Cranial Insertion
From MTG Salvation Wiki
Cranial Insertion is MTG Salvation's weekly rules column. It is currently written on a rotating basis by Woapalanne (Eli), Dr. Tom (Tom), Urchin (Diane), and occasionally by Moko (ook). Previous writers include Gandalf-in-a-Boat (Thijs), jeffV (Jeff), Binary (Ted), and epeeguy (Brian).
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[edit] History
In March of 2005, a group of moderators contacted a few of the prominent rulings posters regarding a column similar to wizards.com's "Saturday School" and Star City Games' "Ask the Judge" columns. Eli and Thijs responded and started working out a setup for such a column, and Jeff quickly joined in to help proofread for rules errors. The three members decided that, in order to make Cranial Insertion stand out, a good amount of humor should be used. This remains a high point of the column, although to a lesser degree than in the beginning.
In the first column, Eli introduced Moko, a chimpanzee who sorted the column's email inbox to weed out junk. In transit to the Netherlands, where Thijs lived, Moko was tragically killed. This was no problem, since Thijs just zombified him. Moko the Zombie Rules Chimp turned out to be a very popular addition to the column's cast, and eventually started writing rules articles dealing with older formats.
For the first few months, the column had a loose storyline behind it, with events from one week's conclusion segueing into more oddities in the next week's introduction. This was abandoned as the readers didn't show as much interest in the story as in the overall humor and rules advice.
[edit] jeffV's departure; Dr. Tom's joining
In October of 2005, Jeff left the CI team, and Tom joined as a writer. Shortly afterwards, Brian joined as a new rules-editor.
[edit] Gandalf-in-a-Boat's departure; Binary's joining
In September of 2006, after 18 months of writing, Thijs was forced to leave the CI team due to real life. Ted, already an editor and Rules Guru, came aboard.
[edit] Binary's departure; Urchin's joining
In February of 2008, Binary was forced to step down temporarily for real-life reasons. He was replaced until such a time as he's ready to return by Urchin, another judge whose upbeat and off-the-wall tidbits added to CI's flair.
Two popular standouts in Cranial Insertion have been one-topic articles and quiz articles. One-topic articles, generally published once a month, go into a great deal of detail on one topic, as the name implies. These have included the turn structure, layers, and Magic keywords. Almost all of the early one-topic articles were written by Thijs.
Quiz articles, written most commonly by Eli, include Test Your Metal and And Thou Shalt Come to Judge. While the shortest of all of the CI articles, they had the greatest amount of interactivity with the readers. Quiz articles are intended to be more common going forth, roughly one per four months.
