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Paving Desire Paths in Cube Design and Cube Drafting
(Originally posted on my Substack on 12/18/25.)As a techy nerd who got into cube design during its infancy, and whose writing helped to pave the ground to define modern cube design theory, I wanted to discuss this topic for my 60th article about cube design as I felt a strong connection when I saw the…
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Going Through Cube Changes
(Originally posted on my Substack on 10/14/25.)Originally, this article was started in 2016 with the whirlwind of great sets in that year. It’s now 2025 and not only do we have more sets per year, but the sets are generally more powerful on a pound-for-pound basis. As someone who got into the world of cube…
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Micro and the Macro Aspects of Cube Design
(Originally posted on my Substack on 5/6/25.)Like with the idealized thinking/additive distraction article, the purpose of this is more to define a concept in more depth than a blurb of words would do, so that I can just link to it. Like with many things I’ve written about, it may be something you’re already doing,…
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The Cube Is Bigger Than You
(Originally written on my Substack on 4/23/25.)Since the early days of my cube writing, I’ve been wanting to do an article about defensiveness in cube design. I’d created several drafts of it, but it never got much further than “hey, don’t get defensive about cards in your cube.” I’d certainly seen my fair share of…
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Stoneforge Mystic, Metallica’s Load/Reload and Changing Contexts over Time
(Originally posted on my Substack on 3/9/25.)In our pilot episode of The Third Power, I had some hesitation about including Stoneforge Mystic in my cube. When we started our podcast in 2011, the newly shown Sword of Body and Mind looked to supplement the package of heavy hitters like Skullclamp, Loxodon Warhammer, Basilisk Collar, Umezawa’s…
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How Heirloom Blade Made Me a Better Cube Designer
(Originally posted on my Substack on 1/21/25.)I worked with Parker over at Lucky Paper on an article about what Heirloom Blade taught me about cube design. This is another article that I’ve had in my brain for a while but never wrote. Heirloom Blade has become a namesake card of mine since praising its merits…
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Challenging Cube Dogma in my own cube.
(Originally posted on my Substack on 1/10/25.)I’ve been running 555 cards in my cube since I did my cube updates after getting my local group back together after Covid quarantine, going from 465 (450 + 15 for Lore Seeker) to 555 (540 + 15.) To be the change I want to see in the world,…
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Additive Distraction and Idealized Thinking
(Originally posted on my Substack on 12/21/24.) If you’ve been a long-time reader of my content, you may recall me talking about Additive Distraction in cube a few times (tl;dr: it’s when you don’t see the forest for the trees on cards.) For years, I’d intended on making an article about it, since referencing a…
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Cube Expansion Pack
(Originally written for Coolstuffinc on 5/18/15. Porting it over here, since they don’t really deserve my views anymore.) When I started doing weekly cubing at my local game store, I started encountering a real first-world Cube problem: More people were showing up to Cube Drafts than my four-hundred-fifty-card Cube could handle. To fix this, I…
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Six Sides of Context
(Originally written for Mananation.com, now Coolstuffinc on 11/10/10. Porting it over here, since they don’t really deserve my views anymore.) When considering cards for a cube, many people look first to those that perform successfully in other formats. Cards that are good in cubes have typically had success in other formats. Spectral Procession has enabled…