iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Reposted by Joe van den Berg

James Turner @james.loadingreadyrun.com · 23h

I’m not really a Hot Take kinda guy, but here’s my Magic hot take for the day. There’s soooooo much Commander content. Like, maybe too much. So here’s a Cube Draft VOD from our Sub-A-Thon to get a little limited in your life 😎 youtu.be/iPM43VdcmQc

youtu.be

James's Cube Tournament - MTG Day || LRR2026 Sub-A-Thon

YouTube video by LRRMTG

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Joe van den Berg @hardcasting.bsky.social · 03/10/2026

This is some freaky shit. I enjoy the freaky shit

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Joe van den Berg @hardcasting.bsky.social · 02/10/2026

Glimmerpoint stag + for mirrodin equipment 🔥

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Joe van den Berg @hardcasting.bsky.social · 01/10/2026

Unfulfilled promises do hurt more :/

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Joe van den Berg @hardcasting.bsky.social · 01/10/2026

They are trying, but yeah retail draft can never be cube. Has too many hats to wear

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Joe van den Berg @hardcasting.bsky.social · 01/10/2026

"What makes Reality Fracture so unique is that we also looked to Cube environments and play patterns to try to design appealing synergies for the set," Weitz says.

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Joe van den Berg @hardcasting.bsky.social · 30/09/2026

Help? Why do you need help? Nobody needs help with this. Are you stupid or something? - reddit, probably

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Joe van den Berg @hardcasting.bsky.social · 30/09/2026

I am making it a personal commitment to help people fix their 2017 legacy + pet cards cubes, where the right way to play is sort the cube by year>2019 and then only draft those. Together, we will work to meet your design goals. Because "Mana Vault synergizes with self life loss" ain't it

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Joe van den Berg @hardcasting.bsky.social · 30/09/2026

Maybe we should consider why the companion errata was made before removing it... and also adding Lutri to the cube. This deck 3-0ed and it was not pretty for the rest of the pod. Lurtri + Swords blew the door open on so many games. One game I played Kirol t3 then Swords + Lutri, copy the trigger...

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Joe van den Berg @hardcasting.bsky.social · 30/09/2026

Oh this is a fun pool! Unsleeved stone soups are goated. I'd be one the lookout for any landfall synergies given the fetches

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Joe van den Berg @hardcasting.bsky.social · 30/09/2026

(or when they start the game on the battlefield)

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Joe van den Berg @hardcasting.bsky.social · 30/09/2026

Reading magic cards? Why would I ever do that??

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Joe van den Berg @hardcasting.bsky.social · 28/09/2026

There are so many knobs we have to turn, we don't have to turn to cards that destroy our cubes. As we learn about our environments, we can appropriately tune our removal (i.e. disenchants) to appropriately match our cubes

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Joe van den Berg @hardcasting.bsky.social · 28/09/2026

I.e. if every card was an enchantment, Erase would be one of the best cards in the game. Cubes with heavy heavy enchantment presence, Erase would be insane. This is how cube designers circumvent their themes. It's much less about scarcity than rate. Instead of Erase, you could try Altar's Light

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Joe van den Berg @hardcasting.bsky.social · 28/09/2026

Disenchants are normally very competitively costed because their use cases are normally much more limited than a generic removal spell. Because its applications are more limited, its rate gets to be better. When cube designers change the context of the environment, they can make Disenchant cracked

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Joe van den Berg @hardcasting.bsky.social · 28/09/2026

And we can learn from them. You can only circumvent your cube conceit if the way people circumvent it is if the cards that run contrary to the cube conceit are also at highly, highly, competitive rates. Maybe Disenchant is too good at 2 mana instant speed vindicate. Try 4 mana! Sorcery speed! Etc!!

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Joe van den Berg @hardcasting.bsky.social · 28/09/2026

And that's the point! Artisan's Sorrow was printed in Theros, a heavy enchantment block. Wizards knew that printing Naturalize in that block would cause damage to the limited environment. As a result, they chose Artisan's Sorrow at 4 mana. Wizards has learned this lesson many times before

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Joe van den Berg @hardcasting.bsky.social · 28/09/2026

the means to circumvent the cube restriction. This self-defeating cube conceit problem is actually a curation issue. With better curation issue, we can prevent the problems we see above. What comes to mind for me is the card Artisan's Sorrow. Artisan's Sorrow is a terrible disenchant.

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Joe van den Berg @hardcasting.bsky.social · 28/09/2026

As always, rate is the most important thing here. The scarcest things in every cube environment are generally things that are at the highest rate in the cube. Sometimes those happen to be disenchants. Part of my confusion here is that this article also presumes cube designers have given players

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Joe van den Berg @hardcasting.bsky.social · 28/09/2026

I think it's time to talk about removal rate and cube conceits. I think a lot of what Parker is talking about here is that where cubes where Disenchant is good, its context makes it more like 2-mana instant speed vindicate. If all the disenchants cost 60 mana instead of 2, scarcity wouldn't matter!

luckypaper.co

The Self-Defeating Irony of Cube Conceits — Lucky Paper

By trying to center their cube around a single mechanic, color, or gameplay style, designers often achieve the exact opposite effect. Here's why variety is the foundation of strategic replayability.

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Joe van den Berg @hardcasting.bsky.social · 28/09/2026

Legend says that next to the word "tempo" in the dictionary there is just a picture of this card

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Joe van den Berg @hardcasting.bsky.social · 28/09/2026

Someone ran it in my friend's Graveyard cube as a 2nd copy of Underworld Breach lmao I completely get the appeal

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Joe van den Berg @hardcasting.bsky.social · 28/09/2026

The green Pia seems amazing for ABS!

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Reposted by Joe van den Berg

Jakob J. Kamminga @rhythmicstudy.bsky.social · 27/09/2026

I made a video about my new cube! Am I trying to get a reputation for degeneracy in #mtgcube? Perhaps... youtu.be/quNyDNnrPmM

youtu.be

About my creatureless Magic: the Gathering cube!

YouTube video by Rhythmic Study

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Reposted by Joe van den Berg

Mork @fourdeltavictor.bsky.social · 25/09/2026

Hello #mtgcube community I have an odd request. I want to acquire 8x of these reminder cards for my MH2+ cube. From what I understand they're on the back of tokens. If you happen to have MH2 tokens lying around and can help me figure out which ones they're on, that would be amazing.

A draft archetype card for MH2 booster draft. It has 10 archetypes with descriptions on a standard mtg sized card.

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Joe van den Berg @hardcasting.bsky.social · 25/09/2026

Or, you don't have enough fixing! Two ways to approach this problem

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Reposted by Joe van den Berg

Chris Mooney @chriskmooney.bsky.social · 25/09/2026

Banning Bugs is actually an essential part of maintaining the traditional bsky ecosystem. If this site were ever to become too entertaining or too based, it would start to lose the very essence of mid-ness that serves as the foundation of its identity.

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Joe van den Berg @hardcasting.bsky.social · 25/09/2026

people to respond to dms for them, to create the allure of availability for clients at every opportunity. I never liked this and never did it, but people do it a lot. Also, you have to be shameless about self-promotion, which I could never fully be. People who do it well flood inboxes with content

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Joe van den Berg @hardcasting.bsky.social · 25/09/2026

Of course! Keep in mind my advice is also shaped by the fact that I was trying to enjoy some of the time I spent on the platform, my goals weren't purely monetary. If your goals are purely monetary, it may be worth looking at a wider array of options. Professional onlyfans personas often pay (1/2)

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Joe van den Berg @hardcasting.bsky.social · 25/09/2026

IT looks way better in pictures than it does in person, but light tends to help. 9 weeks of work later I am so glad I am finally done! Also, I am never doing lettering ever again. Cutting some of those tiny ass pieces and soldering them was hell lmao

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Joe van den Berg @hardcasting.bsky.social · 25/09/2026

Oh also... there is a ton of noise on the platform. It takes work getting it to work for you. You'll get lots of dms from bots, randos, and basically everybody once you start posting. It's not easy. Just getting the platform to a usable place for your needs can be a battle in and of itself

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Joe van den Berg @hardcasting.bsky.social · 25/09/2026

So you may have to dig a bit deeper than I had to, to find a group of people who are willing to give you money. Starting out is especially difficult. I lucked out a bit since I ported over an entire fanbase from reddit. Newcomers often have to release free content for a bit to get a fanbase

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Joe van den Berg @hardcasting.bsky.social · 25/09/2026

1) Find out what demographic of people is attracted to you (for me it was mostly gay men) 2) cater your content towards that demographic 3) involve them in your world is kind of how I advise people to think about it. Onlyfans is much much more crowded for women than men though (1/2)

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Joe van den Berg @hardcasting.bsky.social · 25/09/2026

I used to do onlyfans during the pandemic to pay bills. What I learned is that no matter who/what you are, there are people out there who will be into any specific fantasy... as long as you can make them believe it

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Joe van den Berg @hardcasting.bsky.social · 25/09/2026

The best thing about hosting my own cube event is that I don't have to read any of my own cube submissions. This joke has an audience of 5 people

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Joe van den Berg @hardcasting.bsky.social · 25/09/2026

Very cool! Been working on some creatureless cubes with some other folks, including @bryanculver.bsky.social's excellent Forgotten Monument. A question I have is what di you get gameplay wise from replacing all the creatures with cards that make tokens? Why not run creatures at that point?

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Joe van den Berg @hardcasting.bsky.social · 24/09/2026

Always been an elephant guy myself (I understand this is detrimental to my winrate) but Slow Wurm is up there for best worm of all time

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Joe van den Berg @hardcasting.bsky.social · 24/09/2026

Wow love that y'all are huge euro gamers too! Concordia and Istanbul are great! Can totally see the inspiration!

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Reposted by Joe van den Berg

Boston Cube Party @bostoncubeparty.com · 23/09/2026

LOOKING FOR SPONSORS! Trying to do something much more ambitious next year but venues in Boston are prohibitively expensive. If you can help in any way or know someone who can, lmk! RTs appreciated ❤️

static.klipy.com

Cute Begging Puppy Eyes Emoji

ALT: Cute Begging Puppy Eyes Emoji

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Joe van den Berg @hardcasting.bsky.social · 23/09/2026

Sometimes it's not about the quality of game actions, but the quantity

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