DSB (@dsb-cubes.bsky.social)

New to CUBE? Don't know where to start? We've made a helpful, easy to fill out, framework that you can use to make your first cube! Just 'Paint by Numbers'. Download the print ready files, or copy the google doc and share with friends. Let us know what you think! the-bmcc.com/special-proj...

Spent the weekend at INW 2026 just sitting out, drawing tokens, playing 5 Alive, and had the BEST TIME. @janemckinney.bsky.social has created something special that should/will be studied but never fully understood. You had to be THERE. Now, without further ado, the tokens I drew and gave away.

Big shout out to @andy.luckypaper.co and LPR for the Cube Fellowship and sending Mari to INW. Genuinely one of the best people I've ever met at a cube fest. Instant homie.

I didn't get pictures of all of the tokens before I gave them away. So if you got one, drop it in the comments. Also the typewriter font is a cool customizable library stamp that Floozy had. Incredibly hip.

However, unfortunately, I came down with a terrible case of Dog Jaw. I apologize to @anathemeh.bsky.social and whoever else may have gotten it.

Why is it that we forgot the specifics of dreams but not the feelings? How can I seemingly live some insane adventure, only to remember a vague awe of it? Are we doing this is waking life too? Just running on vibe echos?

My new rules modified cube

I am learning so much. How is there still so much to learn?

The people have spoken

cubecobra.comDRAFT REPORT_ DRAFT REPORT I’ve decided to stop worrying, and love the atom bomb Firsthand. The feedback has come in. The feedback takes many forms, from many folks, and is many flavors. But my conclusion is thus...

20 Sept

Firsthand - DRAFT REPORT Biggest lesson learned : Don't let people dwell on the past. cubecobra.com/cube/blog/bl...

Gotta share a few opening 7’s from the group playing Firsthand last week. Here a very smart mill package. Deck had a bunch of desert for the Riv too. Remember, it’s 30 card decks so mill is totally a win con.

Love the is use of Arboreal Grazer T1. Very good in this environment, especially ramping into proliferate gardening.

cubecobra.comCube Cobra List: FirsthandPick your opening hand from your draft pool, then the fun begins.

Firsthand cube for reference: cubecobra.com/cube/list/fi...

Solid control with Shrieker being a great threat. Definitely had to side board in solutions to FoW

9 Sept

When folks play your experimental cube and are chill and have fun… it’s like … maybe we’re going to make it as a species, ya know? If we can relax our egos, and laugh and help each other understand rules and interactions, maybe, just maybe we’ll survive.

9 Sept

Firsthand was amazing btw. Way easier and less spiky than how it reads. Or maybe I’m just super lucky to have an incredible playgroup.

cubecobra.comHow to draft FIRSTHAND (v1)How to draft FIRSTHAND This advice may change. None-the-less, here is my current strategy for brewing a competitive deck (which also exposes a bunch of my design assumptions about this environment) 1 ...

Firsthand is on main next week. This is not your typical cube, and as such I highly recommend taking a minute and reading these two posts about how to draft Firsthand. How to draft Firsthand(cubecobra.com/cube/blog/bl...) Intermediate Strategies(cubecobra.com/cube/blog/bl...)

All this said, you will not survive the end of the world if you are alone. Although this environment may appear to be a microcosm of life or death competition, you can reinterpret it as something else.

Perhaps you are not fighting each other for resources, but instead sitting around a fire, telling each other stories and hatching plans. Perhaps your summons and mana are quips and jokes, and as such a good storyteller and listener lets their peers share the spotlight in the evening of the world.

This cube's ethos is all about preparation. Preparation for the end of the world. Asking the question, "What do you choose to hold in your hands when society crumbles around you?" The answer is not just one thing. You need a toolbox, you need answers and solutions and plans.

This in mind, you are competing with 9 other desperate, scared, and confused people. They will inevitably take pieces of your well constructed puzzle. Hold your plans lightly.

youtu.beFinally sharing the cube I've been secretly working on for 9 months! (and it could be YOURS)YouTube video by Lucky Paper

1 Sept

This latest Obscura Cube event really delivered some amazing designs! A beautiful example of how creatively diverse cube can be. Check out @andy.luckypaper.co spitting facts about his contribution! Super cool design. youtu.be/bLwKn-rbOK4?...

cubecobra.comCube Cobra: FirsthandPick your opening hand from your draft pool, then the fun begins.

29 Aug

In 10 days our playgroup will be firing my most stressful game design experience: First Hand cubecobra.com/cube/about/f... And I’m going to be totally normal about this until then… … .. .

Now that Obscura is over and the Telemetry box as been seen… I can share some details. Much of my art draws huge inspiration from Calvin & Hobbes, specifically the Spaceman Spiff stories. So I just leaned into those environments:

Huge shout out and thanks to @gdekker.io for the opportunity!

Box bottom. Just a few images and I flush out the world. A bone, clearly imbued with some tech, and a helmet in an old wooden box. Both archeological in vibe.

From years in marketing, I just can’t help myself make logos. Here is my take on the Telemetry logo: made of insect like arms or bones, a ligature of sorts, of the letters T, M, Y, which are the first, middle and last letters of the name.

Box end face

The opening box flap is a diptych. Showing an astronaut before and after a “cosmic event”

cubecobra.comCube Cobra Deck: Library is Life_ Each player starts with an emblem that reads: If you would lose life, instead draw that many cards, then exile that many cards from your hand. _

23 Aug

I gotta share this incredible test draft of Library is Life by fellow chef ReptilianAppeal cubecobra.com/cube/deck/7d... Remember you start with an emblem that reads If you would lose life, instead draw that many cards, then exile that many cards from your hand.

cubecobra.comCube Cobra List: Library is Life_ Each player starts with an emblem that reads: If you would lose life, instead draw that many cards, then exile that many cards from your hand. _

17 Aug

Library is Life Each player starts with an emblem that says: If you would lose life, instead draw that many cards, then exile that many cards from your hand. Bar Cube No tokens, no counters, no dice, just cards cubecobra.com/cube/list/Li... Work in progress. Suggestions welcome!

17 Aug

Also Huge shout out to @gdekker.io for adding the collaboration option on Cube Cobra! This currently has 9 authors and it’s a ton of fun! Amazing tool for connecting designers. Thank you.

26 July

Continuing my journey of watching early 80s sci-fi, I watched Electric Dreams (1984) At the time this movie probability was meant to be fantastical and impossible, but now it’s a grim reality. Basically a Black Mirror episode, skinned as a comedy. I do not recommend

23 July

So I watched Short Circuit (1986) last night and... omg that movie hits different these days. The impossibility of AI and autonomous robots in 1986 vs the creepy current reality of today. Who wants to talk more about this... I've got emotions.

22 July

The informational entropy of a 32 card 5 Alive list, if all cards are equally probable, is log2(32) =5 bits Coincidence?

23 July

There’s a line, a number of cards, where the system becomes unpredictable and chaotic, in other words “playable”. Could we go less than 32? If both players start with 7, that leave 18 in the library, or at most 9 turns. But if we go smaller does that make the system to predictable?

22 July

The informational entropy of a 32 card 5 Alive list, if all cards are equally probable, is log2(32) =5 bits Coincidence?

22 July

The Shannon Diversity is 3.466 …so, do with that as you will.

20 July

Cube is a novel 5 Alive is a zine

17 July

@tolariancommunitycollege.com when are you going to run a Stone Soup draft with @rhysticstudies.bsky.social and friends?

5 July

When your friends are a giant puppet art collective, your kid grows up around glowing monsters www.thecolossalcollective.com

4 July

4 July

Bolt cutters just bring that …Je ne sais quoi

Thoughts about Beauty. The argument is : Beauty is an evolutionary response to non threatening rarity. Beauty is subjective of course. In the eye of the beholder. The viewer creates the beauty, such that they have the beautiful feeling, when exposed to the rare thing.

Our worldview constructs and constrains what we believe is rare. Example: Sunsets, with clouds of pink and red, are rare and beautiful. A flower is beautiful because it is fleeting, rare in the onslaught of days. A poem is beautiful because you’ve never quite heard it said that way before.

@hardcasting.bsky.social @goblingathering.bsky.social Are these things beautiful because they are rare? And is the 'frequency' of a flower, a different rarity than the 'scarcity' of a sunset? Or is that the other way around?

We can extend this rational to someone who is very old. Does a very old person not find sunsets as beautiful? Having seen so many sunsets in their lives, does it take a really really unique sunset to trigger the awe of beauty?

If this is the case then there must be some time in our lives when we experience the MOST beauty. Where we have gathered enough data on what is rare and what isn’t, but not so much that we have formed heuristics which categorize our experiences into beauty-less abstractions.

Example: I gave my 5 month old daughter, a small block of ice in which I had frozen fiber optic cords hooked to rainbow LEDs. It glowed it ways I had never seen. But a balled up sock was also on the table that night, and my daughter’s attention was split equally between the two objects.