The Mana Pool

What is okay to play in a casual setting? Can you break out your hardcore land destruction deck around the kitchen table? Is it okay to play a 20-counterspell deck in the Casual room on MTGO? Do your friends hate you when you whip out your mono-black heavy discard deck? Brian leads us in a discussion of deck-type etiquette when playing in a non-tournament environment. Give us your opinions on the...

First we have to resurrect Squanto, since Vegas worked him to death.  From there, the episode takes off and never really stops.  Squanto, Mike, Brian, and I discuss the differences between the three major types of Magic decks:  Aggro, Control, and Combo.  At great length.  No really, we're really pretty thorough.  Pros, cons, examples, rantings, ravings, questions, arguments.  Pretty much everythi...

On this episode, the whole dorky crew goes over what they played at the Morningtide Prerelease and how it went for them.  We cover our single Sealed flight experience, then how Two-Headed Giant treated us.  Spoiler:  It stomped us.  Hard.  Of course, then we just had to talk about some of the other stuff going on at the tournament, but that's nothing worth mentioning in the show notes.  Except tha...

You know, we do 13 cards and we go to right around an hour. This time we only had 5 cards, so how long did we go? Right around an hour. In this episode, we discuss, at great length, some of the things you can do with the 5 preview cards that have popped up since the last episode. We actually came up with some doozies this time, let us know what you think. There's also Brian's Prerelease article th...

On the off chance anyone wants to help us out, here's the flyer my fabulous girlfriend and I designed (she did all the work, I watched in awe).  If you'd like, you can print this out, make some copies, cut them out, and hand them out to people.  Sure it's a large pain, but it's not so much pain that I'm not willing to put you guys through it.  You know, if you want me to.  Anyway, here it is.  Tha...

Wow. We've done this for 10 episodes now. That's pretty crazy. Seems like only a couple months ago we got this whole thing started...   Oh wait, I guess that's when it was. Never mind then. Mike, Brian, Squanto and I (da Chewie, of course) discuss the 13 new Morningtide preview cards to come out since our last look. This was supposed to be a quickie episode, but with 13 cards to talk about, we're...

In this episode Squanto, Mike, Brian, Dirk and I (da Chewie!) take on the issue of proxies.  When is it okay to use proxies?  When is it not okay?  And what should you do when confronted with someone using proxies?  And what about using your foil lands in place of normal lands at a Limited event?  We tackle these hot-button issues right here in the Mana Pool.   Next up we hit even more Morningtide...

It's the Best of 2007 show for the Mana Pool!  Squanto, Brian, Dirk and I (da Chewie!) discuss all the best things to come out of the Mana Pool in 2007.  This includes but is not limited to the Best Single Card We Never Got Around To Discussing, the Thousand-Year Elixir.  We go over the Chris Millar article that discusses the Elixir, and talk about Brian's experiences both with and against it.  He...

In this episode Mike, Brian, and Thomas join me (the Chewie!) for some scrumptious dorkiness! This time we go over some of the Standard decks that did well and made it big at Worlds this year. The big standout is the return of Dragonstorm, this time in mono-red with Spinerock Knoll as the super-secret tech. But we cover several other big decks too. In the middle of that there's a very short rant a...

Note:  This episode was recorded the night before Rosewater's article "What Do You Know, Part II", but due to technical difficulties and time constraints, it was not posted before the article came out.  The rotating cast of dorks keeps on spinning. Joining me again this episode is Mike, our resident rules guru and all-around Mike kinda guy. The latest edition to the cast joins me as well. That's T...

Welcome to The Mana Pool.  Come on in, the water's fine.  I'm Chewie, as always.  Joining me today: Squanto - n00b, American Indian, and head writer for the show Dirk - still the greenest player alive, and casual player extraordinaire Mike - our resident rules guru and all around Magic know-it-all (but in a good way) In this episode, we revisit last episode's Clash deck and discuss how it performe...

Welcome to the second episode of The Mana Pool!  I'm your host, Chewie, and I'm joined by another group of dorks this time.  Brian - occasional writer for Cardshark, law student, and not a pro. Squanto - token n00b, token Indian (that's American Indian), and all around, uh, guy. In this episode, we discuss a few cards from Lorwyn that aren't tournament killers, aren't big cash cards, and aren't ge...

Welcome to the first episode of The Mana Pool!  I'm your host, Chewie, and I'm joined by a big group of dorks that consist of: Brian - occasional writer for Cardshark Dirk - greenest Magic player alive Squanto - token n00b     In this episode, we roll over to Cardshark and explain how it works and why it's great.  Then we hit many of the new Standard decks that have cropped up since Lorwyn became...