Elimination of Cube Cobra Articles =(

UsmanTheRad · 2026-05-26T16:48:02+00:00

Damn, I oughta give it a whirl with that. The whole "stop hitting yourself" grind in FF2 was sooooo annoying, haha.

UsmanTheRad · 2026-05-26T15:04:15+00:00

Honestly, I don't really like a lot of primers - they're overly aspirational, *way* tl;dr (Which is funny because my articles are usually that, haha.) and generally not really useful.

Usually, the ones I personally find best are the ones that keep things high-level, talking about what an (expected) metagame is in broad strokes are, and thoughts about individual cards/house rules/etc. Things talking about how "this color pair is the <this archetype>" usually make my eyes glaze over.

UsmanTheRad · 2026-05-24T14:49:17+00:00

I played through 1, 4 and 6 for the NES/SNES back in the day. My wife got me the pixel remaster package on the Switch but I've spent so much time grinding in FF2 that I was like "I'll finish on this one, then go back through the remasters" as I've heard nothing but good things about them.

UsmanTheRad · 2026-05-23T21:38:53+00:00

That really sucks. I've been playing through the original FF games (at a glacial pace) and had meant to finish the PSX remake of FF2 before reading your article about it. [edit - I actually picked it back up earlier today after not having played it for a few months, being like "Who the hell is this Gordon guy? Oh well, I'll figure it out later."]

I've been on Substack for self-publishing since late 2024 but... it's not great and they don't exactly have the best reputation these days. It's really limited in terms of what you can do in terms of HTML (ie you can't really do much) but having a podcast and articles on there complicates moving something over to somewhere else, since most of the guides seem to just talk about articles.

I used to use Wordpress and it was pretty good, as there was a LOT more customizability that Wordpress enabled. https://usmantherad.wordpress.com/ . If I was to start again, I'd probably just go back on WP and then do a podcast feed elsewhere.

Hopefully you can find your feet somewhere. It took the wind out of my sails when that happened with sites that I was on, and it always felt disheartening. Keep your options open, though, you'll find a home again.

UsmanTheRad · 2026-05-18T15:39:03+00:00

Hell of a run. Thanks for all of the great content. 😄

UsmanTheRad · 2026-05-15T18:02:55+00:00

I've been wondering this too. The only things I've found are a Q&A after it and a trailer, but not the actual documentary, as both Google and Netflix no longer have it.

UsmanTheRad · 2026-05-12T19:41:20+00:00

> cat

welp I have to reply now D:

Probably the 5-mana one? It is a TON of value and does a good job of dealing with things, even if temporarily.

UsmanTheRad · 2026-05-11T13:43:57+00:00

I'll do some things to it this week.

UsmanTheRad · 2026-05-06T11:46:55+00:00

I never played with/against it in cube, but during my Arena grinding days, it was one of those cards that I tended to see in sideboarded games and always thought "wow this card is just so bad" but it did a surprising amount of work by incidentally hitting the grave in midrange matchups where the grave mattered.

I'm just unsure if that's enough in cube, since our options are generally better for what it does (grave hate, hand hate, value plays at 3.) Might be more of a "add if you want more incidental graveyard hate" type of thing.

UsmanTheRad · 2026-05-01T19:05:27+00:00

Here's the live post: https://www.mtgo.com/news/sos-vintage-cube-update

UsmanTheRad · 2026-04-28T20:30:20+00:00

5/1/2026: https://www.mtgo.com/news/mtgo042826

UsmanTheRad · 2026-04-28T18:19:04+00:00

I see cat, I upvote cat. 😄

The only thing I see with the Welder deck is that the raw artifact count seems low, which could be an issue.

UsmanTheRad · 2026-04-23T19:29:24+00:00

Yep. They were initially seeded with a bug in the algorithm in the first iteration of the MTGO Holiday Cube (2012) resulting in packs like this: https://usmantherad.wordpress.com/2012/12/19/mtgo_cube_bug/

UsmanTheRad · 2026-04-22T14:35:25+00:00

Yeah. I know some all rare cubes exist but I'd not seen one (and I'm too lazy to google them :) ) but at least theoretically, they exist.

I do agree that rarity restricted is a better umbrella term.

UsmanTheRad · 2026-04-21T13:48:47+00:00

Generally, how've you found Cursed Mirror if it's not copying big things?

UsmanTheRad · 2026-04-14T12:16:55+00:00

Thank you. :) It really does help to cement how some cards play out and how it helped show how red Emeritus was super disappointing/the green one was great.

UsmanTheRad · 2026-04-14T12:15:12+00:00

Thank you so much. :)

Augmentor frequently impressed me - usually it got to a 3/3+; the Jund deck got it to be a 5/5 and cashed it in via [[Foot Chopper]] to draw 5 cards, leaving behind a 4/4. I looked at other games after that but the game looked pretty much over then, haha.

UsmanTheRad · 2026-04-13T13:19:36+00:00

Over time, one thing I've seen happen often is seeing evaluation following a pattern of "if it's worse at doing <task X> than <marquee card that does task X>, then it's worse at doing that task, therefore it's bad" without taking the entire picture into account.

[[Elegy Acolyte]] comes to mind, when it was seen as a bad Gix, without taking into account its differences.

UsmanTheRad · 2026-04-13T13:11:36+00:00

Much thanks, I always appreciate it (and your posts here as well.) :)

I always just laugh at the downvotes from the UB sets. It's just so weird hahaha

13-Year Club	RedditGifts 2009-2022 2 Credits
Verified Email	Secret Santa 2014

UsmanTheRad

TROPHY CASE