The Mana Pool

Look, it's really late.  You're getting this episode really early because I'm going to be at the Escapist Expo all weekend.  Mike and I were up way too late getting our respective decks for the big Saturday tournament up and running, then I had to go ask the hot nurse upstairs if she had a needle to help me get this MASSIVE splinter out of my hand.  Seriously, you guys should have seen it, it was...

Yup, it's preview time again!  We are returning to Ravnica in the next set, Return...to Ravnica.  Really?  Is that the best they could come up with?  Maybe the next time they do this we can just all it "Printing Money" or "Preying on Nostalgia".  Anyway, the Card Image Gallery is right here so you can follow along: http://www.wizards.com/magic/tcg/article.aspx?x=mtg/tcg/returntoravnica/cig# We als...

We've got a lot of stuff going on here.  Chewie announces that he's going to the Escapist Expo in Durham.  For the full list of stuff going on at the Expo, you can just click here: http://www.escapistmagazine.com/news/view/119032-The-Escapist-Expos-Official-Magic-The-Gathering-Schedule Brian's got a Magic Mad Lib for us!  It's totally not Boomerang.  Trust me on this. Then we get into the first ma...

We have lots of stuff going on this week.  The World Magic Cup happened, for one.  That's about all the discussion we're gonna have about that.  WotC has revealed some information about some products (again) that we feel the urge to talk about.  There's the 2012 Holiday Gift Box, which you can find here: http://www.wizards.com/Magic/Magazine/Article.aspx?x=mtg/daily/arcana/1039 There's the complet...

Hey look, we're doing another Commander episode!  Told you we weren't done with these, what now haters?  Or whatever.  Gimme a break, I never know how to start off these episode write-ups.  But we are focusing on Commander again this week, and of course we've got a guest host.  We managed to snag none other than Tom of the now-defunct MTG Radio podcast.   That show is the main reason Chewie decide...

We're back with another episode to entertain you all!  This one is again inspired by emails we've gotten from listeners like you.  These seem to be more personal in nature, beginning with our favorite tribes.  From there we move into how we started playing and what keeps us interested, and how one can go about getting cards without destroying your wallet.  Then we're asked about our favorite expan...

It's time once again for us to dig into our mailbag and come up with something to talk about!  This time we hit on an email about podcasting hardware and software because we seem to have gotten a lot of those lately.  How many of you are starting a podcast anyway? Then we hit an email that asks about our card preference.  When building a deck, which version of any given card do we like to use?  A...

We begin this episode with a look at the Magic 2013 Event Decks, now that they've FINALLY released them.  If you'd like to follow along, you can do so here: http://www.wizards.com/Magic/Magazine/Article.aspx?x=mtg/daily/arcana/1022 But of course that's not the real reason we recorded this episode.  Brian bought a brand-spanking-new Deckbuilder's Toolkit, opened everything up, catalogued it, and se...

Yes, we are without Dirk this episode.  He's not joining us on the show while on a cruise, that would be ridiculous.  But we kick off the festivities with another Magic Mad Lib from Brian, our first in quite some time.  It's a long one, and it turns out to be pretty damn funny. Of course, that's not all.  We had a lot of announcements from the San Diego Comic Con that we just had to give you our o...

We are sadly without Brian this time around, but that's only because a) it's his wife's birthday (at least I'm pretty sure that's the excuse he used) and b) Skype absolutely would not let us record the night before.  It was completely weird.  I think it's plotting against us.  But of course it worked the next night, giving you this episode right here!  Yay! We spent a little longer than anyone pro...

Because of the holiday (Independence Day here in America), Brian had family over and couldn't join us. We we tapped everyone's favorite goblin deck hand and MTGO draft recorder, Squee! I mean Bill. You know, the guy with the awesome last name! Bloodworth - isn't that cool? You should follow him on Twitter - he's @SqueeGoblnNabob . And his videos are right here too: http://themanapool.com/category/...

A few days before recording this episode, one Daniel Beach (@ beach7125 ) asked Chewie a question.  That question would lead to a conversation, which would then lead to this episode of The Mana Pool with guest host Daniel Beach.  Before we tell you the nature of this question, we have to talk about the tokens of Magic 2013 and the remaining preview cards that have been shown since our last episode...

Not one, but TWO guest hosts join us for this episode!  Everyone's old favorite Eric (of the Many Names) resurfaces to shoot the breeze and drink Southern Comfort while recording with us.  The other host is Joseph A, better known as Khaos Kontrol (to Chewie anyway, who kept just calling him Khaos) on our forums .  You know, the guy that wrote the awesome poem that we featured a while back on Episo...

So we lied.  Sorry about that.  But surely you'll forgive us for skipping a week because of a LIVE episode!  That wasn't even one that was in the can!  It was recorded so we could put it up while Planechase was still somewhat relevant!  Put down your torches and pitchforks, you can hear the second part of the Awards right here.  See the title?  We covered Cuddliest Werewolf, Most and Least Scary S...

I'll bet you didn't expect another live episode so soon, did you?  Well tough.  We all went over to Dirk's house to play with the new Planechase cards!  Except we did that at the store .  So when we got back to Dirk's house, we threw ALL the new Planes and Phenomena ( doot dooo doo-doo-doo ) into a pile, grabbed up some EDH decks, and started Planechasing away! I'm sorry to say we only got in one...

This episode marks the first of the Mana Pool Creature Awards!  We covered our first few categories here, including Best and Worst Dressed Humanoids and Not-At-All-Humanoids (see image for Worst-Dressed Humanoid nominees), Best Use of Scale Birds, Best Art on a Bad Creature, and Most Disturbing Depiction of a Creature.  Stay tuned to a future episode for the rest of the categories! Oh, right. Plan...

Being that this is a casual-centric Magic podcast, we don't venture much into the world of competitive sanctioned Magic.  But when we do, we spend a LOT of time talking about it on the next show!  That is this show.  In case you haven't heard, Mike, Brian, and Chewie went to a Standard PTQ last week.  Why might you have heard?  Well, that would be because Chewie ended up making Top 8!  Of course,...

In which we discuss what happened to Dirk, refute the notion that there's no such thing as a free lunch, explain why it's good that we didn't record the previous game, and play some Magic.  No really! Mike, Brian, and Chewie lead off with a fairly quick game of Commander, where Chewie's relatively new Johan deck got off to a ridiculous start.  Holy crap.  Then there's another Commander game after...

We begin by taking a quick look at the Avacyn Restored Event Decks, in all their glorious whatever-it-is.  After that, we have a riveting discussion about what happens when you cast Eaten by Spiders on Avacyn.  Another listener-inspired topic that we tackled is a simple one: What was the first card you ever really coveted?  This leads us to all kinds of nostalgia and manages to infiltrate the main...

Yeah, we just had 3 episodes of previews, so you know what that means - the Prerelease episode!  Bill Bloodworth (you know, @SqueeGoblnNabob) joins us for this one, since he was the cause of the funniest thing any of us have seen at a Prerelease for a VERY long time.  Brian talked about his experience, Bill told his story, and Mike and Chewie covered their two apiece.  Definitely a lot of fun.  So...

This episode, there's not much going on other than the full reveal of Avacyn Restored.  So we go through each color, pointing stuff out.  Powerful cards, awesome (or gross) art, cards we can't wait to play with, stuff that we think is utter crap.  You know the drill.  Everyone's doing it this time of year.  But we do it with our own dorky style!  There's actually not much else to talk about on thi...

We're not even screwing around this episode, as we dive right into the Avacyn Restored previews.  Of course by now everyone has heard about the Soratami planeswalker that we speculated about at the end of the last episode.  A mere 2 hours later she was revealed in her entirety.  Then they threw a dapper devil dude at us!  Of course we covered both of those, along with everything else that had been...

We're joined this episode by Bill, the voice of Squee, who haven't heard from in a good while.  We kick it off with a quick rules correction from last episode - Mike missed one small detail on the question about the single spell with Cascade, Storm, and Ripple.  Imagine that, something got missed in the most complicated spell ever.  No one is allowed to give Mike any crap about that one. All the o...

We begin this episode with a discussion of Avacyn, the first reveal from Avacyn Restored, and boy is she something!  From there we move into the double-faced tokens that were given away at FNM (sorry about the delay) and the fansite toolkit available from Wizards, featuring some nifty images for you to use whether you have a site or not.  Also, a big shoutout to Jeffrey Lombaro, who is @MuttZippy...

For episode 223, the dorks gathered to discuss the Avacyn Restored trailer. After rambling on that for a while, we indulged the self-proclaimed Vorthos King and set some time aside to discuss the art and flavor of Venser vs Koth. We closed out the opener (does that even work?) with a Mad Lib about the new "Dark Romance" genre of teenage fiction. Our main topic for the episode was the latest instal...