and Oars is a wall that never swings.
Every figure is read from the official card database listed under Sources. Nothing is estimated and no price appears on the page.
What this page counts
The population is the 2,185 distinct Character card numbers in the official database, deduplicated so that alternate art and parallel printings count once. Of those, 2,033 print a power value; the remaining 152 print a dash and are the subject of the rarity page, which explains how they change an average.
The ceiling at each cost is the single highest printed power among the Characters printed at that cost. It is not an average and it is not a percentile: it is one card, and in one case it is one card out of 407. That distinction is the whole point of the page.
The cost-by-cost ladder, including the most common power at each cost and the number of cards that reach the ceiling, is already published on Card power and counter. What that table can only state in one column is why the two outliers exist, which is here, together with a correction to one sentence on that page about how many cost-4 cards sit above 5,000 power.
The ceiling, cost by cost
| Cost | Characters with a power | Most common power | Ceiling | Cards at the ceiling |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | 238 | 2,000 | 3,000 | 31 |
| 2 | 262 | 3,000 | 4,000 | 34 |
| 3 | 370 | 4,000 | 5,000 | 96 |
| 4 | 407 | 5,000 | 8,000 | 1 |
| 5 | 333 | 6,000 | 7,000 | 70 |
| 6 | 182 | 7,000 | 8,000 | 51 |
| 7 | 112 | 8,000 | 9,000 | 24 |
| 8 | 65 | 8,000 | 10,000 | 20 |
| 9 | 27 | 10,000 | 11,000 | 2 |
| 10 | 37 | 12,000 | 13,000 | 2 |
Two things stand out. The first is that the ceiling normally sits 1,000 above the most common power, and the fourth row breaks that: a cost-4 card should top out at 6,000 and instead reaches 8,000. The second is that the number of cards at the ceiling collapses as the cost rises. Thirty-one cards share the cost-1 ceiling; one card owns the cost-4 ceiling. That is the rarest kind of card in the pool — not a big card, a card that is alone at its height.
Why the fourth rung is the odd one
Cost 4 is also the largest band in the game: 407 Characters print a power at cost 4, more than any other cost. Within that band the distribution is tight. 238 cards print 5,000, which is 58.5% of the band. Another 104 print 6,000. Then there is a gap.
| Power at cost 4 | Characters |
|---|---|
| 8,000 | 1 |
| 7,000 | 1 |
| 6,000 | 104 |
| 5,000 | 238 |
| 4,000 | 36 |
| 3,000 | 6 |
| 2,000 | 9 |
| 1,000 | 12 |
Above 6,000 there are two cards. That is the gap the ceiling sits in: not a gradual tail, but a jump of two thousand from the top of the mass to the two cards at the top. One of them is at 7,000, which would still be a record for a cost-4 card, and the other is at 8,000, which is the same number the cost-6 ceiling reaches.
So the cost-4 ceiling is not 8,000 in the sense that cost-4 cards are large. It is 8,000 in the sense that one cost-4 card is large, printed at cost 4, and printed with a condition attached.
The 8,000 card
OP16-017 LittleOars Jr. is a Red Rare at cost 4, 8,000 power, with a 1,000 counter. Its effect reads:
- “If you have no Characters with a type including ‘Whitebeard Pirates’ and a cost of 8 or more, give this Character −4000 power.”
- “[Blocker]” — after your opponent declares an attack, you may rest this card to make it the new target of the attack.
The condition is the whole card. Without a Whitebeard Pirates Character costing 8 or more on your side of the field, the body is 4,000 power, which is below the cost-4 average of 4,966 and level with the 36 cards that print 4,000 — 344 of the 407 cards in the band sit above that. With one, it is the largest cost-4 Character ever printed, and it is a Blocker, which means the 8,000 is not only an attacking number but a wall the opponent has to get through.
That is a real deck-building constraint, not a formality. A Character at cost 8 is an expensive card to have sitting on the field, and requiring one before your four-cost blocker works means the cheap card and the expensive card are a package. OP-16 is the set that introduced the card, and the OP-16 set guide and the card-by-card OP-16 checklist both list it in context. The Whitebeard Pirates trait itself is indexed on the trait page, and the character behind it is covered on every Edward.Newgate card.
The 7,000 card
OP06-083 Oars is a Black Uncommon at cost 4, 7,000 power, with no counter. Its effect reads:
- “This Character cannot attack.”
- “[Activate: Main] You may K.O. 1 of your {Thriller Bark Pirates} type Characters: This Character’s effect is negated during this turn.”
A 7,000-power Character at cost 4 that cannot attack is not an attacker, it is a blocker that does not need the keyword. To make it swing you have to knock out one of your own Thriller Bark Pirates Characters, which means trading a card on your side for one turn of attack. In a deck that is not built around that trade, Oars is a defensive body: 7,000 power sitting in front of the opponent, at a cost where the most common body is 5,000.
Two thousand power above the middle of the band, for the ability to attack at all, once, at the cost of another card. Measured that way the 7,000 is not an exception to the curve, it is a card with a different job. The cost of removal in Black is what makes the trade possible, which is the part of the colour that no table can score; the site indexes the trait side of it on the trait page.
Both of them are Oars
This is the part that is easy to miss. The only two cost-4 Characters above 6,000 power are both versions of the same character: LittleOars Jr. at 8,000 and Oars at 7,000. Both print a restriction that describes them as enormous and hard to control, and both are printed at a cost where the rest of the band is a normal-sized body.
Whether that is a design rule about giant characters or a coincidence of two sets is not something the database can answer, and this page will not guess. What it can say is that the two outliers in the largest band of the pool share a name, share a cost, and share the structure of trading power for a restriction.
The rest of the ladder is monotonic
Set the two cards aside and the ceiling rises with cost at every step except one: cost 5 tops out at 7,000, which is lower than the cost-4 ceiling of 8,000. Remove OP16-017 from the data and cost 4 tops out at 7,000 as well, which would make cost 4 and cost 5 equal rather than inverted.
So the apparent dip in the ladder is one card. That is a useful reminder about how thin these numbers are at the top. A single printing can move the ceiling of a cost band, and no statement of the form “a cost-4 card cannot exceed X” survives contact with the next set.
The top of the ladder is thinner still. Two cards reach 13,000, both Gol.D.Roger, both cost 10. The 12,000 band holds 28 cards and all of them cost 10. Five cards reach 11,000, and two of those arrive at cost 9: ST16-004 Shanks and OP17-061 Lead Performers. Those two are the cheapest routes to a five-figure Character in the game, and they are the reason the upper half of the ladder bends rather than climbs. The names in the 12,000 band and the full cost-10 picture are on the power and counter page, which lists them.
How to read a ceiling
- A ceiling is one card, not a tier. Cost 4 has 407 Characters with a printed power and exactly one of them is at the ceiling.
- Read the effect before you believe the number. Both cost-4 outliers print a restriction, and in one case it removes 4,000 of the printed power.
- Count the cost of the condition. LittleOars Jr. needs a Whitebeard Pirates Character at cost 8 or more; Oars needs a Thriller Bark Pirates Character to knock out.
- Expect the ceiling to move with each set. The cost-4 record has already moved once inside the data set, from 7,000 to 8,000.
- For the cheap end of the same curve — the 31 cards that reach the cost-1 ceiling of 3,000 — the list is on the one-cost page.
Where these cards sit in a legal deck is decided by their colour, not their power: the Leader page covers which colours a deck may contain, and the deck building rules cover the 50-card count and the four-copy limit. For the Black and Red cards these two belong to, the colour-level measurement is on the colour page.
Related reading
- Card power and counter — the cost ladder this page examines, and the counter share at each cost.
- The 31 one-cost 3,000-power cards — the other end of the ladder, listed in full.
- What rarity buys — power per point of cost across the six rarity labels.
- OP-16 The Time of Battle — the set that printed LittleOars Jr.
- Character traits — how Whitebeard Pirates and Thriller Bark Pirates are indexed.
Frequently asked questions
What is the highest power a cost-4 Character can print?
8,000, and only one card does it: OP16-017 LittleOars Jr., a Red Rare that also prints a 1,000 counter. The next highest is OP06-083 Oars at 7,000, and the other 405 cost-4 Characters with a power value sit at 6,000 or below, with 238 of them at exactly 5,000.
Why does LittleOars Jr. lose power?
Its effect gives the card minus 4,000 power if you control no Characters with a type including Whitebeard Pirates and a cost of 8 or more. Without that condition met it is a 4,000-power card, which is below the cost-4 average. With it, it is the largest cost-4 Character in the game and it still has the Blocker keyword.
Why can OP06-083 Oars not attack?
That is the printed restriction on the card. It can attack only after you use its Activate: Main effect, which requires knocking out one of your own Thriller Bark Pirates Characters to negate the restriction for that turn. At 7,000 power for cost 4 it functions as a defensive body rather than an attacker in most decks.
Is the cost-4 ceiling higher than the cost-5 ceiling?
Yes, and that is the only inversion on the ladder. Cost 4 reaches 8,000 while cost 5 reaches 7,000, which is printed on 70 cards. Remove OP16-017 from the data and the two costs would tie at 7,000, so the dip is one card rather than a rule about the two bands.
How many One Piece Characters reach 13,000 power?
Two, both cost 10, and both are Gol.D.Roger: OP09-118 in Red at Secret Rare and OP13-064 in Purple at Super Rare. The 12,000 band above them holds 28 cards and every one of them also costs 10, which makes the top of the curve unusually narrow.
Sources
Sources and method
- Character card data read from the official ONE PIECE CARD GAME English card database, en.onepiece-cardgame.com/cardlist, retrieved 2026-10-21 across all 60 series. 2,185 distinct Character card numbers were found, of which 2,033 print a power value.
- Cost, power, counter, colour and rarity are the printed values recorded by that database. Card text for
OP16-017andOP06-083is quoted from the same database, including the conditional power modifier on OP16-017. - The ceiling at each cost is the highest printed power among the Characters printed at that cost, with alternate art and parallel printings folded into the card number they reprint.
- The distribution of power within cost 4 is taken over the 407 cost-4 Characters that print a power value. Cards that print a dash are excluded from that table.
- The rule that a Character with a Blocker keyword may rest itself to become the new target of an attack is from the ONE PIECE CARD GAME Comprehensive Rules, en.onepiece-cardgame.com/pdf/rule_comprehensive.pdf.
- One sentence on Card power and counter describing OP16-017 as the only cost-4 card above 5,000 power has been corrected: 106 cost-4 Characters print above 5,000, two of them above 6,000.
Where to go next
- The CardSpicy card index — every card we track, with its PSA 10 population and market history (195 cards).
- The illustrator index — every artist behind those cards, card by card (110 artists).
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