The Mana Pool

It's that time again! We've left our listener emails for far too long, and now we've got to devote an entire episode to them! I was afraid this episode was going to end up kind of boring, but I was wrong. The great thing about going over a whole load of listener mail is that they lead us to all kinds of places. I'm talking everything from the Rapture to Standard to Cyndi Lauper to another take on...

We are joined this week by a very special guest, Adam Styborski.  He writes the Serious Fun column for the mothership, he writes for GatheringMagic, he's the Casual Editor over at Quiet Speculation, and he writes a Pauper Cube blog.  Here are the links! - http://www.wizards.com/Magic/Magazine/Archive.aspx?author=Adam%20Styborski - http://thepaupercube.wordpress.com/ - http://www.gatheringmagic.com...

That's right, we've got a stupid amount of content for you on this episode of The Mana Pool!  First off, Brian's unable to join us until later, so we have a special guest host - Tosus!  You might remember him from the excellent custom cards posted on our Facebook page during our last big contest, or perhaps you remember that he's the guy who made the intro you hear on this episode.  Either way, he...

This is one crazy episode we've got here for you, folks! New Phyrexia has been completely spoiled, and we decided to have fun with it this time. To that end, everything in this episode is a look at the new set, no exceptions (except for all the tangents, of course). I mean it, we had no other topics this time around, nothing else we wanted to talk about, not even listener mail! New Phyrexia is ser...

We are living in an age of villains.  In case you haven't noticed, the bad guys are winning.  The Eldrazi are free.  Nicol Bolas is still scheming.  And now, the Phyrexians have taken over the plane formerly known as Mirrodin.  During these dark times, who do we turn to for hope?  The planeswalkers?  Bah.  Since this new breed of 'walkers came to light, the heroes haven't had much in the way of vi...

Welcome to a very special episode of The Mana Pool, featuring a brand new guest host - Ralph the Guest Hosting Cricket!  He's a new addition to the show, and hopefully he'll be EATEN BY A F@#$ING GECKO soon.  Other than that, we've got a whole host of fun stuff to go over. There's an exceptionally long listener Mad Lib to do first.  Then we've got a small rant about some EDH/Commander at a local c...

Just so everyone is aware, we started off this episode short one Brian.  We spend the first half of the show going over our neglected listener emails, which we've been skipping over for the last several episodes.  Guess who answered the most rules questions that were emailed to us?  Bet you guessed wrong! Luckily after all this we were able to find a Bryan to fill the void in our show, so that's e...

Hey, welcome back!  As you can tell, this is another episode where we play out a game of Magic for all to hear.  Well, we're all on our separate computers, but we're still playing, just for all you listeners out there!  Bear with us, it's our first time playing with the new M11 rules, since we didn't want to switch in the middle of a campaign, you know? It's Brian's turn as Planar Guide this time,...

Is that Eric on two episodes in a row with us?  I think it is!  Eric brought us two very deep and interesting topics to discuss.  First off is a lot of talk about being casual, proxying, business models, and all sorts of nonsense.  It essentially boils down to a discussion on realizing that there are other reasons to play this game than the one you hold most dear, and you should freakin' realize t...

We are joined this episode by none other than the Many-Named One himself, Eric!  Yay!  Lots of news this episode, from new Commander cards to M12 Planeswalker news to Planeswalker news from the next big set.  And we're on a new geeky network, and Swift is on iTunes!  Man that was a lot.  Of course Eric sidetracks us several times during all that.  Otherwise it wouldn't be any fun at all. Don’t for...

Holy crap we've updated the contest we mentioned in the last episode!  If you'd like to see what we've changed, go here: http://themanapool.com/pool-notices/update-mana-pool-mbs-contest We then follow up with a Mad Lib sent in by one of our listeners, Alex.  How awesome was it?  Well ideally you'd listen to find out, but I'll issue a little spoiler - pretty awesome!  And if you like our Magic Mad...

What an episode we've got for you this time!  We've got a new contest, a super-secret special guest host, and...well that's about it.  But isn't that enough? Okay, contest.  If you want the full skinny, you're gonna have to hit the website for the official rules and all that.  You can find it here: http://themanapool.com/uncategorized/ promo_contest / Then there's a quick look at the new Deckbuild...

Yes, it's time for another live episode!  Already you ask?  Yes, we answer.  I'm glad we had this conversation. Sadly, Dirk isn't able to join us due to almost having a baby.  We start off with a little bit of Duel Decks news, since they've announced Ajani vs. Nicol Bolas.  Then we play a game of Magic.  Each of us is playing with a very special deck, and each deck is special for different reasons...

After a mess of emails, we've got those first two cards from the set code-named Action, which everyone has already seen.  But of course, we have to give you our take on it.  Then there's a look at the Event Decks, a new product from Wizards, but that's not the important part. And really, this isn't the important part either.  But this is the main topic!  Brian opened up a Scars Sealed pool, consis...

Magic Mad Lib!  Mailbag!  The homogenization of American music!  A contest that's already over!  And From the Vault: Legends starring Lawrence Fishburne!  And all that is just the first half of this episode of The Mana Pool!  Why can't I stop screaming?! Fishburne Legends right here: http://www.wizards.com/Magic/Magazine/Article.aspx?x=mtg/daily/arcana/641 The gang's all here for this episode, if...

Have you noticed that all the planes in Magic are either terrifying or dangerous or miserable?  We determined this during a discussion of which plane we'd want to live on that came from an email.  It's like the Creative team at Wizards just wants to completely dry up the tourist trade on other planes!  I wonder if the head of Zendikar could sue Wizards for libel.  I'll have to get with Brian on th...

On this episode Mike, Brian, and Dirk take a look at the colored cards of Mirrodin Besieged while I (Chewie) am sitting at home with NO INTERNET!  But luckily the stupid connection kicked back in just in time for me to jump in at the artifacts.  Then there's a little bit of discussion about a recent rules update wherein we figure out about when Wizards realized we were all perverts.  But that's ab...

Once again, we all gathered at Dirk's house for Magic playing and snacks, and so you get to listen to us do so on this episode.  We start off with a nice LONG game of Elder Dragon Highlander, or Magic: The Gathering Commander if you prefer, or Dorky Card Game with Different Rules than Usual if you wanna be real about it.  But either way, that's what we're doing.  It's Fumiko the Lowblood vs. Karrt...

I'd like to start off by apologizing for how scatterbrained I sound in this episode. I had just gotten back from the MAGfest trip roughly AN HOUR before we started recording, so I was still not quite with it.  But that aside, we started off with a Mad Lib that Tosus wrote for us that had us giggling like idiots as per usual.  Thank you Tosus! Then there's short Star Wars retelling featuring our fa...

Hello again, and welcome to the show notes! This is Mike, filling in for Chewie because he's out of town at MAGFest, having a nice time and being a generally all-around lucky jerk. We were all feeling kind of wiped out by our various goings-on, but we kicked things off in the usual way: random banter and listener emails. After that, we decided to take a look at the Mirrodin Besieged Mechanics arti...

Hello everyone!  Chewie here.  Welcome to 2011!  We kick this thing off with some listener mail, some of which we've had since last year (sorry about that).  Then there's a fair amount of other stuff to touch on, but nothing important enough to put in the show notes.  Moving on! I got a copy of Stowaway from Cardshark for us to review a few weeks ago, and we finally got to get together and play! ...

For hitting 150 episodes and/or 3 years of being on the air, our old buddy Jungle Rat Rob of The Retro League podcast has put together another one of his awesome audio montages, spliced together with Praise You by Fatboy Slim.  Lots of these clips came from our guest host episodes, so keep an eye out for some voices from other podcasts, including the Avant-Card Show , MTG Radio , and possibly even...

Just made it in before 2011!  On this episode we take a look at some listener mail, check out how Worlds ended this year (complete with a quick look at some of the decks in the Top 8), take a look at the nonsense surrounding the next two Magic expansions, and talk about the recent rules changes to EDH (or Commander if you prefer).  Then we have the Black installment of the Core Set: Mana Pool Edit...

Just in time for Christmas, it's a late episode!  Sweet!  This episode has a lot of stuff going on, starting with emails covering everything from subliminal messages to holiday habits. Then we have news, which is really not news anymore but it's our take on these news items.  We've got the big Commander announcement, some decks from the Star City Invitational, and a quick rant about Tomoharu Saito...

Other than the random technical issues that caused us to start late, caused Mike to sound funny this entire episode, and caused Brian to be muted for most of the episode, it went off without a hitch!  We went over a mess of emails, then did the White section of Brian's Core Set: Mana Pool Edition.  And to go along with the White section of that, Brian requested an Out of the Deck Box for Mike's mo...