If you’ve read my articles or have ever seen me play in a feature match you’d probably know that I’m a very safe player. I try to never give my opponent a way to battle back in the game, and I like to hold on to difference-maker cards until they can cause the most damage possible. That’s the reason I’m such a big fan of D.D. Crow. Playing a slow-paced, safe game means you need to be able to do a lot on your opponent’s turn. If you can’t respond to your opponent’s cards, conservative play is going to backfire.

D.D. Crow gives you a guaranteed one-for-one trade on a card that’s important to your opponent. This assumes you’re using the Crow to stop your opponent’s use of Destiny Hero - Malicious or Monster Reborn. Having the option of when to play it allows you to make sure the trade you make for your Crow is a good one. Ditching it right away to take care of Malicious or Necro Gardna is sometimes the best play, while other times holding your Crow lets you negate an opponent’s revival card.

The card I’m previewing today is another "discard from hand" effect that can be used on either player’s turn. Take a look at another card you’ll find at your Sneak Preview:

Hanewata
Fairy / Tuner
Light / Level 1
200 ATK / 300 DEF

You can discard Hanewata to make any effect damage you take this turn 0. This effect can be activated during either player’s turn.

And just like that, burn decks are officially dead. When you’re playing against burn, having more cards than your opponent isn’t really an issue. Very few of their effects can destroy anything, so you don’t have to worry about them eliminating cards you control. Any argument about Hanewata costing a card is therefore moot. When playing against burn, you don’t really care about one-for-one trades. In fact I’d say you’d be happy to trade one card for at least one of your opponent’s burn cards, right?

Think of Hanewata like that. Since you can chain it to your opponent using a burn effect, you’ve negated that card and effectively traded Hanewata for it. Here’s where being able to hold Hanewata in your hand becomes extremely important. Often times burn decks don’t win by doing a whole lot more than 8000 damage. If they won easily they’d be everywhere already! Usually it takes the very last burn card to finish you off, just a turn before you could have won yourself.

Enter Hanewata! Now when your opponent finally has enough damage for game he or she will attempt to finish you off. Then you save yourself with Hanewata. That gives you the extra turn necessary to win. When playing against burn you’ll often have three to four monsters on the field at any given time. That’s usually over 6000 points worth of ATK power. Getting one extra battle phase with that kind of arsenal is no joke, and Hanewata’s going to give you the whole turn.

The question then becomes when should you play Hanewata? My first instinct is to hold the card for as long as possible. I want my opponents to think they’ve got me so they will use all their burn cards right away. Burn players want to save their Just Desserts and Secret Barrel cards as long as possible to deal the most damage, but if they think they have game they’ll just play them right away. Now when I drop Hanewata to keep me alive, my opponent will realize he or she could have won by saving those burn cards for one more turn.

And why not take the devastation up a notch? When playing against Chain Burn, this is one of the best cards (if not the best) available to you. Chain Burn does as much damage as possible all in one chain. That means you can negate as much damage as possible all in one chain with Hanewata. Even the biggest Ojama Trio/triple Just Desserts hands will fall victim to one Hanewata.

Hanewata does more than you might think at first. If you missed it the first time the little Fairy is also a Tuner. At level 1 that means you can Synchro summon Magical Android most of the time. Against burn the Android is nuts, working in your favor at almost the same speed Wave-Motion Cannon works against you. With Dark Armed Dragon you can make a level-8 Synchro summon happen. Thought Ruler Archfiend is probably your best target at that point, though Red Dragon Archfiend is probably most useful in the burn matchup.

What makes Hanewata better than other burn hate is that you can use it from your hand on your own turn. That means that, as early as your opening draw, you can have a response ready to go. Burn players take advantage of the fact that they’ll be going first for either game 2 or 3 by setting up on their first turn. Against Chain Burn this often meant your opponent could burn you out before you got the chance to respond. That’s no longer a possibility if you draw a copy of Hanewata.

But what really makes a card good is when it allows you to play other cards as well. With the safety Hanewata gives you, you can feel free to keep Solemn Judgment in against burn decks. A card that cuts your own life points in half is usually frowned upon for the burn matchup, and players who use it right now do so with the intention of preventing the last cards from reducing their life points to zero. With Hanewata you can either double up that last chance protection or you can use Solemn to stop something key early on. With only 4000 life points your opponent will probably try to win the game—allowing you to use Hanewata to stop it, giving you that extra turn, and hopefully letting you win the game instead.

If you’ve got room in your side deck for something devoted to burn hate, I’d suggest changing it to Hanewata. If not, just keep Hanewata close by and ready to jump into the side deck for any given tournament.