Feature Match Critiques - Toronto Round 1: Sorosh Saberian VS Eric Hennig

    In this article I'm going to go over this Round 1 Toronto feature match. I'm not going to go over the obvious things (like Hennig taking Venus over Earth off his Duality, for example) but I am going to go over some of the questionable plays that both players made. The first one was made by Saberian:

Hennig opened up the day with 3 Set cards to his back row, and used Pot of Duality to reveal The Agent of Mystery - Earth; The Agent of Creation - Venus; and Mystical Shine Ball.  He added The Agent of Creation to his hand, then Set a fourth card to his back row.  He Normal Summoned Venus to end.

Saberian had a hand of Dimensional Prison; Gorz the Emissary of Darkness; Super-Nimble Mega Hamster; Gleipnir, the Fetters of Fenrir; Torrential Tribute; and Tour Guide from the Underworld.  He summoned Tour Guide and Special Summoned Sangan from his deck in Defense Position.

    I don’t agree with the summoning of Tour Guide. I definitely think he should’ve set the Hamster, and he dodged a bullet when Henning didn’t have Solemn Warning or Effect Veiler. By setting Hamster first, it would’ve either got hit with the Warning instead, or it would’ve given him access to Ryko to try to hit the potential Warning or even draw out an Effect Veiler. You could argue that if it got Warning’d, he could set Gleipnir and drop Gorz to the Venus attack but one of those back rows could be yet another answer (best case, a 2nd Solemn Warning). I think it’s usually best to try to take out your opponents’ threats with lesser threat cards like Ryko and save your better cards for when your opponent has fewer options to deal with them.

    Another arguement you could make is that he was actually trying to draw out Veiler or Warning, in hopes of later using his Hamster to get Tanngnjoster and make a Black Rose Dragon play to wipe the field. I don't agree with that play either though, because there was a big chance that Hennig had a Starlight Road set. The last thing supporting the Tour Guide play was that Saberian valued information and keeping his deck secret more than trying to destroy his opponents' outs to his plays. Summoning a Tour Guide doesn't give his deck choice away, while showing a Hamster might make Hannig play differently.

Our next play is made by Hennig:

Hennig flipped Royal Decree, which he'd Set the turn previous.  He Normal Summoned The Agent of Creation, and when Hennig activated its effect, Saberian Chained Book of Moon to turn Venus face-down.  Hennig Special Summoned a single Shine Ball in Defense Position.  "Not like I can do anything with it now."

    Now the field at this point features Saberian having a single monster and s/t, and Hennig having Earth and 2 s/ts. I believe he should’ve not flipped the Decree so prematurely. Instead, summoning Venus and declining priority. This can draw out removal cards like Torrential, Bottomless, etc. If he was really reading the s/t to be Warning, he could activate the Decree now and then activate Venus’s effect (Note that it was highly unlikely that Saberian would Warning the summon of Venus, unless he was reading Decree or Trap Stun).

    Another play was to use the effect, and after the Shine Balls hit the field is when Saberian would respond like a card like Torrential to which he would chain his Decree. By prematurely activating his Decree he shut off the rest of his sets and let his opponent make plays he maybe wouldn’t have made. In this unfortunate case, Saberian had Book and shut off any potential play that could’ve been made. If Hennig had played it correctly, his Decree would still be face-down and his opponent would’ve had to play with a completely different mindset.

The last play I want to talk about was again made by Hennig:

 Saberian drew Bottomless Trap Hole, and activated Dark Hole to clear the field!  Hennig returned Kristya to the top of his Deck, now with 4 Fairies in his Graveyard: Saberian Special Summoned Hyperion with Monster Reborn and attacked, depriving Hennig of his fourth Fairy.  He Set Bottomless.

Hennig Summoned another Agent of Mystery next turn to get another Venus from his Deck: he had 3800 Life Points left.  He Set another Spell or Trap.

Saberian drew Tour Guide from the Underworld, and Summoned her to get another Tour Guide from his Deck.  He stacked the Tour Guides together to Xyz Summon Leviair, then detached to Special Summon The Agent of Creation - Venus.  Venus attacked into Earth; Hennig boosted its ATK with the effect of Honest; and Venus went down.  But Hyperion attacked over the boosted Earth, and Leviair made a direct attack.  Hennig had six Fairies in his Graveyard, so Kristya was likely a non-factor.

    Henning should’ve made the play to bring his Kristya online and shut down Saberian’s special summoning. He should’ve just swung with his Earth into Hyperion, taking 1700 damage and bringing himself to 4 fairies. I believe this was better than just hoping his opponent didn’t have a second monster to attack over Earth, drawing out Honest and then putting him to 6 fairies. He would’ve lost his Kristya to Bottomless and lost anyway, but figuring that Saberian didn’t have the Bottomless set the turn before and it was his top deck, I think it was still the safer play. It was just unfortunate that Saberian had in fact topped an answer to the Kristya in the form of Bottomless.