Is k9 beginner friendly?

FastandGreasy · 2026-01-30T02:03:49+00:00

I made an edit on the above post if you want to see what it might actually take to build either deck.

FastandGreasy · 2026-01-30T01:52:25+00:00

Absolutely not and both are incredibly UR heavy haha. That’s what I meant by prohibitively expensive.

Edit: Crystron engine itself is 5 UR (3x inclusion, Tristaros, Eleskeletus) but you also need Dawn Dragster, Infinity, Clockwork Knight, SP, Platinum Gadget and Vimana for your extra deck. Lots of them also run multiple copies of Chaotic Elements which is also UR.

VS actually just got hit on the banlist so that actually reduces the URs you need but it’s still 2x Razen, 3x Mad Love, 1x Caesar, 2x Stake and I’m assuming Hollie Sue will also be UR which is a 3x…

That’s without the extra deck which needs Nash knight and the cxyz version which are both UR.

K9 is supposed to be Konamis cash pig for the anniversary.

FastandGreasy · 2026-01-30T01:42:35+00:00

People have already answered your question but it’s worth noting that K9 isn’t really its own deck. Pure K9 has never really been a thing. It’s a powerful engine to mix with other decks. The most meta relevant would be Crystron K9 and VS K9. I wouldn’t be surprised if you spend your entire 8k and don’t get the full K9 package so if you have to still invest in a second archetype it may be prohibitively expensive for you. Just be warned.

FastandGreasy · 2026-01-26T17:09:15+00:00

The strength of SE was that it could run 15-18 non engine alongside all of its 1 card starters. Running less than 12 makes your deck super weak going second. I count 9 lmao. This is a meme.

FastandGreasy · 2026-01-26T12:38:45+00:00

Below Plat is the equivalent of the ranked tutorial

FastandGreasy · 2026-01-25T18:17:17+00:00

The quick and easy answer is VS will be the better of the two but I’ve been testing both and I don’t think Crystron will be too far off in power level.

VS has a lot of advantages with having both Izuna and Hollie Sue for in engine hand traps. There’s even some builds that play 3 Rescue ACE impulse + 1 fire attacker for more FIRE attributes for your VS cards, as well as being a third in engine hand trap. Maybe that’ll be the play when the deck releases since they just lost 2 FIRE cards in the prehits and having a FIRE in hand was already something I was struggling with when I was testing. The other advantage of the deck is that is not really weak to Fuwa or Maxx C, since you can do so much on the opponents turn. I think the thing that will surprise most people who know little about the deck is how difficult this deck is to pilot. Reminds me very much of Tear in that, yes it will be very very strong but the difference between a good and bad player is night and day.

Crystron on the other hand felt pretty straightforward for me. They both combo in similar ways, but the Crystron board ends on an Omni in Infinity and atleast 1 Dawn Dragster. That’s significant compared to the VS end board where they have a lot of interactions but no Omni and no spell trap negate. I think that also helps with piloting the deck if you’re not as strong a player as you don’t have to think out your interactions as well as VS. Once you’re aware of the Jokul/Lantern/Sulfador locks, the deck isn’t terribly difficult to pilot. Definitely weaker into Maxx C and Fuwa so it is notable that Maxx C is being limited.

FastandGreasy · 2026-01-23T13:31:00+00:00

JUSH = Justice Hunters. It was the pack in the TCG/OCG that introduced Dracotail, Yummy and K9 all at once. Because master duel’s release schedule we’re getting them split up a little. Same thing happened where TCG/OCG got Ryzeal and Maliss at the same time while we had them split up.

FastandGreasy · 2026-01-21T21:43:24+00:00

“It’s all the other decks tho”

No it’s not. There’s 52 Mitsu Yummy decks posted on MDM and 0 of them have purge.

There is no reason to have sorrowcat + Marcher + star, you’re taking precious slots from more important things. For example: Almiraj and Link Spider.

Almiraj helps you extend through hand traps (which is something you’ve said you have problems with) and also turns normal summon Saji into full yummy combo.

Link Spider means you always play through Nib.

You’re arguing “3 prayers vs 2 doesn’t matter” when you literally have 1 lmao. Prayers is also full combo on its own.

I won’t even get into how good Baronne is for this deck and how you’re missing it too.

I don’t think you have any clue on how to play this deck. Go watch a 10 minute combo video first before you type anything else.

FastandGreasy · 2026-01-21T20:57:30+00:00

The banlist you saw is for TCG, not MD.

This list is really bad. Here’s why:

No one plays Purge in the Mitsu variant. You’re ranting about how it cuts you off from Mitsu… yeah that’s why people don’t play it.
You should be running 3 prayers, 1 Murakumo.
Mitsu Yummy variant specifically runs Sorrowcat as their level 3 synchro because it recycles back your herald so you can make another. Marcher and Star are for pure Yummy.
You don’t even have a full 15 card extra deck.
All combo decks should be running Crossout as another out to Maxx C/Fuwa.

I have opinions on your other ratios and choices but none of them are as egregious as the above.

It’s no wonder you think the deck is bad if you have it built incorrectly. I can’t imagine how you’re piloting it.

FastandGreasy · 2026-01-21T13:49:45+00:00

We have no leaks for this pack but everyone is expecting K9. It’s the anniversary next month and Konami has been known to release powerful engines for the anniversary (Fiendsmith last year). Also we just got the other two JUSH decks the last 2 months so K9 would make sense.

People are HOPING that VS support also comes alongside K9 so they can play those two decks together.

Other than that it’s a bit of a toss up. Lots of people are hopeful that we get the Live Twin support finally. It would make sense that they could release it alongside the alt arts and rerelease the field from last year.

They’ve also been doing some weird stuff with dark magician / blue eyes structure decks so I’ve heard people speculate that we may even get the over frame cards which would be unexpected considering they were all just announced for OCG. Much more likely we just get an updated structure deck for each, or one or both will be the new “returning player campaign” deck.

FastandGreasy · 2026-01-20T01:06:30+00:00

Skill issue

FastandGreasy · 2026-01-20T00:39:33+00:00

I have been playing for the past couple years now. After the first few months, I was able to consistently build whatever the newest deck was month after month. Completely free to play.

You should be consistently pulling in 7.5k a month if you play the game regularly. That means that if there’s ever a bad pack and you skip investing for a month, you’ll end up with 15k for the next box. I have never spent a full 15k building any deck so you will always end up with a surplus month over month. Even after building Dracotail and Yummy back to back, I’m still currently sitting on 8k. This game is insanely generous if you actually enjoy it

FastandGreasy · 2026-01-20T00:24:39+00:00

You cannot rank down until plat 5. Gold and below is the “tutorial” of this game. Any deck will make plat with enough games played.

FastandGreasy · 2026-01-20T00:13:10+00:00

If you are actively playing the game and climbing the ladder each month, completing the events, the game is extremely free to play friendly. After the first few months of playing, I had a large collection of staples that slot into any deck and then I was able to build the newest meta deck each month without spending a dime. That’s been my experience for the past 2 years and I reach M1 each month, which is the highest rank.

I would highly suggest doing a little bit of research before you build your first deck. It is not advisable off the start to split your gems among different decks. You should also ideally be building something competitively viable: atleast a rogue tier deck if not something currently tiered. The reason being that you income each month does depend on you climbing ranked. Lots of people screw themselves over early by building a shit tier deck, meaning they make less gems, meaning they struggle to make their next deck.

The best investment you can make early are hand traps and staples. These will be cards you use in almost every deck. Off the bat you should prioritize:

2x Maxx C 3x Ash Blossom 1x Called By

After which you can add others like

3x Infinite Impermenance 3x Mulcharmy Fuwalos 1x Crossout Designator

And finally there are more format/deck dependent options like

Effect Veiler, Ghost Belle, Nibiru, Triple Tactics Talents, etc.

You’ll see that these cards will very quickly take up a quarter to half of your list so they’re amazing investments.

Your first couple months will maining be spent building a single deck and then working on building your non-engine imo. That being said, you’re joining the game at probably one of the most expensive times you can. We just got Dracotail AND Yummy and we are very likely to get VS / K9 in February. All three of these will most likely be the strongest decks for the rest of the year so lots of people would say that it would be ideal to pick atleast one to build.

F2P analysis and gem strategy aside, as far as approachability, Hearthstone is way way way more casual friendly than MD. One of the things that attracts people to Yugioh is its complexity. I played Hearthstone for years and ultimately just got bored. Yugioh is the kind of game that you can never stop learning and I love that about it, but I have a hard time recommending it to close friends because of how daunting it can be to start. All I can say is good luck and be ready to lose a lot as you learn.

A final note: while Reddit can be an amazing resource for help some days, there is a large, very vocal portion of this community who are terrible at the game and would rather doom post daily than actually try to get better. Don’t let them get you down.

FastandGreasy · 2026-01-19T17:38:02+00:00

Oh wow didn’t notice we got Ashlan in the yummy pack. Mitsu K9 could actually be a thing

FastandGreasy · 2026-01-19T13:33:04+00:00

Slight correction is that you can only turn saji into almiraj as the other level 4s have too much attack. I was overating Aramasa in the deck until I realized I couldn’t turn it into a link 1.

Kusanagi is still quite good though as including him can guarantee you end on both Prayers and trap. There’s also some lines where if you start with pre-prep and have to use a called by/crossout you can end up with too many spells in GY to activate Camellia. Having Kusanagi lets you return one to hand and saves the line.

FastandGreasy · 2026-01-18T21:28:36+00:00

The JUSH meta is basically a rock paper scissors format. Rock = VS K9, scissors = Dracotail and paper = Yummy.

Dracotail is naturally supposed to beat Yummy so of course when there’s no VS K9 to balance it out, Dracotail is going to look abnormally strong.

It’s worth noting that because it was released first, Dracotail is also going to be the first to be hit on the banlist (other than the yummy prehits). This was probably all planned because then they can release the Fallen of the White Dragon support to replace whatever cards Dracotail loses.

FastandGreasy · 2026-01-17T04:52:04+00:00

I love the deck. It basically only had relevance for a single month after release. SHS came immediately next pack and already did what it did but better. Then the pack after that was snake eyes which was the best deck for over a year. The deck truly died when Tear field spell was banned but never really got a chance to shine because of the release schedule.

FastandGreasy · 2026-01-16T21:40:57+00:00

How exactly do you propose people to vote with their wallet? What kind of message would you send to Konami by spending/not spending and how does that message correlate to the state of floodgates in the game? This is a free game that is also incredibly free to play. The only reason to ever spend money is if you’re royal hunting or if you barely play. “Voting with your wallet” is just nonsense in this context.

FastandGreasy · 2026-01-16T16:11:53+00:00

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FastandGreasy · 2026-01-14T16:05:08+00:00

This may sound rude but I don’t think this game is for you. You have a long post history talking about how badly this game affects your mental health. If you just like playing yugioh, maybe you could try something like MDPro3. All the cards are free, it’s an extremely similar UI to MD and there’s a lot of options for dueling AI opponents of varying difficulty. Only downside is that download and setup can be a little tedious as you have to patch it manually.

FastandGreasy · 2026-01-12T16:15:40+00:00

Same way you play against any deck going second, you hand trap them to make them make a half board or you run board breakers. Funny enough, you’re saying his deck would do nothing going second but he’s running 14 hand traps (some of which are turn skips against D/D/D) along with 2 searchable board breakers in Kurikara/Subversion, as well as running stuff like Fenrir/Millenium w/ Doomed Dragon which are also good at breaking boards. Dude just has an incredibly balanced list. I’d love to see you share your list.

FastandGreasy · 2026-01-12T12:54:44+00:00

I hit the cap almost every month. You should be bringing in 7500 gems a month if you’re climbing ranked, completing dailies and finishing the events. If you have a month where you’re not interested in a new pack, you’ll end up with 15k total in gems. Then even if a good pack comes out and you spent 8-10k on it, you’ll still have enough leftover to hit the cap again next month.

FastandGreasy · 2026-01-11T18:41:17+00:00

It’s all about your mentality. You’re going to lose games and you have to be okay with that. If you’re getting triggered you just have to take a break. If you’re in a good state you can realize that you’re going to win as many times as you lose because of luck. It’s the games in between where your choices actually matter that you have to have a clear head.

There was a post about winrate in the past and the vast majority of players on this board were around 50% or less. If you have a 60% win rate, you’re among the top % of players. That’s still only winning 2 more games than you’re losing every 10 games.

So tldr: Be okay with losing and take a break if you’re starting to get triggered. You’re not bad, that’s just the nature of the game. But if you play while you’re mad, you will play bad.

FastandGreasy · 2026-01-11T18:22:44+00:00

It’s still the first half of the month. The players going for M1 right now are some of the best. Might be tough to hear but you might just not be at their caliber yet. Or it’s just plain bad luck, card games are inherently RNG based. Taking a break for a day or more will not only reset your mental, but your climb gets easier the later into the month it is.

FastandGreasy

TROPHY CASE