[Help Thread] Megaminx Discussion

[Cubing Forever]

I'm looking forward to buying a YuHu v2 M. Should I buy extra black tiles with it to switch grey and black or should I stick to grey?

 

[GenTheSnail]

I'm looking forward to buying a YuHu v2 M. Should I buy extra black tiles with it to switch grey and black or should I stick to grey?

If it's not too expensive, I would definitely get the black stickers, although I wouldn't necessarily replace them with grey.

The primary uses of switching out a set of tiles is to make them more distinguishable and easier to pick out on the puzzle. If you swap them out for whatever color you have on LL, you won't need to ever be able to use the extra "pop" that the black tiles lend to locate them during F2L or S2L. Instead, they'll all be together on LL where it will be pretty easy to pick them out among the rest of the colors.

I have a Galaxy Xman v2M with grey stickers. I do S2L a little differently than most people and end up on cream for my LL instead of grey. So for me, my LL color isn't grey, so I could end up swapping them for grey. As it is, I'm very used to my current color scheme; I do think that black tiles help with recognition, but (much like color neutrality) I doubt it's enough to warrant me going through the process of buying them and getting used to the new color scheme. But, if you're not used to anything yet, you should definitely go for it.


tl;dr Yes buy them, but make sure that you don't swap them out for the color/side that you use on LL.

 

[abunickabhi]

It's hard to do comms with 12 sides and no slice moves.

True, R2 E' R2 E R S R' F R' S' R F'. I wish slice moves existed on the megaminx.

 

[Jam88]

True, R2 E' R2 E R S R' F R' S' R F'. I wish slice moves existed on the megaminx.

I mean they kinda do. just not as we would expect them. if we define a slice move as a move that goes through between two faces and moves centers, then yes it does have slice moves

 

[swburk]

If it's not too expensive, I would definitely get the black stickers, although I wouldn't necessarily replace them with grey.

The primary uses of switching out a set of tiles is to make them more distinguishable and easier to pick out on the puzzle. If you swap them out for whatever color you have on LL, you won't need to ever be able to use the extra "pop" that the black tiles lend to locate them during F2L or S2L. Instead, they'll all be together on LL where it will be pretty easy to pick them out among the rest of the colors.

I have a Galaxy Xman v2M with grey stickers. I do S2L a little differently than most people and end up on cream for my LL instead of grey. So for me, my LL color isn't grey, so I could end up swapping them for grey. As it is, I'm very used to my current color scheme; I do think that black tiles help with recognition, but (much like color neutrality) I doubt it's enough to warrant me going through the process of buying them and getting used to the new color scheme. But, if you're not used to anything yet, you should definitely go for it.


tl;dr Yes buy them, but make sure that you don't swap them out for the color/side that you use on LL.

I’m verynew to Megaminx, so I could be wrong, but I would think it still helps to have a distinct LL color during F2L and S2L because it’s easier to rule out when looking for pairs no?

 

[Owen Morrison]

I’m verynew to Megaminx, so I could be wrong, but I would think it still helps to have a distinct LL color during F2L and S2L because it’s easier to rule out when looking for pairs no?

I would agree with you.

 

[Jam88]

I’m verynew to Megaminx, so I could be wrong, but I would think it still helps to have a distinct LL color during F2L and S2L because it’s easier to rule out when looking for pairs no?

Yeah but it's not worth swapping an already distinct ll colour for another distinct one. That would be a waste of time and money, as @GenTheThief said

 

[One Wheel]

I’m verynew to Megaminx, so I could be wrong, but I would think it still helps to have a distinct LL color during F2L and S2L because it’s easier to rule out when looking for pairs no?

I have a black side instead of white, and I use that for my star/ first face.

 

[Cuberstache]

I'm looking forward to buying a YuHu v2 M. Should I buy extra black tiles with it to switch grey and black or should I stick to grey?

I would definitely recommend swapping grey for black. Grey doesn't really pop next to the colors it's adjacent to. For me, it's hard to pick out next to cream, light blue, and pink. Black contrasts all the light colors next to it much better. My OLL recognition is significantly better with black than grey. I also don't have any problems with recognizing other colors, like cream and white. The only pair of pieces that look similar enough to confuse them is white/green and cream/green and assuming you do white star you should figure that out in inspection anyway.

 

[Sub1Hour]

I'm looking forward to buying a YuHu v2 M. Should I buy extra black tiles with it to switch grey and black or should I stick to grey?

I just got mine and it's amazing. I would highly recommend the black tiles, they are only a few bucks and can up the contrast on your cube. Personally, I like to replace white with black since it makes finding my star and 1st layer pieces much easier. Whatever way you choose to use them, they are definitely worth every penny.

 

[TheSlykrCubr]

Hi.

What method do most top level megaminx solvers use? I've heard of Westlund, Balint and ZZ-Spike, but i don'k know which to use

 

[Nmile7300]

Hi.

What method do most top level megaminx solvers use? I've heard of Westlund, Balint and ZZ-Spike, but i don'k know which to use

Westlund is the most used and considered by many people to be the best. It’s basically Star, F2L, S2L in a particular order, LL. The S2L (second 2 layers) is where most of the methods differ. Yu Da Hyun and Balint are other “methods” that are simply different ways of solving S2L. ZZ-Spike is fairly new I believe and I haven’t heard of anyone world class using it.

 

[GenTheSnail]

Westlund is the most used and considered by many people to be the best. It’s basically Star, F2L, S2L in a particular order, LL. The S2L (second 2 layers) is where most of the methods differ. Yu Da Hyun and Balint are other “methods” that are simply different ways of solving S2L. ZZ-Spike is fairly new I believe and I haven’t heard of anyone world class using it.

Yep! Balint used to be relevant, but nowadays, almost everyone fast uses Westlund.
ZZ-Spike is also a different way of solving S2L and is about 4 years old or so. I don't think I'm the only ZZ-Spike user, but I'm probably the fastest. I have an official 52 average and 48 single which isn't world class, but it's at least not slow.

I wouldn't really recommend it though, since I use it mainly to consolidate all of my methods as ZZ-- and I'm very very used to EO. It gives different ergonomics that could be considered both better or worse-- for my turning style, it's better, but again, I'm very used to RUL ZZ.

However, because Westlund does direct solving, and megaminx has a lot more room to move things around than CFOP does on 3x3, I do think it is probably both more efficient and faster overall.

Westlund
Balint
Yu Da Hyun
ZZ-Spike

 

[Sub1Hour]

Yep! Balint used to be relevant, but nowadays, almost everyone fast uses Westlund.
ZZ-Spike is also a different way of solving S2L and is about 4 years old or so. I don't think I'm the only ZZ-Spike user, but I'm probably the fastest. I have an official 52 average and 48 single which isn't world class, but it's at least not slow.

I wouldn't really recommend it though, since I use it mainly to consolidate all of my methods as ZZ-- and I'm very very used to EO. It gives different ergonomics that could be considered both better or worse-- for my turning style, it's better, but again, I'm very used to RUL ZZ.

However, because Westlund does direct solving, and megaminx has a lot more room to move things around than CFOP does on 3x3, I do think it is probably both more efficient and faster overall.

Westlund
Balint
Yu Da Hyun
ZZ-Spike

Would switching to one of these methods be significantly better than a freestyle approach? I avg around 1:20

 

[DNF_Cuber]

Would switching to one of these methods be significantly better than a freestyle approach? I avg around 1:20

what do you mean freestyle? Do you just solve S2L however you feel like?

 

[Cuberstache]

Would switching to one of these methods be significantly better than a freestyle approach? I avg around 1:20

I think it's a personal preference thing. Juan Pablo uses a pretty freestyle approach while loosely sticking to Westlund, while I use fixed order Westlund with very few deviations. I find a fixed order to work for me because I know what pieces to look for at every step rather than deciding between different cases. Obviously I miss out on some lucky cases like this but on the majority of solves the difference between different blocks is going to be pretty negligible.

 

[Sub1Hour]

I think it's a personal preference thing. Juan Pablo uses a pretty freestyle approach while loosely sticking to Westlund, while I use fixed order Westlund with very few deviations. I find a fixed order to work for me because I know what pieces to look for at every step rather than deciding between different cases. Obviously I miss out on some lucky cases like this but on the majority of solves the difference between different blocks is going to be pretty negligible.

I kind of do a similar thing and base my approach on Balint, but if there is an easy pair I can put in between Balint blocks I will. Generally, I'm just making Balint blocks but adding extra pairs if I see them.

 

[Cuberstache]

I kind of do a similar thing and base my approach on Balint, but if there is an easy pair I can put in between Balint blocks I will. Generally, I'm just making Balint blocks but adding extra pairs if I see them.

Ok, I see. So there are two things I don't like about Balint. You have extra rotations to put the last pairs in at the end, and there could be pieces stuck in the empty slots that need to go in other blocks. With Westlund, you solve a whole color before moving on to the next, so there aren't any leftover slots for pieces to be stuck in and you don't have to rotate back to places you already were earlier.

 

[DNF_Cuber]

Why do we do 2 look PLL for mega with edges first?

 

[Nmile7300]

Why do we do 2 look PLL for mega with edges first?

Because as far as I know, if you do corners before edges, the algs for corners and edges are either quite slow or the recognition is hard.
When you do corners before edges, the edge algs are just simple PLLs and short algs, and the corners are just commutators.