The Mana Pool

We are again Dirkless this episode, as he is off with his bride gallivanting around our nation's capital. So instead we have Ben, known on the forums as Panahinuva, who was one of our contest winners from a few months ago. Most excellent. Well you know what the deal is. First we have some stuff to go over as usual, shout-outs and whatnot. Be sure to check out the Avant Card podcast, brought to you...

On this episode, we begin Mikeless, because something stupid happened at work. Then we dive into Brian's Scarecrow Deck, which was requested as an Out of the Deck Box. Here's the list for that. We Wish We Had A Brain 14: Swamp 4: Cloudpost 2: Temple of the False God 2: Rupture Spire 1: Shimmering Grotto 1: Vesuva 2: Chainbreaker 1: Wingrattle Scarecrow 1: Rattleblaze Scarecrow 3: Watchwing Scarecr...

First off, Brian got sick and died, so we are without his services for this episode. Then there's a bit of Magic news, including Alara Reborn Intro Pack decklists and the announcement of Zendikar. Then there's the feedback we've gotten from people in various places, new members on the Facebook group, and all that good stuff. And Cardshark Member Promotions, because it's a new month. Zendikar: http...

Forum thread for this episode: http://cardshark.freeforums.org/episode-73-shred-memory-t308.html Check out our archive at http://themanapool.libsyn.com Email us at themanapool@cardshark.com Send me an article at submissions@cardshark.com Cardshark located at http://www.cardshark.com Cardshark Member Promotions: http://www.cardshark.com/member_promotions.asp Subscribe to our RSS Feed: http://feeds....

There's a lot going on in this episode. First off, we have lots of Mana Pool news. New members on the forums, new people in the Facebook group, some comments on the MTGCast page, stuff like that. Also, I got a job. Yay employment! There's also that whole bit about From the Vault: Exiled, but we really don't know enough about it to do anything other than read the stuff on the announcement, found he...

Man, this whole show has gone to the dogs. Well, hounds. And it's for the birds. And cats. And even rabbits and slugs and leeches. We're taking a look at the way Magic handles real-world animals. Any creature type that is a real animal, I have taken a look at and figured out how many there are and what, if anything, ties them all together. Since I did this, I'm going to torment my fellow dorks by...

On this extra-long and woefully non-creatively named episode, we have lots and lots of stuff to go through. First off, there's all the new member promotions on Cardshark. The featured promotion is especially interesting, be sure to check it out. We have new members on the Facebook group, new members on the forums, and a quick message to one of our forum members, involving the words "dude" and "dor...

In this episode, your four hosts definitely do NOT get lives. Trust me on this. First up, there's the big news regarding 11th Edition. There isn't going to be one! The next core set will be Magic 2010. It will contain roughly half new cards. Yeah that's right, new cards in a core set. Weird. We'll go over all this and the other assorted bits of news that aren't worth putting in the show notes, as...

For anyone joining us from the MTGCast, welcome to The Mana Pool! Come on in, the water's fine. For everyone else, welcome back. Please use your assigned locker space for changing into your trunks. Also, please wait until us hosts get out of the locker room, because we definitely don't need to be here to see that. It's a product review and a set review! But first, we have to read the contest winni...

Welcome to our random nonsense episode. I'm dying slowly and pitifully, Mike's sleep schedule is being treated like a pinball, Brian's classes are eating into his social activities, and Dirk plays WoW. Not only that, but we're going to attempt to humanize ourselves just a little bit. We're gonna give you a look at your dorky hosts from a different perspective – what we're doing when we're not play...

It's the Conflux Prerelease Bonanza! Okay, I'm totally not gonna call it that. But in this episode, we all get together and tell you about the Prerelease. Spoiler alert: Mike the did the worst of us all. We also get Bill, winner of the Mana Pool Contest and Kurai_Seraphim on the forums, to join us to tell us how he fared. There's also a brief sidebar on cheating, a bit of discussion about some of...

Alas, we are Dirkless yet again! Luckily (for him), he has a good excuse this time. We are also Mikeless. Is that even a word? Also luckily, he has a good excuse too. I'd hate to have to kill a dork in anger, you know? Before we got to the show though, Brian and I had to finish a game. Luckily, I was able to summon up a garthok84 from the forums to fight for me. Then he decided to stick around and...

Brains! No, wait, that's not right. Previews! After you pay for this episode, you'll get to hear our takes on 13 more Conflux preview cards. Now all you have to do is figure out where to insert the money... Conflux Visual Spoiler: http://www.wizards.com/magic/tcg/article.aspx?x=mtg/tcg/conflux/spoiler Forum thread for this episode: http://cardshark.freeforums.org/episode-64-conflux-previews-3-t288...

In this originally-named episode, we're gonna hit more Conflux previews! But first, we're gonna give you the story that won third place in the contest, submitted by Jason McFarland, who is garthok84 on the forums. It involves my favorite format ever and a terrible, horrible, soul-crushing way to lose. But before that, we've got a promo to play for Mr. Suitcase, a podcast over on the MTGCast. Prece...

In this episode of The Mana Pool, our heroes bravely withstand a goblin attack to bring you the first round of Conflux previews. There are 17 cards to go over, and they manage to hit every one of them without any major casualties, although Dirk may never walk again. Tune in next week to see which of your hosts learns a valuable lesson. The Mana Pool – Mondays on the WB! No wait, they're not that a...

Welcome to the first Mana Pool episode of 2009! We of course have to start off predictably with some Magic-related New Year's resolutions. We all resolve to play more Magic than we have in recent times, so that must be the dork equivalent of "lose weight". I actually resolve not to lose weight, even though Wii Fit says I'm morbidly obese, but that's neither here nor there. Then we get into the mea...

Greetings one and greetings all. This is Brian, taking a break from rambling on the air (internet?) waves to do some typing for you. Here you'll find Episode 60 of the Mana Pool, now with 75% less Dirk (don't worry, he'll be back, he's just experiencing recent matrimony, that's all). In this episode, there's some news that we need to go over. And when I say some news, I mean so much news that you...

Chewie here. Mike was good enough to write the show notes for this episode, but there are a couple things that bear mentioning first. Sorry about the horrible clicking sounds that show up for the first 9 minutes or so. We still have no idea what causes them, and we just happened to not check the file after we recorded it. So of course, we have clicking sounds, because we didn't check for them firs...

It's official: Mike is leaving us. Not the show, he'll still be here as the rules guy and the old-school knowledge. But he's physically leaving us to take a job that is about 8 hours away. And he's doing so relatively soon. So he decided that we should all get together and play Magic one more time before he wandered off to the far reaches of what-have-you. So we did. The four Mana Pool hosts gathe...

For this episode, we are Brian-less. Of all the terrible things that could have happened to cause his absence for this first episode of the new year of casting, this is perhaps the worst. He's lost his voice. Let's hope he survives. Everyone that plays Magic started playing at some point. Which means that after everyone started playing, there was a new set that came out. This episode is all about...

Welcome to our one year anniversary episode! To be perfectly honest, there's not terribly much that is completely new and awesome in this show. We really wanted to stick with one of our core concepts, something that the fans really appreciate. So we went over the Cardshark Member Promotions for the month of November and called it a day. You can find them here: http://www.cardshark.com/member_promo...

In honor of our one year anniversary of podcasting, I wanted to give everyone a look behind the scenes.  Here are some of the bits that didn't quite make it onto the feed for your listening pleasure.  The rest is explained in the clip.  Thanks a lot for listening throughout the year everyone, and enjoy the completely non-Magic goodness in this Bonus Episode!

To honor our one-year anniversary, we offer you this song for direct download.  By taking sound clips from around 10 episodes and splicing them together with Weapon of Choice by Fatboy Slim and a few of the DELETED buzzer sounds from Strong Bad Emails, Rob Anderson created something we dorks will treasure always.    First featured in episode 52, this piece of audio goodness really captures the per...

As the race for the Mana Pool Presidency heads to the finish line, the political ad campaigns are starting to get dirty. The last round of ads will be sprinkled throughout this episode so you can have all the information you need when you get to the polls. In this episode, we're taking a look at the Booster Draft format. Brian did a Shards of Alara draft on Magic Online and saved the results, so w...

Everyone loves Out of the Deck Box, right? So why don't we do a whole episode where we each pick one of our many (many) decks and tell you folks all about it? Sound like a plan? Well tough. We're not doing that. Instead, Brian thought we should each pick a deck that wasn't our own and talk about it. After lots of "huh?" we decided that it was, in fact, a good idea. Brian kicked us off by talking a...