The Mana Pool

It's the long-lost live episode of The Mana Pool!  Well, not "lost" exactly.  More like "we haven't had a hole in recording to fill with this episode" but you know what I mean.  But yeah, this was recorded back in January when we all got together to play at Dirk's house.  We were joined by Ian Shepherd, a kid Dirk knows.  Turns out this kid is the son of the proprietor of Hypermind, a gaming shop...

Yeah, you read it right - we got Bennie Smith! He writes for Star City Games now, he used to write for DailyMTG, and he's here with us to close out Commander Month!  I'm pretty sure this is what's known as "doing it right".  We spent a while picking his brain and asking all about his Magic history - all you've ever wanted to know about Bennie Smith? Aw yeah. We got Bennie to help us answer some ex...

We are joined this episode by none other than Laura Diemer and Bill Boulden, aka Laura by Spruke.  You might know them from clips played right here on the show, or perhaps you bought their album, Katana & Tonic, on iTunes or one of the other digital music distribution services.  If not, then maybe you should! Last weekend most of us went to the SCG Open in Charlotte.  We played lots of EDH, so of...

As featured in Episode 216 , here is the awesome new audio montage made for us by Daniel Beach (who was also a guest host on that one).  He took an unfinished Sprukestep track from the upcoming Factor Friction album that Spruke posted up to SoundCloud and peppered in a lot of random Mana Pool goodness. He said he did it entirely in Audacity, which is pretty ridiculous for a free program. Just like...

It finally happened!  Yes, we finally remembered to grab none other than Jack Antonio Sabato De La Hoya Other Name Lacroix to guest host!  And let me just tell you, this guy is a wealth of information.  We talked briefly about the the latest SCG Open results, and Jack gave us some of his insight there.  With his help, we also covered a wide variety of Commander topics, such as the importance of ve...

Welcome to the first show of Commander Month here on The Mana Pool!  We're kicking it off with one of our long time listeners and constant source of good ideas, Daniel Beach.  If you enjoyed Episode 214, he was the inspiration behind having the ACS guys on again.  If you didn't enjoy it...blame Beach for that. But because it's Commander Month, we've asked Beach to do an Out of the Deck Box for one...

Well, it's the week after the prerelease, so you know what that means, right?  We've got to tell you all about how we did!  Find out who did well, who didn't do well, and how the webmaster Scott did in his first tournament ever! But of course, prerelease episodes are more than just Sealed tourney reports.  We also took the second half of the show to run through some of the listener mail that needs...

Yes, we're doing it again.  Joining us on this episode are Bryan and Christian from the currently-on-hiatus Avant-Card Show, and as always they are entirely too much fun.  This one's a little weird though (even for us) as life gets in the way a bit.  We started one host down and we lose two more hosts over the course of the show, but we still end the show with three of us!  Multiple guest hosts ar...

We are joined this week by Robert Martin, also known as The Beme.  You might recognize him from The Men of Magic interviews.  On this episode, we're covering all the Dark Ascension previews that had been shown when we recorded.  And let me tell you, there are some doozies this week. Interspersed throughout the card discussions are a variety of tangents.  We'll talk about expensive Magic merchandis...

We've got the first of the Dark Ascension previews for you on this episode!  Of course, Sorin popped up after we recorded, so we'll talk about him next episode.  We do have the Zombie Apocalypse though, which is pretty freakin' sweet.  Because of when this was recorded, we're really only talking about the first few days' worth, so we were able to go a little more in-depth than usual. But no matter...

Creatures!  Everyone loves creatures, right?  And what's the most fun way to play with creatures?  In tribes!  Everyone loves some tribal Magic, right?  There's even a format called Tribal, that's gotta mean something!  No we're not even going to talk about the format on this episode, we're being much more general.  This is just all about some of the various tribes in Magic.  We talk about our fav...

On this episode we're missing Brian, who had a last-minute before-Christmas dinner thing.  So We're joined by Brandon Isleib, better known as the Seedborn Muse over on the Muse Vessel !  Of course, you'll be able to find him over on Gathering Magic on Tuesdays from now on, so maybe you should check that out too.  But since we had a guest host, we decided to make a potpourri episode of random small...

Hey look, Bill's back!  And since he's here, we begin this episode by talking all about the SCG Invitational we went to last week.  We've got all kindsa stories and people and things.  There are links to the two playmats we talked about a little further down.  And you know you wanna see ;) Then we have a Magic Mad Lib from Myke Okuhara, which is seriously drop-dead hilarious.  No really.  I might...

This episode is a little out there.  First off, we're missing Dirk because it's his anniversary.  Because not just anyone can fill in for Dirk, we tracked down two old friends to help us out.  First we got Bill, who is kurai_seraphim on the forums and a recent guest host.  Then we tracked down Ben, who is Panahinuva on the forums, Twitter, and probably everywhere else. We start off with a couple o...

We're joined this episode by Tom, formerly of the MTG Radio podcast.  He's always fun to have on the show, so hopefully you'll all enjoy it as much as we did.  We start off with a fair amount of news - new Planechase, Faithless Looting, and the latest WOTC holiday card.  Links to all those are right here: Follow Tom on Twitter: http://twitter.com/MTGRadio Planechase 2012 http://www.wizards.com/Mag...

We really went all out for our 4 year show.  We've got discussions on beating children, Graveborn, panties, laughing thoctars, Horde updates, and the realization that Mike is actually the ruler of all things.  But I'm sure some of you already knew that, you're very clever.  That's why you listen to us! Actually, we didn't exactly realize that this was our 4 year anniversary show until just before...

On this episode of The Mana Pool, we're talking video games!  Reminiscing, really.  But because we're actually a Magic podcast, we're gonna try to bring it back to Magic as often as possible.  What could the different video game genres bring to Magic?  What about the various characters and worlds that video games have given us?  And the question that Brian used to pitch this idea to me: Would Soli...

It's that time again, where we use Gatherer to find a group of unwitting creatures to beat the crap out of each other for our amusement.  I mean...to compete for fame and glory on the battlefield. And charity! Yeah, that's it. Look, what's the point of being able to summon up creatures from around the multiverse if you can't have a little fun with it? But yes, starting with one of the lamest creat...

We're joined this week by Bill Bloodworth, who is Kurai_Seraphim on our forums.  Yes that's his real name.  I assure you he's not just an out of control LARPer.  He came down to hit a Sealed PTQ with Chewie and Brian, so we brought him on to tell us how it went and to join in the discussion. Speaking of discussion, we had a lot of that on this episode.  Listeners send us emails all the time, and s...

On this exciting episode of The Mana Pool we're bringing back a fan favorite segment, the binder pull! We're all just opening up our binders and picking out some cool cards to discuss. Then discussing them. You know. After that, it's back to the emails! We've got a whole mess of interesting rules questions and little tidbits here and there. There's a short rant from Chewie about pottymouths and pr...

This episode is packed!  We start off with our traditional post-rotation discussion.  I'm not sure why we do this, not being Standard players for the most part and being a casual podcast, but we always do and we've always gotten positive feedback about it.  So here it is again!  Did you realize that something besides Squadron Hawk rotated out?  I didn't either! Keeping with this Standard-centric t...

This is it!  We've hit #200!  Because we couldn't do it without all of you out there, we decided to jump through a lot of hoops in an effort to get some listener participation.  If you'll recall, several weeks ago we put a bunch of questions on the website.  One was a poll about which decks of ours you guys liked, and the rest were asking for suggestions for cards of a particular type.  Well we to...

We are joined this week by Amanda Stevens, one of the originators of RedSiteWins.com and hosts of Red Cast Wins.  You guys remember her, right?  She interviewed us a long while back.  And it’s a good thing, because Brian was unable to join us this week.  Anyway, we’ve got to talk about the Innistrad Prerelease, because we recorded this right after that happened.  Mike, Brian, and Chewie (that’s me...

Yes, you read that correctly.  We are joined on this episode by Panahinuva, otherwise known as Ben.  He's one of those omnipresent listener-types, and we love him for it.  Apparently, since here he is on the show again. But we begin with some news.  Well, it was news when we recorded, I'm sure no one really cares much anymore.  But that's okay, we still have to give you our take on it.  They made...

Chewie here.  I got home from a long trip to find that my computer wasn't working...20 minutes before recording was supposed to start.  After trying to coax it back to life, I gave up and had to drive to Mike's place, forgetting to bring the microphone with me.  I also had to get food or I was going to die.  That's how this episode started.  That also explains why I didn't know what episode we wer...