Event Breakdown: YCS Vancouver
Date: August 16-17, 2025
Overview
Welcome to the first-ever premier event of the Justice Hunters format! We didn't get a stream this time around, so information is a little scuffed. Steven Trifunoski managed to win the entire event with Yummy, beating Kassim Hakim in the finals, who played K9 Vanquish Soul. There were 560 duelists with 10 rounds of Swiss and a cut to Top 32!
Check out all of the topping decklists for the event here!
The Hunters of Justice
The three archetypes from Justice Hunters are utterly dominant in this new format and have seen massive success throughout the first few weeks of Regionals, eclipsing old superstars such as Ryzeal Mitsurugi and Maliss in terms of performance and popularity. Yummy, K9 (Vanquish Soul and Crystron), and Dracotail are all powerful in their own right, demanding different answers for their various gameplans. Not only that, they're also quite flexible in terms of build options, ratios, and secondary engines to help power through the metagame!
Both CRBR decks may be down, but not out! They're still incredibly powerful with only minor hits to their name, after all. Ame no Murakumo no Mitsurugi is also surprisingly strong against Yummy!
Huge props to Kevin Ing for finishing 1st after swiss with Ryzeal Mitsurugi! Maliss is still hanging on, also. Both Edward Lu and Ali Yassine finished Top 32 with the deck, respectively.
Cupsy Wupsy
Yummy is a highly consistent LIGHT Beast Synchro archetype that nearly has it all! Filled to the brim with 1-card combos, difficult to pinpoint choke points, plenty of extension, and a tricky endboard that's hard to play around, there's a lot to love. It has the easiest learning curve out of the three, which is another reason why it's super popular (alongside its appealing visual design, I suppose). A mix of board breakers and hand traps has been the popular way to play the deck, getting the best of both worlds in terms of non-engine. Some of these hand traps include both Mulcharmy Fuwalos and Mulcharmy Purulia, Infinite Impermanence, Ash Blossom & Joyous Spring, Dominus Purge, and Songs of the Dominators if built for. One key advantage of these defensives and of the archetype itself is its immunity to K9-17 Izuna, due to not activating monster effects from the hand or GY.
In terms of breakers, they have Triple Tactics Thrust, Forbidden Droplet, and several other flex spots, depending on user preference. We've seen Dark Ruler No More or Book of Eclipse, for example. Most builds are taking advantage of the Sky Striker engine, as Sky Striker Mobilize - Engage! or Sky Striker Mecha - Hornet Drones leads to Yummy combo by tuning Kagari with the Sky Striker Ace Token to make Cupsy★Yummy Way. Obedience Schooled is arguably the best spell in the current format at the moment (it can also be searched by Thrust), due to its ability to bring out Cooky☆Yummy, Lollipo☆Yummy, and Cupsy☆Yummy directly from the deck to immediately get started.
Yummyusment☆Mignon and Yummyusment★Acroquey are very important to the deck's gameplan, providing both extension, interruption, and relevant ATK boosts to hit through things. Yummy☆Surprise has three relevant effects and is a high-priority target for Cupsy to search. Yummy★Snatchy is capable of Synchro Summoning multiple times in a turn and the Synchros themselves are able to tag themself out in response to the opponent's actions.
The archetype is far from infallible and can be dealt with dedicated side deck cards when timed right (Raigeki, The Black Goat Laughs, Super Polymerization, and Dinowrestler Pankratops have been getting a lot more common, for example), but it speaks volumes to just how strong and dominant Yummy is.
Fusing Frenzy
Dracotail is a unique Dragon and Spellcaster Fusion based deck that's a lot stronger going second than it is going first! The deck had a relatively slow start compared to the other two JUSH decks, but has quickly picked up steam and has swept through regionals like crazy these past few weeks! For YCS Vancouver, it saw slight success compared to its contemporaries. Notably, the incredible Jesse Kotton managed to pilot it to a Top 8 finish!
Normally, it can put up a modest board and set up its grind game on the play but it really shines when you're resolving your powerhouse spell cards such as Rahu Dracotail and Ketu Dracotail into established fields on the draw! Dracotail Faimena is also capable of popping off on the opponent's turn as a hand trap, provided you have the right cards to fuse with. Dracotail Pan, Dracotail Mululu, and Dracotail Urgula are amazing at ripping through boards due to their near impossible to prevent negation and destruction effects, all while replacing themselves with the powerful Dracotail Spell and Trap cards ( Dracotail Horn and Dracotail Flame are quite strong followup after cracking through a field).
Shaddolls have made a resurgence as a potent engine in the archetype, enabling El Shaddoll Winda which can lock opponents out, and Shaddoll Fusion as additional access to Dracotail cards. Both archetypes can push pretty hard with multiple GY trigger effects. Shaddoll Beast is quite good at generating extra cards for the deck to make use of. Shaddoll Dragon can assist Urgula in taking down pesky Spell and Trap cards if they're used as Fusion Material.
Dracotail Arthalion can start a massive snowball effect with its mass removal and recursion effect rolled into one, also. (Easily capable of recycling hand traps such as Ash Blossom, Bystial Magnamhut, and Artifact Lancea if needed). Kashtira Fenrir is a perfect fit for the deck due to providing free Fusion Material and exerting a lot of pressure on its own!
Other variants we've seen so far involve making use of King of the Swamp to get more consistent access to Polymerization and to act as a Fusion Substitute, being able to bring out the likes of Red-Eyes Dark Dragoon or Blue-Eyes Tyrant Dragon when least expected! Duelists have also paired the archetype with a few funky choices such as Blazing Cartesia, the Virtuous, other Branded cards, Fiendsmith, Dragonmaids, and even K9!
K9s on the Case!
The K9s, a group of Level 5 DARK and EARTH monsters, are seeing widespread usage in many different ways due to their unique way of punishing commonly used monster effects! The most common and generic way to use them is to run a small HT package of 3 K9-17 Izuna paired with a single K9-ØØ Lupis to disrupt the opponent if they use a monster effect in the hand or GY, which hits a lot of decks! From there, you can Special Summon Izuna from your hand to dump Lupis, revive Lupis, and use his effect to perform an Xyz Summon on the opponent's turn! The result is an untargetable disruption that can be used to hinder your opponent's play. K9-17 "Ripper" gets you to your K9 engine (if playing it) and can negate monster effects from the opponent's hand or GY. N.As.H. Knight is capable of attaching an opponent's monster to it as Xyz Material, and Vallon, the Super Psy Skyblaster is a Book of Moon on legs and then some!
As for the bigger K9 engine, they serve as crazy powerful engine cards that print a lot of resources, while accessing Rank 5s may bridge to a different archetype or complement it well. K9 Vanquish Soul and K9 Crystron are the leading variants, which operate quite differently from one another. The former is an incredibly compact midrange deck that serves as an improved version of Pure VS from the last format, shoring up a few of its shortcomings. The latter is possibly one of the strongest combo decks in the format, powering out a near-unbreakable board and being incredibly resilient through multiple hand traps. Most lists have shrunk down the Synchro package to just Crystron Eleskeletus + F.A. Dawn Dragster and focus on board breakers over most hand traps. Something like a Crystron Sulfador + K9-66a Jokul paired together is often lights out for the opponent, as very few combinations can be used to stop that from popping off. Ripper and Cluster are also dangerous in simplified gamestates, as well as Forced Release into K9-EX Werewolf, often putting duelists in tight spots. The K9 cards bridge into Crystron quite easily (Infinitrack River Stormer searching Scrap Recycler and then using it twice by reviving it with Clockwork Knight).
Vanquish Soul is able to access the K9 cards if they can navigate their way to a Vanquish Soul Hollie Sue + Vanquish Soul Jiaolong to go into Ripper. More and more people are now using Saryuja Skull Dread in the deck to do the opposite, as K9s can spam a whole slew of monsters to dig for Vanquish Soul Razen or Vanquish Soul Dr. Mad Love. Izuna aids Hollie Sue a lot, as it's an EARTH to be revealed for her control-changing effect, and they both can bait Ash Blossom for each other, so one can go through. The deck's attributes perfectly align with VS, making your reveal effects a lot more consistent + giving the deck additional pushes to boot! All of these factors aid in turning K9 VS into one of the most prominent options in the JUSH format.
Other decks like Artmage (River Stormer for Planet Pathfinder), Dracotail (giving the deck an independent second engine), and a Fiendsmith version have also seen modest amounts of play and experimentation.
YCS Vancouver Top 32 Breakdown
12 K9 Vanquish Soul
7 Yummy
5 K9 Crystron
3 Dracotail (1 FS, K9, Pure)
2 Ryzeal Mitsurugi
2 @Ignister Maliss
1 Azamina White Forest
Conclusion
That's all the time we have for today, folks! I'll see you all very soon in the 2025 World Championship! A special article is currently in the works. Renren out!
