Treasure Cruise BANNED in Classic, WOTC Silent on Standard...

The ban hammer falleth! This is huge news for Rarity-Restricted Casual/Competitive Magic: the Gathering Players.  Wizards of the Coast has announce that, as of March 27th, players of Classic Pauper will no longer be able to pack this powerful card in their lists.  The ban announcement dropped yesterday will be effective on Magic Online, where Pauper is played most, on the 1st of April.

This is probably the right move.  In that format, it is clearly overpowered and, by extension, overused, resulting in a warped metagame where one is either playing the card and winning or not playing it and inviting immediate defeat.

The best scribe and sage of Classic Pauper is without a doubt Alex Ullman.  I got the news via his Twitter feed where I also found his incredibly comprehensive data and analyses and on the MTGO Pauper metagame on his Facebook notes.  Here is the recent iteration of that research that found that over two-thirds of 4-0 decks were running Treasure Cruise.

The evidence is overwhelming.  Treasure Cruise has warped Classic Pauper for the worse and therefore cannot be allowed in decks.  That conclusion is not alarming.  What is eye-raising is just how quickly this decision was made!  This happened much faster than previous efforts to ban such criminally overpowered cards as Cloudpost and Frantic Search.

As I recall, these took months of badgering Wizards with solid data and sound arguments to even get them to consider doing the right thing.  Hundreds of players had to send thousands of e-mails, threads on PDCMagic.com went on for weeks, months, For reference, here is ye olde Format Health Discussion thread in the Classic forum on PDCMagic.  Talk about a piece of community history right there!

(I say history because, well, as of this writing, the last post on that thread is dated way back in November.  Of 2013.  This should raise eyebrows...)

In any case, it seems these days the Duelists Convocation International is a bit more attentive to the needs of Pauper Magic players.  'Bout time!

...or are they??

But now we come to the big question: what does this mean for Standard Pauper?  It's kind of difficult to ascertain the answer to this question.  One need look no further than the "Many Ways to Play" page on the official Magic: The Gathering website to confirm that WotC doesn't care a lick about the format or its players.  Standard Pauper is not even on the list!

Bow down  before the one you serve / You're gonna get what you deserve

Wow... 

Much customer service... 

 Such support informative...

Many a happy stock-holder...  

How wealthy chief executive officers....

Shorter Mark Rosewater:

Bow down to New World Order!  

Gag me with a Strix...

Sarcasm aside (and I get to be sarcastic when WotC is obviously ignoring us Standard Pauper players) this banning poses serious questions for our beloved format. Yet because Wizards shows us Standard Pauper players absolutely zero respect, these questions are nearly impossible to answer at this point.

I do not use Magic Online anymore (because the software is not functional and infuriating) so I cannot confirm beyond communication with those who can still run the program whether or not Treasure Cruise is still legal in the format.  Of course, we won't know whether some bug due to the company's infamous inattentiveness to it's least financially well-off customers will screw things up for our community.  At least not until April 1st.  And don't expect them to figure out the answer to this all-important question before that date.

Why, you ask?  Well, I can answer that and the answer should be obvious by now.  It's because...

...WOTC doesn't give a flying FUCK about us and treats us like SHIT!!  

What else is new!?!? 

Beyond getting upset (although I maintain I have a right to be upset when a loyal customer gets treated like this), if indeed we can still run Treasure Cruise, will this have any impact on Standard Pauper?

For example, I wonder if Classic players fed up with the ban after having spend their hard-earned money on play-sets of Cruise be drawn to one of the last formats where the card is legal for play?  Or, might it re-ignite the conversation of whether or not to ban this card-drawing powerhouse in our favorite format?

The issue will not go to rest.  And it certainly won't be helped by silence - or outright shunning - from Wizards of the Coast and the DCI.

Standard Pauper gets no respect from these organizations that claim to care about their customers when it comes to their flagship product, especially the Magic Online community.  This is why I am organizing In Real Life events at my Local Games Shop.  Or, at least, I'm trying to....and if I don't get my answers, then it's not tournaments I'm going to organize....

...it's mutiny.

Now, my events are supposed to begin just one week from today.  I've got to be able to explain the deck construction legalities to my players in a way that makes competition fun and fair.  My goal is for our events to be consistent with the MPDC and SPDC events still being run Online (against all odds, no thanks to WotC!)

I cannot afford ambiguity like this.  I am trying to make sure that kids and adults with limited financial resources can still spend money on Magic cards, dammit!  To make sure a charming little shop doesn't go under because they've lost so many customer who believe (and their kind of right) that Magic is too bourgeois and expensive for a hobby.

That, and I just scoured all three shops in my area for the copies of Treasure Cruise I require in order to keep a few decks built in case a new player comes without a Standard Pauper deck so they can still discover how fun this format is.  So they can find out that you don't have to be a spoiled, smug, upper-class p.o.s. in order to enjoy a game that everybody should be able to enjoy.

If I don't get my answer - hell, if I don't even get some fucking respect and get Standard Pauper at least listed on the damned Formats page! - then I'll be left with no choice.  I'll give right the fuck up.

What's the deal, WotC?  Is Treasure Cruise going to remain legal in Standard Pauper or what?  Do you intend to even pretend to give a damn about me and other Standard Pauper players or not?  This is getting fucking frustrating and I'm not prepared to have my time wasted after putting in all this work to enjoy a game from a company that continues to show  us such disregard and disrespect.

To hell with the niceties.  You've got my money, Wizards.  Against my better judgment, I bought Magic cards from you in an attempt to continue enjoying this game and help others do the same. And this is the thanks I get!?  This is how you treat me and the other tournament organizers on Magic Online who help your game survive and bring in new customers despite your crappy treatment of us?

That entitles me to some damn answers.  

And it entitles me to be fucking pissed.

If I don't get my answers, then I'm done.  I will get off this boat for good.  Because while playing Magic: the Gathering for nearly twenty years has provided me with countless delights on the surface, I'm getting sea-sick at the dark schemes that run below this game...

To Draft or Not to Draft: Pack 1 - To the Left

We begin our story on the battlefield of the mind.  Our establishing shot pans out to the staging ground: a small room with a tiny desk and an inexpensive yet functional laptop computer.  Its wallpaper is an image of the flag of Cuba with an iconic image of Che Guevara in a bright burning red.  There are .txt files littered all over the desktop.

Rough drafts prior to editing.

There is a bed, unmade, and some dirty clothes and Magic card boxes scattered about the floor, but not too many of either.  For the most part, the room is organized with plenty of books.  They are arranged by subject matter, from philosophy to religion to the art of languages, including a row of various Bible translations.  Also present are several spiral-bound and composition notebooks and small writing pads.

Notes before drafting even begins.

It's clear we have a writer here, one who apparently cares deeply about the act of writing.  Yet many have not heard from him on his usual platform.  The same is true of his Magic playing habits, but that is for the second part of this trilogy on drafting.

Today, we examine the importance of drafting when it comes to writing, the crisis that this presents in our current climate where most writing takes place, and lead in to how this relates to those Magic cards lying on the floor when our heroes primary collection was, until recently, only accessible as digital object behind the computer screen instead of readily available in his bedroom.

But first, let me get my pronouns consistent and clean up some run-on sentences!  Our hero is me.  And my sentences are still far too long.  If I do not shorten them via editing by referencing my nearby copy of Strunk & White's Elements of Style, our hero (damn, I did it again!) may never reach the end of this epic, three-part trilogy (damn...redundancy!).

Kindly allow me a moment to go from the first Revised version to the corrected current edition...

Ah, that's better!  And it illustrates my point perfectly.  When it comes to writing, the most important step is drafting.  This is the key to the steps of writing.  Let's review how we get from the beginning to the all-important middle long before we reach the end-goal: 

First, you obtain a spark where you come to know or want to know something.  This is not unlike when a Planeswalker experiences her transformative spark!

Next, you go about taking notes on the subject, obtaining knowledge about it, especially if you think you already know everything about it!  Because you never do.  You are not a know-it-all.  Nobody knows everything.  Never has, never will.  Keep this point in mind before, during, and after drafting.

Once your notes are taken, it's time to organize the mess you made.  Do this aftersleeping on it a day or so as marathon writing sessions are not adviseable.  Neither are binge watching or drinking sessions for that matter.  You'll get out your notebooks and begin to connect the ideas, flesh them out, and create lists as a plan of action for putting it all together.

This is quite similar to constructing a Pauper deck you intend to be competitive with instead of just casually throwing something together for fun - but I'll tackle that in pack two after a break.  And it's best to take some breaks from this step as well.

In fact, when doing any sort of work, one really should be allowed a temporal break so the body and mind can recover.  The fact that the capitalist social conditions of wage-slavery don't adequately allow for this is a different topic for a different day...

And now you are finally prepared to create your first rough draft.  These I consider to be the most important pieces of writing one can put to paper.  Or input into a word processing program, as it were.  Only once these are finished can you get some idea as to how well your ideas are fitting together.  Then, and only then, can you decide whether the piece is good enough to refine via editing and perfect through a grammar check.

Only after taking these steps of drafting and revising will the final composition be ready for publication.  For sleeving up and shuffling for your readers to cut before drawing and opening hand, if you will.

Or, if you've come up with absolute drivel again (this happens constantly if you write like you mean it) then you'll know that the draft is irredeemable.  You return to the beginning of the process working backwards from the outlines, lists, notes, and even your initial idea.  You'd best take a break here, too, because having your draft fail is pretty rough.  Hence the name: rough draft.  Don't let that frazzle you.

Here is the where we reach the conflict in my story.  It is not the struggle with myself to compose better pieces of writing.  No.  In this story, I'd like to be the hero and make things all about me.  Yet where most writing takes place these days - here on the Internet - the judgment of villain is the one most frequently cast upon me.

I disagree!  I maintain that the problem with writing on the Internet is this: the vast majority of people who use it to post their thoughts on social media and other blogs just plain do not know how to write.  They fail to follow these steps.  Most of the time, one can tell that all they did was draft and immediately publish.  To say nothing of any initial thought, research, or organization as the required  first steps to proper composition, most people on Facebook, Twitter, Blogger, and through e-mail and text messages clearly just type away as quickly as possible, click "send" or "post" or "tweet" with nary a second though, and then move on to the the next fleeting distraction.

This is has made it crystal clear that most people, including grown adults who should know better, have very little writings skills, if at all.  And having gotten high marks in schools for my English speaking and writing skills, and recieved consistent praise in person for my communication skills, I reject their poorly-written replies to my accusations that their writing is incomprehensibly bad.

It's one of the main reasons I've removed myself from Facebook, as you may recall from a previous post.  One of the reasons I've done this is because I just cannot take it any longer, it being the  reading through a daily (hourly) glut of ridiculously atrocious writing posted by 99% of people - and how woefully wrong their points are because of how little thought they've put into their rough drafts which, of course, were never drafted in the first place!

To me, this is infuriating , saddening, debilitating, and yet inspirational all at once.  So if you'll forgive my  regressomg into a rant of sorts...

Honestly, folks!  The following is not an example of a damned sentence:

"They shud just all go bak 2 there cuntry!1!!!"  

Not only is it far from being well written, the idea being expressed is disgustingly, hopelessly, and wickedly - sinfully! - wrong to begin with.  It's ignorance!  It's racism!  As socially deplorable as it is grammatically incorrect!

I see this kind of thing over and over again when it comes to people who refer to non-whites with racial epithets; to men who think women are a lesser sex and refer to them all as "sluts"; who think those without jobs are simply "lazy", who express that those who struggle to survive mental illness are just "crazy" and should be quarantined to a deserted island.

In my vast exploration of the Internet, I have come to a conclusion that I stand upon like a house founded upon rock: most of the worst examples of horrible grammar express the most horrifying ideas imaginable.

Now I've been doing this America Online tied up my parents phone line.  But even though I can continue to write, I remain firm in my decision to halt my practice of regular posting in response to this nonsense and bigotry on social media.

Why?

The answer lies in more than just my approach to writing.  The main reason is the content I write about and the context  in which I present it.  My philosophical and political attitudes are exactly the opposite and vehemently opposed to the average American citizen.  These are the crypto-fascist, pro-capitalist, frankly Cro-Magnon to Neaderthalic types of writing that are merely rough drafts of a brutal ideology called neoliberal capitalism.  I provided an example of the same regarding immigrant workers as and introduction to my desperate ravings...

I am no liberal capitalist.  I am a Leftist with a capital L (liberals are not even leftists with an uncapitalized letter, but try explaining that essential element of political philosophy to these linguistically deficient ingrates). I disdain to conceal the fact that I am a socialist in the Marxists tradition.

My social media and blog posts - as well as those of my comrades on the Left - are good pieces of writing.  They are well-presented arguments, thoughtful points regarding the conflict between capitalism and communism.  Above all, they are grammatically correct with far more consistency the than elementary liberal bullshit - conservative and progressive - currently clogging up the plumbing of the World Wide Web.

In fact, one of the main reasons I settled upon this side of the political spectrum was the writing.  It was the Leftists who were adhereing to the rules of the King's English and the liberals who continuously bastardized the languages' core principles of grammar, syntax, spelling, and punctuation.

What a relief it was to see a complete sentence!  What a joy to see commas separating the clauses therein!  How happy to find puns and other ingenious, ironic literary devices hidden among these compositions aimed at the idiot right-winger in a way that only we true Leftists could fully understand to further enhance our enjoyment of political and philosophical debate!

After exploring philosophy and familiarizing myself with Marxist, socialist, communist, and anarchist ideas and seeing clearly how their present-day adherents were the ones who knew how to write in contrast to the incoherent, incorrect ramblings of liberals - both progressive and conservative! - I had no choice but to solidfy which side I was meant to be on.  And I started to draft and revise pieces of writing to post online about it.  Day in and day out.

But...the problem with this is connected to what I spoke of in the first couple of blogs I published here upon my return to Cabel the Pauper.  It is another piece of me that, while I am good at writing lengthly arguments against the wicked Right-Wing reactionaries in favor of the right wing (the Left!), I ended up doing it too much.  Way too damned much.  And because I insist that my writing be perfected after drafting first, this resulted in far too much time wasted.  I finally realized where this daily excursion into argumentation was getting me.

That's right.  Nowhere.

So while I remain proud of my writing skills and as confident as ever in the superiority of my Leftist  positions, there is another saying that is not a double entendre the way my "To Draft or Not to Draft" title is meant to be:

"Pride comes before the fall."  

Indeed, I'd fallen deep into a Facebook hole of excellent Leftists arguments against the deep-seated racism, sexism, classism, etc., inherent these neoliberal, ungrammatical United States.

All my perfect paragraphs were ever met with were misspelled non-sentences taking me completely out of context.  And viciously declaring me such things as "faggot" and "asshole," with instructions to  "go fuck yourself," or "move to Cuba!"  Because apparently the average American liberal's reading comprehension is as good as their ability to compose a complete sentence: tragically terrible.

What's worse: they were insulting and incredibly mean.  It reached the point where it affected me emotionally to the point of depression so deep I found myself asking, as Hamlet did, whether I should continue to be or not to be...

So when I ask the question "To draft or not to draft?" on the topic of writing on social media, the answer is a like a Resounding Roar: Yes.

But after hard casting my diatribes one too many times and not being able to get full value out of this play, I concluded it was time to break the cycle and stick to blogging mostly about Magic: The Gathering Rarity-Restricted Casual/Competitive formats and the 5M's of Cabel the Pauper only once in awhile.  And to do it here on Blogspot as opposed to social media where doing little more beating a dead horse. Literally and literarily,  like that misogynist, bigoted, syphilis-ridden windbag Nietzsche.

As such, from now on, you'll find some political and philosophical posts here once or twice a month to provide a little bit more than just Magic: The Gathering.  These posts will remain uncommon or rare because I'll be spending a good deal of time writing them properly: by drafting them first.  Because when it comes to writing, the answer to the  question "To Draft Or Not To Draft" must be....

 DRAFT!

Thanks for reading.  Part two of this mini-series will appear in hopefully a weeks' time, depending on how drafting it goes.  And this time we'll switch topics to drafting Magic: the Gathering and why the answer to that question is...well  first, I've got to draft it!

Until then, thank you for reading what I worked long and hard one once again.  And good luck & have fun in all your endeavors, Magical and literal. Peace,

- C

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:

Colin DavidMarch 8 at 1:02pm · 

This will be my final status update on Facebook for at least the next 40 days. It will also be the last post that I comment on publicly. This is an extension of my second-to-last update below inspired by two things: an interview with John Mayer and my recent decision to convert to Catholicism.

Turns out that I am a few days late to an annual party called Lent. I have yet to undergo the Rites of Christian Initiation for Adults, but my meeting with the local Deacon is this coming Wednesday. So even though I missed the beginning of Lent last Wednesday, I'm just going to go ahead and get started now:

For Lent, I give up posting status updates and comments here on Facebook. This is likely going to be very, very challenging. I tried to do this a few weeks ago and it turns out I've failed miserably. Again. This time, I'm getting help from above to make sure I halt this destructive, egotistical behavior.

I'm not changing my ideas about the subject matter I post about most often. I am not just becoming a committed Christian. I remain a committed socialist, a dedicated amateur philosopher, a serious hobbyist historian, and a hard-line foul-mouthed antiracist, antifacsit, antisexist, anticapitalist ect., ect., ect....

The time has come to be *antiegoistical* in addition to these qualities. I need to oppose this aspect of myself instead of opposing all sorts of things I find wrong with other people, dammit.

But I'm *not* deleting my profile, here. That would just be too easy. If I am to learn how to resist temptation, then the temptation has to be there for me to resist successfully.
Furthermore, this platform is meant to keep in touch with people who have touched my life with their friendship and family ties and common interests. I had high hopes for Facebook as a means of rubbing opposing ideas together, engaging in meaningful political and philosophical debate that moves us forward as a collective brotherhood of humanity. But after years of testing this hypothesis, I have to make a scientific conclusion that moves from theory to law:

Facebook is NOT the place to debate politics or philosophy. My hypothesis was incorrect. And in fact, my referencing it as a hypothesis was every bit as much a tactic of denial as an addicts insistence that they don't have a problem. Nope. I've got a problem wit this thing. So it's up to me to fix it once and for all.

That said, is a Private Message option here that I intend to keep using in order to keep in touch with my family and best of friends. After acquiring one of these iPhone doo-hickies, I find that many folks just plain don't call or text...but they do make use of Facebook Messenger.

So in order to avoid slipping back into isolation by cutting off this means of communication, while you won't see me posting status updates or making public comments, I encourage you to contact me via private message and we can have a one-on-one conversation. I think that's better than spewing forth my rants for the world to see when I only ever reach a handful of folks anyway.

But now it comes down to it: This post itself is already too damn long and self-indulgent and egotistical! So I'm done. I hereby give up posting Facebook status updates and comments for Lent. I think it's fitting that I'm late getting started, but this is something that is better done than never.

40 days and counting starts of no new Status Updates and Public Comments. Starting now!

Starting now...

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