Introduction

I meant to write and post this article on Thursday. Regular readers of the page know that is one of the warning signs that I might be falling off on regular updates of the page. I promise you that’s not the case this time. I am cram studying for a placement test for a Master’s degree program in computer science. But, I took a break this morning to update the page with my thoughts about the Pokemon Cube Redux.

The actual sequel here is simply this article. I never actually finished the cube that I started a couple of years ago. What can I say? I searched for the cards on the list and started to put together a cart on eBay. And, I discovered that it’s not just Magic the Gathering cards. People pay quite a bit for these little rectangles of cardboard.

“Planning” the Cube

“Planning” the cube actually went very quickly. I searched “Pokemon Cube” and one of the links lead me to a Google sheet that I then looked through with our cards to see which ones we already owned. Perhaps surprisingly (and perhaps not), our collection included a good amount of the cards. Even so, I still needed to purchase three quarters of the cards to finish out the cube.

But, as I said above. Collectors know what they have in this day and age of the internet. They charge a lot even for Pokemon cards. So, my inspiration and drive to finish the cube waned and eventually died. What brought back the spark? I’m glad you asked.

Chris got married a few weeks ago. I even shouted out the website during my best man speech. Don’t worry. I promise it was sincere and not tacky. Anyway, in the months leading to the wedding, we put together a couple of text chains for the groomsmen. One of the guys in the chain actually has a history here on the page as part of a night out where Chris and I went over to his play to play some MTG. He talked about ordering a bunch of proxies for his own cube (possibly inspired by my talk of a Pokemon cube) and then I felt like a huge idiot. Circle of life and all that.

Building the Cube

Even ordering the proxies (which admittedly are of good quality) from the web page that he mentioned would be somewhat cost prohibitive for me. And so I went back to Google and searched a for a page that offered even lower cost, or free, proxies. I found Limitless and started typing cards into the search bar. I made it about two-thirds of the way through the list of cards before I needed to take a break.

From now, I need to finish the list, print out the cards (this will be tricky since we no longer own a printer again) maybe at Staples or one of the University libraries. I don’t want to misuse the resources at work for this project, obviously. Once I print everything out, I want to do a test run with the boys.

The Verdict

The only thing I worry about in this Pokemon Cube Redux is that I’ve chosen grey scale cards to save time and money. Just looking at them on the screen, some of the cards look like they might be difficult to read in that format. That’s not a deal breaker, but it is something to consider. Ultimately, though, come back in December or January for my report on our experience with the cube.