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Shariq 🦈

@sharkman1231.bsky.social
116 followers 365 following 196 posts

Milwaukee Cuber. Egg Cube Designer. CubeCon 2025 winner. Anime and Board Game Enthusiast. Mardu enjoyer 🔴⚪️⚫️

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Shariq 🦈 @sharkman1231.bsky.social · 03/08/2026
Made a new cube built around my favorite land – Drownyard Temple. The biggest obstacle for the cube was that drownyard temple is terrible. I was faced with two choices, a huge number in the pool, or they’re in the basic land station. I went with the basics box since they would feel terrible to pick.
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Shariq 🦈 @sharkman1231.bsky.social · 30/07/2026
Drafted Spy Games for the 2nd time now. A mono-U cube based around learning hidden information. The previous draft I played cards that were good on rate and ignored the theme of the cube and was successful. A lot of those cards got cut. I drafted Tolarian Terror.dek and ignored the theme again. 3-0
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Shariq 🦈 @sharkman1231.bsky.social · 30/07/2026
Drafted the Mardube in anticipation of CubeCon. The cube feels like it’s in a very good place after cutting the broken PWs. Only a couple changes to make before the ‘26 con. Went all-in on Kaalia after seeing it P2 and it sorta worked. Three color is not nothing and I got beat by aggro 2-1.
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Shariq 🦈 @sharkman1231.bsky.social · 30/07/2026
Team drafted the Kindred Cube. First picked Orah and was able to go all-in on Clerics. I find this cube pretty frustrating, changelings are absurdly strong and my deck was pretty functional with only 2. Another cube that’s allergic to wraths, which is annoying but not a dealbreaker. 2-0
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Shariq 🦈 @sharkman1231.bsky.social · 30/07/2026
For the semiquincentennial I drafted Breya’s scrapyard, a 4-color artifact cube. Drafted a classic RB shitters deck that pressured early then ended the game with aristocrat stuff. 3-0 I do wish there were more wraths and mass removal.
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Shariq 🦈 @sharkman1231.bsky.social · 30/07/2026
July 1st was oppressively hot, so we drafted the OG desert cube. Drafted a bunch of 2 mana 2/3s and a few kindles. Had a cool play where I needed to diabolic edict myself to unearth my anathamancer.. 3-0
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Shariq 🦈 @sharkman1231.bsky.social · 30/07/2026
Drafted life, death & Undeath, I’m a fan now that I know how to draft it. Deck was very good against fair decks. Had issues with unfair decks. 2/3 matches had persist and worldgorger combo. Dunno if I should have anticipated that, having more instant-speed removal would have helped immensely. 2-1
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Shariq 🦈 @sharkman1231.bsky.social · 17/07/2026
Went to CubeDungeonCon. A small 32 player cube tournament in Madison. Drove to Madison and immediately once I got there drafted Treva’s Ruins, a Bant old-border desert cube. I don’t like old-border cubes much, but I think this draft went pretty well. Lost in the finals to a much better deck. 2-1
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Shariq 🦈 @sharkman1231.bsky.social · 02/07/2026
Drafted RG Dinos in Kindred cube, all cards must reference a creature type. I find this cube frustrating. The cube is all typal payoffs and changelings as the enablers. Changelings are so strong, but also awful if drawn without a payoff. The payoff cards will often not synergize with each other. 2-1
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Shariq 🦈 @sharkman1231.bsky.social · 02/07/2026
Drafted Life, Death, Undeath. A neat 4-color Assertive deck with Thopter Sword combo thrown in. Going into a 3rd and 4th color actually paid off this time around. Ledger Shredder was quite good, I can see why it’s a good card. I included Deep Analysis as my 23rd card, but it performed very well. 3-0
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Shariq 🦈 @sharkman1231.bsky.social · 18/06/2026
Let this be a lesson to me. Drafted my own Peasant cube (with strong rare lands) and drafted a very bad 4-color field of the dead deck. I spent many picks on lands, but the consistency of mana to cast medium spells does not lead to a good deck. My games were close, but got beat by 2-color decks. 1-2
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Shariq 🦈 @sharkman1231.bsky.social · 11/06/2026
Drafted Spy Games, a mono blue cube revolving around knowing your opponents cards, top cards of library, stuff like that. Eddymurk crab and levitating statue implied a solid spells deck in the cube so I went down that path. There were so, so many interesting decisions during the draft. 3-0
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Shariq 🦈 @sharkman1231.bsky.social · 10/06/2026
I’ve discovered a great motivator for finishing my cube. I just spent a bunch of money on the central cards and now sunk cost is working in my favor.
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Shariq 🦈 @sharkman1231.bsky.social · 07/06/2026
Drafted the Design Mistake Retirement Home cube. Vintage cubes are not my forte so I decided just to first pick academy and just hard commit. Got quite lucky with my first picks with two mox. I don’t really know how to drafts these decks so I went for every artifact that looked good and ended up 2-1
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Shariq 🦈 @sharkman1231.bsky.social · 05/06/2026
Drafted Call a Judge cube again. Cube is all about crazy rule interactions. I’ve been trying to get outside of my comfort zone when drafting. I drafted a neat UB reanimator deck splashing a couple of red cards. Had some very cool interactions and some silly ones too. 3-0
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Shariq 🦈 @sharkman1231.bsky.social · 05/06/2026
Ran back Metalworker cube the next week. Instead of drafting an aggro deck I actually built a time sieve deck which popped off. Misra’s self-replicator was the fuel for the extra turns, having access to a three mana historic spell was strong, and then those metalworkers made mana for copies. 3-0 6-0
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Shariq 🦈 @sharkman1231.bsky.social · 30/05/2026
I submitted my own cube for CubeCon for the champions choice. I did ask like three people if that would be gauche and they all said no, so I went for it.
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Shariq 🦈 @sharkman1231.bsky.social · 29/05/2026
Drafted the Metalworker cube earlier this month. Special rule, you can cast a gold-bordered metalworker (GBMW) any time you can cast a sorcery. And mana from your metalworkers cannot be spent on metalworkers. Cube was very cool, had 20 artifacts and good interaction. 3-0 6-0.
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Shariq 🦈 @sharkman1231.bsky.social · 29/05/2026
Drafted the Ethical Synergy cube. Drafted a UW tempo-ish deck after seeing an 8th pick remand. Didn’t value fixing high enough, ended with some small mana issues. Very much enjoy this cube, lots of strong but not broken game pieces. 2-1
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Shariq 🦈 @sharkman1231.bsky.social · 29/05/2026
Drafted the Kindred Cube. All cards (nonlands?)must reference a creature type of some kind or are changelings. I drafted a goblin deck with some powerful other typal bombs. Deck felt pretty strong. Might be my first time playing skirk prospector, card was pretty good as just a sac outlet. 3-0
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Shariq 🦈 @sharkman1231.bsky.social · 29/05/2026
Draft of the EPA cube, drafted BW splashing red for mayhem devil and chainsaw. The shared smokestack/RoL object had been retooled to start as rule of law. Vastly improved my enjoyment of the cube, and many of the cheap ways to flip the object had been removed. Deck was very strong. 2-0-1 (3-0 imo).
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Shariq 🦈 @sharkman1231.bsky.social · 08/05/2026
April 1st we drafted Hells Cube. Every card is custom with an absurd twist. A lot of cards will just say “Do a thing that doesn’t work (it works)”. I found a lot of the cards very funny and the draft was fun for the first 1/2, but the amount of reading gets tiring. Gameplay was alright. 3-0
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Shariq 🦈 @sharkman1231.bsky.social · 03/05/2026
Drafted my Mardu desert 3/25. I’m so behind. So I just drafted a mediocre value pile and went 1-2. I needed to commit harder to the greasefang plan. I’m actually quite happy that value piles are a little less good now in the cube. Focused aggro/combo/control decks are now much better.
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Shariq 🦈 @sharkman1231.bsky.social · 01/05/2026
Drafted Life, Death & Undeath 3/18. Drafted a bad BR pile splashing Grist & Resto. Graveyard focused cube with a fairly high power level that I have greatly enjoyed. Afterlife insurance is a wild card, never played with it before. Had a blood artist and sac outlet and my opponent was just dead. 2-1
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Shariq 🦈 @sharkman1231.bsky.social · 21/04/2026
Drafted the Mana Flare cube March11th. There’s a mana flare emblem, and just one since it’s symmetrical. Drafted a BG rock deck that had trouble dealing with the threats my opponents could put out on turns 2,3, & 4. The draft was fun but the deck felt pretty clunky. 1-2
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Shariq 🦈 @sharkman1231.bsky.social · 06/04/2026
Behind on posting, but Shoebox was a few weeks ago in St. Paul and had a pretty good time. “Made” Top 64, but the snow was so bad on Sunday I couldn’t make it to the venue. The setup was pretty cool, the top 4 of 6 drafts were counted so having a could you could throw was kinda liberating.
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Shariq 🦈 @sharkman1231.bsky.social · 01/04/2026
Renegade Platinum is so difficult for a casual Pokemon player like myself. I keep getting rocked by surprise trainer battles, so I haven’t even gotten to the really hard fights at the end of the game.
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Shariq 🦈 @sharkman1231.bsky.social · 27/03/2026
Took part in a game of “Assassin’s” this weekend. The goal is to make your target do something they would not normally do, then you “get” them and eliminate the from the game. My objective was to get someone I didn’t know to do a cartwheel. I lost because I wasn’t supposed to talk about the weather.
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Shariq 🦈 @sharkman1231.bsky.social · 18/03/2026
Drafted the OG desert cube a couple weeks ago, and drafted the wildest deck I think I’ve ever had. The cube has 20 copies of kindle, we drafted it with 7 and I still got my hands on 13. With 7 we just played as people became free with the one sitting out. The format is growing on me. 5-0
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Shariq 🦈 @sharkman1231.bsky.social · 18/03/2026
Drafted the Call a Judge cube a couple Sundays ago. A cube that was overloaded on complexity on purpose. Drafted BW Death&Taxes sorta, its archetype was supposedly a little less defined than the other color pairs. Cube was very fun but the lack of wraths made it feel like you couldn’t claw back. 2-1
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Shariq 🦈 @sharkman1231.bsky.social · 14/03/2026
Three cube drafts in one day is a lot, but a good time.
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Shariq 🦈 @sharkman1231.bsky.social · 07/03/2026
Drafted The Mana Vault’s Mono-Red cube two weeks ago with 7. Drafted a bad red deck with some burn and some individually strong cards. Got beat by a lower to the ground aggro deck and another player playing toralf’s disciple. Since we had 7 we started new matches rotating the person waiting. 3-2
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Shariq 🦈 @sharkman1231.bsky.social · 04/03/2026
I love the word dearth. Dearth dearth dearth.
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Shariq 🦈 @sharkman1231.bsky.social · 02/03/2026
Drafted the Cream City Cube with 6 last Sunday. We started at like 8pm, so I wanted to do something a bit different and I P1P1 Flash and ended up in a janky BGu reanimator deck splashing flash. Deck performed okay, but one of the drafters took every fetch so my fixing was iffy. 2-1
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Shariq 🦈 @sharkman1231.bsky.social · 19/02/2026
Drafted the All A’s no B’s cube again this week. We had 2 pods of 6 and teamed drafted. Drafted a mostly green, 1/2 broken (good), 1/2 broken (bad) 5-color pile. My mana was interesting in a bad way. No green fetches, thought I had taken misty. Each fetch had a green shock tho. 3-0, team won 6-2-1
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Shariq 🦈 @sharkman1231.bsky.social · 18/02/2026
I know I don’t play commander, but people on the r/custommagic subreddit are so bad at card evaluation. This custom card is broken with the combination of dramatic reversal, isochron scepter and two mana rocks. No it is not. Come on.
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Shariq 🦈 @sharkman1231.bsky.social · 15/02/2026
My wife and I do a traditional Valentine’s dinner outing the week before/after the actual day. I’m able to book a reservation at a nice restaurant a week beforehand rather than 12 weeks. On the day proper I spend a few hours making a nice meal. It’s been a nice tradition. Making pazole today.
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Shariq 🦈 @sharkman1231.bsky.social · 13/02/2026
Drafted the Heavy Metal cube on Wednesday. An extremely proactive artifact heavy environment w/ poor fixing (which I love). P1P1 was steel-cutter, never played it before, card was quite good, but not absurd. Nothing in the deck felt super broken, and RB has been powered down before in this cube. 3-0
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Shariq 🦈 @sharkman1231.bsky.social · 10/02/2026
Got to play one of my favorite board games on Saturday. Argent:The Consortium. It ran 4 hours instead of the expected 3, but there was a new player and a lot of drinking involved. The final score can be so funny since it felt like a very close game but the final scores were 7-2-2-1-0.
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Shariq 🦈 @sharkman1231.bsky.social · 10/02/2026
Playing this Nuzlocke and got an eevee. Looked at its stats and it has a +Def nature and 31 SpeD IVs. I turned it into my favorite Pokemon (Umbreon) and it is just the chonkiest thing in my box. I got so lucky 🥲
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Shariq 🦈 @sharkman1231.bsky.social · 06/02/2026
Drafted my own cube, the Lich get Licher yesterday. Haven’t made many changes since the initial build, still wildly unbalanced. You start with a Lich’s mastery in play, and games devolve from there. Drafted BW clerics and got completely hosed. The last player to draft BW also had similar issues. 0-3
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Shariq 🦈 @sharkman1231.bsky.social · 03/02/2026
Nuzloking Royal Sapphire right now and it is incredible fun. I’m not a seasoned Pokemon player, so the difficulty feels perfect.
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Shariq 🦈 @sharkman1231.bsky.social · 30/01/2026
Drafted the All A’s, no B’s (working title) cube on Wednesday. Has Kiki no pestermite, Hulk but no Flash, etc. I got to draft a Ketramose deck, which would have probably popped off if I ever drew it. Never played the card before. I loved the deck, the draft, the games, everything was fantastic. 3-0
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Shariq 🦈 @sharkman1231.bsky.social · 28/01/2026
Second Ice Cube 3 draft was old border foil. Opened pack one and saw bolt, piledriver, and spiritmonger. Was sitting to the right of a drafter I suspected would move into red no matter what I took, so I grabbed spiritmonger. Drafted a really fun GB rock deck. Had an absolute blast. 2-1 lost finals
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Shariq 🦈 @sharkman1231.bsky.social · 28/01/2026
First draft of Ice Cube was way worse than the one I did the day before. First picked what looked like a pretty solid green rare but then got passed a pyre zombie which looked pretty powerful and moved into BR. Deck was kinda mediocre, lost to an aggressive deck in round 1, flooded a bit game 3. 2-1
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Shariq 🦈 @sharkman1231.bsky.social · 27/01/2026
Ice Cube 3 was on Saturday, so last week I discovered I put my preferences in backwards and got my “#1” and “#2” picks of an Invasion block cube and Old Border Foil. Thankfully I got to practice the IPA cube the day before the event.
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Shariq 🦈 @sharkman1231.bsky.social · 26/01/2026
Team drafted the Heavy Metal cube on Wednesday. A great artifact-heavy proactive cube. I drafted a classic Shariq Deck of a bunch of 2-drops and removal. In retrospect I think I needed a bit more top end against one of my opponents. My team drafted RB/BW/RW vs UG/UG/U. Ended up 2-1, team won 5-4.
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Shariq 🦈 @sharkman1231.bsky.social · 26/01/2026
I’m sure it was just a coincidence for Himmel that he spent every day of his journey with Frieren, and that the quest was drawn out to be 10 years long.
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Shariq 🦈 @sharkman1231.bsky.social · 19/01/2026
Drafted the Environmental Protections cube on Wednesday. Shared game object that massively altered gameplay. Games were either incredibly interesting and complex or tedious and annoying. Drafted a bunch of cards to interact with the shared object, but any that didn’t cost <=1mv were garbage. 2-1
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Shariq 🦈 @sharkman1231.bsky.social · 14/01/2026
Been in a Roto draft of a graveyardish cube and drafted a very strong cloudpost deck (6xcloud,2xGlimmer, 2xNexus). I achieved a mindslaver lock on Turn 4. T1,2&3 cloudpost, T3 solemn get island. T4 nexus play mindslaver. T5 Academy Ruins put mindslaver on top. Proph Prism to draw and play it.
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