Draft 101 Guide MONARCH EDITION

[Music]thank you welcome back to the Arsenalpast YouTube channel it is Hayden hereand back with something that I love totalk about another limited video andthis time we're talking about Monarchdraft we have of course the Dusk TillDawn or of the Monarch events coming outthis weekend we have Nationals on thehorizon which is Monarch draft partlyMonarch draft for a lot of Nationalsaround the world plus of course Skirmish

season 7 which features some amount ofdraft events or Monarch around the globeso I'm super excited to be back draftingMonarch it has been a long time sinceI've drafted Monarch I've got it back tothe last few weeks in preparation forsome of these events but it is a setthat I think is very unique it's verycool it's very different to some of thesets that we've dropped recently likeUprising and outsides which I'll talk alittle bit more about uh but yeah I wantto share in this video some some tipsand tricks sort of an overview of theMonarch draft format talk about the

heroes and how to draft them some of thekey cards you should look out for just abit of a crash course on draftingMonarch if maybe you're heading to a warof the Monarch event this weekend oryou're looking just to get startedpracticing Finance Nationals things likethat so before I kick into it do youwant to say if you enjoy the videos thatwe put out here Arsenal plus ask pleasedo go and throw us a like on the videomaybe you can drop a comment tell us youknow what you've learned from this videoor what you want to see more expanded onfrom this Monarch crash course and draftthis 101 video or perhaps you know maybeyou've got some questions or somedifferences of opinion on cards that you

like in the heroes and Monarch also dropus a sub on the channel as well it allhelps as we head towards 6000 Subs atthis point in time so I want to get intoit first of all and talk a little bitabout Monarch draft if maybe you'rebrand new to drafting I would suggestmaybe not starting with this Monarchvideo we did do a welcome to wrath 101video about a year ago before thefarewell to welcome to race events youcan go and check those out for a bitmore of a crash course and sort ofbasics of drafting or you can listen toour draft pods that we've donepreviously on the Arsenal past podcastwhich you can find here on YouTube or

Spotify Apple podcast Etc uh but yeahthat said some of the things aboutMonarch that I think are reallyinteresting because it is a really coolformat and it is quite unique there'ssome real differences if you've droppedit Uprising or outside as previously oneof those being the four versus the threeheroes or the you know six Heroes butthree classes that we had in Outsidersand in three Heroes and classes inUprising now you have four on Monarchand that's what we kind of had for along time when Flesh and Blood firststart over here foreign

Arcane Rising we had four and Monarchbefore we went to this kind of threehero class structure with Tales of Ariaand we haven't gone back since but weare heading back with Monarch and itadds a bit of a different Dynamic nowwhen you have this kind of three classor hero split like we have the first thelast few sets usually end up with thiskind of three three two kind of dynamicin your draft pod and often you know youwant to be one of the two drafters it'skind of a one you position yourself toor there might be a class that isslightly more powerful that was kind ofperceived as Phi or assassin in the last

set that people would often have likefour Heroes you know four peopledrafting in service four two two twosplit now with something like monarchwhen you have four Heroes here is apretty balance in this format and oftenyou're going to end up with a two twotwo two split so two of every classslash hero represented in your Monarchdrops can be pretty common but if youcan find your way into that one personseat you know maybe you're the onelivier drafter or the one Bolson drafterwhatever it might be you can findyourself in a really good spot and oftenyou know there will be like three prisms

uh throughout you know three or five uhthree of a class five light Heroesdrafters like hero drafters is notuncommon in this format so you can oftenfind yourself you know position yourselfin your seat while being a pretty gooddeck belt it's not the end of the worldif you're not in like a three prism orthree Bolton uh to be honest or eventhree chain I really never want to bepersonally a three brute drafter and Ikind of want to avoid it in chainI also want to avoid it in Bolton To behonest um but prism I think you can kindof get away with it a lot more so that'skind of one of the first key differencesI wanted to talk about now I could go on

about the three versus four hero drawfrom it for ages even in Singapore Ichatted to James White and he said youshould do a pod on this you should talkabout the differences between three andfour there are drop sets and you knowwhat we might just do that uh in thenear future other differences is sort ofthe power level of the set the set isreally it has quite a high power levelbut it's really Synergy based so throughyour cards working together to formthese really powerful combat chains orto do powerful things with theinteractions they have you know you seethis a lot with Bolton in particular

um you know the way your axes interactwith your hero ability and these abilityto go wide on massive combat chains dothis with Livia with blood dead and sixpowers to make sure you can actuallycontinue to keep yourself alive and pushthrough damage to your opponent prism ofcourse with just how light cards work inIllusionist cards work so a lot ofsynergy in this format but it is alsoquite powerful as opposed to some setswhere you know they were fast likeuprising really fast format andreasonably powerful but this format isslower than that and more Synergy basedbut with higher sort of power levels

interestingly the defensive value of theset is quite low you have a lot of noblocks you have a lot of instances thatdon't block you have like a reasonableamount of cards that do defend too butthere were some really good defensivecards and also one of the other keydifferences in this day is equipment isreally really powerful I'd say it's notgood in other sets but it's reallypowerful in Monarch it's something toreally keep in mind is that generallyequipment is a bit highly higher draftedin the set than some of the other setskind of on the Aggregate and some of theequipment is is really top tier some ofthe equipment you even want to make sure

you have a few minute archetypes whichwe'll talk about once we get into theheroesso power level Synergy defensive valuethree and four Heroes the last bigdifference is 15 cards now this actuallymakes quite a lot of difference inUprising and Outsiders you have fourteam card packs you have an extra cardper pack and that means extra threeplayables effectively or three cardsyou're gonna draft over the draft andactually make a massive differenceespecially in a format with sometimesyou actually want to play more than 30cards uh because of fatigue especiallyif you're in a hero like chain also

gives you the ability to draft cyborgcards which is really cool so I reallylike the 15 card graph format versus the14 card draw format and I think it'ssomething to really keep in mind whenyou get into the Monarch draft formatnext up I want to talk a little bitabout some of the key things in theMonarch Drive format that you shouldhave top of mind or you should kind ofknow about if you are going to bedrafting the set so first of all justbacking onto what I said about thedifferences between previous sets andthe set is just speed of the format thisis not the fastest format out there nowthere can be some exceptions especiallywhen it comes to just kind of what I'd

call like snowball damage you can reallyhave these really crazy snowball gamesbased on just kind of rolling into yourbest damage hands now I would say like alot of the time your dicks are going tofeel like half really powerful half kindof filler and role players sometimesyou're just going to draw that powerfulhalf your deck where your opponent isand it's really important to have thecards to combat this so I'll use anexample prism with Heralds you know thisHeralds are really above rate if they'reable to like you know play a bunch ofspares of surreality to get go againplus a really efficient Heralds thathave on hits that get them spectral

Shields like red Herald of protection orred water in here with this resourceefficient they can kind of just run awaywith the game if you don't havesomething like a popper the flip side ofthat you know if you're playing intosomething like chain and they kind ofjust go off in these first couple ofturns with really big you know they hittheir shackles they get their kind ofnon-attack actions and their attackactions are some ways to get go againand they can really pop like two or oneor two big turns you need good defensivecards that can kind of stop that andpull the game back for you a little bitso you can stay in it so it's kind ofwhat I call like snowball damage it canhappen in this format and it's one of

the reasons I didn't think I likedMonarch but the more and more I play itI think there's ways to mitigate as theopponent you know your opponent'ssnowball damage so I've kind of comearound the speed of the format but yeahit can sometimes be quick but a lot ofthe time it's going to feel somewheresomewhere kind of in between Uprisingand Outsiders often the games aren't asgrindy as some of the outsiders gamesbut at the same time you know two orthree turn Uprising games aren't whatyou're going to see in monarchthe other key things uh talents and howthey impact drafts so one of the keythings in the set you know is that wehave balance class cards and generics

and those Talent cards are going to helpkeep you open during the draft I talk alittle bit about that some more at theend of the video when I talk about tipsand tricks um this this video is fullychapterized you can go if you want toskip some of these maybe these tipsaren't relevant to you maybe just wantto learn about a hero if you don't haveany interest in the shadow Heroes onlythe light Heroes you can skip down tothe chapters in this videoum but yeah when it comes to talents oneof the things that talents really helpyou to do in this format what makes itso interesting is they can keep you openin the draft you might take some reallypowerful equipment and generics in thefirst couple of picks then you know you

take a shadow card and then you takebrute card and you can still be prettyopen it's like okay maybe I don't wantthat brood card that's only one card Ican walk away from that but I've stillgot these you know the Shadow Card Itake another Shadow card then all of asudden chains open and I've still gotevery card but one that's playable in mydeck because the Shadow the talent theycan fit in so you know you don't reallyjust immediately narrow in on a hero youcan actually go like they open and gointo a talent and then go into a ClassHero from there so quite an interestingway that Monarch Works uh packdistribution we've got to talk pack

distribution because it is veryinteresting so the way pack distributionWorks in Monarch again 15 cards is uh asit's a little bit easier to to it's moreconsistency compared to some sets likeUprising for instance so in every packyou're going to have this breakdownyou're going to have three of the LightGlass cards so this means you're goingto have three Bolton or prism cards thatcould be light Illusionist cards theycould be Illusionist cards they could beLight Warrior cards they could beWarrior cards for instance you can have

three of those and then you can and anymakeups you could have two prism oneBolton for instance you'd have but youalways have a two one split you alwayshave minimum in each pack one prism orone Alton card whether they'reIllusionist or light Illusionist thensame on the flip side of Shadow you'regonna havethree cards of Shadow hero cards notTalent cards those come in a second sonot Shadow or light we're talking abouthere we're talking about specificallytied to a class so you could have againyou could have a shadow uh brute cardyou might just have a brute card you

might have a shadow chain card uh shadowroom play card rather or just a roommateHub so that's gonna be in thatconfiguration and these are all commonso these first six cards are all commonand they're split evenly three and threebetween light and Shadow Heroes thennext we have five cards and these aregeneric slash Talent you have betweenzero to five Talent cards so light orShadow not class cards remember zero tofive generics but they're going to totalup to five that's the next five slots inthis pack so you could have a three twosplit between generic and talent you

could have a four one split betweengeneric and talent you'd have a fivezero split between generic and talent uhit's it is completely random but morecommonly you see kind of like a bit of arough split of like three two four oneEtc so that is something to keep an eyeon uh the numbers of light versus Shadoware pretty even as well after that sothat's 11 cards then we go into ourequipment the one piece of equipmenttherethen you're gonna have your foil so thisis your your foil slot depending onwhether you're playing with firstedition or unlimitedso always gonna be your Rainbow four

slot there and then we have our rare soalways guaranteed one where in the packand then one rear or higher so total oftwo rears but one will always be rearand one could be real or higher soMajestic instanceum and that and then you've got youryour token to pack as well so it'sactually 16 cards but 15 playable cardsthere in the pack and if you're playingwith first edition packs then that canbe you know you've got a cold for a slotpotentially there as well that's whatthe pack distribution looks likesomething really important to rememberand I'll talk about tips on how you canutilize the pack distribution as we

later into the video uh anything else Iwant to talk about Shadow versus lightand kind of uh what that means when itcomes to drafting it's kind of theperception that the shadow hero is thehardest to draft than the light Heroesand I think that is kind of trueparticularly chain and Olivia requireddick management and understanding kindofyou know you're not just managing yourlife total and um sort of cards tend toturn you're also managing your deck as aresource a little bit so Shadow is alittle bit harder to play but I thinkonce you get the Reps in it it's not toobadum the Majestics and Rears in this setare really good there's a lot of bombs

actually at Majestic level and even rearlevels so it is important to sort oflook at those cards when you're in thepack because some of those cards arereally really good whereas in somestates like Uprising the rares are oftennot that great so it's a bit of a bit ofa difference there as well game and cardmanagement is really important in thisformat because of things like the t is apossibility for chain even Liviaum even prison because you don't have aweapon as well as just kind of what wetalked about before with you knowbanishing the shackles when you'replaying as chain banishing yourgraveyard and trying to keep your yourlife total up by triggering liver's hero

ability and even Bolton a little bityou're kind of managing the game alittle bit with um more so Tempoactually when you kind of let youropponent we'll swing back at you andwhen you try to use your whole handversus not so it's actually quite hardto use your full hand in this game ifyou're not using some cards on defense aBolton can kind of get away with thatmore than other Heroes let's talk heroesin Monarch draftwhat they do what you should be doing todraft them key cards you should belooking for and what archetypes youshould be trying to build or game plansyou should be going after now first upwe're going to start with the light side

and we're going to go prism prismprobably the most popular or you knowthe one that people gravitate towards abit more I think in Monarch draft thenmaybe perhaps the other three Heroes andyou know for good reason obviously it'sa to her that had a lot of success andclassic constructed uh you know equalmaybe with chain in terms of the mostsuccess obviously living religion now orprism and also just has this kind of Ithink play style with above rate Heraldsthat can really pay you off and maybe bea bit more easier to navigate than someof the the shadow counterparts to prism

so prisons power level really does comea lot and these above rate attacks inthe form of these Heralds and cards likeEnigma Chimera is a surreality forinstance these Phantasm attacks but alsohas a great defensive value and has thisability to soak up incidental damagewith things like special Shield some ofthe good equipment you have access toand you know your class cards uh for themost partdefending for three so with Iris youknow you can get a lot of value out ofthese shields you can have this kind ofcool gameplay with shields as well sothere's kind of two key archetypes I

think in prism now I think there's aNuance to this and maybe there's threeor four but the two key ones that I wantto talk about if you're getting intoMonarch draft for the first time is ideaof a Herald kind of beat down or HeraldFocus strategy and then this more valuedefensive orientated build those are thetwo kind of key ones that I think youshould be focused on if you're lookingto play Prism in Monarch Drive so let'stalk about the the sort of hero Beatdownnow this is all about drafting cardswith great bottom left numbers you knowthese Heralds of protection these

horseshoon Heroes these Heralds ofTriumph tenacity and basically beingable to do things like two card blockand then coming with an above rateattack on your opponents on your turnthat threatens an honored effect nowmajority of the honor hit effects aregoing to be put this into your soulwhich is still a really good on hitthat's going to allow you to createshields for late game and kind of chipyour opponent down once maybe you getthrough some Heralds or maybe if theyhave a popper are using your Shield orallowing you to use your 4 if I've gothands if you swing Tempo by being ableto attack with the shield get go againthen attack with the herald so gettingCards into soul is actually really

really key the other thing as well isalso the on-head effect that comes withthe card and this is where the pickingorder of of Herald starts to come inHerald prediction is Far and Away thatnumber one it's the most important it isthe you know it can provide value onface value it's a two for eight rightwith that Shield but it's so much morethan that because of what that Shieldcan represent you plus you get a cardand soul so who for nine is you knowlike a two card nine is almost what heroprediction it read is for the card is isreally really key I think next is is uhyour Herald of Triumph business reality

and your War churn watun because of theresource efficiency is really reallygood you know when you get these awkwardkind of all red hands you can still comein with a really strong threat inwarchune those are kind of I think thepicking order of some of the best onesbut all of the red Heralds are reallygood even the yellows and the blues aregood because you want these amount ofBlues in prison I'll talk about this atthe end but I like sort of having aroundlike 10 to 14 Blues in prison especiallythe more if you're going to be on thismore defensive value build that revolvesaround attacking the shields of Iris

that we're going to talk about but evenin a build that's more Herald Focus Istill want a lot of Blues and goodHeroes and they're threats if you drawdraw them they uh defend for three andthey can put Cards into your soul sobasically all the heroes areparticularly good outside of that ifyou're looking to kind of build thisthis uh the stick I think the othercards that are really important to youare things likeseek Enlightenment on spell and look forsome poppers for the mirror are reallyimportantnow on the value build side there's moresort of defensive you're really focused

around auras in particular so you dostill want to have some Heroes for suredon't get me wrong but you're focusedaround cards like oh to wrath parable ofhumility merciful even there's okay it'sthe worst of the three rare auras nowpicking up one of these in the draft toput into this kind of style deck isreally important one of the ways you canbeat Olivia it's a sticky weapon asbrynden Patrick likes to call it uh plusspectral Shield builds so you want cardsand then get cards into your soul sothings like red illuminate orum invigorating light like these cardsthat can put Cards into your soul plus

some Heroes Prismatic shield inparticular is a really good sort of wayto gain a lot of value you can play thatcount and turn zero immediately you'vegot three neutral Shields or late gameyou know once you can kind of SwingTempo it's really hard for your opponentto kill them if you're able to blockwith two cards that come in with twoShields you can really chip them downthat way so that's uh that's quiteimportantwith this value build this is where Ilike the more sort of higher blue countlike I say I do want some number ofHeroes particularly blue Heralds becauseI want a higher blue count some keylight cards I think that are importantto keep in mind for either of these twostrategies they're going to keep you

open you know maybe you don't want toimmediately commit to prison I wouldn'trecommend immediately forcing a hero inthis set I think you can really punishedfor it because of what I talked aboutearlier with that kind of two two splityou end up in three prism it's not theworst but if you end up in four becauseyou forced it they can just be awfulespecially because there's going to beone you know there's going to be twoHeroes that have one represented of eachof them probably so uh they're gonnahave really powerful decks some keycards I think can keep you open and thenput you into either prism or or Boltonin particular cards like Haloum of Illumination the equipment the

headpiece really strong in prison butalso again Bolton figurating light redpop-up but also how they can get youthings into Seoul get itself into Soulilluminate red there are four peopleknow how good snatches illuminate iskind of similar in this format seekEnlightenment red so uh then there'ssome tech cards that I think areimportant to keep in mind when you'redrafting prism is in more sideboardcards but they are important one isblinding beam really good into Livia youhave a lot of poppers in the deck whichif you're in the herald straight youneed some number of Landing beams tomake sure you can push through damagepush through your on-hit effects when itcomes to that Livia match up the next is

impenetrable belief really good againstchain in particular uh this card butalso pretty reasonable against Oliviabecause you get this block 4 which is abig number in the bottom right handcorner pretty hard to get in this formatthe last is glsen this is a card that Ithink is particularly good in the valuebuild but can be a bit of a liabilityinto some of the matchups like chainwhere you need to be blocking a bit morebecause of the zero defense but in thekind of more grindy matchups the prisonmirror even against Olivia this card canbe an absolute MVP usually in red now

next up for all you Warrior stands outthere let's talk about Bolton the tallTimmy's favorite Hero at least I thinkit's his favorite hero Alton isparticularly interesting I think inMonarch draft because I actually thinkyou know all the heroes are prettyunique Bolton has this kind ofinteresting play style because it canactually utilize 5 and 4K hands the bestI think of any of the heroes in the setalongside maybe chained but I thinkBolton's a bit more straightforward todo it however Bolton has some really keycards I think you need in the deck nowrather than being kind of differentarchetypes of Bolton I think you can

either be a bit more like weapon focusedor you can be a bit more attack actionfocused and some of the cards willdiffer that you want depending onwhether you're weapon focused or whetheryou are attack action focused butwhether you're weapon or attack actionfocused basically what you want is agood number of kind of payoff cards andhealth cards are things that peopleOverlook a lot I think when it comes toBolton they really focus on these chargecards particularly these red chargecards and honestly these red chargecards are fine but they're not high youknow really really high picks and youdon't want an insane amount of them inyour deck you don't want half your deck

to be red charge cards becauseultimately the card disadvantage youknow people look at ball to Carriagegreat card it's a zero for three youknow it can get the buff when you chargewith your hero ability if they blockwith an attack action and it on it drawsa card great they cost you two cardsjust compare that to a card like snatchyes it's a great card it's a zero fourwith on her draw card but it costs youone card not two cards and yes bolt ofcards does give you that all importantcard into your soul don't need that manycards in your soul you just want enoughto have enough good big payoff turns and

leverage your payoff cards like Valiantthrust this is a particularly importantcard I think or at least it's a reallygood power card you have to have it tohave a successful Bolton deck but it isa really good path card and these aresome of the cards that you are lookingfor ultimately to make sure that youhave a well-rounded and good Bolton deckand not just jam it full of specificallycharged cards soin that regard when it comes to maybethe more attack action focused build oreven to be honest the weapon buildbecause you do still want charge cardsI'm looking for a couple of goodrecharge cards alt of Courage Expresslightning engulfing light uh but then

you know actually having something likeblue or even yellow just so you cancharge a card when you need to on an offturn there's actually still perfectlyreasonable and means that you can youknow draft other cards that have payoffhigher and then get some of these cardslater on in the draft so that's likeValiant thrust via the Vanguard if yousee this card it is a absolute bomb inthe set and of course it's a pack onepick one and if you get that card inyour Bolton deck you're well on your wayto having a very strong Bolton deck samewith gallantry gold and gallantry goldif I don't have a Galaxy gold on myBolton deck I'm pretty upset to behonest I think it's a card that

leverages you to have some really bigturns but also it can turn one singleblue to seven damage with a card fromSoul uh because you pitch you activateGantry gold you come with the firstweapon for three give it a go againsticking weapon for four that's you knowa one card seven is is what you want tobe doing when you're kind of on the backfoot maybe take some tempos so Boltoncan always throw it into swing Tempowhich is great with Gantry gold alsoalso blocks are one but without it Ithink your dick is often quite a bitworse so Gantry gold I have really highin my pick order and of course via the

Vanguard because that card is that'sridiculous but yeah other payoff cardswe've already talked about Valiantthrust red yellow is even fine uhBattlefield Blitz is a pretty reasonablecard some of the cards for the moreweapon based version so if you're goingfor the weapon based version you wantpumps um to be able to put onto yourweapons so second swing is really goodfor that pumps are generally really goodthough so warmongers recital stickEnlightenment especially in red for bothof those are really important cardsthey're going to enable you to make sureyou can put a pump on your attack as atool to me again referencing the tool tome because we're talking about Bolton helikes to call them front pumps but uh

these mean that you know if you play youcome with your bolted Carriage often ifyou're playing like a four or five cuthand you come in with a charge cardopponent can just say okay well noblocks and then your turn's over becausethere's no plus attack on it for you toactivate Bolton's here ability but ifyou've got a pump sick Enlightenment oraum a warmonger's recital or even aminimism mineral wasn't a little alsoreally great in Bolton then it enablesyou to make sure you can activate thehearability and continue with yourmassive chain the other card I haven'ttalked about yet but is up there it'sprobably like via the Vanguard and then

take flight I think take flight red inparticular is very very strong but allthe colors of take flight they enableyou to just have more efficient turnsbecause with all these other chargecards you have to then banish the cardfrom Soul to get go again whereas totake flight you get the card and soul aspart of the cost it was in some damageand then you get to come with yourweapons afterwards so a lot of sort ofwhat take flight allows you to do isplay like really good three card handsthey can present sort of minimum fivesix seven damageum and use it even a soul card toof going into any weapons if your

opponent blocks it and gives that pumpand the zero for these zero sort of redones that we talked about before thezero cost charge cards aren't as aptdoing that so I think yeah make sure ifyou see take flights those are reallyhigh priority especially redthose invented Vanguard are much youknow very much the top sort of picksthat you're looking for when it comes todrafting Bolton all right next up we'vegot to head to the shadow side of theequation when it comes to Monarch andtalk about chain and Olivia let's startoff with chain chain of course livinglegend and classic constructed but you

know when it comes to draft it looks alittle bit different still very powerfulit's still all about at Banner Stoneabout those Soul shackles about thosesort of you know explosive combat chainsand Arcane damage now Monarch is quiteinteresting the fact that we have noArcane barrier so Arcane damage is areally good version of what you mightcall evasion or reach you know this wayto deal damage that's really hard tostop that can get you over the top yourcross the line when it comes to kind offinishing or closing out a game Arcanedamage can be super potent so I candamage for chain really powerful part of

what Chang can do is kind of twoparticular ways this is a common themewith the heroes in the set at least forthis video I'm kind of focusing on twoof the kind of higher level divergencesand strategy and the ways you can draftthese decks when it comes to uh thiskind of video chain you you can go downto more Arcane Focus route or I thinkyou can go down this more kind ofaggressive just pure aggro vanish intogas kind of Routeum that that one relies on a lot moresort of things like chain extenders goagainst cards and generics and the alphagenerics good attacks and the other one

this Arcane that's all about you knowwhat it is drafting cards that sayArcane damage on themum good defensive cards you can actuallykind of go a little bit longer a littlebit grindier with that version asopposed to just kind of likeHittle to the middle just pure aggrofrom the other chain side soone of the key things no matter whichversion you're playing of chain it isall about managing your deck that thosecards in your deck whether it be 30 orto 36 cards which I think you often wantto play more than 30 cards depending onthe build on the match up urine but ifyou think your opponent's gonna try toyou you often wanting to play more than

30 especially if you have more than 30good cards I wouldn't recommend juststretching and playing cards that arebad which if they're just going to besort of dead cards when you draw themthey block twos that do nothing forinstanceum but you know there's opportunities toplay more cards now it is about deckmanagement because you're going to beevery time you create a soul shackle toget go again extend that chain if youaren't making use of that Soul shackleto push some damage or threaten you knowtake cards every opponent's hand so theycan't come back uh you with their gameplan and present damage it's kind of awaste it's just it's not doing what you

want to do because it's going to createanother card that goes into banish thatif you don't have a really really highblood date count it's just going to becards lost from your deck there's goingto be damage lost from your dick thinkabout your your 30 to 36 hours you'representing as having a terminal velocityor a max amount of damage that you canpresent out of those cards and everynon-blooded card that you banish awayyou're losing that especially if youbanish Away really powerful red cards soyou want to make sure that any SoulCheckers you make are super impactful soone of the keys to Drafting and playingchain is understanding what your turn toturn is going to look like from yourcombat chains and that's why it's really

quite easy often to just draft the bestcards that say blood did on them so redblood dick cards like found in demigodRift Vine seeds of Agony how out fromBeyond is one of the best cards you candraft for shadow I think it's maybe thebest Shadow Card in the set you canfocus on these cards and that means thatyou know when you banish them they'rejust great hits that you can play withthe reality you know a chain extendersgo again and then just cards that arejust good generic cards so and theseThese are cards that say go again onthem when it comes to change so brandishred the little red uh you know

warmongers recite all these pumps theseare the kind of cards that can be reallyreally beneficialwhen it comes to that Arcane damage sideagain you know those cards that sayArcane damage on them obviously reallyimportant something that ripped throughreality which also gets going in offarcades you can go wide non-attackactions that have our Cannons of seedsof course but things like Vexy mouththat is a really really high prioritypick because no matter what chain deckyou're building but even like the blueand yellow versions really really goodfor uh your Arcane damage uh wrist ofTorment again great card when it comes

to Arcane damage kind of build so that'skind of what you're looking to do whenit comes to chain you want a high blooddick count uh you want just a reallygood number of non-attack actions aswell pumps are great because you knowyou can't have all your cards having goagain so it allows you to utilize yourhand especially in this attack versionthere's kind of like more explosiveversion you're basically never defendingso you want to be able to use your fivecut hands which is maximum damage andthey kind of kind of this kind ofexponential value on some cards andpumps really help with that because youknow can't have all go again cards uhbloody I like to have around like 50 of

my dick is blood debt kind of a minimumand I want those cards to be reallyimpactful you know some of these likeyellow blooded cards they can be reallylow impact even some of the blue ones umblue pissing Shadow device for instancethat was a really good blue uh alwaysthings like blue seeds for instancewhereas blue Rift binders are much lessexciting card to be banishing so I wanta lot of my my blood dick cards to bered then some good Blues is helpfulsleeping Shadows is a great blue updatecard for instanceuh let's talk about I guess you know

some of the the key cards for aggro um Imean again just brandish belittle Bountydemigod riftbindum Smallmouth recital minimism butlittle minimism is a really high sort ofpriority for that more explosive buildgoing back to that Arcane damage buildrifted torments seeds of Agony fixingMouse crackles ripped through realitiesthese cards in particular are reallypowerful and the sort of cards you wantto make sure you can utilize that I candamage but get the most out of yourreturn on investment on the Arcanedamage when it comes to equipment youwant a chess piece if you can get iteighth iron weave it's really really

strong no matter the builds but evenblood drop arcade just resources andcheating on resources really helps youin theseum these chain builds because of thefact that you get to play extra cardswith banish and then other than that Ithink the sort of other key card is liketime Skippers because I actually like areasonably High number of Blues in mychain deck I like somewhere between like7 to 11 blues and I like to be on thatHigher Side especially if I have carslike time Skippers or I have ways toutilize I believe returnI want to have a higher a higher blue

account that's what chain looks like inthis format I think it is you know itcan be a little bit hard to navigate Idon't think it's the hardest to draftespecially if you focus on one of thosetwo things and just focus on some ofthose cool things I just talked aboutlike dick Cars and auto tech actionscards that say go again and kind of justignore the filler as much as possiblelast but certainly not least when itcomes to the heroes of Monarch draft itis levia Shadow brute hero that isgetting a lot of attention right nowwith Dusk Till Dawn but we're talkingMonarch here and probably one of myfavorite Heroes to draft in this formatI simplify myself in levia quite a lot a

little bit biased but uh I think it'sjust because it's super fun to playquite hard to draft I think it's quitehard to play it might be the hardesthero to draft and play in Monarch draftbut I think once you kind of get thefundamentals down and kind of nail themit's super rewarding and I think it'smaybe the most underdrafted actuallyreminds me a little bit of droppingdromai in Uprising people kind ofsometimes I want to stay away from itbecause I think it can be a bit harderto play you can kind of get punished bygood sort of aggressive decks like chainor Bolton kind of punish you and they'renot wrong but I think overall levia can

just be a ton of fun to play sosome key things about levia I want to gothrough first bloody is scary and itshould be with levia you really need tofocus on blood debt and what the blooddebt cards that you're banishing aregoing to do to you to trigger thatability for like five six turns in a rowis really really difficult so often thekind of traditional game plan you wantto follow with levia is likein thirds it goes in thirds the firstthird of the game is about setting upand just presenting good trade handsthis means you know locking with two

cards coming in with a threat filling upyour graveyard with some six attacks andthen finding like a good power card toArsenal ready for the mid game thiscould be something like a dread screamerfor instance or an unworldly Bellowsum or even like a writing Beast Hulk redcards that kind of have quite a high orendless more have quite a high ceilingand then at some point you can eattowards that mid game and you're goingto find a point where either you havejust like a really good hand that can gowide or utilize your your cards in yourhand really well or your opponent's kindof going to have an off turn and thenyou're going to press the button and by

press the button what I mean is you'regoing to start the count you're going tostart to banish Cards into your ass intoyour into your banished Zone which thenis going to start this like loomingthreat of blood dick killing you so atthat point you need to be in a reallygood position either your deck is justfull of gas because you've pitched stuffearly or set stuff up early and you'vegot a good stockpile in your graveyardof cards or six attack or cards you canplay from banish like hell from Beyondgo see visit Etcum and also maybe ideally your opponentis on low life I like to try in thatfirst little game get my opponent below

that 15 life but if your dick ispowerful enough once you kind of Hit thego button and you just start banishingand presenting all these threats you canoften just kill your opponent if yourdick's really powerful especiallybetween a number of grid screamers youhave options from the bowels of howlwith the Dominate effect writing Beasttalk with dominate effectum there's you know there's what youwant similar to we talked about Arcanedamage and chain when it comes to leviais you want reach you want this evasionand that comes in the form of dominatefor levia that's what you really need tohave a couple of cards for sort ofin-game finishes so you know thoseconvulsions the writing Beast hulks the

um the consuming these are the kind ofcards that can can really help youso I think one of the key things when itcomes to drafting levia is focus on goodefficient attacks is kind of your numberone priority so yeah you know there'sthe blingy cards like Dread screamer andin the small yes those cards are veryvery good you should take those cardsbut next under there is just good damagecards good don't get too caught up ontoo many sort of of these um thesegraveling growls andum hungry Slaughter beasts these cardsare good to have in some number but whatyou really want is cards like Edward

rumbler red David rumbler is such a highpick for me because it's a two cardeight that can in the late game if Ineed it to banish a card to stilltrigger my Libya my ability while stillpresenting good damage and in the earlygame it just helps me trade like I saidblock with two cards that defend formaybe total of five having two threeboxes kind of hard this format been forfive and then coming for eight that'sstill net 13 and I'm still positive likekind of average of 12 damage somatch the big tray is another oneparticularly red but yellow is also goodI'll just trade damage and then you know

get Block two cards smash the Victoryand that's a good way to play the firstcouple turns of the gameafter that I'm kind of making sure thatI don't have too many no blocks in mydeck you know there is a lot of noblocks and brew and this defensive valueof Monarch overall can be quite low so Idefinitely want to make sure that any noblocks or cards with zero defense in mydeck that I have they're reallyimpactful on offense so if they're notimpactful on offense and they don'tdefend I don't want them in my deckum you know so some of these instants uhsort of like a blue smash the big tree Idon't want that in my deck but a yellowsmash a big tree red smash a big tree

red David rumbler for instance pulpingred these are cards I do want to my deckthat's where I want to utilize my NoteBlocks uh some of the ways you can helpoffset that though is having cards likeironhides so having a couple iron hidealong with probably one of the mostimportant cards you want to make sureyou draft and fire which is hose of theShadow Beast um you want to make sureyou definitely have hooves but thenbeyond that the next kind of equipmentI'm looking for is a couple of pieces ofiron height so I can turn awkwardly whenI have you know my no block hands I canturn those into things that can defendso that I'm not just completely dead or

having dead cards in my hand effectivelywe talked about kind of these the thethirds game plan the first third beingthe setup the middle third being thekind of turning point where you pressthe button and then the final third iswhere you present like this evasion orlethal damage will dominate or just likeso much power that you kind of overwhelmor you die to your blood debt try andavoid that one if you can not good uhthat's kind of what that looks like sosecond cycle can actually be reallyimportant in lavaya our favorite thingon Arsenal past talking about secondcycle but it's actually super relevantin the wire in this format because in

Pitch threats early grade damage in theearly game you can block quite a lotactually with the Vira in the early gameand then once you're kind of set upready to press that button like I saidnow you get through to your second cycleand you have a lot of threatsum you want to have at least like 50 inyour deck is like six attacks I thinkwell at least like if a 30 card deck youwant at least like 12 to 13 I thinkthat's really minimum number of sixattacks because one those are going tobe the cards that you then attack withand then banish and so you don't want tobe woofing on your banishes you knowmissing on six attacks when you playcards like drid screamerum they also just good damage and the

third thing is they're also poppers forfor prison which is also actuallyrelevant especially the ones thatobviously can block so make sure you'vegot those cards in your deck let's talkabout some other key cards that you wantto make sure that you uh you're draftingso red skimmer redum chain extenders like brandish seekHorizon is a really great card and redthat I like and and fire and unworldlyBellows one of my favorite things to dowith a card like brandish or evenum seek Horizon is like search my bluecome in with my brandish and then withmy weapon you know I'm threatening

potentially up to 9 damage with justthose uh those two cards that's massiveit's a huge two card hand they even seekHorizon on like a three cut hand it'slike okay play my secret Horizon put mysix attack on top that I want to banishoh sorry discard with my MedEx and thenpitch my my third card come in with mymid X so four damage plus five damagenine damage or three cards are stillpretty good for trading in the earlygame and plus six Horizon is just aboutit's a zero for four so quite high on mypriority list we talked about evasionthese these dominate cards abortions

from the Bellows of how riding Beasttalkum you want some number of those goodjust damage cards like smashed VictoryRed Dead rumbler even the generics likeStony wootenhog and stuff good in thatspot endless more is a complete and adda bomb if you see that card and you'rein the wire make sure you take it whocard nine is amazing who's the shadowBeast you want that the number ofIronhide and then cards to play frombanish you can actually Loop these cardsso something like a hell from Beyond youcan just continually Loop this card it'slike lay male from Beyond from my handand then banish it with my

um my uh myattack my Boneyard for instance nextturn Play It Again do the same thingagain with the hungering slaughter bestfriends keep recurring uh that that uhhow from be honest is Great Value do thesame with go see visit or void wraithespecially on turns where you come inwith something like a drip screamer uhjust criminal in all colors is reallygood with noting and hungry slaughteredbased gravling growl having some numberof these cards is good they're relevantbut I think they're just lower priorityso that is the Via for me that is the

last hero we talk about in the Sonicdraft now we're going to finish up withsome tips and tricks when it comes todrafting oh no so the last thing I wantto leave you with in this crash courseintro to Monarch drafting is just somekey tips and tricks to make sure you getthe most out of your drafts and kind ofgive you somekey takeaways and things that you canwalk into front of mine when it comes tohow to get you know that 3-0 or that twoone in your pod for whatever it might beso first of all is how to make the mostof staying open and what staying openlooks like in Monarch draft now asopposed to some formats like Uprising orOutsiders where I think you could getrewarded for forcing sometimes but

committing reasonably early because of14 card versus in-carb packs and threehero versus four Heroes I think you getmore rewarded for staying open on likeon the flip side so how do you actuallystay up in a monarch well you have yourgenerics obviously they can keep youreally open and then you have yourtalent cards which keep you open to twoHeroes still and then of course then youcan move into your your class specificads and commit to a hero from there sogenerics for the most part keep you openso generic's like surging militiawarmongers recital these cards keep youreally open there's some generics that

are more specific to Heroes I thinkbrandish is an example their cards arereally good but in prism it's much lessimpactful than it is in the wire orchain or even Bolton for example so somegenerics can be a bit more class orspecific and that's worth noting andthen of course Talent cards you knowthey keep you open to a light card toprism or ultim for instanceDon't Be Afraid though to take classcards powerful class cards because evenif you don't play themthey're just one card so let's sayyou're six picks in you've taken three

generics and two like cards and then ayou know a prison card is in their poolas well maybe you took a third pick likeRed's feral protection they kind ofsuper powerful even if you don't end upin prism it's a it's a reasonable likehard to hit John because if you do endup in prison that card's gonna be one ofthe best cards in your deck now if itturns out that you know Bolton ends upbeing open for you and you you move intoa Bolton draft seat that's fine you knowyou wasted only one pack you still getthese other two like cards that aregonna go into your deck and that's whythey're kind of keeping open and using

the light and the generic cards can bereally beneficial now you don't want tostay open too long and you don't want tojust pass up good cards if good classcards are coming your way you know if Isee something like a fourth pick orthird pick red hero protection or youknow they can pick via the Vanguard forinstance like I'm taking these cards youknow a fourth pick red dread screamerwhatever it might be like I'm gonna pickup these cards because I mean that is asignal that that is open you know myopponent is past that they know they'vepassed that card and now I'm going tostart to take those cards now I mightyou know they might end up being inbrute and maybe I take a fourth book red

Drew screamer they took a really goodShadow card and then fifth pick they'relike oh here's a really good root cardit's the best card in the pack I'm gonnamove into brute that's fine I've onlyyou know used one peck because I'veprioritized my shadow cards and my cardsimportant to remember that and this kindof idea of staying open and what hedginglooks like it's something I could talkabout for ages but that's kind of thetop level when it comes to Monarchthis took about a few sort of othersmall things uh reading signals wetalked about the pack distribution atthe start of the draft and one of theways you can actually read signals sowhat is your opponent taking is in those

first two groups of slots which isbasically the uh the hero slots so wetalked about you get three light herocards and three Shadow hero cards notTalent rememberand this can always be a two one splitso pack one pick one you take I don'tknow whatever it doesn't matter but youropponent passes your pack you're lookingat the 14 cards you sort them and youlook at those those front six cardsthere's only five cards and it's a lightcard a light hero card missing andthere's two prism cards in the pack wellyou know they've taken a bulletin card

there's no way they could have takenanything else a Bolton a light Warrioror a warrior card was in that slot andnow been taken so no impact distributioncan give you some they give you a leagueup pretty early in terms of readingsignals and understanding the people toyour right and pack one are doing it soit's actually really really relevantwant to take actions for Bolton graphsand non-tech actions for Bolton so thatyou can block with them and not triggertheir Bolton here ability it's not thebeal and Endo but when you get theopportunity to have some of these theyare really really good like some thingssometimes I'm like okay looking at myCyborg and my Olivia and my levia deck

and I have this like yellow convulsionsthe bells out the card's fine I don'treally want the yellow I want like thered or the blue but I have this yellowone that's kind of floating around aslike an additional card I might justplay it because it blocks foreffectively four against Bolton in a lotof situationsyou can often fatigue chain it's reallyimportant to understand what your gameplan is units chain are you trying totrade cards with them and kill them viadamage or are you going to try andfatigue them often the taking chain islike a default plan because I have a lotof damage like they have a lot of powerlike they can out value you in thedamage uh sort of portion of the game if

you try and trade damage them but youmight just be able to run them out ofcards and run damageyou know Soul shackles and banishingreally important cards I don't thinkit's super powerful that might be a bitharder uh hold a card in Soul as late aspossible when you're playing as prismyou don't want to just be like banishingyour cards from Soul as you go throughthe game and not giving yourself solvefor the end of the game because laterand later you go into the game theharder it is for your opponent to killyour Shields because they can't justsacrifice life to come back kill yourShields because once you get down to alow life total now they have to start

like blocking with cards on your attacksand then coming in with less damage sothat you can basically block with cardsand keep your Shields alive so you wantto make sure you have like minimum acard in your soul for like the in-gameparticularly in the prison mirrors butalmost any game you're playing is prismso that you can at the right time turnthat into a special shield and startcoming in with itlast thing is uh once you blink is Liviayou you've pushed the button and you'reOff to the Races so you've got to bereally careful if you're playing aslevia when you actually decide to startbanishing and you kind of hit that gobutton and that's why people will often

use that kind of game of thirds that Italked about really sit up in that firstthird start to pitch stack some reallystrong cards so that once you hit thebutton and you start going with the wireonce you get through into that last partof the game the in-game you hit yourpitch attack you know you've got all gasand you know what's coming a bunch ofsixes and Dread screamers and thingslike that so that's kind of my last tipfor Monarch draft there you have it mycrash course in Monarch draft Monarchdraft 101 almost for all of you headingto your duster Dawn War of the Monarchevents this weekend you're getting readyfor Nationals Skirmish season coming up

of course as well with some Monarchdraft I hope this has been helpful youknow if you do like the videos we putout here at Arsenal pass make sure todrop us up to us drop a like on thevideo and even drop a comment let meknow you know what was helpful in thesevideos maybe what you'd like to see infuture giraffe videos if you'd like tosee me dive more into these archetypeswould you like to see draft walkthroughsI've done some of these for Outsiders Ihave even done some for patreon as wellso let me know I will be putting up likea rough kind of draft pick order listfrom my early testing up on patreon ifyou're interested in that then Arsenal

passum patreon.com forward slash Arsenalpass if you want to find that I justgive you a bit of a rough idea if you'reheading into some drafts soon and kindof how I'm seeing the format this formatis really deep there's a lot of coolthings you can do I think you can playyou know the replayability of the drawformat and Monarch is maybe at its bestwhich has really surprised me because Iwasn't a fan of Monarch when it firstcame out but it's um it's been a nicesort of change to go back to four Heroesafter all these superhero sets so yeahlet me know in the comments what youthink of this format how you're findingit how your first few drafts have gonehave you had any completely busted decks

or done anything crazy in this formatour level in the Synergy is high you canabsolutely definitely do some crazythings so yeah otherwise go and checkout some of our other limited contentthat we've got on Arsenal past we'vedone stuff for other draft formats we'vealso got limited time only which is ourour limited Focus podcast which we justcovered a season on Outsiders uh therewon't be a season for Monarch draftspecifically but next time we get a newset we'll be revisiting limits of timeonly and breaking down you knowfundamentals getting great limitedplayers on the Pod to talk about all the

ways that you can sell in advance yourgame when it comes to booster draft orseal deck if that's you know a relevantformat when we get to the next format sountil next time I want to say a massivethank you to everyone out there and uhHayden signing off[Music]thank you