An Update on General Things in the Usman world.
Cube list, articles, etc.
I finally got around to posting my main cube (a “legacy lite”) cube over to Cube Cobra. It’s a cube that I’ve had since 2009 and it’s gone through a lot - started with power, and ended up taking it out and didn’t really miss it. I integrated more artifact things, which seems to be a thing I do in my cubes these days, but I (unsurprisingly) found a lot of the artifact-parasitic cards to not do that well. I’m going to see what Aetherdrift does in terms of having more creatures that incidentally make artifacts/are artifacts, since usually the decks that want the “artifact thing” need at least 10 artifacts/artifact generators to work. (The GW gearhulk is a nice start, although its mana requirements are **rough**.)
The cube expanded to 540 + 15 (for Lore Seeker) after Covid/FIRE design resulted in a bunch of powerful cards, and it’s at a power level where I’m happy to aggressively seed new cards in to give them more reps, to be able to write about them at length.
Given the pace of sets, cube sessions have essentially been always seeding in new cards, but the purpose isn’t solely for trying new cards out although I’d not been motivated to make changes other than making, for the most part, updates to try new stuff out. I’d finally gotten around to making some more macro-level changes that I’d been wanting to make for a while, essentially to trim some of the hedges with some of the sections being out of whack, mana curves and how sections are functioning and having the list online will make it a lot easier to make more changes - both on the micro and macro level - which I’ve already done since completing the changes a few days ago.
Other things:
I’m taking a step back from grinding on Arena - at my peak, I was one of the better Alchemy players in the world, but grinding on Arena is such a sisyphean task and, as I recently put it to a non-MTG player, ladder being essentially being like an RPG where - if you lose, you don’t just go back to your save spot, you go back to a previous one - was a sisyphean and a non-productive use of my time. I realized that part of it was to “prove to myself” that I was good at the game but honestly, I know that anyway. What difference does it make grinding for 100% rare completion when most of the rares in sets are unplayable in Constructed formats and most Limited formats, as of late, haven’t been fun? That’s part of it too, it just wasn’t fun and I made a decision to not spend as much time on something that wasn’t making life enjoyable (which also means more time, in theory, to use on cube stuff.) I still clock in for my 4 daily wins on Arena but that’s pretty much it now, and that’s for the better.
I’ll be doing a post-mortem on Duskmourn - as the article of initial takes that I wrote back in September isn’t really something that’s going to resonate. Might integrate the old material and say “this is what changed”, similar to the MKM one, but I’m honestly unsure if it’s really worth the juice is worth the squeeze, at this point, given view count.
Writing an article with someone about Foundations and cube. It’ll be a mix between what I do for the quick hits for the pauper cube committee and an article that I did with Justin Parnell for SCG many years ago. It’s still in progress, but being self-published means that there’s no lag between the article being done and going up.
Which hopefully, for the future, means that I’ll be posting these articles with the aggressive testing that I do, closer to set drops rather than some time after, due to there not being a time lag.
If so, I’ve no idea if the juice is worth the squeeze to do an initial article as well as a post-mortem.
A blog post about how Cube Con went. It was pretty amazing, but I don’t think it’s going to be an article. Likely more a blog post talking about how it was and how it’s been motivating me to go into more cube communities and create more, since I found people actually did care about the cube stuff I’d done (as I assumed no one did anymore.)
The panel that I did for Cube Con about “Designing a Cube for Dummies” will eventually manifest, somewhere, since it didn’t get recorded (which was uhhh not great.) Maybe an article, maybe a video, I have no idea - but since I have the PowerPoint for it, the skeleton of it is mostly done, since I didn’t have a lot that I wanted to edit.
Other general cube design articles that have been hanging around, inspired by the Cube Con experience. I hadn’t been motivated to write about cube design, and the last one I did was in 2015. Unsure if I’m going to post it here or elsewhere, but I’ve got that and some other ideas in the works with some of the article drafts ideas going back to around that 2016 timeframe - articles that I started but never finished, as there’s still at least a few things I want to get out there. I have zero aspirations for turning it into a WoTC job, but I still have some things that I want to get out there on (digital) paper.
Some looks back on cube articles that I’ve written over the years - I’m happy with the stuff that I’ve written and don’t want to George Lucas all of my older content, but I’ve been doing this for almost 15 years at this point; looking back at some of my articles is something that I’ve been wanting to do with a “looking back” lens, especially given how the game has changed (creatures got a LOT better, cards like Sulfuric Vortex went from being a windmill slam to being mediocre sideboard card, at best, given how much cube decks are playing to the board more.) I’d always written with a “big picture” view of things, and having the gift of retrospect of time should help that too.
In theory, I’ll also be updating my other online lists - even if I don’t have a paper copy of those lists as well, since sleeves and cards cost $ and I also just want to update stuff like the Ravnica cube and my pauper and peasant lists, as well as other ideas floating around. But I really shouldn’t get ahead of myself, since I just *now* got around to getting my main list online, eh?