As always, your mtg content is the best out there. All substance, no compromise. I think your apology when you timed out shows your work ethic the best - you are drafting for the viewers and you say you are sorry when you obviously punted, because you owe the viewers your full concentration. This behaviour is amazing and we can all thank you for that. Having said that, I want to ask you something - I know most people play arena (me aswell) and want to see your input regarding viable decks when drafting against bots, but please at least make a disclaimer, that this is not the *real* drafting experience.
This is the best commentary draft(er) ever. Information and tips on this set are gold, really digging it and im craving for more WAR draft from BenS!!!
Can't thank you enough for your content! I went through a limited slump recently and I watch one vid of yours and I'm back on fire. Very satisfying to fix issues and I appreciate your help with it.
1:38:00 you simply -2 angrath rather than casting proliferate which is doing essentially the same if not lesser thing at that board state, you would at least gotten value out of angrath since you have priority. And then they are left with 0 good attacks since your zombie would be a 7/7
I love krenko. It's just such a cool card and it plays awesome in a sacrifice deck. I'm a big fan of cards that just get out of hand fast. I think krenko is maybe even a little better than legion warboss.
Absolutely love these arena drafts from Ben, getting to hear him disect an entire pack is absurdly informative. Keep em coming (Although I do prefer the mtgo drafts despite less info)
@@z.s.7992 I understand that they are drafting against bots, but do the bots get replaced by real players during the actual gameplay? Or is it bots all the way thru?
@@BASEDinMaine yes the games are against other players that have also drafted against bots. It makes it so you can take as long as you want selecting your cards and building your deck. You play against people with a similar record for that draft so if you have one win one loss you will be playing against a player with one win one loss.
@@BASEDinMaine I think that this is one of the best things to happen to magic because it allows people to stream it. I only play paper because that's how my brain works but I surely love watching constructed and limited on arena. It also gives good players an easy way to add commentary to their picks in draft which definitely helps me with my card selection.
The analysis in this and overall explanations were extremely good. Very impressed, and definitely looking for more. Was interesting to hear a difference of opinions on some cards between this and LRcast thoughts
Thank you Ben! I can quit Magic for 7 months, come back without knowing any card of the last 2 sets; watch some of your draft video's and nail it on my first (looks like it's called "traditional" now) War of the Spark draft going 5-1. You guys are all pretty awesome over at ChannelFireball but for some reason I favor your explanation of picks and game play decisions. Keep doing what you do!
At 1:12:08 wouldn't it be better to wait for opponent to replay kefnet, then use saheli to copy Rager, sac Rager copy to heartfire dealing 5 to kefnet?
3:47 - 6:43 is the reason I watch Ben S videos, well that and him talking about his plays in the same level of detail, and just the general high level of content and... Edit: At 1:12:48 Ben uses heartfire, if he held it had tyrned a servo into a copy of rager and then heartfired sacking the token, is that 5 damage to kill Kefnet, or does the copy not work the way I'm assuming?
Ashiok has been an all-star pretty much every time I have taken them. Id say I win straight off the back of them 50% of the time, and the other 50% of the time it gets good value from removing graveyard preventing Aid the Fallen type shenanigans, or prompting the opponent to devote almost 100% of their effort into dealing with it, buying a significant amount of time to stabilize.
Pack 3, Pick 7. Why did you pick Relentless Advance over Lazotep Plating? It seems like a potential 2-for-1 -- blank a removal spell and generate an army token and can just create a creature token in a pinch.
Personally I would pick the relentless advance because it is more proactive. It's also a sorcery for finale of promise. I do like lazotep plating in a more controlling deck.
@@z.s.7992 I agree with increasing the sorcery count, though I haven't gone back to count and see if the extra sorcery was needed. It just seemed to me that he wasn't ever particularly excited about Relentless Advance and Lazotep Plating offered more utility in exchange for a smaller body. Also, I think any deck with creatures would value Lazotep Plating. High creature density means that there will be more opportunities to protect with LP, low creature density means that its more important to protect whatever you have (though I could see an argument for not drafting it because lower creature count means you might not have something to protect when you draw it).
you miss kiora has 7 loyalty and is a good ramp spell . its almost never killed early and in green decks it often doubles ramp. and its also a 2 mana walker.
59:00 you definitely should have bounced the Kefnet. There's infinitely more ways to come back with doubled spells than with proliferating. Or put differently, proliferate can never remove an attacker while a copied spell could.
thanks for the great video. not sure what the round 3 opponent was doing, dicking around instead of trying to get his kefnet back into play and attacking asap. wasted so much time which gave you the chance to come back.
Question, if someone can explain me plz, why did he pay 5 for finale in the first match, when Ral's Outburst cost 4, thank you very much person who will respond me. BenS, he is the best drafter I have seen
11:00 Missed No Escape?! Don't like to sit on mana or what? It's insane in this set. 24:20 Missed Lazotep Plating, again not wanting to counter opponents? Not sure why this wasn't discussed...
What is happening with the world where you put up a 5-0 draft with arguably the best limited player around, and majority of comments are pathetic criticism from people who have probably never accomplished anything. Great video as always.
Calling sorceries and instants “spells” is confusing, especially for those who have both HS and MTG experience. Unfortunately, the text printed on MTG cards calls “spells” everything but lands.
How many rares do you get passed wtf? I played more then 20 drafts war of the spark so far and i can count the number of rares i get passed on one hand.
why don't you prioritize the 5c land if there is nothing else in the pack? I would have thought it would be much better than apick you will not play, because maybe you want to splash.
He took Skulker, Augur and Blindblast over it, from what I saw. 2 of those made his main deck and the other could well have if he needed more high-end stuff. The land just isn't very good either, it slows you down too much when it's important to be playing to the board early.
34:20 not sure why you're attacking planeswalkers at all here. Opp is on Single Combat or bust at this point, and him making 1/1s does nothing against your horde of goblins.
18:21 to 19:44, almost a minute and a half just to pick the obvious Saheeli. I like Ben Stark's content but hoo wee thank goodness this is fast forward-and-skippable.
turn three Krenko seems sooo unfun. it's like, "do you have removal or a good blocker? no? welp, i guess i win". isn't that a sign of a card that was very poorly designed for limited? it feels like this set has more of these unfun cards that require very little strategy or thought other than slotting the card in your deck -- no real changes to your deck do you need to make in order to use that card.
Pretty sure NCISfresk123 understands what Been said. Saying Dovin isn't good in limited Is a pretty hot take - most people I hear are high on it in slow decks.
blue red spells is only good with a lot of help from the draft bots. this dude is playing 10 uncommons/rares/mythics, which im pretty sure most archetypes can win very easily with
It's a good version of the deck for sure, but the UR spells archetype is great and can do a lot with just commons. Spellgorger Weird, Burning Prophet, Aven Eternal, Thunder Drake, Callous Dismissal, Contentious Plan, etc. can easily win you games on their own.
I'm here to listen to Ben's thought process since he's one of the finest there is when it comes to drafting so I mean, I really wouldn't have it any other way
@@NotExactlyBacon Yeah, BenS's content is great because you can easily just have it be a podcast-type dealie going on in the background. His pick and board descriptions are so in-depth that I never have trouble knowing the game state.
@@craigferge4702 mtgo drafts are for who wants to have REAL drafts drafting with REAL people and not with bad Arena bots... Watching videos of Pro Player drafting on mtgo is instructive and teach you something about the format, watching Arena draft is totally useless
You misunderstand, or at least disregard, Ben's "product". Drafting on Arena lets him talk much more thoroughly about the cards in packs. For any other drafter's video though, I agree with you, please draft with humans.
Can we get an "Arena" warning in the titles or thumbnails of these vids? I'm not actually interested in watching you draft against 7 computers no matter how good your individual-card analysis is because Arena will never be able to perfectly encapsulate the concept of signals as actual humans use them. For constructed it's whatever (I personally don't like the Arena UI but that's totally my own problem) but for drafts I am just going to auto-dislike any arena draft vid that I'm not warned is an arena vid so that the TH-cam algorithm will maybe stop suggesting them to me.
Listening to bens thought process is the best magic analysis
Opponent: *casts Kefnet*
Ben: *Silence*
Or why Krenko is better than a God.
As always, your mtg content is the best out there. All substance, no compromise. I think your apology when you timed out shows your work ethic the best - you are drafting for the viewers and you say you are sorry when you obviously punted, because you owe the viewers your full concentration. This behaviour is amazing and we can all thank you for that. Having said that, I want to ask you something - I know most people play arena (me aswell) and want to see your input regarding viable decks when drafting against bots, but please at least make a disclaimer, that this is not the *real* drafting experience.
This is the best commentary draft(er) ever. Information and tips on this set are gold, really digging it and im craving for more WAR draft from BenS!!!
Wow. Round 3 game 2 was one of the most insane games I've ever seen
“Kiora can draw you cards if you play creatures powered 4 or greater, but that requires living” -Ben S
Can't thank you enough for your content! I went through a limited slump recently and I watch one vid of yours and I'm back on fire. Very satisfying to fix issues and I appreciate your help with it.
(unimportant) missplay at 1:30:58. playing heartfire with the goblins from the new krenko trigger does 1 more dmg :)
Does the enemy not have priority to select blockers before cast it?
@@rawrgaming91 both players get priority after the krenko trigger resolves. so you can still remove the reaper before blockers.
1:38:00 you simply -2 angrath rather than casting proliferate which is doing essentially the same if not lesser thing at that board state, you would at least gotten value out of angrath since you have priority. And then they are left with 0 good attacks since your zombie would be a 7/7
Spoiler:
I think he dropped one game the whole run. Ben S is incredible.
I love krenko. It's just such a cool card and it plays awesome in a sacrifice deck. I'm a big fan of cards that just get out of hand fast. I think krenko is maybe even a little better than legion warboss.
Thank god it's Ben :D I love your drafting my dude!
Its so wild going back and watching everyone undervalue ashiok a year ago.
Absolutely love these arena drafts from Ben, getting to hear him disect an entire pack is absurdly informative. Keep em coming (Although I do prefer the mtgo drafts despite less info)
Yeah. I like the fact you are drafting against people on online.
@@z.s.7992 I understand that they are drafting against bots, but do the bots get replaced by real players during the actual gameplay? Or is it bots all the way thru?
@@BASEDinMaine yes the games are against other players that have also drafted against bots. It makes it so you can take as long as you want selecting your cards and building your deck. You play against people with a similar record for that draft so if you have one win one loss you will be playing against a player with one win one loss.
@@z.s.7992 thanks for the reply. Thats fair logic on the time-waiting part given the goal of the program is wider accessibility.
@@BASEDinMaine I think that this is one of the best things to happen to magic because it allows people to stream it. I only play paper because that's how my brain works but I surely love watching constructed and limited on arena. It also gives good players an easy way to add commentary to their picks in draft which definitely helps me with my card selection.
Wow. Beating turn 3 kefnet. Insane. Your opponent made a huge mistake by not recasting kefnet, but still a great game.
The analysis in this and overall explanations were extremely good. Very impressed, and definitely looking for more. Was interesting to hear a difference of opinions on some cards between this and LRcast thoughts
Watching Kenji during the last Tournament, he brought up your quick hard charge over and over!
Thank you Ben! I can quit Magic for 7 months, come back without knowing any card of the last 2 sets; watch some of your draft video's and nail it on my first (looks like it's called "traditional" now) War of the Spark draft going 5-1.
You guys are all pretty awesome over at ChannelFireball but for some reason I favor your explanation of picks and game play decisions. Keep doing what you do!
Spoilers below:
BenS, the God Slayer
Sick deck man well played
At 1:12:08 wouldn't it be better to wait for opponent to replay kefnet, then use saheli to copy Rager, sac Rager copy to heartfire dealing 5 to kefnet?
That opponent played poorly throughout
I agree -- I think Ben missed this since he didn't mention it.
the play of beating the turn three kefnet in draft was amazing :)
3:47 - 6:43 is the reason I watch Ben S videos, well that and him talking about his plays in the same level of detail, and just the general high level of content and...
Edit:
At 1:12:48 Ben uses heartfire, if he held it had tyrned a servo into a copy of rager and then heartfired sacking the token, is that 5 damage to kill Kefnet, or does the copy not work the way I'm assuming?
Ashiok has been an all-star pretty much every time I have taken them. Id say I win straight off the back of them 50% of the time, and the other 50% of the time it gets good value from removing graveyard preventing Aid the Fallen type shenanigans, or prompting the opponent to devote almost 100% of their effort into dealing with it, buying a significant amount of time to stabilize.
Very good video Ben, thank you.
Excellent video. @1:48:45, you could have cast the krenko and then copy it onto a servo.
Legendary creature unfortunately
Pack 3, Pick 7. Why did you pick Relentless Advance over Lazotep Plating? It seems like a potential 2-for-1 -- blank a removal spell and generate an army token and can just create a creature token in a pinch.
Personally I would pick the relentless advance because it is more proactive. It's also a sorcery for finale of promise. I do like lazotep plating in a more controlling deck.
@@z.s.7992 I agree with increasing the sorcery count, though I haven't gone back to count and see if the extra sorcery was needed. It just seemed to me that he wasn't ever particularly excited about Relentless Advance and Lazotep Plating offered more utility in exchange for a smaller body.
Also, I think any deck with creatures would value Lazotep Plating. High creature density means that there will be more opportunities to protect with LP, low creature density means that its more important to protect whatever you have (though I could see an argument for not drafting it because lower creature count means you might not have something to protect when you draw it).
you miss kiora has 7 loyalty and is a good ramp spell . its almost never killed early and in green decks it often doubles ramp. and its also a 2 mana walker.
Really enjoy your vids
Can I ask why you took Relentless Advance over Lazotep Plating?
59:00 you definitely should have bounced the Kefnet. There's infinitely more ways to come back with doubled spells than with proliferating. Or put differently, proliferate can never remove an attacker while a copied spell could.
thanks for the great video. not sure what the round 3 opponent was doing, dicking around instead of trying to get his kefnet back into play and attacking asap. wasted so much time which gave you the chance to come back.
Thanks for the draft cid nice !
That deck was sick.
Question, if someone can explain me plz, why did he pay 5 for finale in the first match, when Ral's Outburst cost 4, thank you very much person who will respond me.
BenS, he is the best drafter I have seen
11:00 Missed No Escape?! Don't like to sit on mana or what? It's insane in this set. 24:20 Missed Lazotep Plating, again not wanting to counter opponents? Not sure why this wasn't discussed...
How come Ben struggles with basic English but can pronounce the Chinese planeswalker perfectly?
LUL I gotta admit, he did a better job on Jiang Yanggu than on Sharktocrab, that's for sure.
The way he pronounces Kronch. Lol I love Ben
What is happening with the world where you put up a 5-0 draft with arguably the best limited player around, and majority of comments are pathetic criticism from people who have probably never accomplished anything.
Great video as always.
nice spoiler
@@wingscht3973 who reads comments before watching the video?!
@@RobJT ya like really wing why u do dis to me
Calling sorceries and instants “spells” is confusing, especially for those who have both HS and MTG experience. Unfortunately, the text printed on MTG cards calls “spells” everything but lands.
Krenko is stupid good on the play.
Nobody:
Literally Nobody:
Ben Stark: K R O N K
So surprised that you dont like the strix! Card has been bonkers for me
"Raging Kronk"
"Fin-ahl of Promise"
But what was your reward!?
same i must know
How many rares do you get passed wtf? I played more then 20 drafts war of the spark so far and i can count the number of rares i get passed on one hand.
why not cut the lands to 17 with such a low curve? 19 seems a lot
He was playing 17 lands though. I don't understand.
why don't you prioritize the 5c land if there is nothing else in the pack? I would have thought it would be much better than apick you will not play, because maybe you want to splash.
He took Skulker, Augur and Blindblast over it, from what I saw. 2 of those made his main deck and the other could well have if he needed more high-end stuff. The land just isn't very good either, it slows you down too much when it's important to be playing to the board early.
34:20 not sure why you're attacking planeswalkers at all here. Opp is on Single Combat or bust at this point, and him making 1/1s does nothing against your horde of goblins.
When he mention sweepers I was wondering if there was another one in that color pair, single combat leaving Ben with just Krenko is not quite enough
The audio is sooooooooooooo low
Ben S: Complains about all the bombs in limited, drafts on Arena, where bots pass bombs all day.
18:21 to 19:44, almost a minute and a half just to pick the obvious Saheeli. I like Ben Stark's content but hoo wee thank goodness this is fast forward-and-skippable.
One thing you could do is make the iron bully a copy of the zombie army and then amass onto it so you get a stronger menace creature
It would become a copy with 0 toughness and die immediately though.
@@bobbio100 Unless the Bully put the counter on itself, which is presumably where alasanof was going with this.
@@Reach_W ah, you're right. That would be petty clever.
turn three Krenko seems sooo unfun. it's like, "do you have removal or a good blocker? no? welp, i guess i win". isn't that a sign of a card that was very poorly designed for limited? it feels like this set has more of these unfun cards that require very little strategy or thought other than slotting the card in your deck -- no real changes to your deck do you need to make in order to use that card.
zero respect for gateway plazas, surprising
What a clinic
self control
Saying Dovin isn't good is one of the hottest takes I've heard
Pretty sure NCISfresk123 understands what Been said. Saying Dovin isn't good in limited Is a pretty hot take - most people I hear are high on it in slow decks.
For the love of god look up the pronunciation of Finale
blue red spells is only good with a lot of help from the draft bots. this dude is playing 10 uncommons/rares/mythics, which im pretty sure most archetypes can win very easily with
It's a good version of the deck for sure, but the UR spells archetype is great and can do a lot with just commons. Spellgorger Weird, Burning Prophet, Aven Eternal, Thunder Drake, Callous Dismissal, Contentious Plan, etc. can easily win you games on their own.
3 minutes for the first pick. 7:20 for the second. Ain't nobody got time for that.
If you watch at x2 playback speed, videos like this become a lot more bearable.
@@Gonbebe Wait, there are people who don't watch every MTG video at 2x speed?
I'm here to listen to Ben's thought process since he's one of the finest there is when it comes to drafting so I mean, I really wouldn't have it any other way
@@NotExactlyBacon Yeah, BenS's content is great because you can easily just have it be a podcast-type dealie going on in the background. His pick and board descriptions are so in-depth that I never have trouble knowing the game state.
Such a shame such a great player drafting with such dumb bots, a waste
ChannelFireball, please,please,please stop drafting on arena in your videos... please use mtgo for drafts
mtgo is for losers
@@craigferge4702 mtgo drafts are for who wants to have REAL drafts drafting with REAL people and not with bad Arena bots... Watching videos of Pro Player drafting on mtgo is instructive and teach you something about the format, watching Arena draft is totally useless
You misunderstand, or at least disregard, Ben's "product". Drafting on Arena lets him talk much more thoroughly about the cards in packs.
For any other drafter's video though, I agree with you, please draft with humans.
Can we get an "Arena" warning in the titles or thumbnails of these vids? I'm not actually interested in watching you draft against 7 computers no matter how good your individual-card analysis is because Arena will never be able to perfectly encapsulate the concept of signals as actual humans use them.
For constructed it's whatever (I personally don't like the Arena UI but that's totally my own problem) but for drafts I am just going to auto-dislike any arena draft vid that I'm not warned is an arena vid so that the TH-cam algorithm will maybe stop suggesting them to me.
Ben hasn't posted anything other than Arena videos for months now. Feel free to avoid his videos in the future.
@@michalljubljanac312 I used to love his videos though :/ Really disappointing that he thinks arena drafts are useful in any way....
So long winded you talks through your turn.
arena is boring!
jesus christ i had to put the speed to 2 so i could skip the endless jabbering about cards just say the top 3 to 4 cards in the pack and move on
u dont learn nothin if u dont listen bud!
jesus christ i had to put the speed to 2 so i could skip the endless jabbering about cards just say the top 3 to 4 cards in the pack and move on
jesus christ i had to put the speed to 2 so i could skip the endless jabbering about cards just say the top 3 to 4 cards in the pack and move on