The Mana Pool

And there's The Twelve Dorks of Christmas. Even though there's only four of us. Oh well. We begin with an Out of the Deck Box from Mike, who has built an Esper-type deck with some old school flava. He wants some feedback on it, so by all means let us know what you think. As always, if you want to see the decklist and offer up some advice or comments, hit the forums. The link is at the bottom of th...

Hello again and welcome to another episode of The Mana Pool! This is Brian, standing in for our oh-so-fearless, ever-so-valient, and so-so-so-overworked leader Chewie. We've got some good stuff on the menu for you tonight (today, this morning- insert most appropriate here). It's the first episode we recorded of during a new month, but due to a relative lack of Cardshark member promotions, we didn'...

Hello again, and welcome to The Avant-Card Show. This is Mike, filling in for... Wait, what? I mean The Mana Pool. This is The Mana Pool. You'll understand my confusion soon. Unfortunately, due to hardware/software issues and scheduling conflicts, we are Dirkless yet again (and unfortunately, due to sleep issues and schoolwork conflicts, our Brian has to leave before the end), but to make up for i...

Hey look, it's a new episode! First off, we spend some time responding to listener feedback, as we have a lot of it. You should send us some too! Then we have lots of Magic news to go over. There's some discussion about the new Premium Deck Series: Slivers. The new Grand Prix schedule was released, not that we care terribly much, but we do take a few minutes to make fun of the new alternate art fo...

Because winning by knocking your opponent's life total down to zero is SO last season, we're having a fire sale on all the other nifty ways to win. Alternate win conditions for all! We've got Epic Struggles, Darksteel Reactors, Chance Encounters, and Poison. For those workaholics out there, we have a few Coalition Victories, Helix Pinnacles, and even one Barren Glory in the back corner. None of th...

In this episode, Mike gets distracted by something early on. But that's not the actual content of the show! Brian and I kick it off by each opening a pack of Zendikar and going through the contents. Then we switch gears and talk about Brian's PTQ experience from a few weekends ago. He did really well. His deck list is in the forum thread for this episode, give it a look and let us know what you th...

Here it is, as promised. For hitting our 100 th episode, Jungle Rat Rob (Rob Anderson) has worked his audio editing magic again and come up with another great clip compilation! This time it's got so much funny that he couldn't fit it all in one song, so he used three. We have the Superman Main Theme by John Williams, Sabre Dance by Aram Khachaturian, and Simple Passing by Hammerbox. This also feat...

And in this episode, we bid a fond farewell to the Lorwyn/Shadowmoor mega block. We're gonna take a look back at the stuff that is gone from this Standard. All those cards that we loved, hated, despised, thought were nifty, and were beaten by are getting one last look before heading off to Extended Land forever and ever amen. And then, not to get stuck looking at the past, we forge ahead into the...

Hello again, and welcome to The Mana Pool! This is Mike, filling in for Chewie on the show notes while he's busy getting a previous episode uploaded. For those of you who've been anxiously awaiting our customary Prerelease story time episode, this is your lucky day! Not only do we have that, but due to scheduling conflicts and hateful technological mishaps, it took us so long to get this one recor...

Well...better late than never. This is the fabled lost episode 102 of The Mana Pool. Okay, so it's not so much fabled, and it was never really lost. But I do apologize for this episode being so incredibly late. I suddenly found myself working 6 or 7 days' worth of work in a 5 day period, and by the time I got home, I didn't want to do anything at all. But enough of lateness excuses! I'd also like...

WE MADE IT! Thanks to everyone who has listened, commented, criticized, and offered feedback, advice, help, and ideas for these hundred episodes. We really appreciate all of you who have stuck with us all this time, all of you who have stuck with us since we joined the MTGCast, and all of you who have just discovered us. And a special thanks goes out to Eric from St. Louis who is Mr. Suitcase who...

More Zendikar previews! Join us this episode for lots more Zendikarian goodness, along with a discussion of temporal mechanics and a special guest of sorts. This episode also includes a good 11 minutes of lost footage from the previous episode, including our take on Nissa Revane, Nissa's Chosen, and a somewhat depressing Mike story. There's a brief discussion of the Banned & Restricted List update...

Hey, Mike here. Well, here it is, the episode we all knew had to be coming. Thank goodness that we were all looking forward to it, too! It's the first big episode of Zendikar previews here on the Mana Pool, and we decided to go for a bit of a different structure this time. Rather than just go up the list, Brian had the foresight to group the cards into convenient broader discussion topics, based o...

DISCLAIMER: In an effort to keep our listeners safe while listening to our show, we have decided to forgo any and all comedy this episode. We here at The Mana Pool are committed to your well-being, and we certainly don't want anything bad to happen to any of you (with only very few exceptions). That being said, we hope you enjoy this funny-free episode of The Mana Pool. Thank you and drive around....

Holy crap it's the Mana Pool! Wizards has revealed the last two Planechase decks, so we check out each and every plane on this fabulous tour of the multiverse. Keep an ear out for lots of informational sound-related material - like what being on fire sounds like, and discussions on spheres on the vertical surface that holds up the ceiling. Doosh! Because we talked about bad mechanics on the last e...

On this episode, we've got a cameo by my new roomie Scott. He's one of my best and oldest friends, and he was one of the people I played Magic with back in the days of Homelands when I played the first time. But that's just the intro, there's a lot more where that came from. First up, there's Planechase. As of this recording, two of the decks had been shown, so of course we have to go over those....

<!-- @page { size: 8.5in 11in; margin: 0.79in } P { margin-bottom: 0.08in } --> We are joined this episode by none other than the architect of the Cutie-Pie Deck Challenge herself, Claire! Most excellent! Tasteless innuendo and bad jokes abound. Of course, we have to go over what happened during the Challenge. Spoiler: I WON! We discuss the spoils of victory, the lady's prerogative, and cree...

Hey, Mike here.  Welcome back to another hot summer episode of The Mana Pool!  You don't even have to worry about getting burned if you stay in too long anymore. Anyway, we were getting a pretty impressive amount of listener input that essentially boiled down to one core issue:  People want more "Out of the Deck Box"!  Lucky for all of you, we came prepared.  Not only is this episode exclusively d...

<!-- @page { size: 8.5in 11in; margin: 0.79in } P { margin-bottom: 0.08in } --> Let's talk about some stuff, shall we? We FINALLY got to play the first round of post-edit Divine vs. Demonic! Yay! We made a few changes to the decks, trying to bump the Demonic deck into the same league as the Divine one. Listen in to find out if we succeeded or just made it worse. Wizards announced the Premium...

On this episode, we have even more Magic 2010! Don't worry, next week we're gonna ease up off the M10 for a while. But we had to stay with it this time, because there's a Launch discussion to be had! Brian and I attended, along with Jonathan and Logan. It was Logan's first tournament, so we asked him to join us on this episode, not only to tell us how he did, but to give us his perspective on the...

Wow, we've made it up to 90. You believe that? To celebrate this auspicious occasion (not really) we have a whole mess of episode for you. After a somber intro, where we dedicate this episode to a friend who is no longer with us, we go into further detail about the new Duel Decks Contest here on The Mana Pool. You can find the official forum announcement for the contest here: http://cardshark.free...

This is truly a momentous occasion!  Not only do we have all four of the hosts of The Mana Pool present for this recording, but we also have everyone's favorite guy with a bullseye painted on him, AJ!  We also have Mrs. Kill AJ and The Hot One helping out for a moment in the intro.  You heard it, girls on The Mana Pool!  Even if it was just for a second. Right then.  Previews!  We've got another f...

Chewie here.  On this episode you've got me, Brian, and Mike going over a whole crapload of Magic 2010 previews.  There's really not much else to say about this particular episode, you know?  It's a preview episode, after all.  Although we do go over quite a few of the old Lords, so it's like a bit of a history lesson too. There are, however, a few interesting questions to be answered in here.  Li...

Brian here, yet again.  This episode sees the cast of The Mana Pool, with the long-awaited return of Dirk, finally getting to a subject we've been approaching for weeks: multiplayer combat!  Hold on to your hardhats, because here we...uh...wait.  Our plans, apparently more fragile than a Faberge Egg, have been broken in half by the launch of the Magic 2010 page on the main Magic website, complete...

Hello again, and welcome to episode 86 of the Mana Pool!  Brian here, as your on-duty lifeguard for this episode.  Please make sure that your life vests are securely fastened and your diving boards are locked in their upright positions, because today we're going to hit the rapids.  We should reiterate that The Mana Pool is not responsible for any lost or damaged items, limbs, or personality traits...