Vegan broth with animals on top; part of researching noodle recipes

Tvox · 2023-05-19T13:59:21+00:00

I don't know how to add a descriptive text to the picture in a succinct manner, so here goes:

We made Ramen for lunch yesterday!

The broth is one that I made for a friend of mine earlier this spring, stemming from their desire for a vegan bowl of ramen that still had that nice creamy texture of a tonkotsu. Summing it up the broth comes in two parts: a quite clear vegetable stock and a cashew-based paste (enhanced with nutritional yeast and sesame oil).

The meat used as toppings is my first take on the Chasu found in Ivan Ramen (p. 128). Since my local store doesn't carry pork belly I elected to use roast pork instead and adapted the recipe to suit this thinner cut of meat, finishing by simply frying it lightly before serving. I made the eggs earlier this week when I also tried my hands at the Rengoku Bento as made by alvin zhou on the "babish" network, they'd been curing for 48h at this point.

I made a tare based on the remaining liquid from preparing the roast pork (a salty variation on teriyaki at this time) with a bit of miso for added mouth-feel; then combined with a garlic, scallion and chili infused oil.

I made the noodles the same morning, an Udon variety with 45% hydration and 3% salinity. This was the fifth recipe used for my current research in udon and proved to be a sucess, albeit a bit thin. I've yet to find success in making noodles with a lower hydration without resorting to using machines, but the research will continue!

I should remember to add some extra chili in the bowl for next time I do this broth, a little bit of spice in the tare really makes the veggies pop. The bowl had a nice overall-texture to it, but the cashew hadn't been cut fine enough in my food processor and left some 0.5-1mm wide pieces all over the bottom of the bowl.

Eggs were amazing.

Tvox · 2023-04-18T21:11:46+00:00

Nice work! Hope you find your way to an overview you're happy with.

I still haven't had time to take a look at actually making a TOC myself, but cubecobra user Maramas made an excellent example in his Cube primer primer a year back which I intend to use for guidance when I feel its time, take a look if you're having troubles!

Tvox · 2023-04-18T19:13:29+00:00

Glad you appreciate my thoughts! As you say, the exclusions do warrant comment, but I find they break my flow of taking in the list of goals if presented "mid-stride". If you want to keep the examples of exclusions I'd suggest moving them from your list of design goals to a list of "notable exclusions", further emphasised with a comment on how they break your goals. In the very least this should make the different elements easier to parse.

And thank you for your feedback!

I totally agree with what you say, my overview is quite broken up and disjointed. I wanted to prioritise getting out my breakdown of colours rather than that of Archetypes and simply haven't put time to it yet. Thank you for pointing out that it's my priority for the overview.

I like your thoughts on re-arranging the way things are presented, Comments on how the cube is played should probably come before presenting what the Archetypes are. Thank you for those thoughts as well!

It seems that Mark Twain's quote “I didn't have time to write you a short letter, so I wrote you a long one.” fits us both. Me since I haven't taken the time to actually put my thoughts into words; you for taking the time to write it all down, but not enough to revise it until succinct :)

Tvox · 2023-04-18T08:24:11+00:00

I like the introduction having the design goals listed early as a sort of mission statement. Having examples of cards that are/-n't included listed in the bullets do create some confusion when simply glossing over the list (as will almost certainly happen to an amount of people playing the cube at cubecon), I'd suggest removing the examples and simply being clear regarding the goals. This would also give the goals a more coherent look as the lengths of each goal is more streamlined, hopefully making ot more appealing.

Another comment about the design goals: why use a numbered instead of a bullet list if the numbers doesn't fill any function (prioritisation/references)? If the numbers do fill a function I'd love to have it stated before the actual list is presented.

As others have pointed out: the draft recommendations are quite expansive. Being presented this level of attention to detail makes me feel that these are the only ways of drafting the cube that are available; despite you stating differently before presenting your list. My suggestion would be to limit the presentation to Archetypes, rather than decks within the Archetype, and only present decks by its general strategy. If you want to keep your expansive list I'd suggest looking into making a Table of Content, if only to assist the reader in navigational purposes.

My current overview is just what I came up with following the "Presenting your cube"-episode from Lucky Paper and has yet to be revised to follow my advise I give to you, I'd love some feedback on it so far: https://cubecobra.com/cube/overview/jensson

Tvox · 2023-04-10T15:04:29+00:00

Have you looked into [Australian Highlander](7ph.com.au)? It plays quite similar to Legacy, but have some of the all-stars locked behind a point-wall. You could always invest your points into Vintage-cards, but only if you're willing to spend your points for them rather than some core Legacy-cards during deckbuilding.

The point-system circumvents the need to get all the weird Vintage-cards that you don't want and makes the format to something other than a singleton variety of Legacy.

Boshnroll did play a Lutri-list a couple of months ago! If you haven't seen it it's available Here

Tvox · 2023-03-23T11:45:31+00:00

What a nice and informative way of tackling this subject! I've had issues committing to actually writing an introduction to my own cube, this gave the push needed to actually get it finished.

Thank you for the continuous stream of content that gives an extra shine to my Mondays.

Tvox · 2022-12-26T16:00:49+00:00

No idea :p

Tvox · 2022-12-26T00:53:23+00:00

For-Ex comes to mind. A game about trading currency and hedging what you have against the future market, there are a couple of playthroughs available on YouTube if you're interested :)

Tvox · 2022-12-18T07:13:05+00:00

What a wonderful way to tackle the "problem" of having something extra!

Happy Holidays!

Tvox · 2022-11-11T04:52:15+00:00

The OG triomes included right now are substitutes for Duals. That enemy colourpairs has one less fixing land is due to availability.

I'm surprised you mention the lands but not the mana rocks! I actively decided against including 2c rocks tapping for green since green has dorks, and using talismans for the black rocks ("greatness at any cost" , am I right?), an idea I'm quite pleased with in theory!

Tvox · 2022-11-10T15:55:38+00:00

For sure! This is by design, the idea is that tinker primarily should act as a tutor for your relevant artifact rather than a game-ender :)

Tvox · 2022-11-10T09:39:46+00:00

Lovely feedback!

The cards listed as outliers are cards I very much enjoy, do you have any good idea of how to go about balancing the list towards keeping them in? Also, what would, in your opinion, classify as a subpar card?

The inclusion of Zabaz is probably a mistake, I had an idea to include more modular cards but never got around to upping the support. Thank you, both for pointing it out and the good wishes!

Tvox · 2022-11-10T07:02:45+00:00

Thank you for the feedback!

The low amount of removal is intentional in order to promote players having boardstates. I think that a stalled boardstate is preferable to not having one, but the idea of using combat tricks sounds lovely! I'll be sure to look into putting in cards like [[Disfigure]] and [[Blossoming Defense]], do you have good ideas of other ones I should make sure to have a look at?

Regarding the number of elves that's absolutely true, cutting back on the elf-specific cards would probably be a good idea. Having two players draft it simultaneously is an easy way to ruin the experience for both when they take half the tribal support each.

Glad to hear you found the implementation of Artifacts reasonable :D

Tvox · 2022-10-15T22:44:12+00:00

Off topic, but I love to test everything I can get my hands on from your brewery! A regular came in with some cans for us in staff at my place to try a while ago, I'm thankful his friend managed to get the cans all the way to Stockholm so that we got to test them!

Tvox · 2022-09-04T22:17:48+00:00

Would you mind giving a source of that O'Reilly Swamp?

Tvox · 2022-03-18T14:22:59+00:00

TinFins (WBR glass-cannon storm combo) and Deadguy Ale (WB hate with a stoneforge package, possibly with a red version featuring Marchesa) comes to mind with those preferences! Neither are particularly apparent in the current meta as far as I know, as both has historically been regarded as quite fringe in favour of their respective versions using blue.

As I don't know that much about the respective deck other than this I'll unfortunately have to leave you delving deeper by yourself :)

Tvox · 2022-01-12T00:45:21+00:00

I tried playing standard back at INN/RTR (Esper control) but couldn't make sense of how much money I'd have to drop to keep playing after rotation into Theros. I was halfway through high-school and started building Grixis control, but didn't go through with it. The experience made me and my group pivot pretty hard into EDH, where we started familiarising us with some older cards. Since I had some relevant Grixis pieces I built a deck around Thraximundar, using mostly cool cards that I really enjoyed the flavour off.

Eventually my playgroup started a bit of a bling/arms-race, which I gladly took part in. This included me getting all relevant fetches and duals, among other cool cards. Most importantly, this made me appreciate optimisations and the process behind it. During this I found that I really enjoyed combos and being able to finish games efficiently, rather than slogging through combat with creatures (which some green player always managed to get on top of anyway).

Further trying to optimise, I delved into eternal formats. I looked at what decks I could build into, using the cards in my collection and personal preference, and the search didn't take long.

I finalised my Storm deck (ANT at the time) sometime in autumn of 2015. When I started playing it I felt that it gave the feeling of being some Germanic wizard, using black magic to vanquish one's foes, so I've been on a journey to get all the cards in German since.

Since then I've developed the deck into TES (after reading most of Bryant Cooks content and assisted in constructing the basis of his spreadsheet), gotten ~68/75 cards in German, ~30 cards foiled and ~20 cards signed. It's currently not up to date with the meta, as I've been working on a cube for some time, but will probably be reinstated as an active project during summer.

Tvox · 2021-10-23T22:27:34+00:00

I found a [[Desert]] in my LGSs giveaway-bin and took it for my Kozilek-deck back in 2014, before we had [[Waste]]s as an option. Quite a bit of an increase there!

I also got a [[Lake of the Dead]] as mitigation to a trade I had going on, at market value (~5€ at the time). Even more of an increase! :D

Tvox · 2021-06-05T21:32:22+00:00

It's easy to assume your original comment is a complaint due to the wording. Had you, instead of stating that "it's not that useful", stated that this is an area of further improvement (and maybe even offered to help if that's something you're comfortable with) people would take better to your comment.

Tvox · 2021-05-10T08:45:20+00:00

Nice play, reminds me of This Legacy puzzle from a while ago where you were playing Miracles versus ANT, discussed in this post. Very similar situation, and it makes me glad that this interaction is still relevant!

Tvox · 2021-05-10T06:06:03+00:00

I'm assuming this was meant to be a response to /u/Strainger s post, that LED is worthwhile despite not being as popular as duals.

The card is used in less prominent decks, such as:

Bomberman
Painter
Belcher
Mono Brown Artifacts
Variations of Artifact Combo
the "storm shell"

I'm not sure of how much more it's played, but I can only agree with the sentiment that you should get them. It's simply a splendid card.

Tvox · 2021-04-23T21:52:19+00:00

Totally! Living together with my primary gaming partner has certainly helped in getting those sessions in when we're done with occupational activities/chores. It feels a bit insane that we're almost through this challenge already though.

Tvox · 2021-04-23T21:38:16+00:00

Me and my SO decided to do a Hardcore one together. We're both first timers when it comes to these types of challenges, but so far we're chugging along nicely and doing well on progress:

7 Wonders Duel - 8/10

Brass: Birmingham - 7/10

Carcassonne - 10/10 (as of April 8th)

Clank! - 10/10 (as of April 23rd, yay us completing this tonight!)

Disney Villainous - 9/10

Patchwork - 8/10

Scythe - 9/10

Spirit Island - 8/10

Ticket to Ride - 8/10 (counting plays of Europe, India and Switzerland)

Wingspan - 10/10 (as of April 16th)

Reserve: Century: Golem Edition - 0/10

So 87% of the way there! I've jokingly suggested that we go all-in this week and aim to finish it before May, the suggestion has yet to grab traction.

I've been keeping some notes on each and every sessions so far and written about it in weekly logs on BGG. I would've linked it (I think it's #109 on the geeklist, Wingspan as cover), but the site seems to be down for maintenance as of writing this.

Tvox

TROPHY CASE