[MW] Justice Hunters Has Brought New Forces To The Meta!

Justice Hunters is in full swing and it’s their time to shine.

Fresh off the heels of the release of Justice Hunters in the TCG, let’s take a look at what has been going on with the market for the new meta. The meta has shifted and natural power creep has been set in place from Yummy and Vanquish Soul K9 taking the lead of the meta with Decks like Dracotail following behind in the Top 5 Decks currently.

As one of the main cards in Dracotail that you want to run at 3, Dracotail Faimena has become the 2nd most expensive Ultra Rare from Justice Hunters. Being able to discard itself to Fusion Summon a Dragon or Spellcaster Fusion Monster using monsters in your hand and field is perfect, and this being a Quick Effect on top of that makes it better into targeting negation. If you use it as a Fusion Material with something like Ruha Dracotail or Ketu Dracotail, you can Set 1 Dracotail Spell/Trap from your Deck. Faimena has been useful as an all around card to help bring out El Shaddoll Winda on your opponent’s first turn, or to Summon Secreterion Dragon against the Dracotail Mirror Match or Blue-Eyes Primite. You can also find this card in multiple rarities, from Ultra Rare to Collector’s Rare and Starlight Rare, if you are planning on maxing out the rarities in this deck.

Being straight off the presses in Justice Hunters, this amazing card will see play going into the future for any Fusion Deck that is dedicated to both Dragons and Spellcasters.

One of the major versions of Dracotail players are trying out is the Dragonmaid build using cards like Lady’s Dragonmaid from Battles of Legend: Monster Mayhem, Parlor Dragonmaid, and more. Parlor Dragonmaid happens to be the main monster you want to run from the Dragonmaid cards as on its Normal Summon, you can send any Dragonmaid card from your Deck to the GY, which, most of the time, will be Dragonmaid Lorpar. By doing this, it allows you access Lady’s Dragonmaid as she requires you to banish 2 Dragonmaid monsters with the same Attribute, but different Levels.

With the inclusion of Lady’s Dragonmaid, she allows you to Special Summon any Level 4 or lower Dragonmaid monster from your Deck, and usually, it will be Chamber Dragonmaid, as it can add any Dragonmaid Spell/Trap from your Deck to your hand. Lady’s Dragonmaid also has a powerful effect that occurs during either Standby Phase. It lets you Fusion Summon any Dragon Fusion Monster from your Extra Deck by shuffling its materials from the field or banishment into the Deck. This allows you to access Dragonmaid Sheou for a card/effect negator that also replaces itself with Special Summoning a copy of House Dragonmaid from your Extra Deck.

With Dragonmania happening again, we see plenty of past Dragons and Decks being tested with Dracotail like Dragonmaid and Branded too. Time will show us the power of Dracotail and will show what version will be the best in the end.

Even with this being a direct counter to Dracotail, it is heavily used in the Deck because of all the Dragons and Spellcasters that the Deck has access to, and Secreterion Dragon is no stranger to being utilized with and against Dracotail. Mainly, Decks have been playing Super Polymerization to prepare for Dracotail to fuse away both Dracotail Arthalion and Gulamel. While you control a Fusion Summoned Secreterion Dragon, your opponent cannot activate the effects of Special Summoned Dragon and Spellcaster monsters on their field, which is the main reason why it’s great in Dracotail. But it can be amazing for the Deck as well, as you can target 1 Dragon and 1 Spellcaster in your GY to Special Summon 1 of the targets and place the other target at the bottom of the Deck.

The last time we covered this card, it was half its current price, and now more and more players have been picking up the card for their arsenal of Super Polymerization options.

Let’s finally move onto the hype from K9, with K9-17 Izuna being the top Ultra Rare in Justice Hunters, being around $45, or €38.87 if you are in Europe. Being the center of the K9 strategy, Izuna has been doing wonders for the game as a way to deter the usage of monster effects in the hand and GY, because if either thing occurs, you can quickly Special Summon this card from your hand. When Izuna is Normal or Special Summoned, you can send any K9 card from your Deck to the GY. And if it is during your opponent’s first turn, you would want to send K9-ØØ Lupis, as he can also Special Summon himself from your hand or GY, but he banishes himself when he leaves the field. Lupis allows you to use his Quick Effect to Xyz Summon an Xyz Monster, using himself as 1 of the materials, to allow you to make K9-17 “Ripper” for a monster effect negator. 

The K9 engine can be run in virtually every Deck in Yu-Gi-Oh! and it’ll be crazy to see what decks players have ready to play and test out in the future.

This one blew my mind the other day when I saw its price, and how it still hasn’t seen a reprint in 12 years and that card is Number C104: Umbral Horror Masquerade from Judgment of Light, a set released back in August of 2013. Being a powerful Rank 5 Xyz Monster in K9 Vanquish Soul Decks, when it is Xyz Summoned, you can target 1 Spell/Trap on the field to destroy it. Now onto the main meat of this card. You Special Summon this card most of the time after you use the effect of N.As.H. Knight to attach both a monster from your opponent’s field and a copy of Number 104: Masquerade from your Extra Deck to the Knight. Then you overlay CXyz N.As.Ch. Knight on that N.As.H. Knight, and then you detach a material from N.As.CH to Special Summon Number C104 from its effect. This allows you to use C104’s major effect to detach 1 material to negate the activation of a monster effect on your opponent’s field, then you send 1 random card from your opponent’s hand to the GY, and on top of all of that, you also halve your opponent’s LP. With a combination of this card, Vanquish Soul Heavy Borger, and Vanquish Soul Snow Devil, you can end the Duel extremely quickly, dealing a total of 8050 damage if you sequence everything properly. You do 1500 damage to your opponent via the burn effect from Heavy Borger, then you cut your opponent’s LP in half with C104’s effect, and, on the opponent’s turn, you use Snow Devil for an additional 1800 damage and another 1500 from Heavy Borger.

With this card only being from Judgement of the Light, many wonder why it was skipped over in Justice Hunters, but there could be a reason for it. Maybe a reprint could appear in the 2025 Mega Tins? Only time will tell for that.

The “Fear” of Yummy has settled in, and Yummy★Snatchy is in the lead for the top Ultra Rare for the Deck. It is the main Link Monster that you utilize, as it takes any Level 4 or lower LIGHT Beast monster to summon it. If this card is Special Summoned, it allows you to play either of your Yummy Field Spells, Yummyusment☆Mignon or Yummyusment★Acroquey, from your Deck face-up, but it locks you so that you cannot Link Summon Link-3 or higher Link Monsters for the rest of the turn. The best part about this card is that once per Chain, during the Main Phase or your opponent’s Battle Phase, you can, as a Quick Effect, pay 100 LP to immediately Synchro Summon a Synchro Monster using monsters you control as material, including a Yummy monster. This is useful for getting around card effects that need to target things, and with that, all of your Yummy Synchro Monsters can use any Link-1 as a Level 1 Tuner, making it even easier to Synchro Summon them. Even on top of all of this, Yummy★Snatchy has been seen being used as something to reveal from Ghost Reaper & Winter Cherries’ effect, making it a great way to deal with the claw machine menace.

Yummy has made a huge impact on the meta as being in the top decks and will continue to reign as one of the best decks currently, even after the release of Marshmao☆Yummy from Doom of Dimensions.

Sky Striker happens to be the best engine to use in Yummy, and this has caused Sky Striker Mobilize – Engage! to skyrocket in value for all of the copies as it searches for one of the best Token generators in the game, Sky Striker Mecha – Hornet Drones. With many running 1 to 2 copies of Engage, Engage lets you add any other Sky Striker card in the game, and if you have 3 Spell Cards in your GY, you can draw an additional card after your search. A couple have opted to run a single copy of Sky Striker Mecha – Widow Anchor to help with breaking the opponent’s board with multiple other cards like Evenly Matched, Harpie’s Feather Duster, and Lightning Storm. Back to Sky Striker Mecha – Hornet Drones, this Spell Special Summons 1 Level 1 Token that you can use to Link Summon Sky Striker Ace – Kagari, then Kagari can trigger her effect to target and add back Hornet Drones, so you can activate it again. This time, you use the Level 1 Token and Kagari to make any of your Yummy Synchro monsters to get your Yummy engine going. This is possible thanks to Cupsy★Yummy Way’s search effect to add 2 Yummy monsters from your deck to your hand.

With a total of 8 reprints over the past 7 years since it’s been released, this card has a knack for always climbing in price when new Sky Striker support releases or a deck that can utilize Hornet Drones is in the game.

Finally, let’s take a look at the future with something for post Doom of Dimensions, and that is Magician of Black Chaos MAX, which features wonderful artwork from Kazuki Takahashi. This beautiful card has been seeing sales constantly over the past month or so since the new Megalith support was revealed, and I got to say, we are really heading back to doing this lock, are we? If this card is Special Summoned, you can Tribute 1 monster, which can include itself, to make it so your opponent cannot activate monster effects this turn. During the Battle Phase, when this card destroys an opponent’s monster by battle, you can target and add any Spell from your GY to your hand. Overall, Magician of Black Chaos MAX is still one of the craziest promotional cards that has been printed. With that, it has been seeing a constant line of sales over the past month.

With it having a special artwork made by the late Kazuki Takahashi, it is unlikely for this magnificent piece to ever see a reprint in the future. We can’t say for certain if the 2019 Gold Sarcophagus Promo cards will ever get alternate artwork in the future, but only time will tell.

With the new meta in full throttle, it is great to see natural power creep happen to the game, but we can still expect the next Forbidden and Limited list for the TCG to be after Worlds, and that is getting closer by the day.

Even though the format has just started, Justice Hunters have given us three powerful decks to utilize and to face off against the old top-tier decks. But only time will tell how well they’ll cement themselves into the top decks.

Edited and co-written by Angryjon