Yes he did do a whole thread where his intention was to over use paste. He found that doing so at least for him really wasn't possible. However what is being said here:
"My usual warning to new users. Anything that involves abrasives will usually magnify your stropping faults 10x. Get your linen & leather stropping down pat first then consider harsher media."
Is not about over using paste. This is talking about if your stropping technique is not good. Paste will show the error quicker and usually with much more damage to the blade edge do to the bad stropping.
Now to the original op the set up you are asking about is how I started as well and is a good setup. My suggestion would be if you get this set up to put the balsa aside for at least a month and really put the effort into keeping your blade shaving sharp on the leather strop. After that you can start using the balsa strop. Also before you use the leather strip search YouTube for hanging newspaper strop. Give that a try for at least 3 days to a week and it will greatly help your stropping technique as it is real easy to cut a newspaper strop but it won't hurt the blade edge to much ( normally not enough to destroy your edge) this will show you if you are torqueing the blade into the strop at any point in your stroke.