It’s no secret that hand traps have become the bane of many Yu-Gi-Oh! players' existence. With the upcoming Justice Hunters expansion set to release on March 22nd, Konami will attempt to bring some form of order to the wild world of the game.
The Main K9 Unit
Upon first inspection of the main deck monsters, they all share a couple of similar traits. The most common is that they’re all level 5 monsters. Another is that in some form or another, each of the main K9 monsters can be cheated into play.
K9 - Izuna, K9 - Yokuru, and K9 - Lantern, all share the capability of being normal summoned without needing tribute as long as the opponent has at least two cards in hand.
With how much disruption is being slotted into decks nowadays, it would not be strange for an opponent to run through their entire gamut of plays and still be sitting on two cards left in hand; just waiting to be used to counter their opponent.
K9 - Lupus, meanwhile, is a special case in that his form of self-special summon is reliant on the opponent activating a monster effect from either hand or graveyard. To make up for this conditional requirement, Lupus can special summon himself from the same areas he’s looking at -from the graveyard or hand-.
Depending on the circumstances, Lupus can also be special summoned by riding the coattails of Yokuru and Lantern and their respective ability to special summon allies. As a cherry on top, Yokuru and Lantern can add a non-aqua K9 monster or a K9-named spell/trap card respectively once they stick to the field.
As for K9 - Izuna, she shares some of the capabilities of Lupus in that she can special summon herself in response to a monster effect being activated from the hand or the graveyard. However, her capability is slightly restricted as she can’t bring herself back from the graveyard.
For her other skill, she’s able to send any of the named “K9” cards from the deck to the graveyard once she’s summoned, normal or otherwise. This effect bypasses handtrap staple cards like Droll & Lock Bird or Ash Blossom & Joyous Spring that can -ironically- police the other members of the archetype.
In the Trading Card Game (TCG), Foolish Burial, a card that does basically the same thing is sitting on the Limited List. An in-archetype version of Foolish Burial can see a lot of use with how Yu-Gi-Oh has evolved into seeing every location as a form of resource, graveyard included.
Something similar
Somewhat similarly to the Ryzeal archetype, the K9 archetype seems to be focused on summoning XYZ monsters usually in the rank 5 category.
K9 - Ripper is the easiest to summon XYZ monster from the archetype. Using Yokuru or Lantern, Ripper can easily spearhead a lot of plays by setting up any graveyard-focused follow-ups. If the opponent activates a monster effect from the hand or graveyard, Ripper can stop the effect from firing.
Notably, Ripper only stops the effect of the cards from going online. It does not stop the act of activation itself. This is important for the cards in this archetype as they are sniffing around for this distinction for their own abilities to be allowed to activate in turn.
K9 - Hound is a little bit of an odd one. You’d think that being a rank 5 XYZ monster would make it easy to summon given this archetype’s focus on level 5 main deck monster. Unfortunately, the easiest path to summoning Hound via Yokuru or Lantern is not meant to be.
The latter main deck monster specifically forbids the XYZ summoning of monsters from the Light attribute, and Hound is a light attribute monster. Should a player be able to get this guy on the field, however, he does offer some fair disruption capabilities of his own. On the turn he is special summoned, Hound receives anti-destruction protection from both battle and card effects.
If Hound makes it to a standby phase, he can target a card on the field and banish it. To add to the anti-monster effect this archetype is going for, Hound also gains 500 attack whenever the opponent activates any monster effect. With no “once per turn” clause stapled to the attack gain, Hound can keep getting stronger if the opponent keeps playing into it.
K9 - Werewolf is the archetypical boss monster. It sports a higher-than-normal average statline as well as hosting some rather powerful abilities. The most mundane of the lot is being able to battle a number of times equal to the number of materials currently attached to Werewolf.
With its 3300 attack power, Werewolf is actually a sizeable threat if it comes to a brawl. Even leading competitive archetypes like Ryzeal and Maliss don’t have an in-archetype monster card that can reach this level of attack power.
But Werewolf’s biggest strength lies in its other abilities. For just the cost of a single XYZ material, Werewolf can do one of two things depending if he is activated on the controlling player’s turn or the opponent’s.
For the former, he can just send up to two cards the opponent has to the banishment zone; one from the field, the other from the graveyard. It even has an “and/or” clause so it can be used if a particular thread needs to be immediately removed full-stop.
For the latter timing, Werewolf can let its controlling player gain perfect knowledge of the opponent’s hand before banishing 1 card face-up until the end phase of the turn. For most decks, the banishment is quite the monkey wrench already.
Any knowledgeable player will be able to place pressure on their opponent temporarily by just removing a key piece till the end of the turn. But the added capability of being able to look at your opponent’s hand and being able to anticipate their next moves leaves quite the sting.
Backrow Support
No archetype is complete without some form of backrow support. For the K9 archetype, they are coming with at least three of them.
Mirroring the monster side already revealed, the backrow support shares similar traits. K9 LC Liberation, K9 - EX Forced Liberation, and K9 - EW Experimental Liberation, all allow the controlling player to use their already summoned K9 units on the field as materials for their XYZ extra deck plays.
These 3 backrow cards help answer the question of how to get K9 - Hound and K9 - Werewolf onto the field. Not only that, but they also allow K9 - Lupus’ last effect to come into play more frequently.
K9 - Lupus, as long as he’s an XYZ material, will give the XYZ monster he is under anti-targeting capabilities. This gives any XYZ monster that uses Lupus as a material the opportunity of becoming a mini-‘towers’ (a monster unaffected by card effects).
To round off the backrow effects, K9 LC Liberation and K9 - EX Forced Liberation can recur from the graveyard at the end of the battle phase so long as a K9 unit has battled. Given that they’re both quick play spells, this gives the player another layer of disruption plays given that Werewolf is a viable target for summoning.
As for K9 - EW Experimental Liberation, it acts more as a safety net. Should the above parameters not be met for either spell Liberation card, then the trap card can be banished at the End Phase to set either Liberation spell card onto the field.
Old Dog, Possible New Tricks
So far, the K9 archetype looks like a rehash of Ryzeal. Albeit K9 is altered a little bit due to their focus on level -and subsequently rank- 5 lines of play. Aside from that, the K9 units do appear to have a high level of flexibility if more generic rank 5 XYZ monsters are thrown into the mix.
There is also the possibility of the K9 archetype being highly compatible with the Regenesis monsters. With both Hound and Werewolf sporting a 2500 value in either attack or defense, Konami seems to be taking more careful considerations when assigning numbers to their monsters.
That said, the biggest elephant in the room is how the K9 archetype actively punishes any opponent solely reliant on monster-based disruptions. With how often one runs into an Ash Blossom or one of the many Mulcharmy monster handtraps, these officers are definitely going to have an effect on deck building standards.
For those interested in reading the translated text of the K9 cards, you can visit YuGiOhMeta for the complete transcription.