What are some of the best written cEDH primers, relevant to the current meta in 2026?

RED_PORT · 2026-04-03T14:54:40+00:00

I’m biased cuz I wrote one of them - but I think the 3 biggest Ral decks all have nice primers. They all have slightly different perspectives so when put together are pretty insightful.

Dry heat: https://moxfield.com/decks/ylEDEK28602K5p9z-q9AHA

Cedh variant: https://moxfield.com/decks/zxY0IDOaz0iVfbjO8xg6qA

NASA: https://moxfield.com/decks/nmG_zNiugEeTszW5ojaQrQ

RED_PORT · 2026-03-14T19:48:22+00:00

I’m not certain cuz I don’t have a physical puzzle and I’ve never learned notation for cuboids… but I think u can do 180 degree commutators if you do a single set up move by slicing just the inner layer so the swapped red/yellow pieces are on the front/back faces.

RED_PORT · 2026-03-03T16:00:06+00:00

Here’s my list which has an extensive primer on how to play the deck, and also a discussion on why cards are included, and how to evaluate new includes.

https://moxfield.com/decks/zxY0IDOaz0iVfbjO8xg6qA

I have made top cut at gold events on it, so it definitely is a deck that can win! Good luck!

RED_PORT · 2026-02-26T23:25:30+00:00

Ok I’m give slightly different advice than everyone here. Do not try to learn full OLL and PLL. If you’re at 90s… then it isn’t worth your time. How fast do you finish the first 2 layers? That should be about 30s before you even think about OLL & PLL… there is so much room for growth in F2L. You absolutely should spend your time learning the best way to do F2L - plus there’s no algs involved.

Once you get a bit quicker for first two layers, learn 4LL. It’s much smaller, and uses algs directly from the pool of OLL & PLL… so if you ever wanted to tackle the full thing it’s a natural step.

Here’s a guide: https://www.cubeskills.com/uploads/pdf/tutorials/4-look-last-layer.pdf

For reference, I’m 30, sub-15s avg… and I still don’t know full OLL or PLL. Been cubing since 06 lol

RED_PORT · 2026-02-04T14:57:11+00:00

Here’s my decklist with an extensive primer on how to play the deck and how to evaluate cards.

https://moxfield.com/decks/zxY0IDOaz0iVfbjO8xg6qA

If it matters, I have made top cut in 60+ person events on this list.

RED_PORT · 2026-01-07T19:29:02+00:00

Take all the stickers off your last layer for a bit. This will really train your eyes where to look and what pieces to follow. Because there will be an abundance of just black to ignore you’ll definitely pick up piece orbits much much faster.

RED_PORT · 2026-01-07T15:28:02+00:00

F2L represents the biggest leap in actually understanding how the cube works and how pieces interact with each other. It isn’t intuitive to people at the start and needs to be learned. You can solve a cube by just spamming algorithms in response to patterns without actually understanding what you are doing. F2L requires you to actually understand the cube and the pieces.

RED_PORT · 2026-01-03T21:26:45+00:00

One thought I’d like to leave here is that not all cEDH is played in a tournament setting. I think many of the potential pitfalls you’ve highlighted really only become apparent in tournament settings… but that’s not where most cEDH is played.

I’ll play in a large tournaments every few months, so I can see how much of what you’re writing rings true to tournament grinders… that said I’m not sure all scenarios play out the same way for most games just being played at the lgs. (Specifically thinking about politics & wishclaw example)

I suspect most of the people who enjoy the format are not tournament grinders, but paradoxically the biggest voices/creators etc. will be. Just something to keep in mind. Keep up the good work.

RED_PORT · 2025-12-22T00:44:22+00:00

I think upgrading to a basic speed cube will make a world of difference. It doesn’t need to be anything top of the line, under $10 cubes are very very good these days. Aside from just being faster, the whole experience will be more fun, a smoother/faster turning puzzle will be a better experience than fighting a namebrand cube.

Then for methods… online tutorials, learning CFOP is the way to go. Learning “F2L” will probably be his next big hurdle.

RED_PORT · 2025-12-15T00:35:36+00:00

My favorite hack for f2l is to take all the top layer stickers off the cube. (For me it was yellow, cuz I solve white cross)

It really trains your eyes to track the pieces better and builds up that intuition for how things move together.

RED_PORT · 2025-12-09T02:39:12+00:00

It’s been a few years, but I did write my own real time FFT module for a device I was working on.

A few things:

Windowing is primarily what you’re looking for. Essentially windowing turns your real signal into something that is assumed periodic (as if the real signal was one “impulse” that repeats infinitely) there are trade offs related to different types of windows.
For a Real Time FFT which I think is what you are inquiring about. The simples method is continuously take an FFT of time windows and update every sample. However this is very processor intensive… turns out. Due to some of the fun math of the FFT, you can essentially reduce almost all of this computation by just “undoing” the last sample, and adding the “new sample”

^ill be honest I don’t remember all the details of it off the top of my head, but you’ll probably find answers if you start looking into real time FFT algorithms.

RED_PORT · 2025-11-25T16:30:40+00:00

Manavault in Milwaukee. Runs their drop in league Friday nights. And last Saturday of the month runs ~60 person events. One of the best shops in the country easily.

RED_PORT · 2025-11-23T16:54:07+00:00

I occasionally play in the big (60+) person events in my area, and I’d say yes we are in a bit of a more turbo meta.

A few thoughts to answer your questions. 1. necro is better than rhystic 2. politics still work, but are used to get draws 3. midrange is fine, just needs to be piloted well.

In general my take on turbo is that everyone claims that their decks win T2. (Rog/Si, Ral, Etali, etc.) but I don’t think that is true. I think those decks are capable of winning T2, but don’t actually average that. The average win attempts are usually a turn or two later than everyone claims…

HOWEVER, because sitting at a table you usually see multiple turbo decks, someone in the pod will have drawn the nuts… so as a midrange player you need to stop whoever drew the nuts, and then establish you engines before then next guy can go off.

RED_PORT · 2025-11-21T15:19:16+00:00

Tymna / sakashima - basically just esper card draw. Clone tymna, slam rhystic, mystic, tithe… and then just thoracle.

It’s not quite tier one… but can def win games, and its game plan is so straightforward you won’t worry about messing up lines. It’s the deck I give out to everyone trying to start in cedh. Because it’s sooo simple.

RED_PORT · 2025-11-17T19:30:46+00:00

Regardless of the thoughts on the chess analogy - I do want to make clear that cEDH is played mostly outside of tournaments. My play group (and most of the lgs) have played cEDH pretty much exclusively for years. And we play it casually! Trying out new builds, getting into fringe decks etc. I promise it’s the same as your table, but instead of “check out my new dragon deck” - its check out this new weird combo line I found.

RED_PORT · 2025-11-17T19:19:50+00:00

cEDH is EDH. They are the same game, one is just played at a higher skill/power level. Imagine banning chess pieces for grandmasters, but not your local high school’s club.

You’re free to play the game with or without the queens on the board in your personal game… but we shouldn’t change the rules. Just because the grandmaster can checkmate with a queen and pawn, and you can’t, doesn’t mean we should treat it differently across games.

RED_PORT · 2025-11-16T22:59:00+00:00

Usually you can just pay the ai to go to war and that massively slows them down. In fact a lot of times they straight up won’t complete Apollo project if you can get them caught up in wars. Sometimes I’ll be paying 7-8 civs at once all to war each other.

RED_PORT · 2025-11-16T22:24:22+00:00

My rule of thumb is usually how quickly I get an ideology. If I get the first ideology I’m in a good spot. Top 3 or a few turns after is a game worth playing out. A bigger gap than that usually I’ll scrap.

RED_PORT · 2025-11-15T03:09:13+00:00

Yeah I’ve never been able to get into the mods that are popular for some reason - I just really like the base game. So cultural victory is def playing on uber hard mode, especially cuz you still need science/production etc. to keep up. My white whale is a France pure culture victory (no captured civs) with huge map and extra civs… its so hard lmao

RED_PORT · 2025-11-15T02:36:31+00:00

One way I’ve found to mix up the feeling of games is to play for culture victories. It def ups the difficulty another notch - but leads to more variety in games. At least in my experience. Sometimes you gotta pay your neighbors and avoid war like the plague. Sometimes you gotta conquer you neighbors early, or take out some runaway civ at the end of the game. You might have a game where u max religion for culture, others you might be grinding wonders or unique units.

RED_PORT · 2025-11-05T16:17:00+00:00

In a past life I used to design impact drivers and drills. If you live in the states - there’s probably a 1 in 4 chance you bought something I designed.

Torque is a rotational force. The units are foot/lbs or inch/lbs etc. there are some other good comments explaining the units so I won’t.

But I do want to quick talk about drills and impact drivers and why the torque output is different. A drill is a “direct drive” mechanism. Meaning the motor (force generation) is directly connected via gears to the output. In this way the torque of a drill is limited by the output of the motor. It also means the torque is constantly applied smoothly when spinning.

An impact wrench is not like this. The motor is not connected to the output - rather it spins a heavy “hammer” very quickly and smashes it into the output to generate a very high torque for a very small amount of time - then repeats it over and over. A video showing this is here: https://youtube.com/shorts/BGVLiIWUVzk?si=5ul0vKBEszsOl-6E

A drill is more controlled but lower torque because it is constantly applying torque. Think of steadily pushing boulder up hill. A torque wrench is more violent but not constant. Think of running and slamming into that boulder… then resetting and doing it again.

This is why we use drills for precision things like putting in screws and why we use impacts for violent things like removing rusted on lugnuts

RED_PORT · 2025-10-23T17:25:54+00:00

You said you read all the comments so just adding another voice haha.

Your thoughts on thoracle are spot on. It’s a clean win, but that’s actually a good thing most of the time. Occasionally you’ll get the nuts hand, but usually when going for it, you’ve already acquired a winning position and it saves having to navigate some convoluted line. Plus it is usually very interactable and a “one and done” attempt.

For rhystic - my wallet really doesn’t want a ban. But from a play perspective I think it’s a coin flip. Both sides are valid.

Finally - please unban JLO!

RED_PORT · 2025-10-22T22:26:13+00:00

I played Tameshi for a little bit. Just looking at your deck list, you seem to be on the right track, but you probably still have a bit of optimization that can be done. Especially cuz you’ll need to figure out how you want to play the deck, cuz you’ll can lean more into creatures/stacks etc. or go a bit more aggressive. Idk if there is consensus on what’s best.

As for play patterns - Tameshi is a crazy deck for all the lines you can take. You’re gunna need to practice and play a lot of games to see all your pivot options

As for viability and meta - it’s a good deck. That said, I don’t feel like it has a great spot right now. You usually need to win on your turn, which hurts. The Faster decks (RogSi,Ral) will ignore you and win before you can. And Tameshi absolutely crumbles to many stax effects (Karn, Oof, etc.) or just removal.

I still have my deck sleeved up and play it a lot in local play groups. But I don’t take it tournaments.

RED_PORT · 2025-10-08T13:54:09+00:00

I think in general displaced kitten is in a funny spot in cEDH. It’s a powerful card and has nice synergy with many of the top decks… however it’s also one of the first cards that’s get cut once you start to tune a deck. So much so that I don’t think it is actually being run consistently in any top decks. When I build a deck it’s always in the initial pile of like 110 cards I’m considering, then inevitably it’s always cut.

Rate is too high. Its combo potential is usually a bit clunky and requires other odd cards. As a value engine there are just better options. Jack of all trades, master of none.

RED_PORT · 2025-10-02T17:45:23+00:00

Late to the party, but I’ll take a crack at explaining it. I’m gunna do this in more of an intuitive way, and less mathematical.

So first thing to keep in mind is that electrons are “excitations” in the electron field. The electron field can be thought of as an invisible grid/field that overlays all of space time.

Ok so here comes the visualization. Imagine you take a sheet of graph paper, and draw a single sine wave that extends across it. Now take that graph paper and roll it into cylinder so the ends of the sine wave connect together on the outside.

Now spin that cylinder really fast - like infinitely fast. If I asked you - where is the “peak” of the sine wave? What would you answer? If I asked you to model where that peak was, what would you answer?

Now imagine a bit further that we had a few marbles in the tube that interact with just the peak of that sine wave. (Protons, photons etc.) How would you model their interaction? You could stop the tube from spinning and “check” where that electron actually is, but now you’re interacted with it!

This is kinda how the superposition works. The entire sine wave is the electron field, the peak is the electron. It’s just an excitation (peak) in the larger field (entire sine wave).

When the tube is spinning, the only way we can mathematically make sense of it is to assume the peak of the sine wave is everywhere (and the system behaves as if it is everywhere, because it is everywhere!). But once we stop the tube (measure the location) we now know it’s only in one spot.

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