It’s been said that Droll & Lock Bird, whenever it appears, is a load-bearing handtrap. This is in reference to the fact that, no matter how crazy a combo deck might be in a given format, ultimately it should have to fear the chance that it might only receive a single search on its first turn. That fear inspires deckbuilders to imagine lines without need of multiple searches, and critically, build conservatively such that you won’t be locked out of the game for playing sloppy. Droll in Genesys was 5pts since the format’s inception, and now, following the December point update, it’s 25pts—that’s a mere 5pts below literal Pot of Greed. The functional death of Droll has caused a number of shockwaves among Genesys’ best players, but the chief takeaway is this: The proverbial ‘cat’ of combo has entirely escaped its bag. I’m not focusing on said cat today though, but rather its opposite, K9, which has managed to persist despite all but one of its Maindeck monsters being pointed. How and why are deeply interesting questions, and help interrogate where the format is headed in 2026, so get ready to search again with Herald K9.
While K9 took a substantial hit in the recent update, seeing its search Spell ”A Case for K9” go up to 20pts, on top of Jokul and Ripper each going up ~10pts, this is an archetype given far too preferable treatment in terms of types to go without search Spells. Jokul & Lantern are DARK Aqua & Pyro, respectively, and Noroi is a Machine; these open the way for a ton of ways to get them into your hand, with an…ambitious suite of searches. Notably, what we’re about to cover would have shriveled and died in the face of Droll & Lock Bird, but with that weight-bearing measure now functionally gone, K9’s power has shifted, not gone away.
Between Chaotic Elements, Seventh Ascension, & Seventh Tachyon, as well as a single expensive copy of Case, there’s a total of 10 Spells that find your core K9 line, even more than were played in the previous point update. That means the strategy, like a lot of other decks, have somehow become more consistent following these point penalties.
With everything so expensive though, K9 can’t afford any handtraps that cost points: No Ash, no Mulcharmies, and certainly no Droll. What the deck can afford, however, is a massive glut of colorful Heralds—these Fairies can discard themselves and another Fairy to negate & destroy a Monster, in the case of Orange, or Spell, for Green. Coming with them is our final card that costs points, a 2-of Eva, which when sent to the GY can banish LIGHT Fairies like Heralds to find additional copies. These cards were proto-PSY Frames in their day, and here as one of the last true bastions of 0pt handtraps, we’re kind of forced to play them or Crow & Skull Meister. Those two aren’t bad cards per say, but they’re very matchup-dependent, and with no copies of K9-17 Izuna in the budget we can’t afford anything but broad answers. There’s one other massive reason to play Heralds, though, which has been one of the dominant reasons K9 saw play in Advanced Format: There’s a few Level 5 LIGHT Fairies we’d quite like to play.
These two cards are Trickstar Corobane, a free Level 5 extender that can help us start our Xyz plays, and a card that won’t be 0pts for long, Artifact Mjollnir. See, Mjollnir has a mandatory effect when it’s Special Summoned during the opponent’s turn, that allows you to grab any other Artifact from your GY. That does basically nothing for us, though—what we’re actually after is weirdly enough the associated restriction, ‘also you cannot Special Summon monsters until the end of the next turn, except “Artifact” monsters’. Due to the fact the effect is an ‘also’, it will always apply even when the first condition cannot be met, so if there’s some way to give this card to our opponents during our turn, they’re locked from Special Summoning. Coincidentally, not only do Herald put Mjollnir in the GY, but the Rank 5 Imperial Princess Quinquery can Special Summon any Level 5 from the yard to either field. Heralds aren’t just handtraps, they’re enablers for a massive lock piece.
Is this a healthy play pattern? Certainly not, but it’s also what K9 now has to do to remain relevant in a world where the format designers clearly don’t want it playable. It is in spite of itself that the deck functions at all, and looking at this decklist it only does so now that Droll is gone; if not for that card’s removal, the designers would have succeeded. Now, you have a free fourth copy of Corobane via a 1-of Trickstar Light Stage, Gnomaterial is playable as a lock or free pitch to Heralds, and the newly-printed K9-X “Ripper/M” provides a point-free Rank 9 K9 now that the only other option is out of budget.
Genesys has been a bit of a whack-a-mole format, where new threats arise or new forms of problematic decks persist, because people fundamentally don’t want their toys taken away. If you’ve spent money to buy a K9 core for Genesys, why would you accept it being legal in a given form for merely one month? In Yugioh, the TCG with the highest player retention (which is true, look it up), these invested players will innovate and find ways to play their favorite strategies, sometimes at the loss of other archetypes.
I think that there will come a point at which the designers learn their lessons, though; even in a format where the intent is for no single card to ever be ‘banned’, lock pieces like Mjollnir should have had a target on their back. ‘Donate’ effects like Quinquery and Branded locks never end well, and even without Links like Geonator Transverser, we need to be wary about passing these non-game effects around. At the very least, the fact that the leads are communicating with us at every turn, and have even pointed newly-released decks like Kewl Tune, shows they’re willing to grow. I still have the utmost faith for Genesys, and not even getting locked by K9 for the third month in a row can stop me from having a blast.
Back to the deck, one interesting bit of tech that’s arisen following recent changes is the Rank 5 reliance on Raidraptor - Brave Strix, which finds a searchable Trap of Raidraptor - Glorious Bright. I think this is awesome to see, and putting those two tools together (which become fragile & pointless without the other) may point to the cracks in decks like K9, to be so vulnerable in reaching for any form of Trap-based interaction. The deck is not entirely unscathed.
In terms of the Side for this deck, your regular culprits of Maester, Crow, & Lancea are present, with special mention to Lancea as a Level 5 LIGHT Fairy for all the same reasons we touched on above. I also think there could be space made in the Extra (via the Side Deck) for some kind of Level 7 Synchro, if you open exactly a Herald and Level 5 starter, but no second Fairy to pitch. Black Rose Dragon, or Moonlight Dragon, could be options, although better proactive options like F.A. Dawn Dragster are 20pts or more, greatly restricting our options. There’s even a world where we play 3 copies of Herald of Purple Light, the Trap counterpart to Orange & Green, going second; that would give us the opportunity to answer powerful Traps like Big Welcome Labrynth or similar, which we otherwise can’t do in the Main Deck. That being said, the K9s we do play mean there’s less need to actually answer things in the hand or GY versus react to them, given how strong a live Noroi can be when properly insulated from negation.
As options for non-engine get hit with point hikes, and the K9 package itself becomes too expensive to run anything but 1-ofs for the vast majority of your cards, one particular area that gets squeezed is the Extra Deck. Ultimate Slayer is a good card, but takes at minimum 2, often 3 slots in Extra to be utilized. We won’t be using Garura or Malong outside of it, and only receive a little rebate in that we can actually make Vallon, the Super Psy Skyblaster. Similarly, Seventh Tachyon requires we play some absolutely awful, unmakeable Number C monsters. We can reveal Masquerade for Jokul or Lantern, Hand for Noroi, or Seraph for one of our Level 5 LIGHT Fairies; having this flexibility is awesome, but over a third of our Extra Deck is cards we wouldn’t ever dream of actually Summoning. The pool of unpointed Rank 5s is shallow enough that this is likely fine, but not great, though we see the last of our points used for a single K9-17 “Ripper”, the premier Rank 5 to start with. If we aren’t locking with Quinquery, we’re ideally ending on Ripper, an interactive Rank 5, and a set K9 Release Spell to line into either Hound or Ripper/M—that’s a powerful plan B, especially when the plan A is ‘your opponent cannot Special Summon’.
K9 being covered in this article is more a smokescreen to talk about larger trends in the Genesys Format, and I’d say I’m on the whole happy with where it’s headed. Yes, I think Droll needs to find a point count where it’s playable and something combo decks have to at least give lip service to, but its prior position was backbreaking. There’s a happy medium, and with the pace of changes that come to the format, I’m confident we’ll get there in 2026. Have a very happy holidays, and here’s to another great year of Yugioh!
How do you feel about the most recent slate of point changes? How will the format shift following Droll’s untimely demise, at least for the time being? What support do you want to see in the new year? Let me know in the comments below!
