The Mana Pool

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...

Hey there, all you Mana Pool listeners!  Brian here, subbing in for Chewie.  He worked 12 hours on the day that we recorded this episode, only to come home and run the recording less than 2 hours later, and he needed a bit of a break.  You'd never guess it from the episode, though, 'cause we're all firing on all cylinders for this one.  When I say "we", I don't mean Dirk, because he's not going to...

Can we say that? This time we've got a lot to go over.  We're Dirkless again due to his recent computer problems, but we're joined by my old roommate Corey again, so that evens out.  We've got a mess of feedback to go over first.  Then Brian and I have to tell you about the recent PTQ we attended.  We ran the decks that were being tested in the last episode, just so you know.  No last minute deck...

This is probably not what you were expecting, is it?  Due to recording time problems, it was either this or no show at all.  And since I know what happens to you rabid Mana Pool fans out there when you don't get your weekly fix, Brian and I came up with a solution.  Let us know if you thought this was good, bad, terrible, stupid, didn't care, greatest thing ever, or whatever you think.  Please giv...

Prepare yourselves for a wild ride. That's all the warning you get. This episode, we're taking it back. All the way back to our college days when we would spend many hours of the night, many times a week, playing big round table multiplayer Magic. To help us take it all the way back that far, we have my old roommate Corey joining us for the first time. You may remember hearing about him on previou...

<!-- @page { size: 8.5in 11in; margin: 0.79in } P { margin-bottom: 0.08in } --> This episode was a complete mess, but not for you to listen to. Allow me to explain. First, we are joined by our old friend AJ of "Kill AJ" fame. This leads to our pre-recording conversation becoming a completely random mess that I really wish we could have recorded. Then we have a bit of listener feedback, which...

Hey there, all you Mike fans!  This is me, filling in on the notes for Chewie this week as a special treat for everyone who missed me (hi, Mom!).  Unfortunately, we're less one Dirk this time, as he had some stuff to take care of and didn't feel like he had anything in particular to contribute to the subject matter of the episode. Anyway, we kick things off with a special little featurette that mi...

First off, I just wanted to say sorry for the lateness of this episode. I'm sure you'll hear about why in the next one. In this Mike-free show, we're here to talk the Alara Reborn Prerelease. We decided that it made more sense to record on a night that Brian could join us, since he was at the Prerelease, so we had to do it on a night Mike was unavailable. Sorry to all the Mike fans out there, he s...

And the final Alara Reborn Preview is upon us! We are Mikeless in this episode, but that's okay because we have joining us the amazing Jason, also known as garthok84 on the forums, who was the third place winner of our big contest at the beginning of the year. He takes up the slack from Mike's absence and is generally a horrible human being throughout the entire episode. Which is what we look for...

Hello to all you folks out there in Internet Land! This is Mike, filling in on the notes for Chewie because... uh... because he told me to, really. Welcome to another Alara Reborn preview episode! As usual, Wizards dumped a whole truckload of stuff on us through the main site and other venues since we last sat down to record, so we're just doing a partial update of the official spoiler list as it...