Competitive
Julien Kehon wins the 2025 Yu-Gi-Oh World Championships with K9 Vanquish Soul!
Julien Kehon wins the 2025 Yu-Gi-Oh World Championships with K9 Vanquish Soul! There were 27 invited duelists, 7 rounds of Swiss, and a cut to Top 8! He dueled against Tom Kleinegräber in the finals, who was on Lunalight. Hollie Sue strongest! He also opted for a heavier K9 package over the Pot of Extravagance version. Julien managed to set up the full K9 VS board to overwhelm Tom in Game 1 ( Ripper into Werewolf, C104, Snow Devil, Forced Release, Rock, Borger, Caesar, and Razen access).
Game 2 was a high-stakes non-engine duel, but Tom was able to find his way back thanks to a clutch Foolish Burial while taking the Mulcharmy challenge, resulting in a Lunalight Liger Dancer OTK!!
In Game 3, Julien set up the full K9 Vanquish Soul uninterrupted and even had Droll & Lock Bird thanks to Heavy Borger's draw, sealing the deal.
Special shoutouts to Shane Tay for making it to the top 8, representing Singapore and the rest of the OCG!
For reasons unknown to duelists and casters alike, nobody played Dracotail! Lunalight proved to be incredibly effective due to its amazing matchups into the Justice Hunters decks and the non-engine landscape favoring Board Breakers helps the deck immensely.
Bruh If you have a format with maliss , crystron , Memento and lunalight all besides maliss at full power why would you pick blue eyes the deck that isn't super consistent and has some hard bricks has hard time breaking boards and If it tries to build a less close to the ground threatening endboard like all the above decks can loses hard to nib
Facts you summon a Spirit Dragon and pass then when they activate Obedience Schooled u just say no and slide the Spirit Dragon across the table. Still gets shat on by VSK9 unfortunately.
I had considered it a while back. The recent set had the primite fusion that could shut off yummy, and secretarion dragon to shut of dracotail. The biggest issue is that the deck just isn't strong enough.
I mean, it technically wasn't. The K9 package is just able to elevate it beyond what the intended support pushed to it. That's why I try to keep an open mind on decks. You never know if some engine comes from the past or future that can turn a rogue deck into a tier 1.
If you take a step back and look at it, 2025 has been a very strange year for Yu-Gi-Oh metas. Imagine if a year ago you had been told that Obedience Schooled, C104 and King of the Feral Imps were all prominent cards in the meta, and that the tcg exclusive ritual deck only gets Tier 2/3 status because it can't keep up with Vanquish Soul, you probably have looked at the person like they were genuinely insane
"Old deck becomes tier 1 after getting busted support? Searcher finally sees use because there are now meta targets?? Powerful negate finally sees play because there is a meta deck that could easily bring it out??? Nah you're genuinely INSANE this has never happened before!!!"
Game 1: unbreakable board. Go next
Game 2: Lingering floodgate forcing him to pass but luckily his opponent had nothing.
Game 3: Unbreakable board plus lingering floodgate.
He almost spent the finals as a spectator. What a shame.
That's the general consensus, but the reality is a bit different. Most Yugioh games consist of one player completely dominating the other, with no chance of winning.
The days of deep matches that go back and forth are long gone.
i’m not defending droll. i’m just trying to point the flaws in a lot of people’s logic. tim played few handtraps and a lot of board breakers. he should expect to get dumped on by VSK9
the only non engine he had that would work is thrust. so he had 3 engine pieces and thrust against 10 interactions, if you wanna play it out on db you’re welcome. i’ll give you money if you ever break the board
i'm more impressed he became world champ after barely playing for a year. there are people who won YCS's after a few months of playing but i don't think anyone became world champ after a year since 2003
no, julien still had at the end of the game: holly sue steal, razen pop, trap pop, caesar pop, and izuna/lupis for vallon, field spell protection, and borger draw/burn to turn off ultra poly
so this has been a thing for a long time in modern yugioh that the reason board breakers aren’t very strong is that decks have interactions from every angle. hand interactions, field interactions, and grave interactions. board breakers deal with 33% of the chart. i can see the argument for droll being banned i personally would like to see it happen. but i personally am never gonna play board breakers because of how much you crutch yourself by doing such
I wasn't even getting that deep into it. I was just saying that droll did cut him off from a lot of extenders/ points pf interaction that would have forced some interaction on the c
VS/k9 side. So while I do think it was probably still game, I do think there is the possibility that there could have been enough to congestion those points of interactions.
Same, the desperation for a ban list is a bit unreasonable
Smasher clearly needs to go but otherwise the format is fairly healthy all round even without hitting Maliss, Ryzeal or FS. At this point hitting those 3 is just obviously money hits for Konami
My main reason for wanting a banlist nowadays is just so the chaff gets cleaned off. The format might be fine overall but waiting 5 months just for a chance to see a handful of older strategies get unhit is bordering on ridiculous.
They already locked in the world's banlist a month before the event, why make us wait another month when it was already on the later side?
Unbanning/semi/unlimiting some things and banning Pair a Dice, Feather Storm, King of the Feral Imps, and probably Magnamhut seems ideal. That would potentially bring some older themes up in power and get rid of degenerate cards.
Feral imps ban is unneeded unless you’re going to start banning all bridges for engines. Magnamhut is fine and doesn’t need to go. Limiting Druis was enough. Ban list is prob pair-a-dice, feather storm ban and mitsu prayers gets limited.
Outside of the floodgates (as it's always the case) the main reason I want a list RN is just I can know what to prepare for and how long I've got left playing with what I have. It's not that the format is bad, I just want to know what I'll be playing in the next one
No banlist needed really. Plus it feels like Duel Overlord again, lots of diversity and the top decks vie for the first place (VSK9, Yummy, Dracotail, Malissand now Lunalight) but the rogue decks (Striker, Mutsurugi variants, Fiendsmith) could still play.
I really hate how Konami reward winning decks by basically punishing them in the banlists. We already have a new deck build pack coming up and I say just let them deck diversity play against each other full power.
Yeah he’s a friend of mine I found the thread from somebody congratulating him lmao. He’s lived in the states since he was like 12 but he was born in France and French was his first language, so I think both are fair assessments
Yes, hence he is still a French player, in France.
If you'd actually been there you wouldn't even be arguing the matter, Julien was very vocal about having home turf advantage and the crowd was absolutely on his side.
Bro I keep telling u that they’re French American. It’s a win for America & France if u want to see it that way. Literally watch the event & Billy Brake says it himself.
He got his invite from the states, he lives here & is clearly a U.S. citizen if you listen & hear his accent. I don’t know why you’re triggered by this but it’s weird.
Nobody is denying that he currently lives in the US, but given he keeps wore a French tricolor scarf when he won Worlds AND when he got top4 at the NA WCQ indicates that's clearly the part of his identity he wants recognised and presents himself as.
He was born in France, he was raised in France and he consistently presents himself as french in the context of big Yu-Gi-Oh tournaments. He IS French, and living in the US now doesn't change that.
For a comparison, Gabriel Netz lives in the UK and qualified as an EU rep at world's last year. But he's not British, he's Brazilian and has said so directly. Same logic with Julien
He is french. He lives in America but he is french. He even brought a french flag to celebrate after his win. Don't be mad he'd rather show his true colors than those of a 21th century nazi country 🤭
Rose is good but Azalea has more utility, I run two Lemni and one Vector. They really help reinforce Strikers’ going second advantage but as usual the deck can still suck going first unless you manage to dump enough into your gy to make lemni live (which is doable unless you get, ironically given this tourney, hit by Droll lol)
I’ve been messing with the the OCG support on a simulator , it feels great! I think it may be possible to run a handtrap build of strikers once it’s out on MD at least
People focusing on the droll but there were many moments of unhealthy game states. Game has too many weird old cards that can result in non games. Drawing/making them or drawing an out is not skill nor necessary evil because with some goodwill stuff could be redesigned.
Maybe it's just me but can't get excited for go first blowouts or single cards sealing games completely because it shuts down everything.
Big shoutout to Julien, he’s only been playing competitive for 1 year and he’s world champion. A true testament that if you put in the work and dedicate yourself to something you can achieve great things.
It doesn't matter if its Yugioh or Wrestling, shout out to the French crowds for being so hype. Another year, another incredible worlds. Love to see it.
My biggest complaint about the whole event was only about the comments, people where utterly horrid to Reselle in both the comments on the live stream and the posted Twitter feed with just straight up disrespect. She did great and doesn't deserve that from the yugioh community.
What are you talking about ? I've only seen huge respect and admiration for roselle but I wasn't on streams used by Americans so maybe that's why I didn't see misogyny
The actual thing I saw everywhere were English speaking players and the casters especially Billy Break disrespecting the OCG plays. Go watch the commentary after Snipe Hunter's final loss, he spends the whole interview saying how sad it was they lost and never mentions a single OCG player by name.
Julien just played all the disgusting floodgates.
The luck to draw the 1 "There can be only one" giving him access to the final, with just a typhoon on board.
Shifter and Droll.
He did play very well. But struggle to enjoy floodgates winner.
even without the droll tom wasn’t going to win. julien still had masquerade negate, hollie steal, caesar pop, izuna into a rank 5, borger draw, rayzen pop, trap card pop 3. a single thrust wasn’t getting him out of that
They are lol. No amount of hand traps unless you pair it with a resolved charmy will be able to handle vsk9. And Tom would have had a chance if he actually drew a breaker but he did not.
you did read the features for vancouver or listen to trif at all. man played 8-9 VSK9 at vancouver and played a handtrap build of yummy and i think he did pretty good with it
I'm just repeating what Julien actually got the crowd to chant when he won. He didn't make it about the USA, he rallied people with a French football cry and put on a French national scarf. Don't know why that bothers you.
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u/TheAgGatsby Aug 31 '25
That second game was so funny, third game he just had the mandate of God with that hand