Oversoul
The Tentacled One
There are plenty of concepts for long-form content that I could reasonably choose from to write about, Comboist Manifesto style. Since I’m not a reasonable man, I’m choosing something stupid instead. Feel free to suggest better topics, so that I might ignore your cogent suggestions and do a deep dive on my favorite flavor texts from Homelands. I’m only kind of kidding. We might get there. Some day. Not yet! Instead, I have something else planned.
Whenever I find myself in the “General CPA Stuff” forum, I notice that two old threads are “stickied” and show up first. On any sane website, those stickied threads would be reference threads, either important material for newcomers to see or perhaps curated list threads cataloging useful links. This is the CPA, and sanity is a dubious concept here. Why are those old threads stickied? Because they were active catalog threads over a decade ago! So, with over a decade behind us, I’m struck by the impulse to write a retrospective on these long abandoned projects, the CPA Halls of Fame and Shame.
Most of the links in the stickied threads have been rendered broken, and the threads don’t include all of the relevant links anyway. What I’ll try to do is dig up the relevant threads myself and try to go through the developments in each Hall chronologically. Now, this is all just for fun anyway, but I should probably note that my goal here isn’t to take anyone to task or dispute opinions from over a decade ago (but I'll still do that). In reviewing these threads, I’ll be covering some arguments that took place, but I want to try to keep that presentation generally historical, rather than attempting to reignite old disagreements or whatever. I’m not so interested in how wrong Ransac was about something back in 2007, although I might be a little bit interested in why I disagree with some of my own old choices. All of this should be taken with a grain of salt and with the understanding that choosing the best “casual card” from each set is inherently subjective.
Beginning the Hall of Fame
I found a few old threads about ranking cards or asking members to select their favorite cards, etc. But the genesis for what became the “Casual Card Hall of Fame” was this thread in February of 2006: http://www.casualplayers.org/forums/threads/omg-we-shouldve-done-this-years-ago.13616/
It didn’t take very long for the concept to evolve into its better-known form, but Killer Joe’s early idea was a bit different from what we ended up actually doing. He proposed a 3-person rotating monthly committee to vote on casual cards nominated by CPA members throughout each month. He also floated the idea that if someone’s card selection was chosen by the committee, then the person who nominated it would rotate onto the committee or would stay on the committee if already on it. Limiting card nominations to one per member was not initially stated, but could have been implied. There was no mention of organizing this by set. I had totally forgotten this. So, if things had gone differently, we might have just been nominating our favorite cards willy-nilly with no real structure. It’s easy to see how the Hall of Fame would have looked very different if we’d adopted that approach.
Within that initial thread, we started nominating members for the first committee. The first round of nominations went like this.
-Killer Joe nominated Spiderman.
-Spiderman nominated Limited.
-Ransac nominated TomB.
-BigBlue seconded the nomination for Spiderman.
-I nominated Orgg.
-Limited thirded the nomination for Spiderman.
-Nightstalkers nominated Train.
-HOUTS seemingly attempted to nominate himself, but made a typo and never actually did.
So, we had five nominees for the new committee. Killer Joe created another thread with a poll. This one: http: //www.casualplayers.org/forums/threads/selection-committee-poll.13617/
I should mention that these old polls all display nonsense results because of a forum software change in 2010. I'll be linking to poll-containing threads a lot here, but the poll results themselves are, I believe, universally gibberish. The initial committee consisted of Orgg, Spiderman, and TomB. I’m a little unclear on how the committee’s role was supposed to work at that time. Both Killer Joe and Spiderman provided some description, and their instructions, while compatible, were different. I think that KJ was trying to simply note what the committee needed to do and that Spiderman was trying to summarize what he and his fellow committee members had already agreed upon, putting things in context. Killer Joe told the committee...
Spiderman thought it was a good idea, and the rest of us just kind of went along with it.
Whenever I find myself in the “General CPA Stuff” forum, I notice that two old threads are “stickied” and show up first. On any sane website, those stickied threads would be reference threads, either important material for newcomers to see or perhaps curated list threads cataloging useful links. This is the CPA, and sanity is a dubious concept here. Why are those old threads stickied? Because they were active catalog threads over a decade ago! So, with over a decade behind us, I’m struck by the impulse to write a retrospective on these long abandoned projects, the CPA Halls of Fame and Shame.
Most of the links in the stickied threads have been rendered broken, and the threads don’t include all of the relevant links anyway. What I’ll try to do is dig up the relevant threads myself and try to go through the developments in each Hall chronologically. Now, this is all just for fun anyway, but I should probably note that my goal here isn’t to take anyone to task or dispute opinions from over a decade ago (but I'll still do that). In reviewing these threads, I’ll be covering some arguments that took place, but I want to try to keep that presentation generally historical, rather than attempting to reignite old disagreements or whatever. I’m not so interested in how wrong Ransac was about something back in 2007, although I might be a little bit interested in why I disagree with some of my own old choices. All of this should be taken with a grain of salt and with the understanding that choosing the best “casual card” from each set is inherently subjective.
Beginning the Hall of Fame
I found a few old threads about ranking cards or asking members to select their favorite cards, etc. But the genesis for what became the “Casual Card Hall of Fame” was this thread in February of 2006: http://www.casualplayers.org/forums/threads/omg-we-shouldve-done-this-years-ago.13616/
It didn’t take very long for the concept to evolve into its better-known form, but Killer Joe’s early idea was a bit different from what we ended up actually doing. He proposed a 3-person rotating monthly committee to vote on casual cards nominated by CPA members throughout each month. He also floated the idea that if someone’s card selection was chosen by the committee, then the person who nominated it would rotate onto the committee or would stay on the committee if already on it. Limiting card nominations to one per member was not initially stated, but could have been implied. There was no mention of organizing this by set. I had totally forgotten this. So, if things had gone differently, we might have just been nominating our favorite cards willy-nilly with no real structure. It’s easy to see how the Hall of Fame would have looked very different if we’d adopted that approach.
Within that initial thread, we started nominating members for the first committee. The first round of nominations went like this.
-Killer Joe nominated Spiderman.
-Spiderman nominated Limited.
-Ransac nominated TomB.
-BigBlue seconded the nomination for Spiderman.
-I nominated Orgg.
-Limited thirded the nomination for Spiderman.
-Nightstalkers nominated Train.
-HOUTS seemingly attempted to nominate himself, but made a typo and never actually did.
So, we had five nominees for the new committee. Killer Joe created another thread with a poll. This one: http: //www.casualplayers.org/forums/threads/selection-committee-poll.13617/
I should mention that these old polls all display nonsense results because of a forum software change in 2010. I'll be linking to poll-containing threads a lot here, but the poll results themselves are, I believe, universally gibberish. The initial committee consisted of Orgg, Spiderman, and TomB. I’m a little unclear on how the committee’s role was supposed to work at that time. Both Killer Joe and Spiderman provided some description, and their instructions, while compatible, were different. I think that KJ was trying to simply note what the committee needed to do and that Spiderman was trying to summarize what he and his fellow committee members had already agreed upon, putting things in context. Killer Joe told the committee...
To this, Spiderman added the following.Killer Joe said:Your directive is simply this:
Agree on a way we the members can submit a card that is worthy of being on the CPA's Casual Card List then let us know and you three will agree amongst yourselves how to choose a card. Maybe one-card-per month can be added to the list or whatever since you're the first ones to be on the selection committee.
The committee can stay the same or one member can be changed each month or whatever. Again, you're the first committee you can pretty much make up whatever is best.
Use this as your foundation: Select a submitted card that best defines the term casual amongst yourselves.
Good Luck!!!
one last thing: I'd use the PM's to communicate
Credit for the by-set format would seem not to go to the initial committee, but to BigBlue, who started this thread: http://www.casualplayers.org/forums/threads/casual-card-nominees-1.13640/Spiderman said:Here's the tentative guidelines that the committee has so far:
That way, new people come on board and serve for at least three months (except for the starting members).
- Card submissions for a week.
- The committee deliberates and chooses one for the week.
- Nominations for a new person to take the place of the oldest serving committee member are taken for a week (in the case of the three starting committee members, the one with the least votes goes first). The person leaving the committee cannot be nominated again for at least a month (so in effect, they have a two month minimum absence from the committee)
- Voting on the nominations takes place for a week.
Spiderman thought it was a good idea, and the rest of us just kind of went along with it.