(Brad)
I'd like to take a minute to catch all of you up on the current plans for the end of Season 4, the break between seasons, and the ideas we've been rolling around for Season 5.
Season 4 has been solidified barring any last second emergency on our end, here's the list of upcoming episodes you can expect:
S4E8 - "The Board Game Cube: GRN/RNA Update" (Feb. 26th)
S4E9 - "Multicolor Sections as Archetype Support" (March 5th)
S4E10 - The Patron Decided Episode "Traps in Cube Design" (March 12th)
After Season 4 wraps up we'll be going on official hiatus for 2 weeks to get some housekeeping done in the background here. This is mostly stuff outside of the scope of the podcast but it might include editing some extra bonus content we have laying around and finishing polish on the website (which should hopefully be public by the end of S4.) We might also be tinkering with merchandise designs by then, as we're getting very close to that goal on Patreon.
Season 5 Has a start date solidified on April 2nd. Assuming everything lines up normally it should be 10 episodes as usual. This puts the end date on June 4th. The first episode of S5 will be S5E1 - The Board Game Cube Introduction REDUX. The point of this episode will be to redo the second half of episode one, with updated information for 2019 and much better editing and sound quality.
The only guest host currently lined up for S5 is Anthony Avitollo, who will be joining us for the roast of his cube. We may attempt to get Matt Kranstuber in front of a microphone again to discuss a topic, but I can't promise anything on that front. He's been out of podcasting for awhile now, but his opinions and contributions to the cube community over the years makes him a perfect guest host if he's willing. I already have a topic I'd like to bring him in for, but I don't know if the scheduling will work out.
Here's a quick look at the initial plans for Season 5, do note that not everything in this list will make the final cut, some of them may have to fight for their slot in the Patreon Decided episode, and other ones may get added to the list as we get further in the season and the discussion topics in the community at large crop up and episode requests come in. Just because an episode doesn't happen in the season it was penned in for doesn't mean it's scrapped, a lot of them will actually just get pushed back to S6 or S7 depending on when we think it will be best covered.
S5E1 - The Board Game Cube REDUX
Intro to cube drafting - First time cube drafting advice (Drafter-centric)
Hybrid Episode after WAR launch.
Comparing Split Cards after WAR launch.
Outsourcing to other formats
Where to put your money in a new cube
Beating a Dead Horse: Cold Takes (Crystal SHART amirite?)
Cutting cards you love to test new things
Roast of Anthony Avitollo’s Cube (Featuring Anthony Avitollo)
Battlebond+M19+C18 Postmortem (To keep GRN alone in Season 6)
Archetype: Fair Green/X Ramp (No SnT/SA/NO combo discussion.)
MCD
Ranking XYZ
SCD + Choosing Card Printings
Patreon Decided Episode
For those wondering: MCD, SCD, and Ranking episodes take very little work to set up ahead of time and tend to be our emergency buttons we have access to during each season. If one of us is busy and we're late to record that week or someone is sick we throw those episodes in as quick, easy to edit, recordings. They are not what I'd consider top-tier discussion topics, but they are still decent episode topics that we don't feel embarrassed to fall back on each season.
Let's talk about the roast episode for a moment. I'm sure most of you are fans of how absolutely horrible S2E8 is, unlike myself. The episode is actually one of our least downloaded (thankfully) and one of our only ones we got continuously mixed reviews on. Long story short, the first roast episode was a massive failure and we won't be repeating it. I would live a long and happy life never attempting a roast episode again, but some of our fans thought it was fantastic, so we're going to try to make a GOOD roast episode one more time. The current plan involves coming up with jokes in advance, keeping the episode short and only keeping the best jokes in, having Anthony on the show to keep certain audience members from feeling bad about us making fun of somebody else's cube while they are not present, and giving Anthony a counter-roast on us to finish the episode. We'll also be drinking less (not zero, but not blitzed like last time.) The result of this episode and all the extra work that will be going into it will lead to one of two outcomes:
A. We do roast episodes once a year as a "Holiday Special" of sorts. This keeps the format from getting stale as fast and makes it something people will actually look forward to in the future.
B. We scrap the concept once and for all and never speak of it again.
You can assume Season 6 will start after another two week break on June 25th or after the 4th of July, depending on our personal schedules at that point. (Filthy Americans, with our Summer holidays and long family weekends.) If, for some reason, we have to take the longer break and start after the 4th we'll extend S5 to an 11 or 12 episode season to keep the break period shorter. This is the problem with cementing our season schedule months in advance, we don't have regular workloads and our jobs don't care about our podcast surprisingly enough.
I hope this post has brought everyone up to date on all the podcast plans for the next three to four months. Feel free to ask us questions on the Patron-Only Discord if anything I talked about here was confusing or too vague.
As a final note, if you're one of our supporters reading this who is not yet in the Patron-Only Discord server, you really should be, it's the easiest way to talk to us and our community of supporters is amazingly fun to hang out with. If you're having trouble with Patreon not connecting to your Discord account or the invite not being sent automatically after connecting them, please contact us on a Patreon message or via the show's email.