I've always known about its existence, but I haven't actively looked for it or played with it. Now I'm becoming increasingly curious about daub. Stories are told all over the place... But now I want to start experimenting with it. Any advice is welcome, of course , but my first step in experimenting... what color would you recommend? I've read a lot about silver, but is that the right color for daub? I mainly use tally's circle back. I would appreciate to hear your perspective on this....

Any color will do to get started. You can (perhaps counterintuitively) use blue daub on red cards and vice versa. You can use silver, gold, or black on just about any color with pretty good results.

I've always believed that thinking of daub as a concept rather than a specific product or color combination is the best way to fully understand it. You can play "daub" off of the newsprint of a newspaper, lipstick, colored paint cakes, "professional" daub made from the old formulas, etc. Big or small, any imprecise, blobish marks meant to go unnoticed and applied during the game is all daub is. How you get there is of little importance.

Jason

Thank you so much for your response and explanation. I completely understand your advice and am experimenting with making and applying the daubs in different colors to see how legible they are. The composition of what I use is more like a wax with a color I've added. I understand when you say that every advantage of applying something to a card is a daub. For learning purposes, I'm curious about the "professional" formulas that were used (not even what they use now). Are the professional daubs now more of a powder, wax-like, or something else? I find it fascinating to understand the old school.

Also read somewhere about using a mixture of graphite and clay from a pencil... is something like that mixed with another substance to get a solid shape?

And then I understand that there are two divisions in applying daub: on the fly, which is temporary, pre-worked with daub on a pre-worked deck, and what is permanent on the cards.

Thanks again for sharing your knowledge!