The Mana Pool

Chewie here. First off, I'd like to apologize for the lateness of this episode. We recorded it almost a week ago, but I've been bouncing back and forth between really busy and seriously exhausted, so it's all my fault. You can spread around the blame with the other dorks if you want though, I'm not going to stop you. In this episode, Mike thought we should take a closer look at the Shards. Of Alar...

It must have been a full moon or something. Perhaps Karma reached out to slap us. Whatever the deal was, we had serious problems actually getting this episode recorded. The recording program didn't seem to want to record. Part of the way through, Brian decided to turn into Optimus Prime transforming into a truck. He didn't actually make it all the way through to the end of the episode. After he tr...

Whether it's caused by eroding your memory, freezing your brain, dampening your thoughts, having your secrets drowned or your grimoire stolen, glimpsing the unthinkable, looting, brokering, or just being driven insane by the sound of the millstone relentlessly grinding away, Milling is never a fun way to lose a game of Magic. But it sure is a great way to win a game of Magic! If you can get it to...

Hey all! This is Brian, taking the reins of the show's writing department for a week, and what a week it is to be here. The Mana Pool is proud to present its 50th Episode spectacular. Lions! Squires! Mana-producing, vigilancing, multi-color bears! We've got it all, so come on in! In this episode, we've got 50% more hosts than usual. Dirk, sadly, could not be there for reasons that Chewie will kill...

Hello again, and welcome to The Mana Pool! Mike here one last time with one last rundown of one last Shards of Alara Preview episode before the Prerelease. We're finishing up from where we left off last time, and covering the additional cards that were shown Wednesday and Thursday.  Unfortunately, Brian could not be with us, but we have our wonderful guest host Jason filling in for him again.   We...

Hello again, and welcome to The Mana Pool! Mike here again with yet another rundown of yet another Shards of Alara Preview episode. All the customary hosts are present and accounted for (no special guests, unfortunately), and we start to tackle the first part of a massive info dump that showed up in the Visual Spoiler over the past weekend. Tune in later in the week to get completely up to date. T...

In a world where Shards of Alara preview cards are shown at a rate much less frequent than in previous sets, there is no need for two episodes of The Mana Pool in a week. In this world, episode 47 of The Mana Pool is just being released, instead of coming out late last week. It covers the preview cards shown from September 10 to September 17 on the Magic website's Shards of Alara Visual Spoiler, f...

Hello again, and welcome to The Mana Pool! Mike here again with a rundown of our second Shards of Alara Preview episode. Unfortunately, Brian could not join us because of other schedule obligations. Fortunately, we have a special guest. It's Jason (garthok84 of the forums), who had previously appeared to help us out in the Eventide prerelease aftermath, and he does not disappoint. We start things...

Hello, all, and welcome to the month of September. This is Mike, coming back from a weekend full of forgetting I agreed to write the show notes for this episode. Because this was our first episode of the month, we get things started with a rundown of the new Cardshark Member Promotions for September. Raffles! Free cards! Great deals! That guy who keeps trying to give away his excess Dissension unc...

In this episode, we cover a fair bit of news. There's a new look on our forums page. There's a new look for the Magic website. There are lots more pictures of your host dorks on our Facebook group, in case you want to know what we have looked like over the years. Here's a hint: We looked like dorks. There's also the matter of Shards of Alara previews. No, don't worry, the official previews haven't...

This time, we actually stay on task most of the time! We start off by discussing some basic combat strategy. Attacking, blocking, looking ahead in the game, etc etc. Then we move into tricks. We cover some of the different types of tricks, what they do, and how to use them. It's a much more enjoyable episode than last time, I assure you. That's all you get for now because I seem to have hurt my ba...

In this episode, we go over that most entertaining of phases, the combat phase. We cover all the steps of combat, what each step entails, and what sort of things you can and can't do in each step. In fact, I'm going to let Mike handle this via IM: "The way I remember it, it started with a general overview of the structure of the turn, then we looked closer at the general structure of combat, then...

On this episode of The Mana Pool, we decided to practice what we preach. Last time, we gave you the basics on Sealed. For this episode, we wanted to show you those basics in action. To do this, we've done two things. First, I opened a Sealed pool of cards (a Shadowmoor Tournament Pack and two Eventide Booster Packs) and copied down the contents. I then sent the list to Dirk, Mike, Brian, and mysel...

In this episode, in keeping with the recent Prerelease and Launch Parties for Eventide, your host dorks bring you the basics of Sealed Deck play. We cover color selection, creatures, the curve, removal, land counts, and whatever else comes to mind, sprinkled with our own experiences and anecdotes as per usual. Please excuse the horrendous pops that show up for the first 15 seconds or so, but we di...

This episode kicks off a series we've decided to call Back to Basics. Since Wizards of the Coast is focusing on acquisition this year, we thought it would be nice to spend a few episodes focusing on some of things that would be relevant to newer players, affectionately referred to as "noobs". For this episode, we've started with the basics. Each of us (except Dirk, who chose his girlfriend and Dar...

On this special Prerelease episode of The Mana Pool, we are joined by a special guest. You know him as garthok84 from the forums, and as a matter of fact so do we, but his name is Jason. He was good enough to join us on the show with virtually no warning and no prep time whatsoever, so we appreciate that quite a bit. Everyone give a big thanks to him on the forums for making the episode much more...

Ah, summer. The sun shines brightly, the birds sing sweetly in the trees, and a young dork's fancy turns to thoughts of the last few Eventide preview cards we'll be talking about before the big event this weekend. Mike here again, as Chewie insists that the posting of the show goes much faster whenever he doesn't have to write the show notes himself (it does). First, we finally conclude tribal "mo...

Hey, this is Mike here, filling in for fearless leader Chewie, who is currently busy eating ice cream and playing Rock Band (or watching The Muppet Show; he wasn't very clear on that point).  In this episode, Brian is back above the weather, giving us our customary cadre of dorks.   It turned out that the massive weekend info dump to the visual spoiler that we totally didn't expect to happen actua...

In this episode, we are without Brian, who is feeling under the weather. With the lead rambler missing, you'd think this episode would be shorter, wouldn't you? Shows you what you know, we can all ramble just fine whether we have Brian or not. Sorry for yet another long episode. But what an episode it is! First off we go over the results of the Onslaught vs. Lorwyn Tribal Wars for Wizards! Mike an...

In this episode, we take on the nine new Eventide cards that have been previewed on the Magic site since the last episode. Not only the cards in the visual spoiler and the day's articles, but also a few cards that showed up in the Eventide primer video in Monday's Arcana. Tuesday's video had no new cards, but it's a good way to familiarize yourself with Chroma, the new ability word in Eventide. He...

In this episode, we give you the result of the Onslaught vs. Lorwyn Goblin Tribal War thing. The captain for the Onslaught deck was the Goblin Warchief, and the Lorwyn deck got the Mad Auntie. Who won? I'm not going tell you. You'll just have to listen. You can find the decklists for these two decks here, eventually: http://cardshark.freeforums.org/tribal-month-t179.html Then, Tribal Month gets pr...

In this episode we are Dirkless. Whoa, that looks like a real word. Playing the role of Dirk in this episode is Thomas, Mike's brother, who you may remember from the episode that discussed how Time Spiral had several hints about the tribes that were going to appear in Lorwyn. Okay, so he's not playing the role of Dirk. He's playing the role of Thomas. He's a natural for the role, oddly enough. Sin...

Welcome back to Tribal Month! This time, we start off with a quick discussion of the Eventide Booster Pack preview that showed up on the Magic website for a few days. Here's the link that worked for us after they took it down, hopefully by the time you read this it'll still be working. Be sure to run your mouse over the Overbeing of Myth to see the full text. http://www.wizards.com/default.asp?x=m...

Well, this was going to be our first Tribal Month episode, but Wizards went and threw a curve ball at us. There's a big bunch of announcements that appeared this week, and we're here to give you our two cents' worth. Well, there's four of us, so that's eight cents. Don't spend it all in one place. We discuss the changes, talk about some of the things Mark Rosewater said about the changes, and then...

In our triumphant return from a vacation hiatus, we promptly decided to skip the show we were going to do and do this one instead.  Please forgive the quality of this episode, both content and sound quality, as it was kind of slapdash.  On Memorial Day, your host dorks got together along with Chris (PhoenixRising422 on the forums) and Michael (Science_Fixes_Everything on the forums) to do a bit of...