I mean, after two solid months of no updates after the appeal to save Standard Pauper fell on deaf ears over at Wizards of the Coast - and after a year of rather infrequent posts - it should be pretty clear that this blog is dead. The Standard Pauper format is still alive thanks to dedicated players and community leaders, but the filter has been taken away at the same time a lot of changes have happened rapidly in my personal life.
So it looks like I'll be composing a eulogy for the Cabel the Pauper blog instead of an obituary for the format.
So why have I not been playing Standard Pauper since about mid-season or blogging about it? And why does it look like I won't again, at least not in 2016? I feel I owe whatever readers I have some answers.
The first reason is romance. This is something that I did not see coming, but after catching up online with an old acquaintance this spring and summer, things moved rather quickly into the fall and I'm now involved with a woman who has fast become the love of my life. She knows how to play Magic but isn't really too into it and was also in the European time zone finishing her doctoral degree. So my time was better spent chatting with her on Sundays and Mondays when the PDC events were going on. That is a pattern that will definitely continue once she goes back to Britain after coming home for the holidays.
I know, I know: it's the classic "found-a-girlfriend excuse" but I've always been of the mind that there's no such thing as excuses. There are just good explanations and bad explanations. I think falling in love and maintaining a long distance relationship is as good an explanation as any for just not having the time to log in to play Standard Pauper any more. And I can only hope that every Magic player out there - every human being, really - can find someone special against all odds to truly fall in love with.
Now that the sappy stuff is out of the way, the second and third reasons fit in with the Letter-M theme I've developed on the blog. These are music and Marxism.
On the music point, I've recently switched instruments from bass to acoustic guitar and will be going back to school for music. Specifically, I'll be training to become an audio recording engineer and I'm focusing on guitar because I already know how to play bass, keyboard, and can carry a tune singing. In about a year or so my final project for graduation will be to produce a 20-minute recording myself.
This means I can finally write and record all the songs I've been working on for years that all the bands I've been in before weren't interested in. It also means I'll have a marketable skill set as both a songwriter and studio engineer so this long spell of joblessness can finally be put to rest. So since I'll be practicing an instrument as often as recommended by my instructor and studying for classes, Magic simply has to take a backseat and I've already gotten halfway decent at guitar by spending my time learning chords and rhythms instead of playing Magic.
Finally we come to Marxism. I'm proud to report that after several years of starting and stopping with the bitch of text that is Marx's Das Kapital Volume I, I've finally finished reading the book and the lectures posted for free by Dr. David Harvey. Now I feel I truly understand several of the contradictions that are inherent in the capitalist system and know for a fact that Marxist philosophy and economic theory is more relevant than ever. My new girlfriend even got me Volume II for Christmas (she is also a socialist!) and I'll be spending my spare time this semester reading that one and following along with Dr. Harvey's newly posted lectures on this essential Marxist text.
Anybody interested in this intellectual undertaking can find Dr. Harvey's lectures here. I highly recommend not trying to tackle this masterpiece of philosophy, political economy, and world literature on your own. God knows I didn't make it very far by myself, so it's a blessing to have somebody who has been teaching the book for over forty years share his course materials for free over the Internet.
So those are the reason that I haven't been keeping this blog up to date and why I have no plans to do so after the publication of this post. My time will be spent maintaining a healthy long-distance relationship until summer arrives and my love finally comes home for good, practicing my guitar and learning the ins and outs of audio recording and engineering, and continuing my autodidactic studies of Marxist philosophy. This leaves no time for playing Magic, much less blogging about it.
The fact that the Standard Pauper filter was taken away from us and that a nasty bug in my MTGO client made deck-building a bigger chore than it was before are small potatoes compared to these positive life changes and thus warrants no more than a passing mention here.
The main thing I want to say is that it's been a hell of a lot of fun being a member of this small but close-knit community of online Magic players and doing a little bit of self-indulgent blogging about it from time to time was fun, too. I want to thank everybody who read this blog or my old forum posts and PureMTGO articles, everyone in the Standard Pauper Players Clan for keeping the format alive, and, of course, I wish you all good luck & have fun!
Peace Out!
- C
Showing posts with label Blogging. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Blogging. Show all posts
Tuesday, December 29, 2015
Sunday, July 26, 2015
Back to Standard Pauper with Izzet Tokens
It's been a while since I last posted here after rage-quitting Magic Online because Standard Pauper wasn't listed on the Formats page. And out of frustration with how poorly that program was performing...
But after a few months of cooling down, I found that Wizards of the Coast remedied the problem faster than I expected. And when I took the plunge to invest a few bucks into cards for some Standard Pauper decks just to see if Magic Online was working, I was pleasantly surprised with how well both the client and the deck I constructed were performing.
To make a long story short, the client has never once crashed, disconnected, or otherwise crapped out on me in three weeks of playing, during which I've had some of the most fun and successful Standard Pauper experiences of my "career" in the format. In other words, it's a fanastic time to stop hating on WotC and play some Standard Pauper!
So I guess I take back all those means things I said about R&D and Maro. Sorry guys! I suppose I just love the game too much and it makes me a jerk sometimes But enough of that, on to the deck!
As of this writing, on the eve of the MPDC Season 29 Worlds Championship, I've had greater Top 8 success with my Token Izzet Control build than any other stack of 75 digital cards I ever entered in a PDC tournament. I've twice made it the finals for a second-place finish and twice made it to the semi-finals out of five total entries. I consider this successful because, hey, winning isn't everything!
Just tonight I nearly won the SPDC Season 29 championship against a Mono Black Control build that I had bested in the Swiss. Unfortunately, my luck ran out against Izzet Control's toughest matchup.
But I still wouldn't change a thing about this list. All I'm going to do is update the Khans-block Dragon Fodders with the cool new Magic Origins printing that features the original Shards of Alara artwork. This brings me to a question I really have to ask:
Dragon Fodder has always been a nuts card and fits perfectly into the strategy of using only token-producing spells to summon two dudes at once while leaving the rest of the list open for control, card draw, more control, and even more card draw.
Most importantly, by running Dragon Fodder in Izzet Control instead of relying only the five-mana big token spells, the deck suddenly has the opportunity to apply pressure in the early game. I've won games off the back of a single Dragon Fodder dropped on the second turn while taking care of every potential blocker and threat my opponent could muster. It almost feels like I'm playing a Red Deck Wins....with Treasure Cruise and Nullify!
That and those Goblin tokens are fantastic when you need a couple of chumps to fend off a Boros Aggro or Formidable Green assault. I cannot recommend using Dragon Fodder in Izzet Control lists any higher. This inclusion was the only main difference between my build and the established Izzet decks, some of which forgo tokens entirely and focus on on Whirlwind Adept (which makes for a nice sideboard option here) hence the name "Token Izzet Control" to distinguish it from the rest. I believe it's well positioned in the format and primed for a win...
I've got one last chance this season to take the top spot as MPDC Season 29 Worlds happens tomorrow! But after results like this, I'm happy just to play. Indeed, I'm happier now that I'm actually able to play without Magic Online blowing up and it's a bit easier to find opponents. That, and this Standard Pauper metagame is incredibly deep and diverse.
So it's good to be back and it's even better to have people reading the blog. For the few who do, don't expect me to go overboard again and post all the time. I've already decided that blogging about Magic doesn't make one a better Magic player, so my updates here will be infrequent and completely random.
But thanks for reading anyway and good luck & have fun for everybody who participates in the last event of the season. It's good to be back :-) Peace,
- C
But after a few months of cooling down, I found that Wizards of the Coast remedied the problem faster than I expected. And when I took the plunge to invest a few bucks into cards for some Standard Pauper decks just to see if Magic Online was working, I was pleasantly surprised with how well both the client and the deck I constructed were performing.
To make a long story short, the client has never once crashed, disconnected, or otherwise crapped out on me in three weeks of playing, during which I've had some of the most fun and successful Standard Pauper experiences of my "career" in the format. In other words, it's a fanastic time to stop hating on WotC and play some Standard Pauper!
So I guess I take back all those means things I said about R&D and Maro. Sorry guys! I suppose I just love the game too much and it makes me a jerk sometimes But enough of that, on to the deck!
Token Izzet Control
Not Your Mom's Blue-Red Deck by Cabel
| Creatures 0 cards Other Spells 4 Dragon Fodder 4 Lightning Strike 4 Magma Spray 4 Nullify 4 Treasure Cruise 3 Anticipate 3 Divination 3 Flurry of Horns 3 Ojutai's Summons 2 Cancel 2 Voyage's End 36 cards |
Lands 11 Island 5 Mountain 4 Evolving Wilds 4 Swiftwater Cliffs 24 cards
Sideboard
3 Scouring Sands 3 Disdainful Stroke 3 Negate 2 Whirlwind Adept 2 Pin to the Earth 2 Voyage's End 15 cards |
|
As of this writing, on the eve of the MPDC Season 29 Worlds Championship, I've had greater Top 8 success with my Token Izzet Control build than any other stack of 75 digital cards I ever entered in a PDC tournament. I've twice made it the finals for a second-place finish and twice made it to the semi-finals out of five total entries. I consider this successful because, hey, winning isn't everything!
Just tonight I nearly won the SPDC Season 29 championship against a Mono Black Control build that I had bested in the Swiss. Unfortunately, my luck ran out against Izzet Control's toughest matchup.
But I still wouldn't change a thing about this list. All I'm going to do is update the Khans-block Dragon Fodders with the cool new Magic Origins printing that features the original Shards of Alara artwork. This brings me to a question I really have to ask:
Why have Izzet Control players not been using Dragon Fodder all season???
Dragon Fodder has always been a nuts card and fits perfectly into the strategy of using only token-producing spells to summon two dudes at once while leaving the rest of the list open for control, card draw, more control, and even more card draw.
Most importantly, by running Dragon Fodder in Izzet Control instead of relying only the five-mana big token spells, the deck suddenly has the opportunity to apply pressure in the early game. I've won games off the back of a single Dragon Fodder dropped on the second turn while taking care of every potential blocker and threat my opponent could muster. It almost feels like I'm playing a Red Deck Wins....with Treasure Cruise and Nullify!
That and those Goblin tokens are fantastic when you need a couple of chumps to fend off a Boros Aggro or Formidable Green assault. I cannot recommend using Dragon Fodder in Izzet Control lists any higher. This inclusion was the only main difference between my build and the established Izzet decks, some of which forgo tokens entirely and focus on on Whirlwind Adept (which makes for a nice sideboard option here) hence the name "Token Izzet Control" to distinguish it from the rest. I believe it's well positioned in the format and primed for a win...
I've got one last chance this season to take the top spot as MPDC Season 29 Worlds happens tomorrow! But after results like this, I'm happy just to play. Indeed, I'm happier now that I'm actually able to play without Magic Online blowing up and it's a bit easier to find opponents. That, and this Standard Pauper metagame is incredibly deep and diverse.
So it's good to be back and it's even better to have people reading the blog. For the few who do, don't expect me to go overboard again and post all the time. I've already decided that blogging about Magic doesn't make one a better Magic player, so my updates here will be infrequent and completely random.
But thanks for reading anyway and good luck & have fun for everybody who participates in the last event of the season. It's good to be back :-) Peace,
- C
Thursday, April 2, 2015
The Monthly Metablog & Metagame Report: March 2015, Part I - General Introduction
μετά
Of all the blogs I post, few are more fun than those in which I blog about blogging itself. Every month here on Cabel the Pauper, I will go meta. I sincerely hope you enjoy reading them as much as I do drafting, editing, and publishing these Monthly Metablogs.This may be more for my own purposes than for my readers. See, as long as I've been writing on the Internet, I've often found that when I'm writing about writing on the Internet while I'm...well, we have this prefix in order to not repeat ourselves so often, don't we? The dictionary can define this better...in fewer characters than I seem to be able to keep to:
In the case of a metablog, we're after the second entry in the above-linked definition of this useful prefix. Just as metaphilosophy is a branch of philosophy, primarily concerned with the question of what philosophy is (basically, philosophy is just thinking about thinking) a metablog is a blog about blogging. These have been happening ever since The Blog as a genre of Internet literature first appeared. The Wiktionary has a nice clear entry on this:
A Metablog can become self-referential. In fact, it has to be. By definition! This can get humorous, become confusing, and possibly annoying. Indeed, many see it as a waste of time or a load of nonsense. I recall when I was working on a the wiki page during the Great Designer Search 2. I often had more fun writing about how to do the tasks than actually doing them! It didn't take long for somebody to post a lamentful quip: "The Wiki has gone meta." This poster was using the word accurately as defined above, but was also very likely hinting at the term's more vernacular use. The Urban Dictionary is always fun to consult:
You got it: Metagame! We use this word very often, fellow Paupers, Peasants, and other proletarians Magic-players. Yet in drafting the metablog on metagaming for this month, I could not find a single, definitive definition expressed in dictionary times like those linked to above.
Now the Urban Dictionary did have an entry linked to on the "Meta" page, but I found unsatisfactory for Planesalkers. We need something more specific for our Magic metagaming purposes. There's much more to any Magic: the Gathering format's existence, and quite a bit more thought that Magic players put into the action of metagaming than a single dictionary-style entry just can't define. One really should read (or re-read) an entire article on the topic from a verified professional:
This piece may be several years old (about as old as Standard Pauper as a Format Magic Online) but it's by no means out of date. It remains one of the best places to familiarize yourself with the a metagame is and how to do metagaming. Just in case any of you reading this were not yet familiar. And to lead in to the second reason a blog titled something like "Monthly Meta" will appear early each month: to report on a Rarity-Restricted Casual/Competitive Magic: the Gathering Format's metgame!
With all that out of the way, I'm done blogging about why I'm blogging right now. Let us proceed with the Monthly Meta and take a thoughtful look at March 2015's Format of the Month, Standard Pauper...
...tomorrow :-)
Yes, dear reader, the one metablogging point I'll make in this entry is that my others are often very long. Perhaps too damn long! So the goal for this new month of April will be to "go beyond" my usual writing habits and shorten things up. A bit.
That makes this entry merely an introduction to the Monthly Metas here on Cabel the Pauper. And it means it's over. Expect the March Metagame report for Standard Pauper tomorrow and the Metagablog for March on Cabel the Pauper, featuring the M's of the Month, later this week.
Until then, thanks for reading and good luck & have fun! Peace,
-C
Saturday, March 28, 2015
ERRATA: Another STD Pauper Video Review of DTK Exists!
I reported yesterday during my round-up of other DTK set reviews for Standard Pauper that MagicGatheringStrat are the producers of the "only" video review of the set.
DrChrisBakerDC over at The Draft Brewery has also produced another Standard Pauper themed assessment of every single card in YouTube video form. He brought the error in my reporting to my attention in the comments section of the blog post, providing a link to his excellent video review. You can watch the entire video right here, right now.
His narration has some great laugh-out-loud moments and his card evaluation skills are excellent, It is a must-watch for all Standard Pauper players. In fact, how about you just watch out below! I'll save you some browser navigation time to help atone for my mix-up:
In any case: Apologies for this oversight go out to my readers and Dr. Chris himself. I honestly cannot believe I missed this and I'm very glad he brought this great piece of Standard Pauper media to my attention. I hereby correct myself like any good objective e-journalist should. The offending text has been struck out to indicate where the mistake took place and a link to this message has been added to the text of the offending post.
- C
That is incorrect! This cannot stand!
DrChrisBakerDC over at The Draft Brewery has also produced another Standard Pauper themed assessment of every single card in YouTube video form. He brought the error in my reporting to my attention in the comments section of the blog post, providing a link to his excellent video review. You can watch the entire video right here, right now.
His narration has some great laugh-out-loud moments and his card evaluation skills are excellent, It is a must-watch for all Standard Pauper players. In fact, how about you just watch out below! I'll save you some browser navigation time to help atone for my mix-up:
Please note that Dr. Chris doesn't start off with the new set: don't be fooled by his focus on the previously-evaluated Fate Reforged cards. The good doctor checks his last top ten predictions for that set based on how the Standard Pauper metagame has actually played out since. Just keep viewing - he'll get to Dragons of Tarkir soon enough after he's done reviewing...his own reviews! Now that's impressive intellectual integrity!
Honestly, having watched it after posting my own Critiques, it makes me wonder just how much I got horribly wrong in my own evaluations. I suppose we all make mistakes when it comes to judging new cards upon their initial release, but we can quickly fix our deckbuilding and spellcasting strategies to compensate.
But a blatant error in reporting and compiling information? That, dear reader, is a different animal entirely! The only humane thing to do is acknowledge it cannot be saved, put it to sleep and out of its misery, and properly dispose of the remains. It's like a cat that's grown so old and sickly it's practically a zombie. To not correct and update one's informative posts online is as filthy and mangy as a...
 |
| Am I correctly exploiting this scary simile? |
In any case: Apologies for this oversight go out to my readers and Dr. Chris himself. I honestly cannot believe I missed this and I'm very glad he brought this great piece of Standard Pauper media to my attention. I hereby correct myself like any good objective e-journalist should. The offending text has been struck out to indicate where the mistake took place and a link to this message has been added to the text of the offending post.
I will also opine - once and only once since this is my first official correction here - that it's only we red-blooded Leftists and our pinko-brained progressive-leaning pals who ever seem to submit such errata and make such displays of intellectual honesty. A word on how one's politics and philosophy affects their informative and editorial output on the Internet:
Part of being right all the time like a true radical commie bastard like myself (or right at least some of the time like any progressive) is...being able to admit that you get things wrong sometimes!
Our consistently incorrect counterparts? Your conservative-leaning liberal wimps and outright Right-winged reactionary wankers of the word? Those fools never, ever seem to do this sort of thing. They just plain do not possess the intellectual integrity required for such behavior thanks to their idiotic ideology. They are incapable of this.
If they did have the ability, acuity, humility, and/or sagacity to make editorial corrections to mistakes in their odious output...well, then they wouldn't lean to the right and be wrong all the time in the first place now, would they ;-) They would cease to bear any resemblance to the Magic card that perfectly describes them...
Our consistently incorrect counterparts? Your conservative-leaning liberal wimps and outright Right-winged reactionary wankers of the word? Those fools never, ever seem to do this sort of thing. They just plain do not possess the intellectual integrity required for such behavior thanks to their idiotic ideology. They are incapable of this.
If they did have the ability, acuity, humility, and/or sagacity to make editorial corrections to mistakes in their odious output...well, then they wouldn't lean to the right and be wrong all the time in the first place now, would they ;-) They would cease to bear any resemblance to the Magic card that perfectly describes them...
 |
| Libertarian Anarcho-Capitalist Self Portrait, conservative oil on canvass, 2015, collaboration by Glenn Beck, Ann Coulter, Alex Jones, Sean Hannity, Rush Limbaugh, Bill O'Reilly, Ron and Rand Paul and the artist who actually performed all the work and didn't share in any of the profits. So there. |
Thanks for reading this piece from Cabel the Red's Bureau of Correctional and Re-Education Facilities. We now return to our regularly scheduled blog-jamming. Thanks for reading and good luck & have fun with those new Dragons of Tarkir cards for all people who play Pauper on paper. Peace,
- C
Friday, March 27, 2015
DTK Midnight Release Musings & Reviewing...the Reviews!
Part 1: Dragons of Tarkir Midnight Release Musings
I am tired this morning and afternoon! And not just because I finally finished my five-part Critique of Dragons of Tarkir the day before: the new set was released at midnight last night. And I was there to get my new cards as soon as my favorite card shop could legally sell them.
Partly because this was the first full set I reviewed in full, partly because I am to begin hosting Standard Pauper events at my local games shop this coming Tuesday, and partly to disprove all those fallaciously claiming "Pauper does not drive sales" - a part of the debate about Standard Pauper not even being listed as an official format on the Wizards.com Formats page! - I decided that it was worth it to head to my favorite hobby gaming and scifantasy fiction store at midnight to pick up my traditional Fat Pack and Intro Packs.
See? Standard Pauper actually does drive sales!
I do this almost every set. Although I could build a Standard Pauper collection by only making purchases on the secondary market, cracking open Boosters of a brand new set as soon as possible is just part of what makes Magic so, well, magical! One of the great things about buying boosters and playing mainly Pauper is you can build your collection very quickly for less cash on opening day, when many stores offer first-time discounts to generate additional revenue for the most important thing any business can do...make payroll!
The next step for me? Taking whatever rares, mythics, or in-demand pieces of silver back to the game shop to get some of your money back, then using that to complete your playsets of the commons you were not lucky enough to unwrap. It actually works rather well, and if you go this route, you still get to have the irreplaceable experience of getting fresh new cards as soon as they are unleashed. Hey, even Paupers have dreams of opening big money mythic rare foils :-)
And that's not all: this isn't just a Standard Pauper blog. It's about all Rarity-Restricted Casual & Competitive formats. Peasant is also an existing format. So is SilverBlack, which is basically just "Rareless." I may yet desire to return to an FNM to challenge myself to see how well I can do when utilizing uncommons. And though I just purged my collection of all rares in order to get back into IRL Magic playing, I am (deep foreshadowing, here folks, stay tuned...) working on a Rarity-Restricted format of my own invention that will, I expect, allow cards with golden expansion symbols.
So after I got the promotional e-mail from the struggling little shop where I'll be running Standard Pauper Tuesdays starting in just a few days, I shuffled up my paper Standard Pauper decks and dropped in about 11:30 PM. To my dismay (and owner on the phone with the cashier!) there was only one other customer there, and she was too tired to play. But another dude walked in early to pick up his box, his hopes high that his chase for new Legendary rare perfect for his favorite Commander deck would be successful. I sure hope it was!
He dropped dudes nearly ever turn, but I had answers. He was clearly still having fun plenty of fun, and was even able to Cruise for Treasure twice to summon more than a couple threatening Heroes. But my bounce, permission, and burn was able to clear the way for Minotaur tokens for the win: I drew all four copies of Flurry of Horns. Despite his defeat, he seemed more interested in Standard Pauper than ever, and the time flew. He grabbed his box and quickly left as I wished him luck in finding that new Legend he'd been building his Pauper EDH deck around for months.As for me, I grabbed the Fat Pack I always get because I think they are good buy. For forty bucks, I get plenty of basic lands with new artwork and the correct expansion symbol for building block decks and keeping my decks aesthetically pleasing to me. I get the booklet with the collectors checklist to help me keep track of how unlucky I am when trying to collect common playset. I get that very cool d20 with the set symbol that could someday end up being a collector's item. And in my experience, you do get a better shot at pulling money cards from Fat Packs.
Anyway, I hope you enjoyed this story of my midnight Magic experience. I thoroughly enjoyed playing a Standard Pauper match with another dude face-to-face, chatting with my co-organizer at the shop, and busting open those packs after reading the story. I ripped open the packaging while re-watching the Dragons of Tarkir Standard Pauper set review from my comrades at MagicGatheringStrat...
Part Two: Reviewing the Reviews of DTK for Standard Pauper
...which brings me to part two of my blog post today, which is much happier than my previous critical reviews and my desperate ravings about Wizards refusing to acknowledge that this format exists. I may be the most long-winded and foul-mouthed of Standard Pauper online personalities, but I'm by no means the only one. There are others. And I compile them here today for your convenience and reading pleasure.
There is NO reason to be an individualist if you have NOBODY to share your individualism with! In this sense, our old Existential Marxist friend, Jean-Paul Sartre, was wrong.Hell is not, as he insisted, "other people." Other people are, in fact, our Heaven here on Earth!
The only reason a collective ever exists is to ensure the expression of it's members' individuality with other individuals, isn't it? The only reason individuals exist is to become part of an empowering collective, and the only reason a collective exists is to empower all the individuals that comprise the collective. See? ¡Sí!
Give that line of socialist thinking a second thought if you're so inclined. But definitely check out these, the best of the rest of the Standard Pauper set reviews for Dragons of Tarkir!
Gwyned is THE authority on Standard Pauper! He hosts the long-running MPDC PRE series on MTGO through PDCMagic. He blogs about Magic and many other topics on his succinct, well-composed blog Writer Adept. And he also is the author of Standard Pauper articles on PureMTGO.com. It's almost a moot point to instruct you to read his work. If you get into Standard Pauper either in real life or online, coming into contact with his consistently excellent work is inevitable. He's been giving us set reviews from the perspective of a Standard Pauper player for a long time. The first part of his full set review is already published on PureMTGO and I highly anticipate parts two and three. Instead of just going by color as most do, his approach is to review cards by various relationships such as new mechanics, horizontal and vertical cycles, and card types. And instead of over-used letter grades or ratings on a scale of one to infinity, he uses a concise system based on Channel Fireball's "hit or myth" system. Read his stuff if you only have time for one Standard Pauper set review. That's an order, comrade!
You can find a lot of good information on Limited play on his blog as well (something I need as much as I can get with!) and he's a formidable Magic player in his own right. Seriously, one of the best who you can expect to lose against if you start hunching over your computer screen. Since he's such a busy doctor and such a freaking good Magic player, he hasn't invested as much time as Gwyned or myself in reviewing the entire set or establishing a consistent, creative rating system. But that's refreshing and it still works. When you're as good as Dr. Chris, you can simply rate things on an A through F scale, rank the colors, and present a top ten list of the cards in the set. He's got the authority to do so. Respect his authorit-ah!ERRATA: DrChrisBakerDC has also produced a 90 minute YouTube video reviewing every single card in the set, contrary to what I am about to report in the segment that follows. Sincerest apologies submitted and appropriate action taken in compensation. This message has been brought to you by Cabel the Red's Bureau of Correctional and Re-Education Facilities.
Thirdly, there is the gang at MagicGatheringStrat. This cast of colorful characters are into both writing articles and Skyping together to produce YouTube videos and Podcasts about a variety of Magic formats. Among the formats they cover, they produce probably more Standard Pauper content excepting perhaps myself or the Gwyned the Great! They are the creators of The Standard Pauper Show, the only place on the web to get news on this format on a regular basis in a way that won't leave your eyes blurry from reading voluminous blog posts...
They even have a Standard Pauper subsection on their forums,
This is the second (or third?) time Brennon, VaultBoyHunter, and FanOfHistory have collaborated to produce what is
It's as if my prayers were answered. These guys are the Standard Pauper equivalent of Evan Erwin & Brad Nelson's ten-hour Magic Show set reviews. When you pick up your Fat Pack of Dragons of Tarkir, put this on and enjoy their hard work while you start brewing your deck!
CARDBOARD COMMONS REVIEWS PARA PAUPER...EN ESPAÑOL
Finally, this one is rather challenging but I TRY to read it because my other hobby these days is...learning how to hablar español! Produced by a group of Spaniards (or at least Spanish-speakers) on a Wordpress blog called Cardboard Commons, this is one of my favorite new discoveries that combines two of my hobbies: reading and writing about Pauper and learning foreign tongues!
But enough about me. And thank God for Google's translate feature! That allows me to check my own translation (or see how bad Google has translated things...it's quite amusing to see Chrome get confused when encountering Magic player vernacular!) and so far I've found that these are the only other guys on the planet giving each card in all five colors a page of their own with reviews and critiques geared exclusively towards Pauper. That makes for a marvelous discovery, indeed. I encourage everybody to check them out now that they have been added to my Rarity-Restricted Casual/Competitive Magic: the Gathering blogosphere links.
El Fin
Before closing and wishing you all good luck & have fun, let me add this: my local games shop has decided to INCREASE THE PRIZE PAYOUT for the STANDARD PAUPER EVENTS played IN REAL LIFE beginning this coming TUESDAY, MARCH 31st!! That's right! You'll still be able to pick 40, 20, or 10 commons out of their huge dump-box inventory, but NOW you can also WIN PACKS! That's right! Win PACKS for playing STANDARD PAUPER! Damn, this is exciting!
Okay. Now you have fun and hopefully experience good luck ripping open those brand new Dragons of Tarkir booster packs! Until next time, thanks for reading ALL this text :-) Peace,
- C
Friday, March 13, 2015
Weekend Previews: Upcoming Drafting Trilogy and Standard Pauper Deck Challenges
Welcome back to Cabel the Pauper! Everybody please silence your cell phones and take note that there there is No Exit! Today's brief update is a teaser of what's to come and has been approved for all audiences by the International Committee of the Fourth, Fifth, or Sixth-and-a-Third Internationale (Depending on Who's Counting).
The following pieces are currently being composed and will hopefully challenge everything you know about blogging, drafting, and Standard Pauper, coming soon to an Internet connection near you. In other words, here's what I'm working on for next week on my little blog:
"To Draft Or Not To Draft" will be an epic trilogy about ONE MAN and his heroic journey into the evolving wilds of limited play with limited resources.
BASS-BOOM-BOOM-BASS....
Will our hero find that the pen is mightier by the sword?
BOOM-BASS-BOOM-BASS-BOOM...
Or will his life by the sword result in his death by the sword?
BOOM-BASS-SUB-WOOF-BOOM-Boom-boom-bomb-bass-bass-fade-fade....
[insert cheesy advertising tagline and social media icons here]
In addition to this series, I shall chronicle a Standard Pauper deck challenge taking place tonight. I will bring one of the top decks in the online Standard Pauper metagame to a Friday Night (Money) Magic event at my local game store. There's already plenty of Web-based promotion for this endeavor posted on this thread at PDCMagic.com for more information.
Finally, I'll be making a very important announcement regarding competitive Standard Pauper play In Real Life by the end of next week. If you're in my geographic area and are hard up for tickets and entry fees and as frustrated as I am with MTGOv4's lack of functionality, but still desire to play the best Magic: The Gathering ever devised, you definitely want remain seated and stay tuned...
That's all for previews this Friday. I hope you enjoy your weekend, are able to sneak in your own refreshments without having to make any concessions in your casual or competitive gaming outings the next few days. Thanks for reading and good luck & have fun! Peace,
- C
The following pieces are currently being composed and will hopefully challenge everything you know about blogging, drafting, and Standard Pauper, coming soon to an Internet connection near you. In other words, here's what I'm working on for next week on my little blog:
"To Draft Or Not To Draft" will be an epic trilogy about ONE MAN and his heroic journey into the evolving wilds of limited play with limited resources.
BASS-BOOM-BOOM-BASS....
Will our hero find that the pen is mightier by the sword?
BOOM-BASS-BOOM-BASS-BOOM...
Or will his life by the sword result in his death by the sword?
BOOM-BASS-SUB-WOOF-BOOM-Boom-boom-bomb-bass-bass-fade-fade....
[insert cheesy advertising tagline and social media icons here]
In addition to this series, I shall chronicle a Standard Pauper deck challenge taking place tonight. I will bring one of the top decks in the online Standard Pauper metagame to a Friday Night (Money) Magic event at my local game store. There's already plenty of Web-based promotion for this endeavor posted on this thread at PDCMagic.com for more information.
Finally, I'll be making a very important announcement regarding competitive Standard Pauper play In Real Life by the end of next week. If you're in my geographic area and are hard up for tickets and entry fees and as frustrated as I am with MTGOv4's lack of functionality, but still desire to play the best Magic: The Gathering ever devised, you definitely want remain seated and stay tuned...
That's all for previews this Friday. I hope you enjoy your weekend, are able to sneak in your own refreshments without having to make any concessions in your casual or competitive gaming outings the next few days. Thanks for reading and good luck & have fun! Peace,
- C
Tuesday, March 10, 2015
The Last Facebook Post
Yesterday I mentioned that I am taking great pains to reform my writing activities online. This is why I am back to blogging here regularly, hopefully on a daily basis. Over the past several years, I have cultivated a habit of posting hard Left-wing and critical commentary on social media several times a day on my Facebook page.....
Actually, that's not entirely true. The gardening metaphor conjures up images of healthy botanicals and attractive perennials. I've realized that a better analogy is to the weeds that must be uprooted in order to grow a garden properly. My Facebook page has actually become overgrown with rantings and ravings that are not at all attractive. In fact, it is shameful. I was not cultivating anything of value. I was screwing myself the same way we get mana screwed in Magic: The Gathering if we fail to build the proper mana base or include such fixing spells as Cultivate itself.
But even that comparison lets me off the hook for what I actually doing: stacking the deck against myself.
So a couple of days ago, I determined that taking the first step to getting back to blogging here was not unlike taking the first of the twelve steps required for sobriety. I had to admit to myself and to others that I had a problem with excessive posting on social media.
And I do! That's a problem. So I'm fixing it so as not to be so damned off-color. I may be a Red, but that doesn't mean I have to spend my time online sinking deeper into a Swamp of egotistical self-indulgence. That's the common bond between this blog and my other online activities.
I have already written about this on in my last Facebook post, which I will quote below in its entirety. I'm already in the habit of writing online as soon as I awaken each morning. But I need this to be a good habit, not a bad one. I used to wake up feeling the craving to post, troll, post again, agitate, post some more, and before I knew it I would be through a whole pot of coffee with no food in my belly...and my writing would have remained just as grandiloquent as before and having failed to make my point as best as I could. I was trying to agitate and educate and organize...but it was just agitating to others and resulted in a disorganized life for myself.
Now that I'm no longer trolling about that social media platform, I'll also note that I have taken to Twitter. I find the restriction to 140 characters is doing wonders for my writing skills as I've probably exceeded a 140 sentence (or even paragraph!) limit on Facebook. I hope my dear readers will follow my Twitter account as well as this blog.
Without further adieu, here is the adieu I bid to Facebook the day before I said buneas días to Cabel the Pauper: the Last Facebook Post:
Whew! Thanks for reading through all this verbosity. This time - for the last time - I think it was necessary. Now that I've satiated my daily desire to get writing first thing in the morning, it's time to get back to work on my proletarian IRL M:TG projects, one of which will be the subject of my next update: The Great Purge of 2015! Until then, good luck & have fun! Peace,
- C
Actually, that's not entirely true. The gardening metaphor conjures up images of healthy botanicals and attractive perennials. I've realized that a better analogy is to the weeds that must be uprooted in order to grow a garden properly. My Facebook page has actually become overgrown with rantings and ravings that are not at all attractive. In fact, it is shameful. I was not cultivating anything of value. I was screwing myself the same way we get mana screwed in Magic: The Gathering if we fail to build the proper mana base or include such fixing spells as Cultivate itself.
So a couple of days ago, I determined that taking the first step to getting back to blogging here was not unlike taking the first of the twelve steps required for sobriety. I had to admit to myself and to others that I had a problem with excessive posting on social media.
And I do! That's a problem. So I'm fixing it so as not to be so damned off-color. I may be a Red, but that doesn't mean I have to spend my time online sinking deeper into a Swamp of egotistical self-indulgence. That's the common bond between this blog and my other online activities.
I have already written about this on in my last Facebook post, which I will quote below in its entirety. I'm already in the habit of writing online as soon as I awaken each morning. But I need this to be a good habit, not a bad one. I used to wake up feeling the craving to post, troll, post again, agitate, post some more, and before I knew it I would be through a whole pot of coffee with no food in my belly...and my writing would have remained just as grandiloquent as before and having failed to make my point as best as I could. I was trying to agitate and educate and organize...but it was just agitating to others and resulted in a disorganized life for myself.
Now that I'm no longer trolling about that social media platform, I'll also note that I have taken to Twitter. I find the restriction to 140 characters is doing wonders for my writing skills as I've probably exceeded a 140 sentence (or even paragraph!) limit on Facebook. I hope my dear readers will follow my Twitter account as well as this blog.
Without further adieu, here is the adieu I bid to Facebook the day before I said buneas días to Cabel the Pauper: the Last Facebook Post:
Colin DavidMarch 8 at 1:02pm ·
Whew! Thanks for reading through all this verbosity. This time - for the last time - I think it was necessary. Now that I've satiated my daily desire to get writing first thing in the morning, it's time to get back to work on my proletarian IRL M:TG projects, one of which will be the subject of my next update: The Great Purge of 2015! Until then, good luck & have fun! Peace,
- C
Monday, March 9, 2015
Back to Blogging and The Five M's of Cabel the Pauper
It has been nearly a year since I have posted anything new here. And what a year it was! I shall spare the details for the sake of my readers and myself. All you need to know for the purposes of this long-overdue post is this: I've returned to playing Magic: The Gathering in real life at the same time I am reforming my writing activities on the Internet.
That means it's time to get back to blogging here after breaking several promises to update regularly about Magic Online and far too many other topics. On this Monday, I will begin (again!) by directing your attention to the changes already made and my plans for the future.
First of all, this blogs description in the header has been shortened from its former declamatory incarnation to be more concise and accurate regarding the intended content. I've distilled what I'll be covering to one main point and five other interrelated interests of mine worth writing about. The most important is now listed at the top of the page and the rest of these - all beginning with the letter "M" by some strange coincidence - you will find in a revised list of links in the sidebar.
Magic: the Gathering will be what I post about the majority of the time. It will not be about bourgeois Money Magic formats, which I oppose. Instead, this will be the place for what I have christened Rarity-Restricted Casual/Competitive styles of play. I explained what this was in the post immediately preceeding this one three days shy of one year ago. If you are unfamiliar with what this approach to Magic is, I encourage you to find out below or by clicking the link provided.
In fact, I intend to make it known to you and every other Magic player I come into contact with. Much, much more on this in future posts.
Last, but not least, are the other Five M's of Cabel the Pauper. I will elaborate on these sub-topics in the future. For now, two elements of each are alluded to in parentheses as sub-headers for the new link lists featured to your right. Here they are for reference below:
You'll note that there are five of these just as there are five colors in Magic: The Gathering. The idea here is to connect these areas of interest and inquiry to the game itself, as well as combine them together in the same way the five colors join forces into guilds, shards, and wedges.
Perhaps someday I'll be good enough a writer to compose a piece that connects all six! But that post is for another day and, after having said all that needs to be said for now, this post itself has become too magniloquent.
In closing, I hope you enjoy the new format and subject matter. This time I make no promises with regard to a set blogging schedule. But I plan to explain reasons for returning to playing Magic: The Gathering in real life as opposed to Online; for returning here instead of continuing to post elsewhere on the Internet; and for settling upon these specific five topics.
It's good to be back! Thanks for reading and following along and good luck to the Standard Pauper players still struggling with Magic Online. Peace,
- C
That means it's time to get back to blogging here after breaking several promises to update regularly about Magic Online and far too many other topics. On this Monday, I will begin (again!) by directing your attention to the changes already made and my plans for the future.
First of all, this blogs description in the header has been shortened from its former declamatory incarnation to be more concise and accurate regarding the intended content. I've distilled what I'll be covering to one main point and five other interrelated interests of mine worth writing about. The most important is now listed at the top of the page and the rest of these - all beginning with the letter "M" by some strange coincidence - you will find in a revised list of links in the sidebar.
Magic: the Gathering will be what I post about the majority of the time. It will not be about bourgeois Money Magic formats, which I oppose. Instead, this will be the place for what I have christened Rarity-Restricted Casual/Competitive styles of play. I explained what this was in the post immediately preceeding this one three days shy of one year ago. If you are unfamiliar with what this approach to Magic is, I encourage you to find out below or by clicking the link provided.
In fact, I intend to make it known to you and every other Magic player I come into contact with. Much, much more on this in future posts.
Last, but not least, are the other Five M's of Cabel the Pauper. I will elaborate on these sub-topics in the future. For now, two elements of each are alluded to in parentheses as sub-headers for the new link lists featured to your right. Here they are for reference below:
- Marxism (Philosophy & Politics)
- Meditation (Buddhist & Franciscan)
- Music (Performance & Enjoyment)
- Mixology (Professionalism & Recovery)
- Media (Social & Traditional)
You'll note that there are five of these just as there are five colors in Magic: The Gathering. The idea here is to connect these areas of interest and inquiry to the game itself, as well as combine them together in the same way the five colors join forces into guilds, shards, and wedges.
Perhaps someday I'll be good enough a writer to compose a piece that connects all six! But that post is for another day and, after having said all that needs to be said for now, this post itself has become too magniloquent.
In closing, I hope you enjoy the new format and subject matter. This time I make no promises with regard to a set blogging schedule. But I plan to explain reasons for returning to playing Magic: The Gathering in real life as opposed to Online; for returning here instead of continuing to post elsewhere on the Internet; and for settling upon these specific five topics.
It's good to be back! Thanks for reading and following along and good luck to the Standard Pauper players still struggling with Magic Online. Peace,
- C
Monday, March 10, 2014
Revised Blog Posting Schedule
As I promised when I announced my return, I have revised the posting schedule for the blog. Cabel the Pauper will now update three times a week and will feature the following revised format:
This schedule is manageable with my work schedule, which is not something I'm prepared to compromise after so many years of being out of work. That situation brought me to pauperism in the first place (and it feels good to be out of it!) so I feel I owe it to the format itself to continue writing about it as I return to playing it.
I hope you enjoy the future posts on Cabel the Pauper. Thanks for reading goes without saying from here on out. But I'll always close with a good luck & have fun. Peace,
- C
Mondays - The MPDC Pre-Game Show will go live on Monday morning for some final thoughts before the MPDC tournament starts the same day. If you haven't been able to catch up Standard Pauper news all week, I'll link the reader up with all that can be found on other blogs, too.
Wednesdays - I've decided to get rid of any "wacky" themes for this day and simple commit to any random post about Magic: The Gathering. At least half the posts will be about Standard Pauper while the rest of the time other Rarity-Restricted Casual-Competitive formats will be covered (and I'll finally elaborate on the philosophy of this style of Magic play).
Fridays - As these are work days for me, I can commit to getting a post up here on Fridays on a bi-weekly basis. But I cannot guarantee which topic this "freestyle" piece will be about beyond pointing you to this blogs still unchanged description. You'll just have to stay tuned to find out.
This schedule is manageable with my work schedule, which is not something I'm prepared to compromise after so many years of being out of work. That situation brought me to pauperism in the first place (and it feels good to be out of it!) so I feel I owe it to the format itself to continue writing about it as I return to playing it.
I hope you enjoy the future posts on Cabel the Pauper. Thanks for reading goes without saying from here on out. But I'll always close with a good luck & have fun. Peace,
- C
Friday, March 7, 2014
The Return of Cabel the Pauper
Just in time to cover for another Standard Pauper writer going away for a while, I am finally able to return to writing about the game (and playing it!) after having been gone for some time.
Believe you me, nobody was as disappointed about my absence as I was. Playing Standard Pauper, organizing Player Run Events in the format, and writing about it all on this blog and on PureMTGO are high on my list of things I enjoy doing. I did not plan my break from hosting and blogging, and sadly I will not be able to host again....
But I do plan to get this blog back up and running and write future articles about the exciting Standard Pauper format and its competitive metagame. Real life has blessed me with a job that does not require me to work Mondays, so I expect to once again be a regular at the Monday Pauper Deck Challenge tournaments on MTGO. That is where I will gain the necessary experience required to start writing quality content regarding the Standard Pauper environment and its unexplored nooks and crannies in this earliest of early seasons after the release of Born of the Gods.
I have returned!
Cabel the Pauper marches on!
In the coming days, I'll have a new blog posting schedule worked out after revising my previous plans to fit with my new real life responsibilities. In the meantime, feel free to use the comments to talk up what I missed when I went AWOL for a month and a half. I'll see you in the Just for Fun Room. When I do, I wish you good luck & good games. Peace,
- C
Thursday, February 13, 2014
IN ABSENTIA
IN ABSENTIA:
...which I won't ;-)
Instead, I'll just officially let my few readers and Pauper friends know that the blog will be down for a little bit longer and that I'm sorry I had to leave it in the first place.
All I can say in my defense is that I had no intention to put it down - far from it! Regular readers know this blog always had bigger and better plans being made for it, even if it was only a very small blog. Practically only in incubation. Anyway, I was more pulled away from or, perhaps, even called away from the hobbies and interests listed above.
But my situation is better than it might seem and things are looking up. If all goes well, I may no longer be in absentia for much longer than a few months or two. And in the meantime, you can bet I'll be cooking up more blog ideas on the side.
'Til then, keep up the good work, guys! See you 'round Magic 2015! Peace & God bless,
-C
That is the status of Cabel the Pauper. Take your pick of the above possibilities and it probably applies. Or at least I could write a whole blog about how each one might, in a sense, actually apply...Absentia is Latin for absence. In absentia, a legal term, is Latin for "in the absence" or "while absent".(In) absentia may also refer to:
- Award in absentia
- Declared death in absentia
- Election in absentia
- Excommunication in absentia
- Graduation in absentia
- In absentia health care, the provision of healthcare in the absence of a personal contact
- Trial in absentia
...which I won't ;-)
Instead, I'll just officially let my few readers and Pauper friends know that the blog will be down for a little bit longer and that I'm sorry I had to leave it in the first place.
All I can say in my defense is that I had no intention to put it down - far from it! Regular readers know this blog always had bigger and better plans being made for it, even if it was only a very small blog. Practically only in incubation. Anyway, I was more pulled away from or, perhaps, even called away from the hobbies and interests listed above.
But my situation is better than it might seem and things are looking up. If all goes well, I may no longer be in absentia for much longer than a few months or two. And in the meantime, you can bet I'll be cooking up more blog ideas on the side.
'Til then, keep up the good work, guys! See you 'round Magic 2015! Peace & God bless,
-C
Wednesday, January 8, 2014
Wacky...Whatever, It's Wedensday
You were expecting Wacky Wednesday? Well so was I, but when I started writing it all these Governors and Vice-Presidents started coming to town when a bunch of indie rockers came up to me and I was like...
In all seriousness, time and inspiration constraints have caused me to revise my blogging plans a bit. The theme for Wednesdays this year will be whatever I can alliterate with the letter "W" since I'm obviously an alliteration addict.
There's some great words that start with the same letter as "word" itself, many of them corresponding to my interests as a Pauper Magic player and somewhat of a pauper in real life. You get connected with certain powers when the hand you are dealt is not quite as strong as those dealt to others in this stacked-deck world. Many of these coincidentally begin with the same target letter:
Willpower. Wisdom. Wellness. Wonder. And of course, that thing that doesn't seem to increase as quickly as pauperism: Wealth.
I should be able to come up with something more interesting given this new, less limiting constraint. I have a second daily writing gig that must take precedence over this blog (in the coming weeks, I'll let you know why and where).
Finally, I imagined myself in mid-year, trying desperately to be funny with another Wacky Wednesday. I felt corny just thinking about it :-)
So sometimes I'll be wacky, and sometimes I'll be wise. For now, this post is just a warning that you can expect whatever you didn't expect come Wednesdays.
To make up for this, I will build the absolute wackiest Standard Pauper deck I can cook up for tomorrow's SPDC 20.02 tournament I'll be hosting at 9:00 PM in the Anything Goes room (which I'd lobby to have renamed to the Whatever room). See you there! Peace,
-C
In all seriousness, time and inspiration constraints have caused me to revise my blogging plans a bit. The theme for Wednesdays this year will be whatever I can alliterate with the letter "W" since I'm obviously an alliteration addict.
There's some great words that start with the same letter as "word" itself, many of them corresponding to my interests as a Pauper Magic player and somewhat of a pauper in real life. You get connected with certain powers when the hand you are dealt is not quite as strong as those dealt to others in this stacked-deck world. Many of these coincidentally begin with the same target letter:
Willpower. Wisdom. Wellness. Wonder. And of course, that thing that doesn't seem to increase as quickly as pauperism: Wealth.
I should be able to come up with something more interesting given this new, less limiting constraint. I have a second daily writing gig that must take precedence over this blog (in the coming weeks, I'll let you know why and where).
Finally, I imagined myself in mid-year, trying desperately to be funny with another Wacky Wednesday. I felt corny just thinking about it :-)
So sometimes I'll be wacky, and sometimes I'll be wise. For now, this post is just a warning that you can expect whatever you didn't expect come Wednesdays.
To make up for this, I will build the absolute wackiest Standard Pauper deck I can cook up for tomorrow's SPDC 20.02 tournament I'll be hosting at 9:00 PM in the Anything Goes room (which I'd lobby to have renamed to the Whatever room). See you there! Peace,
-C
Sunday, January 5, 2014
Weekend Update: 2014 Posting Schedule
For the first Weekend Update of the New Year, I'll fulfill my promise made in my Holiday Update as to how updates to this blog will look for the rest of the year. Since then, the next edition of Standard & Pauper has been submitted and should see publication on PureMTGO soon. The details of the 20th season of SPDC have been finalized as well. That leaves only a regular posting schedule for Cabel the Pauper.
And here it is!
But first, a little reasoning behind the time table: I found last year that posting twice daily was too much work. Even after reducing this I found that once a day was still too difficult to fit into real life demands. My hopes of a site that published daily content about Standard Pauper seemed dashed.
But this is okay in the end because others are posting regularly as well (check them out on the sidebar of this blog). A daily stream of submissions has can be achieved by circumstantial collaboration so that no one person has a post-a-day responsibility that, in the end, is too demanding. So since Gwyned over at Writer Adept has announced his intent to post three days a week, I'll fill in the holes on the four remaining days. This leads me to present to you the 2014 blogging schedule for Cabel the Pauper:
And here it is!
But first, a little reasoning behind the time table: I found last year that posting twice daily was too much work. Even after reducing this I found that once a day was still too difficult to fit into real life demands. My hopes of a site that published daily content about Standard Pauper seemed dashed.
But this is okay in the end because others are posting regularly as well (check them out on the sidebar of this blog). A daily stream of submissions has can be achieved by circumstantial collaboration so that no one person has a post-a-day responsibility that, in the end, is too demanding. So since Gwyned over at Writer Adept has announced his intent to post three days a week, I'll fill in the holes on the four remaining days. This leads me to present to you the 2014 blogging schedule for Cabel the Pauper:
Mondays - The Monday Metagame Report
This feature will appear a few hours prior to the MPDC tournament and will contain all the updated metagame information compiled from the previous weeks' MPDC and SPDC tournaments. This column will always be about Standard Pauper.
Wednesday - Wacky Wednesdays!
This silly feature from last year will continue, if only for my own selfish amusement. I will at least try to be funny here once a week while discussing pretty much anything Magic related that strikes me as wacky. I'm sorry if I do not succeed :-D
Fridays - Freestyle Fridays
All those non-Magic related topics mentions in the blog description are reserved for this column. Even though they seem unrelated to M:TG, the goal here will be to find hidden parallels. Expect more philosophy and pop culture themed posts than anything else. Or, if the last night's SPDC event was particularly exciting, I'll provide a tournament report like the last one. The point is to provide me with the freedom to do one or the other as circumstances permit.
Sundays - The Weekend Update
Finally, this will be similar to the Freestyle Friday format, but will only ever focus on either Standard Pauper or other Rarity Restricted Casual Competitive formats on Magic Online. The Update portion itself will contain announcements for Standard Pauper events in the upcoming week and a quick wrap-up of the best format coverage elsewhere on the web during the past week. The rest of the post will essentially be my Sunday morning "talking head" style of editorial, mostly focusing on what I've been playing on MTGO, or some metagame comments that will be elaborated on as the next week of updates to follow.
There you have it! I'm looking forward to writing these pieces all year, hopefully improving my writing and Magic playing skills in the process. These are two of my main personal goals in the New Year. I've been successful in all the other ones I've made for myself by taking things one day at a time. One play at a time, the best one I can with what the shuffler deals me.
I hope you enjoy the rest of the year and meet your goals, too. Until next year, it will go without saying: Thanks for reading and good luck & have fun! Peace,
- C
Saturday, December 7, 2013
Weekend Update: Quality Over Quantity
If you are one of my handful of regular readers, you probably noticed I took a day off yesterday. There was no Card of the Day or weekly column to speak of. To be honest, I just didn't have the energy yesterday. I had gotten back from playing a show at five in the morning. After something like that, I pretty much sleep and don't get up to do any work...unless it's to get back in the van and rush off to the next gig!
In any case, this missed deadline means it's time to pick up where I left off with the Weekend Update last week, wherein I allowed myself to write this weekend column instead of continuing with daily posts. This seems like a good time to consider an even further reduction in content for two main reasons.
First of all is my own real life. It seems two posts a day are too much to fit into my daily schedule, but I'm sure I can manage once a day and still get things up even when something extra like an on-the-road gig comes my way. Also, like I mentioned last week, I'm still doing more writing about Standard Pauper than playing of Standard Pauper! That might make for some well-written sentences and paragraphs, but eventually my topics (and my plays!) are going to be irrelevant if this imbalance is maintained.
This blog has to be about quality, not quantity.
And second of all, there is a higher quantity of quality Standard Pauper writings out there than ever before. This blog is just one of many places reporting on the format, part of a recent mini-explosion of regular new content. Even if I didn't update daily, one could still discover something new about Standard Pauper every day at other awesome sites. So my audience really doesn't need one guy posting a dozen times a week because there's half a dozen other guys posting once or twice.
So I'm concluding that two-posts-a-day was overkill; it was quantity over quality. But the first couple weeks of posting too much wasn't without it's good side-effects. It was fun, for sure, and I needed some technical practice with the new Blogger interface. I had to come up with the themes to keep me on task, and I believe I will use them in future. Sometimes I'll do a Wacky Wednesday or Top 5 Friday, and if I haven't got time for that sort of thing, a Card of the Day or some other short musing should do.
And some days, I think I'll just point you to other awesome Standard Pauper articles - they are popping up like wildfire. Here's one the best I've ever read just to get started, from DrChrisBakerDC over at The Draft Brewery, Ten Reasons To Play Standard Pauper. Enjoy!
I'll still keep the Weekend Update to let you know if any other changes to the Blog are in the works, or just continue random musings about Magic before taking my day off :-) Thanks for stopping by and enjoy the weekend! See you next week. Until then, good luck! Peace,
- C
In any case, this missed deadline means it's time to pick up where I left off with the Weekend Update last week, wherein I allowed myself to write this weekend column instead of continuing with daily posts. This seems like a good time to consider an even further reduction in content for two main reasons.
First of all is my own real life. It seems two posts a day are too much to fit into my daily schedule, but I'm sure I can manage once a day and still get things up even when something extra like an on-the-road gig comes my way. Also, like I mentioned last week, I'm still doing more writing about Standard Pauper than playing of Standard Pauper! That might make for some well-written sentences and paragraphs, but eventually my topics (and my plays!) are going to be irrelevant if this imbalance is maintained.
This blog has to be about quality, not quantity.
And second of all, there is a higher quantity of quality Standard Pauper writings out there than ever before. This blog is just one of many places reporting on the format, part of a recent mini-explosion of regular new content. Even if I didn't update daily, one could still discover something new about Standard Pauper every day at other awesome sites. So my audience really doesn't need one guy posting a dozen times a week because there's half a dozen other guys posting once or twice.
So I'm concluding that two-posts-a-day was overkill; it was quantity over quality. But the first couple weeks of posting too much wasn't without it's good side-effects. It was fun, for sure, and I needed some technical practice with the new Blogger interface. I had to come up with the themes to keep me on task, and I believe I will use them in future. Sometimes I'll do a Wacky Wednesday or Top 5 Friday, and if I haven't got time for that sort of thing, a Card of the Day or some other short musing should do.
And some days, I think I'll just point you to other awesome Standard Pauper articles - they are popping up like wildfire. Here's one the best I've ever read just to get started, from DrChrisBakerDC over at The Draft Brewery, Ten Reasons To Play Standard Pauper. Enjoy!
I'll still keep the Weekend Update to let you know if any other changes to the Blog are in the works, or just continue random musings about Magic before taking my day off :-) Thanks for stopping by and enjoy the weekend! See you next week. Until then, good luck! Peace,
- C
Tuesday, November 26, 2013
Introducing: Cabel the Pauper - A New Pauper Blog
Greetings and well met! I am Cabel the Pauper. This is my first post on my brand new blog about Pauper Magic and my other eclectic interests.
In real life, my name is Colin. I'm a Thirtysometing dude from historic Albany County, New York. I am an American citizen and English is my native tongue. I cannot blog in any other language...yet!
Blogging
What I write here will reflect my interests and who I am in real life. The subject matter will focus primarly on playing Pauper on Magic Online. But I'll also blog about any of those things listed in the blog description from time to time. I like lots of different topics and enjoy sharing my thoughts and writing about all of them.
But the top focus of Cabel the Pauper will be Standard Pauper and all Rarity-Restricted and Casual-Competitive formats of Magic: The Gathering on Magic Online and on paper.
This is my second attempt at a blog after years of political blogging as Soundpolitic and posting about Pauper as Copperfield. I consider it a big step forward in my personal reboot as a Magic player and blogger at the same time.
I'm thinking a bit of my Magic and blogging history is an order, if only to get it out of the way so I don't feel the need to keep relating the same tale ad nauseum. I'll try to keep this explanation - and all blogs henceforth - brief and to the point:
Soundpolitic
As Soundpolitic, I learned the ropes about blogging. I started out on DailyKos and then The Albany Project, eventually working my way up to a front-page and rec-list poster of political blogs. It was a good writing experience and I got to meet some interesting politicians and activists in my local political scene.
But that era of my blogging and political development is over. I no longer aspire to be the citizen-journalist I originally set out to be. I believe just talking politics with family and friends once in a while is sufficient for now. I finally want to make my break with the Democrat vs. Republican deadlock as I have completely rejected both conservatism and liberalism. I'll probably only blog about this sort of thing here only once in a blue moon, and try to keep it Magic related.
That's the main focus of the new Cabel The Pauper blog: Pauper Magic.
Pauper Magic
I first started playing Magic: The Gathering soon after seeing my first cards at a youth group in middle school. The cards were intriguing and I wanted to know what the text box meant, what the symbols in the corner were for, what the numbers at the bottom meant, and everything else about this unique new game. I played from 4th Edition during Alliances and Tempest was the last set I got into while playing during lunch and after school.
I quit for a long time, but once I got my first "real" job, I used some of my extra cash to return to Magic. I was drawn back by the black borders of Tenth Edition and classic fantasy Tribal elements and Hybrid multi-color of Lorwyn/Shadowmoor. Unfortunately, I lost the job after only a few months, and a few months later sold my rares and uncommons to compensate.
Fortunately, this lead me to discover the Pauper format and PDCMagic and put my remaining commons to good use. After a while of playing Standard Pauper on paper, I finally got a Magic Online account. I got my Classic Burn deck that I always wanted, but I always focused on Standard Pauper due to affordability and the great weekly events, MPDC, hosted by Gwyned, and SPDC, run by PDC and Gatherling guru, Jamuraa.
Part of this blog's purpose is to live up to the inspiring example of these Standard Pauper pioneers. So the majority of content on this blog will focus on that format specifically and Pauper generally. And I don't think I completely lived up to these guys as Copperfield.
From Copperfield to Cabel
Under the name of Copperfield, I started posting deck threads, and later branched out to writing articles on Pure MTGO. I'm still proud of much of my past work, but more often than I'd like I displayed a regrettable tendency to engage in flame wars and "troll-hunting". Aside from that, there was the practical matter of solving confusion as to who I was when posting as Copperfield while playing/running hosting in-game as Cabel.
So now it's just Cabel in-game and online and there will never be such useless silliness posted under this clean new alias. The name change represents a clean break from these bad habits as well a fresh start as a Magic player and blogger. "Copperfield" was just a stepping stone, some mistakes were made and lessons learned, and "Soundpolitic" was no different. So retiring both egotistical alter-egos and adopting Cabel makes perfect sense.
Cabel the Pauper
As Cabel, I will continue to post on the PDCMagic boards and will also be making use of the Standard Pauper Players clan-only forums. I will also try to change my username on PureMTGO and other sites in anticipation of new articles and further forum posts. MTG Salvation seems like fertile ground for Standard Pauper, and as always the push for official support from WotC marches onward.
But more than anywhere else, I will post here. And the plan is to post prolifically, yet succinctly. And above all with good nature, good humor, and good intent.
Because as you can see, I tend to be rather long-winded! I have many ideas about many things and feel the need to explain everything about anything I think. This is not bad if kept in my mind, but it's not all worth posting and this blog needs focus and clarity the same way my thoughts do. This new blog will finally serve as exercise in improving my writing and thinking skills.
So instead of spewing thousands of words about every current of thought that sweeps me away - or getting so caught up in my thoughts that I turn into Mr. Internet Jerk again - I will keep things on the topic and always be as kind and helpful as possible in posts and comments.
And when I say I want the blogs on Cabel The Pauper to be prolific and succinct, I mean I will post once a day and adhere to a strict one dozen paragraph limit....
Two For Tuesdays #1: Introduction!
Except for Tuesdays! If it's Tuesday, it's time for....Two-For-Tuesdays!
Two-For-Tuesdays will feature not one, but two posts. In one I'll share my thoughts on the previous nights MPDC tournament. In the other one I get to post whatever I want just for blogging fun, but these will likely be about Magic as well. This Tuesday, I choose to write about getting this blog started, introduce myself, and state my main goals and other random musings about what I want this blog to be.
Oh, and since I've done so already, I get to break my one dozen paragraph limit on my random Two For Tuesdays posts, too :-)
The Blog
And so it begins! By the end of today I'll get my thoughts on yesterday's tournament posted and the new Cabel The Pauper Blog will officially be up and running! I hope you enjoy it and visit regularly..
On the to-do list for the Blog's first week is visual and layout decisions and the construction of a proper Blogroll of other Standard Pauper sites and some related useful links for fellow Paupers. I need to figure out other daily themes to help me keep up the pace of blogging a little each day, too. I might even include links to my social media profiles, but I don't really use those for Magic much. If you have suggestions for what you'd like to see on Cabel the Pauper, let me know in comments.
Thanks for reading and stopping by. I look forward to blogging more and seeing you here again soon. Have fun, good luck, and good games!
Peace,
- C
In real life, my name is Colin. I'm a Thirtysometing dude from historic Albany County, New York. I am an American citizen and English is my native tongue. I cannot blog in any other language...yet!
Blogging
What I write here will reflect my interests and who I am in real life. The subject matter will focus primarly on playing Pauper on Magic Online. But I'll also blog about any of those things listed in the blog description from time to time. I like lots of different topics and enjoy sharing my thoughts and writing about all of them.
But the top focus of Cabel the Pauper will be Standard Pauper and all Rarity-Restricted and Casual-Competitive formats of Magic: The Gathering on Magic Online and on paper.
This is my second attempt at a blog after years of political blogging as Soundpolitic and posting about Pauper as Copperfield. I consider it a big step forward in my personal reboot as a Magic player and blogger at the same time.
I'm thinking a bit of my Magic and blogging history is an order, if only to get it out of the way so I don't feel the need to keep relating the same tale ad nauseum. I'll try to keep this explanation - and all blogs henceforth - brief and to the point:
Soundpolitic
As Soundpolitic, I learned the ropes about blogging. I started out on DailyKos and then The Albany Project, eventually working my way up to a front-page and rec-list poster of political blogs. It was a good writing experience and I got to meet some interesting politicians and activists in my local political scene.
But that era of my blogging and political development is over. I no longer aspire to be the citizen-journalist I originally set out to be. I believe just talking politics with family and friends once in a while is sufficient for now. I finally want to make my break with the Democrat vs. Republican deadlock as I have completely rejected both conservatism and liberalism. I'll probably only blog about this sort of thing here only once in a blue moon, and try to keep it Magic related.
That's the main focus of the new Cabel The Pauper blog: Pauper Magic.
Pauper Magic
I first started playing Magic: The Gathering soon after seeing my first cards at a youth group in middle school. The cards were intriguing and I wanted to know what the text box meant, what the symbols in the corner were for, what the numbers at the bottom meant, and everything else about this unique new game. I played from 4th Edition during Alliances and Tempest was the last set I got into while playing during lunch and after school.
I quit for a long time, but once I got my first "real" job, I used some of my extra cash to return to Magic. I was drawn back by the black borders of Tenth Edition and classic fantasy Tribal elements and Hybrid multi-color of Lorwyn/Shadowmoor. Unfortunately, I lost the job after only a few months, and a few months later sold my rares and uncommons to compensate.
Fortunately, this lead me to discover the Pauper format and PDCMagic and put my remaining commons to good use. After a while of playing Standard Pauper on paper, I finally got a Magic Online account. I got my Classic Burn deck that I always wanted, but I always focused on Standard Pauper due to affordability and the great weekly events, MPDC, hosted by Gwyned, and SPDC, run by PDC and Gatherling guru, Jamuraa.
Part of this blog's purpose is to live up to the inspiring example of these Standard Pauper pioneers. So the majority of content on this blog will focus on that format specifically and Pauper generally. And I don't think I completely lived up to these guys as Copperfield.
From Copperfield to Cabel
Under the name of Copperfield, I started posting deck threads, and later branched out to writing articles on Pure MTGO. I'm still proud of much of my past work, but more often than I'd like I displayed a regrettable tendency to engage in flame wars and "troll-hunting". Aside from that, there was the practical matter of solving confusion as to who I was when posting as Copperfield while playing/running hosting in-game as Cabel.
So now it's just Cabel in-game and online and there will never be such useless silliness posted under this clean new alias. The name change represents a clean break from these bad habits as well a fresh start as a Magic player and blogger. "Copperfield" was just a stepping stone, some mistakes were made and lessons learned, and "Soundpolitic" was no different. So retiring both egotistical alter-egos and adopting Cabel makes perfect sense.
Cabel the Pauper
As Cabel, I will continue to post on the PDCMagic boards and will also be making use of the Standard Pauper Players clan-only forums. I will also try to change my username on PureMTGO and other sites in anticipation of new articles and further forum posts. MTG Salvation seems like fertile ground for Standard Pauper, and as always the push for official support from WotC marches onward.
But more than anywhere else, I will post here. And the plan is to post prolifically, yet succinctly. And above all with good nature, good humor, and good intent.
Because as you can see, I tend to be rather long-winded! I have many ideas about many things and feel the need to explain everything about anything I think. This is not bad if kept in my mind, but it's not all worth posting and this blog needs focus and clarity the same way my thoughts do. This new blog will finally serve as exercise in improving my writing and thinking skills.
So instead of spewing thousands of words about every current of thought that sweeps me away - or getting so caught up in my thoughts that I turn into Mr. Internet Jerk again - I will keep things on the topic and always be as kind and helpful as possible in posts and comments.
And when I say I want the blogs on Cabel The Pauper to be prolific and succinct, I mean I will post once a day and adhere to a strict one dozen paragraph limit....
Two For Tuesdays #1: Introduction!
Except for Tuesdays! If it's Tuesday, it's time for....Two-For-Tuesdays!
Two-For-Tuesdays will feature not one, but two posts. In one I'll share my thoughts on the previous nights MPDC tournament. In the other one I get to post whatever I want just for blogging fun, but these will likely be about Magic as well. This Tuesday, I choose to write about getting this blog started, introduce myself, and state my main goals and other random musings about what I want this blog to be.
Oh, and since I've done so already, I get to break my one dozen paragraph limit on my random Two For Tuesdays posts, too :-)
The Blog
And so it begins! By the end of today I'll get my thoughts on yesterday's tournament posted and the new Cabel The Pauper Blog will officially be up and running! I hope you enjoy it and visit regularly..
On the to-do list for the Blog's first week is visual and layout decisions and the construction of a proper Blogroll of other Standard Pauper sites and some related useful links for fellow Paupers. I need to figure out other daily themes to help me keep up the pace of blogging a little each day, too. I might even include links to my social media profiles, but I don't really use those for Magic much. If you have suggestions for what you'd like to see on Cabel the Pauper, let me know in comments.
Thanks for reading and stopping by. I look forward to blogging more and seeing you here again soon. Have fun, good luck, and good games!
Peace,
- C
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