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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 to be read on-air.  Rules questions, prerelease stories, and general hilarity.  Interspersed throughout the episode are rants and discussions of various things.  These things include lame intro packs, a good game of EDH at Lucky's, Chewie not playing Thalia, Columbia House and BMG, and this one highly obnoxious guy who seems to run through the whole account of the prerelease.  We hope you enjoy!

Also, there were a few URLs from emails that we agreed to share with everyone:
Ace's Altered Art - http://AcesAlteredArt.com
Bury St. Edmunds Wargaming Club - http://burywargamers.blogspot.com/


Intro and Outro Music – Diamond by Swift – http://www.swift-band.com
Break Music - Easy by Laura by Spruke - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ybRVsCwDTqc

Be sure to check out all the great stuff on the website! – http://themanapool.com

Forum thread for this episode: http://cardshark.freeforums.org/episode-215-dka-prerelease-and-mailbag-t760.html
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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 are cool.

Of course, we're gonna talk about the rest of the Dark Ascension spoiler now that it's all been revealed.  (Sorry I didn't get this up before the Prerelease, but it's not like we're giving you any vital information, right?)  But before that, we have to talk about what we think should go into a From the Vault: Casual.  We kicked around a lot of ideas both good and bad.  What would you put in there?

Of course, there's plenty of discussion of the flavor of certain cards, Bryan being old, the price of chase rares, how a Justin Bieber shirt almost destroyed Bryan's life, Edward G. Robinson, website development, Magic as Satan's Game, and lots of other nonsense.  And what episode would be complete without a little dig or two at Chris Lansdell?  HOpe you guys enjoy all this random conversating as much as we did!


Find Bryan and Christian over on http://avantcardshow.com

Intro and Outro Music – Diamond by Swift – http://www.swift-band.com
Break Music - Double Dragon (Opening Theme) by Kazunaka Yamane

Be sure to check out all the great stuff on the website! – http://themanapool.com

Forum thread for this episode: http://cardshark.freeforums.org/episode-214-crisis-ii-dork-harder-dka-preview-3-t757.html
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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 merchandise, jerks on forums, jerks playing Commander, dragons on Innistrad, money gouging and crooks, the Magic Twitter community, and a certain professional player that I had to interact with later that night.  He's not a bad guy it turns out, I just severely disagree with one of his opinions.  But still...screw him.


Follow Robert on Twitter - @TheBeme

Intro and Outro Music – Diamond by Swift – http://www.swift-band.com
Break Music - Hellrider by Judas Priest - http://www.judaspriest.com

Be sure to check out all the great stuff on the website! – http://themanapool.com

Forum thread for this episode: http://cardshark.freeforums.org/episode-213-rant-over-dka-preview-2-t753.html
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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 how in-depth we get, two days of cards do not a full episode make!  But we didn't have time to go full-on into another topic, so a listener suggestion came to the rescue!  The question was "what's your favorite combo that you run in one of your decks?"  So we all dug through our decks and came up with the combos we love.  Except for Chewie, who brought every combo in his decks.  Don't worry, he shoots more for synergy in his decks, so he only has a few.  It gives a little glance to the way the dorks build decks.

Intro and Outro Music – Diamond by Swift – http://www.swift-band.com
Break Music - Corridors of Time (Chrono Trigger Zeal cover) by Laura By Spruke - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ufJslNR_cOw

Be sure to check out all the great stuff on the website! – http://themanapool.com

Forum thread for this episode: http://cardshark.freeforums.org/episode-212-dark-ascension-preview-1-t752.html
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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 favorite tribes, most hated, what makes a good one, all kindsa stuff!

But we're missing Mike!  To help us out with this, we brought in Uriah Oxford, the man behind CMDR Decks on Youtube (and MTGcast).  Of course, we'll talk about tribal in EDH and get distracted by various EDH issues and discussions while we're at it.  I know, it's amazing that we Mana Pool boys can get distracted by anything, but believe me it happens.  And it's good stuff!

CMDR Decks on Youtube - http://www.youtube.com/cmdrdecks
Follow Uriah on Twitter - @CMDRDecks

Intro and Outro Music – Diamond by Swift – http://www.swift-band.com
Be sure to check out all the great stuff on the website! – http://themanapool.com

Forum thread for this episode: http://cardshark.freeforums.org/episode-211-tribal-talk-with-cmdr-decks-t747.html
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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 smaller topics that have come up recently.

First off there's a quick discussion of the two cards Banned from Modern.  Then we took a quick look at Avacyn Restored.  We let Brandon cut loose on a topic we recently we recently talked about, keeping casual Magic casual.  Then there was a discussion of creatures with Defender in multiplayer Magic.  We finished up with a nice long discussion about the various mechanics in Future Sight and which of them were our favorites.  That one was a good one.

Big thanks to Brandon for joining us, we had a lot of fun with him!  You guys should definitely go check out his Musings, along with the other two guys over on The Muse Vessel!

Intro and Outro Music – Diamond by Swift – http://www.swift-band.com
Break Music – One Shot You Don't Want to Miss by A Light Divided - http://www.facebook.com/ALightDivided or http://www.reverbnation.com/alightdivided

Be sure to check out all the great stuff on the website! – http://themanapool.com

Forum thread for this episode: http://cardshark.freeforums.org/episode-210-seedborn-musings-t745.html
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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 die.  Then we did a real Mad Lib that Brian wrote, because it was there to do.  Just don't get used to this two-Mad-Libs-per-episode thing going on here, okay?

And we finish up with a sizable discussion about the pros and cons of each color, as seen from a gameplay perspective.  We started off with flavor, then realized that's not what the person was asking.  I wish I could remember who asked and where, but them's the breaks, you know?  Hope you enjoy!

Planeswalkers for Equality: http://www.steveargyle.com/?cmd=gallery_ext&art_id=411

Chandra closeup that Mike bought: http://www.steveargyle.com/?cmd=gallery_ext&art_id=368

Intro and Outro Music – Diamond by Swift – http://www.swift-band.com
Break Music – Why is the Rum Gone?

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Forum thread for this episode: http://cardshark.freeforums.org/episode-209-dirk-and-a-half-t743.html
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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 of listener-submitted Mad Libs, one from Jose Lorenzo de Jesus and one from Austin Abel.  Yeah I know we've done the first one before, shut up.  They're fun.  After that, it's time for a Story Circle.  But not just any Story Circle, this is a holiday special!  We're taking a look at the various holiday special promo cards that Wizards has released the last few years, then we're gonna concoct a Story Circle around one of them!  Trust me, it turned out great.

After that, things got a little unfocused.  We talked about some of the things that are coming up in the near future on TheManaPool.com and discussed our upcoming trip to the SCG Open Invitational in Charlotte.  Just a reminder, Mike's taking on all comers with his High Tide Eldrazi Archenemy deck!  Then we turned our attention to some listener mail and assorted ramblings.  Hope you enjoy!


Intro and Outro Music – Diamond by Swift – http://www.swift-band.com
Break Music – They're Taking the Hobbits to Isengard

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Forum thread for this episode: http://cardshark.freeforums.org/episode-208-like-for-bullets-t740.html
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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/Magic/Magazine/Article.aspx?x=mtg/daily/arcana/848

Faithless Looting
http://www.wizards.com/Magic/Magazine/Article.aspx?x=mtg/daily/arcana/847

Yule Ooze
http://www.wizards.com/Magic/Magazine/Article.aspx?x=mtg/daily/arcana/852


Then we get to the good stuff!  Way back in Episode 69 - Get A Life!, we each took the simple concept of "lifegain" and built a deck around it, completely separate from each other.  Then we compared and contrasted our decks on the show.  We each came up with something vastly different of course.  That episode got a really good response, and we've always meant to do it again.

Well we're finally doing it.  This time, we started with the idea of "counters" and ran with it.  And in case you're wondering, we're not talking Cancel here.  We're talking break out the Crown Royal bag full of dice.  So all five of us built a deck around this loose theme, and the results were again wildly different.  Brian, Mike, and Dirk each focused on one type of counter, while I decided to intentionally not focus on one type.  Tom, with his background as an EDH podcaster, built a Commander deck.  If you'd like to see what the decks looked like, here's where you can go to find them:
http://themanapool.com/the-deck-box/make-itcount-deck-lists/

After that, we have a few good discussions that come from listener mail.  We discuss Magic Online vs. paper Magic.  We discuss some of the possible ways to get rid of your collection once you're done playing.  We even talked about Worlds for a minute.

And finally, if you're going to be at the Star City Games Open Series in Charlotte, NC (you know, the Invitational) then you might just see Chewie and Mike there, along with Bill (you know, from Episode 203 - Medium-Sized Discussions) and at least a few others from the podcasting community, including BigheadJoe, Jack LaCroix, and the crew from Runnin' the Gauntlet.  So come on out and see us in Charlotte on Dec. 10!

Intro and Outro Music – Diamond by Swift – http://www.swift-band.com
Break Music – Boil 'Em by EnigmaMonkey

Be sure to check out all the great stuff on the website! – http://themanapool.com

Forum thread for this episode: http://cardshark.freeforums.org/episdoe-207-make-it-count-t739.html
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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 we started.  But luckily, we had chosen a topic that was very much suited for it!  This episode is a whole mess of Out of the Deck Box!  Each of us took one of our favorite decks (or one that listeners have asked about) and go over it.  We're talking casual multiplayer here, so expect a lot of nonsense and fun!

Brian shared his Shared Fate deck at a listener's request.  We are awesome.  Chewie showed off his Primalcrux deck, even though he still needs 2 more Primalcrux.  No seriously, we're pretty great.  Dirk hauled out the aptly named X-Deck because he really doesn't like us at all.  Actually Mike is the awesome one.  And Mike discussed his themeless Black/Red deck, probably because it's one of the few decks he has that still just doesn't have a central idea running through it.  Kneel before Mike!

Stupid thoctars...


Uncle Zod by memorypalace
Intro and Outro Music – Diamond by Swift – http://www.swift-band.com
Break Music – The Picard Song by DarkMateria

Be sure to check out all the great stuff on the website! – http://themanapool.com

Forum thread for this episode: http://cardshark.freeforums.org/episode-206-kneel-before-mike-four-years-t736.html
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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 Solid Snake have shroud?  I liked it so much I made it the title of this episode!

After that, we attempted to knock out some of the listener emails that have been piling up over the last month.  Rules questions, congratulations on hitting 200 (oops), and assorted other topics come up for discussion, so don't miss it!  You never know, you might learn something.

Intro and Outro Music – Diamond by Swift – http://www.swift-band.com
Break Music – Mike Tyson's Punch-Out!! Theme
Intro by Tosus - http://dergeek.com
Image by snatx - http://community.wizards.com/snatx/blog/2009/10/19/zendikar_custom_tokens

Be sure to check out all the great stuff on the website! – http://themanapool.com

Forum thread for this episode: http://cardshark.freeforums.org/episode-205-would-solid-snake-have-shroud-t734.html
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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 creatures in Magic and going from there, we have pitched battles between random creatures.  By pitched battles, of course I mean nerd arguments about who would win (and yet Batman vs. Captain America doesn't come up once...huh).  Eight enter, but only one will come away victorious!  Feel free to join in the nerd arguments on the forums or in the comments, of course.

After that, Brian gives us an in-depth rundown of a draft he did on MTGO that he thought was especially interesting.  And it was, so listen up.  You in the back there!  Pay attention!

Intro (and new Outro!) Music – Diamond by Swift – http://www.swift-band.com
Break Music - Killer Instinct Theme

Be sure to check out all the great stuff on the website! – http://themanapool.com

Forum thread for this episode: http://cardshark.freeforums.org/episode-204-hyper-instinct-turbo-third-strike-goty-ed-alpha-t732.html
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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 sometimes there's something in those emails that just need more attention than a quick email reading will give, so we file them away to discuss later.  Usually we don't actually get around to discussing them later because we're terrible people and miserably forgetful.

Mike made a list of these forgotten discussions and we tackled a few of them this episode.  Was putting Sol Ring in the Commander decks a good thing, or just a marketing ploy?  Should decks be played a certain way, or is it cool that some people play the same deck in a different way?  How might you attempt to control a difference in power levels in a multiplayer play group?  And finally, we take a look at Preordain, Ponder, and Brainstorm and the differences between them.

Intro (and new Outro!) Music – Diamond by Swift – http://www.swift-band.com
Break Music – Where Everybody Knows Your Name (Theme from Cheers) by Gary Portnoy - http://garyportnoy.com

Be sure to check out all the great stuff on the website! – http://themanapool.com

Forum thread for this episode: http://cardshark.freeforums.org/episode-203-medium-sized-discussions-t731.html
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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 professionalism that will probably end up offending someone, but it happens. No harm meant I assure you.

At this point my show notes say "something at the end". It's been long enough since we recorded that I'm not entirely sure what that means. So if you hear something at the end, that's what it meant. And if you don't, then I've got nothing.

Intro (and new Outro!) Music – Diamond by Swift – http://www.swift-band.com
Break Music – Trogdor by Strong Bad - http://www.homestarrunner.com/sbemail58.html

Be sure to check out all the great stuff on the website! – http://themanapool.com

Forum thread for this episode: http://cardshark.freeforums.org/episode-202-bringing-back-the-binder-pull-t729.html
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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 topic, we then move to a quick discussion about the first couple of SCG Open with the new Standard.  It's amazing what these people are doing nowadays! Oh, and there are new Innistrad Event Decks to discuss.

That sounds like a full show right there, but we're not even close to done yet!  There's a new format that's been making the rounds lately, Horde Magic.  It was introduced to me by SkeetWo, a listener named Justin, when I met him at Curio Cavern in Springfield VA. It was a blast when I played the Horde with him, so I wanted to introduce it to my cohosts. Of course, since we recorded this it's been all over the place, including an article by Stybs on the mothership (where he also mentioned another favorite of the show, Respawn Magic).  Links for those are right here:


Peter Knudson: http://www.quietspeculation.com/2011/09/horde-magic-a-new-way-to-play-magic-and-survive-zombie-invasions/

Adam Styborski: http://www.wizards.com/Magic/Magazine/Article.aspx?x=mtg/daily/sf/165


And that's not even the whole show!  Dirk had the brilliant (no really, no sarcasm at all) idea to talk about art.  Good art, bad art, creepy art, whatever.  And this led to the most fun discussion we've had in a while.  We picked out some stuff that was great, some stuff that was ridiculous, and we finally solved the long-standing mystery of what happened to Baron Sengir's legs.  Hope you guys enjoy it!

----------

Donate to Dustin’s Extra Life page! Help out some sick kids! – http://extra-life.org/participant/vognasty

Intro (and new Outro!) Music – Diamond by Swift – http://www.swift-band.com
Break Music – Aria di Mezzo Carattere (Orchestrated) from Final Fantasy VI by Nobuo Uematsu

Be sure to check out all the great stuff on the website! – http://themanapool.com

Forum thread for this episode: http://cardshark.freeforums.org/episode-201-armchair-art-critics-t727.html
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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 took that information and came up with a bizarre Planechasey kind of thing.  We made a stack of all the cards you guys suggested and shuffled it up.  After 3 turns of buildup we drew from the listener-supplied stack along with our normal draw.  Whatever card we drew we HAD to play by our next turn.  No discarding it, no skipping out on it, nothing like that.  If you submitted it, we HAD to play it if at all possible.  Not only that, but when we played it we read off who submitted it and what their comment was about it.  So if you're lucky, you might just hear yourself on the show! 

Forgive us if we seem rushed, we recorded this the day of the Innistrad Prerelease and had to get the games finished with enough time for us to actually make it to the tournament.  And be sure you listen to the quick intro about Extra Life!  I'm uploading this after midnight the day before, so I really need to get some freakin' sleep.  If you're hearing this on Saturday, October 15, then you can check out the uStream the Extra Life game-playing here:
http://www.ustream.tv/channel/extra-life-2011

————
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Intro and Outro Music – Diamond by Swift – http://www.swift-band.com
Break Music – Whack It by Swift

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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) all went to the tourney, so find out how we did and what we pulled.  Amanda did some spellslinging at her prerelease, so there’s another nifty story.  Of course, then we’ve gotta talk about how we like the set as a whole and all that.

There was a rules update!  Some of the updates are actually pretty cool, so we had to talk about them.  If you’d like to follow along at home, just click here.
http://www.wizards.com/Magic/Magazine/Article.aspx?x=mtg/daily/feature/161d&page=2

From there, we tackled our mountain of listener emails.  There were a lot of rules questions, funny comments, and completely random nonsense that have built up over the last several weeks.  So we’ve got to share those with you.  Whether you like it or not.  But I think you’ll like it.  So there.

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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 a slight change to drafting procedures vis a vis the double-faced cards.  The Banned & Restricted list has been updated, with Modern and Extended taking some pretty major changes in direction.  And there were a few key changes to the Commander Banned list too.  So we covered all of that of course.

Then there's Innistrad.  At this point, the entire spoiler had been revealed, so we just went through each color, pointing at various cards and going "Ooooo" at them until we were done.  I love this set.

Find Ben on Twitter: @Panahinuva

Double-Faced Draft Changes (at the bottom):
http://www.wizards.com/Magic/Magazine/Article.aspx?x=mtg/daily/ld/160

B&R List update:
http://www.wizards.com/Magic/Magazine/Article.aspx?x=mtg/daily/feature/161a

Commander update:
http://www.mtgcommander.net/Forum/viewtopic.php?f=1&t=10749

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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 were on at the beginning, give me a break.

But enough discussion!  This episode is all Innistrad previews, all the time!  We touch on every new card that had been shown since our last recording, this time with another special guest!  Adam Styborski joins us once again to interject random hilarity throughout the episode.  You can find him in a variety of places, wearing a variety of hats, in places like:

Weekly columnist for DailyMTG: http://www.wizards.com/Magic/Magazine/Archive.aspx?author=Adam%20Styborski
The Pauper Cube: http://thepaupercube.wordpress.com/
Writer for Gathering Magic: http://www.gatheringmagic.com/author/adamstyborski/
Casual Editor for Quiet Speculation: http://www.quietspeculation.com
Twitter: @the_stybs

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Intro and Outro Music - Diamond by Swift - http://www.swift-band.com
Break Music - Tubular Bells (Theme from The Exorcist)

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Welcome to another episode of The Mana Pool!  This time around we're joined again by Chris Lansdell, that limey podcast whore that you know from many other podcasts, most notably Horde of Notions and The Great Debate.  If you haven't listened to those, what's wrong with you?

We kick off the festivities with a discussion about the newly-revealed (at the time) Planeswalker Points system.  This is the new rating system that's going to replace the old DCI rating.  Thank goodness.  You can read all about it here:
http://www.wizards.com/magic/magazine/article.aspx?x=mtg/daily/feature/159b

We then take a few minutes to check out what happened at Pro Tour Philadelphia, which was the first official Modern tournament.  It made me happy to see a relatively healthy format after the first attempt, even though I have no interest in playing myself.  We discussed the decks that made the Top 8, which you can see here:
http://www.wizards.com/magic/magazine/article.aspx?x=mtg/daily/eventcoverage/ptphi11/top8decklists

And then of course we have to talk about all the wondrous and crazy Innistrad previews that have shown up since our last recording session.  And there are some pretty good ones, as always.  You can find them all here:
http://www.wizards.com/magic/tcg/article.aspx?x=mtg/tcg/innistrad/cig#


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Intro (and new Outro!) Music - Diamond by Swift - http://www.swift-band.com
Break Music - Theme from Halloween

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News news news!  We've got the announcements about the Duel Decks: Ajani vs. Nicol Bolas deck lists and the Duels of the Planeswalkers 2012 expansion, so of course we had to cover all that.  There was a lot of concern from our listeners regarding the various and sundry natural disasters that hit our area, so we had to talk about that a bit, including a mightily depressing hurricane story from Brian.
http://www.wizards.com/Magic/Magazine/Article.aspx?x=mtg/daily/arcana/783

Oh, and there's Squeak.  Holy crap I'm in love.
http://girlsofgeek.com/squeak/

But really, you're all here for the Innistrad previews, so that's what we're going to give you.  We look at every freakin' card we could find and discuss them.  We weigh in on the double-faced cards, the flavor, being Morbid, and the return of Flashback. You can check it all out here:
http://www.wizards.com/magic/tcg/article.aspx?x=mtg/tcg/innistrad/cig#

Then we try desperately to get through some of our emails, which is why this episode went so long.  There were some good ones though, so stick around!

Donate to Dustin's Extra Life page! Help out some sick kids! - http://extra-life.org/participant/vognasty

Also, keep an eye out on the website for a few polls that have nothing to do with the show.  We're going to have you guys give us answers to a few questions just because.  There will be a new one every two days or so, so keep going back!


Intro (and new Outro!) Music - Diamond by Swift - http://www.swift-band.com
Break Music - Captain Planet Theme
REAL Break Music - Twilight Zone Tower of Terror Theme

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Holy crap, a live episode?  Is this why there's no Innistrad episode yet?  I think it must be!  Dirk, Mike, and Chewie gathered together to play some Magic, and so of course we recorded some of it for you.  Because we love you guys.  No really.  You think we get together and have to put up with each other in person because we like each other or enjoy playing this game?  Nope, it's just to give our listeners something different to listen to, that's it!

First up we have a Commander game.  Mike's using his edited Mimeoplasm deck, I'm using Hanna, Ship's Navigator, and Dirk is using his brand new Sharuum the Hegemon deck.  This one was a lot of fun and fairly brutal.  You'll get a kick out of it.

After that we played a 60-card game that was completely brutal.  There was just little to no hope for those of us that didn't win.  You'll hear it.  We made up for that horrible beating by playing another 60-card game that was much more awesome.  Since it's such a great thing to finish on a good game, we called it there.  We went on to play some Planechase, more EDH, and more 60-card games, since we were there another 5 hours or so, but sadly we couldn't record them all for you.  Trevor wouldn't have let us anyway.


Intro (and new Outro!) Music - Diamond by Swift - http://www.swift-band.com
Break Music 1 - DuckTales Theme Song
Break Music 2 - Darkwing Duck Theme Song

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This episode is all about recapping the events of the Star City Games Open Series that took place in Richmond just a couple weekends ago.  Do you want to know what the dorks were playing?  What led Mike on his winning, then losing, then winning tear?  What's up with Brian's odd silence on the matter?  And what the hell was Chewie doing the whole time, since he certainly wasn't playing?  All this and more will be covered right here in this very episode!

But that's not all!  There's also a discussion about the lineup of From the Vault: Legends. And the new artwork that some of the cards are showing off, of course.  Oh, and we weigh in with our two cents about the sudden announcement that Pro Tour Philadelphia was changed from Extended to Modern with only 3 weeks to go.  That's a big one, so even we casual players had an opinion on it.

From the Vault: Legends can be seen here: http://www.wizards.com/Magic/Magazine/Article.aspx?x=mtg/daily/arcana/774

Donate to Dustin's Extra Life page! Help out some sick kids! - http://extra-life.org/participant/vognasty



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Break Music - Go Go Power Rangers from The Mighty Morphin' Power Rangers TV Show

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Holy crap it's the Mana Pool!  Because you asked for it (well, at least a couple of you asked for it) this is an Out of the Deck Box episode!  We're taking a look at Mike's mono-white Wrath of Emeria deck in all its world-destroying glory.  Then Dirk cries havoc! and lets slip the Slivers of war.  Brian is up next with his Grixis-colored Phyrexia-aligned Rage Extractor deck, which made its first appearance at our last gathering.  I bring up the rear with a look at my Progenitus Commander deck, with a name that I blatantly stole from Claire, formerly of the Avant-Card Show.

Of course, that's not all we did this episode.  We took a look at the decks that were at the top of the standings at US Nationals, with their pigeons crapping all over everything and giving people meningitis.  And while Brian was away on baby care duties, we went over some emails, of course.  We always have emails.  And because I've patterned my podcasting manner (loosely, of course) after Kermit the Frog, the music is from The Muppet Show.  Oh yeah.


Intro (and new Outro!) Music - Diamond by Swift - http://www.swift-band.com
Break Music - The Muppet Show Theme

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We are joined this week by the highly entertaining Bigheadjoe of Yo! MTG Taps and formerly of SCG Live.  He fits right in as one of the dorks, and I think you'll enjoy having him on to take Mike's place this episode.  Hold out until the end to hear an announcement from Joe about his new wrestling podcast.

We begin with Brian's experience at a recent FNM, followed by a massive bout of nostalgia.  I'm not entirely sure what that means, but I remember it was pretty awesome.  Then we have a nice discussion about the M12 Event Decks, FNM promo cards, and have a bizarre example of M12 print runs.  Blood Ogre, Angel's Mercy, Garruk's Companion, Child of Night - in that order, first 4 cards, of all three packs I opened on the air.  What the hell? 

Oh, and we finish the episode off with a nice big discussion about our favorite mechanics, a topic Dirk came up with a long time ago that we're finally getting around to.  Yeah, we've been putting it off for at least a couple months. 

I want to apologize for my (Chewie's) voice doing the Max Headroom thing this episode.  It starts around a third of the way through, and it lasts the entire damn episode.  I have no idea what caused it, but since it's just me and I wasn't speaking as much as usual this episode, I just let it go.  Sorry again, hope you can make it through.


Follow Joe on Twitter - http://twitter.com/omgwtfbhjftw

Intro (and new Outro!) Music - Diamond by Swift - http://www.swift-band.com
Break Music - Opening Theme from GI Joe: The Movie - taken from http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DN034sBeF4c

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Before recording this episode, I put out a call for some topics that we could talk about that required no preparation ahead of time, and boy did you guys come through!  We got a whole massive list of stuff to talk about.  After we covered the Innistrad news from the San Diego Comic Con, of course.  Don't let's be silly.  Mark Rosewater tweeted a recap of the information that was revealed, and I gathered up all those tweets so we could then share them with all of you listeners out there.

We go through a few emails, which is where we get our first major discussion.  Tosus asks what he should do with his $500 worth of free stuff, so we kick that around for a bit.  Then there's a bit of reflection on the multiplayer products Wizards has released over the last few years, followed by a discussion on whether or not Commander should become a sanctioned format.  Then there's some serious discussion about how to keep things fresh when playing with the SAME people all the time.  Even if it's the SAME people using the SAME decks, you can still change some stuff up to make it fun, and we're gonna give you some suggestions.

Thanks to everyone who gave us some show ideas, we're gonna hold on to the ones we didn't get to for future shows!


Intro (and new Outro!) Music - Diamond by Swift - http://www.swift-band.com
Break Music - Creepy Doll by Jonathan Coulton - http://www.jonathancoulton.com/

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This episode has it all - thrills, chills, suspense, controversy, a happy reunion and a heartfelt goodbye.  You'll laugh, you'll cry, you'll yell at your mp3 player.

Well, maybe not all of that.  But most of it!  This episode sees the return of our disease-ridden rambler Brian!  Okay, so that's a bit much, but whatever he's back yay!  To celebrate being back, he's got a brand new idea for the show - Magic Jeopardy!  With 30 questions across 6 categories, he's going to put the other three dorks to the test!  Who will come out ahead?  And what sort of controversy will arise?  Let us know what you think of the Magic Jeopardy so we'll know if we should bother doing it again.

After that, we answer another mess of emails and rules questions from our inbox, and one in particular catches our eye.  A couple episodes ago, Ben sent us a question about casting voice talents for a Magic cartoon, which we discussed briefly.  Ryan Gregersen went several steps beyond and sent us his ideas for the cast of a live-action Magic: the Gathering movie, complete with IMDB links!  So of course this discussion sidetracked us for a good long time while we looked up actors and kicked ideas around.  It was a lot of fun, we hope you guys enjoy it as much as we did.

And if you are at all interested in helping out with Extra Life as described at the beginning of the episode, my good friend Dustin's donation page can be found below.  If you don't want to help him out, then start your own drive and get people to donate to you!  All that matters is that you're helping!
http://extra-life.org/participant/vognasty


Intro (and new Outro!) Music - Diamond by Swift - http://www.swift-band.com
Break Music - The Weight of Instruction by Swift

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After a bit of email and some news (including our long-lost interview with Amanda, which can now be found on Red Site Wins), we are joined by two very special guest hosts. No longer do we need wonder if these two are actually one and the same person, because I heard them both talking at the same time! Our two special guests are none other than the returning Adam Styborski and first time guest but long-time dork Chris Lansdell. If you want to find more about our guests, consult the links below.

With introductions out of the way, we proceeded to talk about the various M12 events we attended, which included a vicious bad beats story from Stybs. After spending some time on M12 as a whole, we decided to do a Story Circle with our hosts. Apparently Chris does this a lot, since he ripped off the idea for his own show. But that means a better deck for all involved, right? We started with Pyromancy, and it just went out of control from there. With all the cards we rattled off, there's a wonderful starting place for all you deckbuilders out there. Probably three or four starting places, actually. From here the discussion went far afield, covering such random topics as planking, scrapple, old Hot Pockets commercials, and Billy Madison. I really wish I was making this up. Hope you guys enjoy!


Our long-lost interview with Amanda Stevens is on Red Site Wins: http://redsitewins.com/2011/06/02/amanda-chewie-and-3-other-dorks-aka-the-mana-pool-interview/

Adam Styborski
Weekly columnist for DailyMTG: http://www.wizards.com/Magic/Magazine/Archive.aspx?author=Adam%20Styborski
The Pauper Cube: http://thepaupercube.wordpress.com/
Writer for Gathering Magic: http://www.gatheringmagic.com/author/adamstyborski/
Casual Editor for Quiet Speculation: http://www.quietspeculation.com
Twitter: @the_stybs

Chris Lansdell
Host of Horde of Notions: http://www.hordeofnotions.com/
Writer for Mana Deprived: http://manadeprived.com/chris-lansdell
Occasional host of Mana Screwed: http://mtgcast.com/?cat=57
Twitter: @lansdellicious


Intro (and new Outro!) Music - Diamond by Swift - http://www.swift-band.com
Break Music - Bending Back As Far As I Can by Swift

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We are joined this episode by one Robert Martin, also known as The Beme. You might know him as the interviewer from The Men of Magic, or maybe from the Hardcast, or maybe even the suddenly-defunct Mana Screwed podcast (go listen to their episodes, dash it all!). He also pops up on Monday Night Magic sometimes! But today, he's here with us!

At least, he starts out here with us. Due to circumstances beyond his control, he had to leave us before we actually got to the meat of the episode. He did stick around long enough to give us his take on the new Chandra and Garruk though, and those are the important ones. Before he left, we were reading listener mail and determining the best way to tell our listeners to RTFC. Ah, like that.

But after that, we took a nice long look at the full set of Magic 2012, and I'm pretty sure we like it. I mean, it sure sounds like we do. Also, Dirk is calling it! Amphin Cutthroat is heralding the introduction of Salamanders in Innistrad! HA!

I'd like to apologize to everyone expecting something removal-related for this appropriately-numbered episode. In all honesty, we had forgotten that this one was going to be 187. We prostrate ourselves before you and humbly beg forgiveness.

Follow Robert on Twitter: http://twitter.com/thebeme


Intro (and new Outro!) Music - Diamond by Swift - http://www.swift-band.com
Break Music - Children of Africa (The Story of Us) by Symphony of Science - http://www.symphonyofscience.com/

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After many requests for us to talk about the various cards in the new Commander decks, we decided to go one better.  We all gathered at Brian's house, picked out one of the Commander decks, and played them in a 4-player game.  Yeah yeah, we know everyone else is doing this too.  The reason everyone else did this is because these decks are freakin' awesome, and people love to hear about them!  So we jumped on the bandwagon with the rest of the world.  The upside of us doing it is you get to hear our...unique take on things.

Just so we're clear here, Brian chose Zedruu the Greathearted, Dirk was playing Kaalia of the Vast, Mike had Riku of Two Reflections, and Chewie was rolling with The Mimeoplasm.  Spoiler Alert: The Mimeoplasm became something completely ridiculous every time it got played, but Riku set the record for number of times entering the battlefield.  Oh, and Veteran Explorer is the greatest thing ever for multiplayer.  Trust me on this.  Go to Cardshark and buy some.


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This is a weird one.  Eric of Many Names joins us one final time before his family gets back into town, so we're trying to make the most of it.  We mine his brain for some information about Cube Draft on behalf of one of our listeners.  More specifically, he talks about creating your own Cube.  For reference, you can find Eric's own Cube list here.

And of course, we have a full load of M12 previews to go over, starting with the new Jace!  We recorded this well before they revealed any other new planeswalkers, so be patient and you'll hear us rant about them eventually.

There was also a momentous decision by the US Supreme Court that we discussed for a short while.  Don't worry, it's definitely something Magic dorks are interested in.  Well, a good number of you anyway.

I'd like to dedicate this episode to Mario, Jumpman, and Ryu Hayabusa.  They died so we could have appropriate music for the various times the call got cut off due to power outage at Chewie's house, Eric being forcibly muted, and Skype deciding it was sick of us being able to hear each other.  Remember them fondly, everyone!


Eric on Twitter: http://twitter.com/thewachman

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Break Music - Too many other issues for a break!

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We're joined again here at The Mana Pool by Eric of Many Names, who can add one more name to his repetoire - Judge.  Yes, Eric went to GP: Kansas City and passed his test, so you guys get to hear all about it right here!

Then we've got another handful of listener mail, including one that we took extra care to answer.  It involved either moving cards from Standard back to Alpha, or bringing cards back from Alpha to the current Standard.  We weren't sure which, so Brian took one, and the rest of us went the other way.  Either way it was an interesting discussion, hope you guys enjoy it as much as we did.

Dirk and I discussed Duels 2012 a bit, and then we had to turn to the elephant in the room.  And yes, we talked about it for a good while.  And we have lots of good discussion about it and the reasons that we either are or are not surprised by it.  Let us know what you think!

We're talking about the Jace and Stoneforge Mystic bannings here, by the way.  Just so we're clear.

Eric on Twitter: http://twitter.com/thewachman


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No really.  They dropped a TON of stuff on us since our last recording.  Apparently I was even allergic to some of it.  Well, that or nerds, not sure which.  But yeah, we're trying desperately to keep up, so much so that we enlisted the aid of the ever-awesome Eric of Many Names once again!  He's going to help us out with the new M12 cards, the new Commander cards, and the other cards in the Commander decks.  Mike also guides us through a relatively painless Rules Update.  And of course, we knocked out a few of the many emails we've gotten since the last episode.  And now, a lot of links to all this stuff:

Eric on Twitter: http://twitter.com/thewachman

M12 previews
http://www.wizards.com/Magic/Magazine/Article.aspx?x=mtg/daily/arcana/731

Commander previews
http://www.wizards.com/magic/tcg/productarticle.aspx?x=mtg/tcg/commander/cig

Commander decklists
http://www.wizards.com/Magic/Magazine/Article.aspx?x=mtg/daily/arcana/732

Rules update
http://www.wizards.com/Magic/Magazine/Article.aspx?x=mtg/daily/feature/146a&page=1


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After a few Skype problems that apparently cleared up just a short while before recording (for everyone but Brazil and Dirk it turns out) we finally got an episode started.  And after Dirk reinstalled Skype, he joined us too.  We started this episode off by catching up with our email!  Yes, we covered EVERY email we had in the inbox!

If you couldn't tell from the title, we spent the rest of the episode talking about the Commander previews.  We've only seen a couple days' worth at the time we recorded this, and it's already ridiculous. And these are just the new cards! I'm sure some of the stuff they've reprinted to put in these things is equally nuts.

Commander Image Gallery: http://www.wizards.com/magic/tcg/productarticle.aspx?x=mtg/tcg/commander/cig

And watch out for a small rant at the end by Chewie.  If you have any contact with Wizards, please refer them to this rant.  Thank you.


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This time around, we've got even more listener mail!  Reading the mail leads to some interesting conversations.  We discussed cheating a little bit, complete with judge-type commentary by Bryan from the Avant-Card Show, who happens to be a Level 2 Judge.  There's a little bit of speculation about Innistrad (completely baseless, the best kind!).  And just in case we're right, you heard it here first!  Innistrad's going to deal with things dying and possibly life totals.  HA!

We've also got another listener-supplied Mad Lib!  This one is from Tosus, our old buddy out in Germany, and it's a good one.

Then we finally get to talk about the cycles in New Phyrexia, after a brief discussion of what cycles are in the first place.  Then we realized...there really aren't that many cycles in the set.  The Praetors, the Chancellors, the Exarchs, the Shrines, and the Souleaters.  I think that might be it.  But we went into detail for each cycle, so it works out well.  Let us know if you have any thoughts on the cycles of New Phyrexia.



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Even though we ran through over 30 emails in the last episode, we still have more! So we took another chunk out of the remaining emails. I really enjoy doing lots of listener mail, because it lets us talk about all kinds of things we wouldn't ordinarily talk about. For instance, an email gave me a perfect segue into discussing a new repacked product thing I got at Target!

But of course, we had to talk about lots of other things this episode! Which we were able to do, because Brian couldn't be with us. Apparently he couldn't stop coughing for more than a few seconds at a time, so he opted out. Of all people though, Dirk really picked up the slack Brian left us. He's on fire! (be sure to read that in the NBA Jam announcer voice)

As far as what other stuff, it was all M12 all the time baby! Well not really, but we did talk about all the M12 stuff that has come to light since our last recording. It's all down there in those links

Mechanics and whatnot: http://www.wizards.com/Magic/Magazine/Article.aspx?x=mtg/daily/feature/144
Buy-a-box Promo: http://www.wizards.com/Magic/Magazine/Article.aspx?x=mtg/daily/arcana/716
Core Set Survivor: http://www.wizards.com/Magic/Magazine/Article.aspx?x=mtg/daily/arcana/718
New Dragon: http://twitpic.com/51sipe
Old Dragon: http://twitpic.com/51sjyh


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It's that time again! We've left our listener emails for far too long, and now we've got to devote an entire episode to them! I was afraid this episode was going to end up kind of boring, but I was wrong. The great thing about going over a whole load of listener mail is that they lead us to all kinds of places. I'm talking everything from the Rapture to Standard to Cyndi Lauper to another take on a Magic RPG and all points in between. It's a heck of a trip, thanks to all of our emailers for leading us along! If you guys would like to email us in the future, we have a new email address! It's dorks@themanapool.com, please start sending your emails there!

In between all this nonsense, we managed to actually talk about some things that matter, like the new planeswalker and decklist and trailer from Duels of the Planeswalkers 2012, which you can find right here on http://themanapool.com. And we did a new Mad Lib too! We also talked about the New Phyrexia Event Decks (holy crap!) which you can find here:
http://www.wizards.com/Magic/Magazine/Article.aspx?x=mtg/daily/arcana/714

Floor Rules in case of Rapture:
http://dl.dropbox.com/u/408510/mrpg.txt

Abe Sargent's Magic RPG:
http://www.starcitygames.com/php/news/article/15084.html

Ed Grabianowski's Magic RPG:
http://io9.com/5799753/playing-magic-the-gathering-as-an-rpg


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We are joined this week by a very special guest, Adam Styborski.  He writes the Serious Fun column for the mothership, he writes for GatheringMagic, he's the Casual Editor over at Quiet Speculation, and he writes a Pauper Cube blog.  Here are the links!

- http://www.wizards.com/Magic/Magazine/Archive.aspx?author=Adam%20Styborski
- http://thepaupercube.wordpress.com/
- http://www.gatheringmagic.com/author/adamstyborski/
- http://www.quietspeculation.com
- Twitter: @the_stybs

We talked to Adam for a while about his writing, his playing, and whatever else Brian thought up.  Then we all discussed the New Phyrexia Prerelease, which most of us ended up attending.  One of us was gunslinging, can you guess which one?  After that, we did one of our nonsensical but fun Magic Mad Libs! And yes, Stybs helped out!

Then we started talking about Equipment.  Which ones we love, which ones are awesome, which ones are awesome for multiplayer.  Whatever we could think of.  Adam had some especially interesting things to say on this topic, so pay attention.  You, in the back!  Head up off the desk!


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That's right, we've got a stupid amount of content for you on this episode of The Mana Pool!  First off, Brian's unable to join us until later, so we have a special guest host - Tosus!  You might remember him from the excellent custom cards posted on our Facebook page during our last big contest, or perhaps you remember that he's the guy who made the intro you hear on this episode.  Either way, here he is joining us for an episode while he's in the USA.

Right, content!  First off, I have to recount meeting Ben and Tosus in person last weekend, and how neither of them could stand up to my mighty Progenitus EDH deck.  So what if they stomped me every other game?

Then Mike tells us all about his experience at the SCG Open in Charlotte NC.  Since Brian wasn't with us to ramble on forever, Mike took care of it for him.  There was a rules update too, and Mike explains a couple of the interesting things that came out of that.  Then we have to give a bit of opinion about the New Phyrexia leak and the Guillaumes that caused it.  Oh look, there's Brian!

There's a short break followed by a big announcement for next episode, be sure to listen carefully!  Then Brian tells us all about his SCG Open weekend.  And finally, we're able to get to the New Phyrexia cards. We take a look at all the cards with Phyrexian Mana in their costs, so check it out to see what we think.  Then...we ran out of time, so we picked out a couple other quick ones and called it a night.  See?  Very little nonsense this episode!


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This is one crazy episode we've got here for you, folks! New Phyrexia has been completely spoiled, and we decided to have fun with it this time. To that end, everything in this episode is a look at the new set, no exceptions (except for all the tangents, of course). I mean it, we had no other topics this time around, nothing else we wanted to talk about, not even listener mail! New Phyrexia is serious business, much like the internet.

And when Brian steps away for a few minutes on baby business, I bring in the heavy hitters. We're joined by a pair of old friends (podcast whores) to look over all this new stuff. First off, joining us for a short while from his car, we have Eric of Many Names. Rubber pants are optional, of course. Then we're joined by none other than our favorite Ben Shout-Out recipient...Ben! Known as Panahinuva on forums all across the internet, he had a class let out early and was able to join us for the second half of the show.

So yes, we're just crawling with dorks. It was really a stupid amount of fun having these guys on the show to talk about the compleation of Mirrodin, you guys are gonna enjoy it! Find out which card makes Mike want to go lie down for a while, causes Brian to wish suicide on his opponent, and forces Dirk to consider rage-quitting. Also find out which card has flavor implications that had me laughing uncontrollably for a long time. I blame Ben and his roommate, personally.

New Phyrexia Visual Spoiler:
http://www.wizards.com/magic/tcg/articl ... a/spoiler#

Oh, and just because I forgot to mention it this episode, don't forget that we still have lotsa free stuff to give away for random reasons. Try to impress us and you might just get something! Free stuff is courtesy of Top Deck Games in Kernersville, NC. Randy's the owner, and he can be reached at 336-996-8088. Give him a call and see if he'll cut you a deal! Be sure to tell him we sent you!


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We are living in an age of villains.  In case you haven't noticed, the bad guys are winning.  The Eldrazi are free.  Nicol Bolas is still scheming.  And now, the Phyrexians have taken over the plane formerly known as Mirrodin.  During these dark times, who do we turn to for hope?  The planeswalkers?  Bah.  Since this new breed of 'walkers came to light, the heroes haven't had much in the way of victory.  Dark times indeed.

To combat this, today we will remember the heroes of yore.  The ones who fought against, and triumphed over, the evils that now beset us daily.  Powerful planeswalkers, mere humans, and even artificial beings that we used to look to when things were at their darkest.  Perhaps this discussion will inspire a new hero to step forth and save us.  Is there a man among you here?  Is there not one who values courage over life?

Whoa, I sort of went off the deep end there.  And did I quote some Protomen there at the end?  That's the song featured in this episode, how appropriate.  Huh, I need to start sleeping more.  Right then, back to the episode.  We also have a brief discussion about the new Wizards event scheduling, particularly how it relates to a certain other high-level tournament series.  Then we've got the New Phyrexia preview cards that have been spoiled!  Yay!  There aren't many, but see which one had Dirk quite literally flustered.  Also, I used the word "eidetic" during this episode.  Go me.

Announcement about 2012's Tournament Structure:
http://www.wizards.com/Magic/Magazine/Article.aspx?x=mtg/daily/news/041411a

New Phyrexia Visual Spoiler:
http://www.wizards.com/magic/tcg/article.aspx?x=mtg/tcg/newphyrexia/spoiler#

Free stuff mentioned at the end of the episode courtesy of Top Deck Games in Kernersville, NC.  Randy's the owner, and he can be reached at 336-996-8088.  Give him a call and see if he'll cut you a deal!  Be sure to tell him we sent you!


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Welcome to a very special episode of The Mana Pool, featuring a brand new guest host - Ralph the Guest Hosting Cricket!  He's a new addition to the show, and hopefully he'll be EATEN BY A F@#$ING GECKO soon.  Other than that, we've got a whole host of fun stuff to go over.

There's an exceptionally long listener Mad Lib to do first.  Then we've got a small rant about some EDH/Commander at a local card shop.  Then there's an entirely different small rant about the supposed balance of Duel Decks: Knights vs. Dragons. We couldn't find it! 

Then there's the main topic, which is another edition of the Mortal Guilty Edge Fighter Champion Tag Shodown, or whatever the hell it's called.  As always, this was entirely too much fun.  Spoiler alert: At least this time a green rare didn't win! 

And finally, we're going to throw out our own unique perspectives on the Ban Jace nonsense, as some guys who only sort of play Standard and have no personal stake in the debate either way.  I get the feeling this part will get us the most response.  Let us know what you guys think!

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Just so everyone is aware, we started off this episode short one Brian.  We spend the first half of the show going over our neglected listener emails, which we've been skipping over for the last several episodes.  Guess who answered the most rules questions that were emailed to us?  Bet you guessed wrong!

Luckily after all this we were able to find a Bryan to fill the void in our show, so that's excellent.  We talked about New Phyrexia and gave our general opinions about it, then stepped into a Story Circle with Elesh Norn, Grand Cenobite.  You may or may not want to ignore one color that we added in.

After that, Dirk went to bed.  That means we had no one there to keep throwing out profound statements, so we lost our heads.  It just sort of degenerated into random conversations about whatever came to mind.  It happens.  Hope you guys enjoy!


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Hey, welcome back!  As you can tell, this is another episode where we play out a game of Magic for all to hear.  Well, we're all on our separate computers, but we're still playing, just for all you listeners out there!  Bear with us, it's our first time playing with the new M11 rules, since we didn't want to switch in the middle of a campaign, you know?

It's Brian's turn as Planar Guide this time, running one of the new Zendikar scenarios.  Hopefully this won't turn into another Romp on Ravnica that caused us to skip Mike's last turn.  Jeez.  Brian assures us he's going strictly by the book, but we'll see.


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Is that Eric on two episodes in a row with us?  I think it is!  Eric brought us two very deep and interesting topics to discuss.  First off is a lot of talk about being casual, proxying, business models, and all sorts of nonsense.  It essentially boils down to a discussion on realizing that there are other reasons to play this game than the one you hold most dear, and you should freakin' realize that.

Follow Eric on Twitter - http://twitter.com/thewachman

After that, there's a long talk that actually outlasts two of the dorks (Brian Burrito and whatnot), and it's about threat selection in multiplayer.  In the middle there it turns into a brief discussion on playing jerk generals in EDH, but I'm not entirely sure how that happened.  Here's an article on Muse Vessel that Eric mentioned during this talk.
http://musevessel.wordpress.com/2011/02/27/gbm7/

And here's the infamous theory about the internet that I referenced at some point:
http://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/2004/3/19/

Of course, what episode would be complete without a Mad Lib?  This one is from our old buddy Jars, and we agree that it was pretty brilliant, even though none of us read it first and we had to take a musical break in the middle of doing it.  We also reveal the winners of the contest! If you heard your name on there and haven't contacted me, PLEASE DO!  And we did a quick rundown of the new Duel Decks: Knights vs. Dragons, which you can find here:
http://www.wizards.com/Magic/Magazine/Article.aspx?x=mtg/daily/arcana/673


Intro Music - Diamond by Swift - http://www.swift-band.com
Technical Difficulty Music - Funeral for a Son by The Protomen - http://www.protomen.com
Break Music - Unrest in the House of Light by The Protomen - http://www.protomen.com

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We are joined this episode by none other than the Many-Named One himself, Eric!  Yay!  Lots of news this episode, from new Commander cards to M12 Planeswalker news to Planeswalker news from the next big set.  And we're on a new geeky network, and Swift is on iTunes!  Man that was a lot.  Of course Eric sidetracks us several times during all that.  Otherwise it wouldn't be any fun at all.


Don’t forget to enter the contest before it’s over on March 20!
http://themanapool.com/pool-notices/update-mana-pool-mbs-contest/

Follow Eric on Twitter - http://twitter.com/thewachman

M12 news:
http://www.wizards.com/Magic/Magazine/Article.aspx?x=mtg/daily/arcana/665

Innistrad:
http://www.wizards.com/Magic/Magazine/Article.aspx?x=mtg/daily/arcana/666

A.A.A. Network:
http://www.aaanetwork.org


Then Eric hits us with his Searing Meditation deck, which sounds like a lot of fun.  He got the set and didn't build a deck for roughly two and a half years, but I think it was worth the wait.  Of course, somehow this leads into some random discussions about EDH...somehow.  I'm not entirely sure how, really.  Better listen to find out.

From there, Brian takes us into the world of Mirrodin Besieged drafting, where he gives us a look at his first experience with it, which he claims was excellent.  We shall soon see.  From there the conversation turns to all kinds of nonsense, because Eric is here and he's entirely too much fun.

Quick aside: The music for this episode is from The Protomen.  It's Hope Rides Again, the first track from Act I, their first album.  I've given you 3 bits of it in an attempt to get you hooked.  They've taken the mythos of Mega Man and turned it into a badassed rock opera sort of thing, and it's seriously badassed.


Intro Music - Diamond by Swift - http://www.swift-band.com
Break Music - Hope Rides Again by The Protomen - http://www.protomen.com

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Holy crap we've updated the contest we mentioned in the last episode!  If you'd like to see what we've changed, go here:
http://themanapool.com/pool-notices/update-mana-pool-mbs-contest

We then follow up with a Mad Lib sent in by one of our listeners, Alex.  How awesome was it?  Well ideally you'd listen to find out, but I'll issue a little spoiler - pretty awesome!  And if you like our Magic Mad Libs, then you'll love this new section of the website:
http://themanapool.com/category/mad-libs-2/

We've got a whole mess of emails, since we haven't managed to check them on-air in a few weeks.  I mean it, we've got a lot!  Look at the title of this episode!  We are not screwing around here!

And since I played the old Beast deck on the last live episode, Mike decided I should do an Out of the Deck Box with it.  It's been a while since I talked about it, so I dug through the deck, told everyone what it does, and realized it really needs some changes.  So we kicked around some ideas for updates, most of which I actually executed in the time between recording and uploading.  Let me know if you guys have any other suggestions for it, I'm always willing to ignore our listeners!  I mean...listen to them.


Intro Music - Diamond by Swift - http://www.swift-band.com
Break Music - Super Mario's Sleigh Ride by The OneUps - http://www.theoneups.com

New website is live! -  http://themanapool.com

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What an episode we've got for you this time!  We've got a new contest, a super-secret special guest host, and...well that's about it.  But isn't that enough?

Okay, contest.  If you want the full skinny, you're gonna have to hit the website for the official rules and all that.  You can find it here:
http://themanapool.com/uncategorized/promo_contest/

Then there's a quick look at the new Deckbuilder's Toolkit, and some email, and really this was just a stalling tactic until our host arrived.  When he does arrive, holy crap it's Tom from Monday Night Magic!  I'm not entirely sure how I managed it, but I talked him into recording with us for a while!  He joins us to give us some insight into a Quest for Ula's Temple deck first, then we do some Tribal Story Circle shenanigans.  Of course with Tom on the job, all semblance of order went right out the window, so this isn't so much a deck as it is a lot of nifty possibilities.  We start off with Sunrise Sovereign, the giant that makes all other giants infinitely more terrifying.  Then there's the oldie-but-not-too-goodie Thrull Champion that made for an interesting deck idea.

After all that excitement, Tom turns and walks away, quite literally fading into the aether.  But we'll never forget Tom, for our man-crushes are far too strong for that.  Now, did I forget anything?


Intro Music - Diamond by Swift - http://www.swift-band.com
Break Music - Borrow Mega Nuke (Boomer Kuwanger from Mega Man X) by Armcannon - http://www.armcannon.com

New website is live! -  http://themanapool.com

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Yes, it's time for another live episode!  Already you ask?  Yes, we answer.  I'm glad we had this conversation.

Sadly, Dirk isn't able to join us due to almost having a baby.  We start off with a little bit of Duel Decks news, since they've announced Ajani vs. Nicol Bolas.  Then we play a game of Magic.  Each of us is playing with a very special deck, and each deck is special for different reasons.  One is a blast from the past, one is returning from exile, and one has a lot more cash in it than it did before.

Then there's a new Mad Lib!  Then we play another game of Magic.  Then we break for lunch.  Then there's another game of Magic!  That's three games, plus a Mad Lib, plus some news, and we managed it all in about 2 and a half hours! Unheard of!  Stay tuned next episode for an episode that we hope will feature a super awesome special guest host!  And if not, then please disregard that bit of text as well as this one.


Intro Music - Diamond by Swift - http://www.swift-band.com
Break Music - Dozen Elf Death Gel by Armcannon - http://www.armcannon.com

New website is live! -  http://themanapool.com

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After a mess of emails, we've got those first two cards from the set code-named Action, which everyone has already seen.  But of course, we have to give you our take on it.  Then there's a look at the Event Decks, a new product from Wizards, but that's not the important part.

And really, this isn't the important part either.  But this is the main topic!  Brian opened up a Scars Sealed pool, consisting of 3 packs of Scars and 3 packs of Besieged.  We're gonna take a nice long look at it and see what we can come up with.  Turns out we came up with two different decks, just so you know.  If you'd like to see the pool in its entirety, please direct yourself to the forums.  The link is right down there.  Apologies in advance for the long drawn out discussion, but I think it's a good one :p

So what if I just used a tongue-sticking-out emoticon in the show notes? Kiss my butt!

One more thing - beware the goats...


Intro Music - Diamond by Swift - http://www.swift-band.com
Break Music -  Techno (original track by Chris Keybor) by Armcannon - http://www.armcannon.com

New website should be live by the end of the week! -  http://themanapool.com

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Magic Mad Lib!  Mailbag!  The homogenization of American music!  A contest that's already over!  And From the Vault: Legends starring Lawrence Fishburne!  And all that is just the first half of this episode of The Mana Pool!  Why can't I stop screaming?!

Fishburne Legends right here:
http://www.wizards.com/Magic/Magazine/Article.aspx?x=mtg/daily/arcana/641

The gang's all here for this episode, if you ignore Brian wandering away a few times in the middle and leaving a bit early.  So ignore that.  But the second half of the episode is devoted to a special EDH edition of Pimp My Deckbox!  Mike built a deck using Fumiko the Lowblood that looks pretty good on paper, but he's not terribly happy with how it's working out in practice.  So we're going to poke at it a bit and try to figure out what's missing.  He's got it on Tapped Out, so feel free to play along with us and send in your suggestions.  Check it out right here:
http://tappedout.net/mtg-decks/fumiko-edh/


Intro Music - Diamond by Swift - http://www.swift-band.com
Break and End Music - Super Cranial Syphon (Super Metroid) by Armcannon - http://www.armcannon.com
Dirk's Rant Background Music - Wishmaster by Nightwish - http://www.nightwish.com

New website coming soon! -  http://themanapool.com

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Have you noticed that all the planes in Magic are either terrifying or dangerous or miserable?  We determined this during a discussion of which plane we'd want to live on that came from an email.  It's like the Creative team at Wizards just wants to completely dry up the tourist trade on other planes!  I wonder if the head of Zendikar could sue Wizards for libel.  I'll have to get with Brian on that...

Anyway, good old Jungle Rat Rob sent me a link to a Magic set based on Zelda II: The Adventure of Link over on Games Radar.  If you wanna see it, just click here:
http://www.gamesradar.com/f/the-complete-zelda-ii-magic-the-gathering-card-set/a-2011011416369729007

And of course we had some Prerelease experiences to discuss!  By we I mean Brian and me, but that's still first person plural!  He went Mirran and I went Phyrexian - who do you think came out ahead?  Well I guess you'll just have to listen.

And finally, we finish off on a special Mirrodin Besieged edition of Story Circle.  I counted up the number of Rares and Mythics in MBS and put that number into random.org and it told me to use Shimmer Myr.  We didn't so much build a deck as much as throw out a lot of different ways you could build a deck around the Shimmer Myr.  You'll see what I mean when you give the episode a listen.

Intro Music - Diamond by Swift - http://www.swift-band.com
Break Music - Cranial Syphon (Kraid from Metroid) by Armcannon - http://www.armcannon.com

Forum thread for this episode: http://cardshark.freeforums.org/episode-164-mbs-prerelease-and-story-circle-t642.html
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On this episode Mike, Brian, and Dirk take a look at the colored cards of Mirrodin Besieged while I (Chewie) am sitting at home with NO INTERNET!  But luckily the stupid connection kicked back in just in time for me to jump in at the artifacts.  Then there's a little bit of discussion about a recent rules update wherein we figure out about when Wizards realized we were all perverts.  But that's about it.  I'm just happy I managed to make it onto my own freakin' show.  At least the guys were able to cover for my shoddy ISP.

Mirrodin Besieged Visual Spoiler:
http://www.wizards.com/magic/tcg/article.aspx?x=mtg/tcg/mirrodinbesieged/spoiler#

Rules Update Bulletin:
http://www.wizards.com/Magic/Magazine/Article.aspx?x=mtg/daily/feature/127a


Intro Music - Diamond by Swift - http://www.swift-band.com
Break Music - Bigger Boards [with Bigger Nails [with Bees in Their Mouth]] (Final Fantasy 7 Battle Music) by Armcannon - http://www.armcannon.com

Forum thread for this episode: http://cardshark.freeforums.org/episode-163-all-of-mbs-and-half-of-chewie-t639.html
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Once again, we all gathered at Dirk's house for Magic playing and snacks, and so you get to listen to us do so on this episode.  We start off with a nice LONG game of Elder Dragon Highlander, or Magic: The Gathering Commander if you prefer, or Dorky Card Game with Different Rules than Usual if you wanna be real about it.  But either way, that's what we're doing.  It's Fumiko the Lowblood vs. Karrthus, Tyrant of Jund vs. Tolsimir Wolfblood vs. Sliver Overlord (Brian's a filthy whore) in this knock-down, drag-out, hyphenated-words fight to the death!

Then we decided to show you guys that Brian isn't the only filthy whore and play a game of Archenemy.  Mike built a deck that only a horrible horrible person would build, then supplemented it with a Scheme deck that only makes it more horrible, and we decide to let him kill us for your amusement.  Well, I knew that's what would happen.  Brian and Dirk were more optimistic, but you know what they say about ignorance in this particular case.  But it does make for a good show, listening to Mike summon up a Shoggoth to have vicious sex with our faces while pouring sugar in our gas tanks and making us listen to miserble old twangy country music and Swedish death metal at the same time.

Wow, that was out there.  Uh, hope you enjoy the episode!  Next time is a look at Mirrodin Besieged as a whole, with a full Chewie-less hour! *gasp*


Intro by Tosus of Der Geek - http://www.dergeek.com
Intro Music - Diamond by Swift - http://www.swift-band.com
Break Music - Dutch Town (Tecmo Super Bowl) by Armcannon - http://www.armcannon.com

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I'd like to start off by apologizing for how scatterbrained I sound in this episode. I had just gotten back from the MAGfest trip roughly AN HOUR before we started recording, so I was still not quite with it.  But that aside, we started off with a Mad Lib that Tosus wrote for us that had us giggling like idiots as per usual.  Thank you Tosus!

Then there's short Star Wars retelling featuring our faces that Patrick sent us that had us rolling in the floor laughing.  You can see it here:
http://sendables.jibjab.com/view/337a8koVbYL4PoLz

After the rest of the emails, I go off on how awesome MAGfest was.  It really was great.  If you're interested, the website is here:
http://www.magfest.org

And after all that stuff, we finally get into the heavy Mirrodin Besieged previews.  And there is some crazy stuff here, let me tell you.  Next episode won't be previews, so you better get enjoy these while you can.  To see these cards and many more, click here for the Visual Spoiler:
http://www.wizards.com/magic/tcg/article.aspx?x=mtg/tcg/mirrodinbesieged/spoiler#


Intro Music - Diamond by Swift - http://www.swift-band.com
Break Music (and End Music) - Smegmaman 3 by Armcannon - http://www.armcannon.com

Forum thread for this episode: http://cardshark.freeforums.org/episode-161-mad-libs-magfest-and-mirrodin-t634.html
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Hello again, and welcome to the show notes! This is Mike, filling in for Chewie because he's out of town at MAGFest, having a nice time and being a generally all-around lucky jerk.

We were all feeling kind of wiped out by our various goings-on, but we kicked things off in the usual way: random banter and listener emails. After that, we decided to take a look at the Mirrodin Besieged Mechanics article Wizards posted earlier in the week, which previewed a number of very interesting cards from the upcoming set.

And finally, FINALLY, we get around to the mysterious topic that we keep mentioning having to put off because of time issues. Was it all worth it? Actually, that's kind of what the topic is about.

Thank you all for reading, and go listen to some dorks!


Intro Music - Diamond by Swift - http://www.swift-band.com

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Hello everyone!  Chewie here.  Welcome to 2011!  We kick this thing off with some listener mail, some of which we've had since last year (sorry about that).  Then there's a fair amount of other stuff to touch on, but nothing important enough to put in the show notes.  Moving on!

I got a copy of Stowaway from Cardshark for us to review a few weeks ago, and we finally got to get together and play!  The full review is in the episode, but it's a lot of fun and I think it's well worth the small investment if you enjoy playing card games.  You can check it out right here:
http://www.cardshark.com/stowaway

Then we've got the last color in the Core Set: Mana Pool Edition, and that color is Green.  I know you're all really waiting to hear what Dirk had to say, so we made him go last in each category.  Ha!  So sit back, take a listen, and enjoy all of what 2011 has to offer.


Intro Music - Diamond by Swift - http://www.swift-band.com

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For hitting 150 episodes and/or 3 years of being on the air, our old buddy Jungle Rat Rob of The Retro League podcast has put together another one of his awesome audio montages, spliced together with Praise You by Fatboy Slim.  Lots of these clips came from our guest host episodes, so keep an eye out for some voices from other podcasts, including the Avant-Card Show, MTG Radio, and possibly even Rob himself.  There may or may not even be other voices on here somewhere, I'm not entirely sure.

As always, Rob has managed to capture the essence of the show's appeal.  I really believe that people listen to us because we remind them of their own group of friends.  We try to make each other laugh while we're sitting around talking about Magic.  I think everyone can relate to that, because anyone listening to this show probably does that on a regular basis.  Much like our podcast, there is very little actual Magic content here, so it's appropriate.  It really seems like I spend a lot of time giggling, doesn't it?  Thanks again to Rob for the most excellent hilarity, we appreciate it as always!

Just made it in before 2011!  On this episode we take a look at some listener mail, check out how Worlds ended this year (complete with a quick look at some of the decks in the Top 8), take a look at the nonsense surrounding the next two Magic expansions, and talk about the recent rules changes to EDH (or Commander if you prefer). 

Then we have the Black installment of the Core Set: Mana Pool Edition.  This time we have 6 staples from my favorite color!  I've typed about this several times before, so if you have no idea what I'm talking about, check the last few episodes.  I hope you guys enjoy it, and we'll see you again next year!


Intro Music - Diamond by Swift - http://www.swift-band.com
Break Music - Brinstar from Metroid by Hirokazu Tanaka - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hirokazu_Tanaka

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Just in time for Christmas, it's a late episode!  Sweet!  This episode has a lot of stuff going on, starting with emails covering everything from subliminal messages to holiday habits. Then we have news, which is really not news anymore but it's our take on these news items.  We've got the big Commander announcement, some decks from the Star City Invitational, and a quick rant about Tomoharu Saito's non-induction to the Hall of Fame and how little Wizards said about it.

Then there's a brief musical interlude and we go right back into Core Set: Mana Pool Edition.  In case you don't remember, Brian came up with this idea a while back.  For each color, he came up with six things that each color always does all the time, which I refer to as "staples".  Then each of us took this list of staples and found cards to fit them.  The catch is that each card we choose must be one that has never been printed in a Core Set.  Easy, right?  Well this time we're taking on Blue, and we've got lots of interesting choices.  Let us know what you think or what you'd throw in a Core Set.


Intro Music - Diamond by Swift - http://www.swift-band.com
Break Music - Zeromus by The Black Mages - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Black_Mages

Forum thread for this episode: http://cardshark.freeforums.org/episode-157-blue-with-a-splash-of-news-t615.html
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There you guys are! I've been looking everywhere for you! Where have you been for the last 4 months? I've had this decklist and discussion ready to go all this time. Geez, so much for loyalty in readership.

Okay, you got me. I primarily worked on these 60 Card Challenge posts at work during lunch and breaks. Then work picked up and ran, and my computer got co-opted for use on the production floor, so I wasn't able to do it there anymore. And when I got home the last thing I wanted to do was sit in front of a computer again.

But now I'm unemployed and have nothing but time on my hands, so here I am to start writing again! In my time thus far without a job, I've been watching lots of movies, and I just watched the one that originally inspired this next deck. In 2003, Ang Lee released a masterpiece, his take on Marvel's Green Goliath, Hulk. When I saw Hulk pick up a tank by the turret, spin around, and let it go hammer throw style, I knew I had to do that for myself. After throwing my back out and spending a while in the hospital with gamma radiation poisoning, I decided perhaps an exact duplication wasn't such a good idea. So I turned to Magic, and thus was born the Chuck Deck!

Okay, you got me again. There's no way this cinematic bucket of fail inspired anything other than an early bowel movement. The only good things about that movie, other than the one action sequence where Hulk chucks the tank, were the casting of the Ross family (Jennifer Connelly and Sam Elliot – holy crap!) and Lou Ferrigno's cameo. The 2008 version was superior in almost every way (except the casting of Betty Ross – Liv Tyler can't hold a candle to the aforementioned Connelly).

The real inspiration for the deck, as far as I can remember anyway, was my friend Corey's Sneak Attack deck. He would Sneak out something terrifying, like you're supposed to, then he would use Fling to get double duty out of his poor doomed creature. Since I wasn't playing back during Stronghold, I had never seen Fling before, and I was impressed. I started trying to come up with ways to maximize the usefulness of Fling without just making my own Sneak Attack deck (that and I couldn't afford a set of them at the time, I was a broke college student). The deck has come a long way from its original incarnation. If you'd like to see it, check it out at Cardshark, coming to you all the way from 2005!
http://www.cardshark.com/Articles/Magic-the-Gathering/Chewie!-Slate/CardShark-Content/View-Article/3648

But that's not where we're starting now. Here's the decklist as it stood before I did work for the 60 Card Challenge.


Chuck!
Creatures
3 Bloodshot Cyclops
3 Bloodmark Mentor
3 Thunderblust
2 Ball Lightning
2 Blistering Firecat
2 Spitebellows
3 Torpid Moloch
2 Firemaw Kavu
2 Kiki-Jiki, Mirror Breaker
1 Homura, Human Ascendant
1 Brion Stoutarm

Noncreatures
3 Soul's Fire
2 Fling
2 Grab the Reins
2 Grafted Wargear
2 Rage Reflection
1 Elemental Appeal
1 In the Web of War
4 Seething Song

Land
17 Mountain
4 Boros Garrison
2 Valakut, the Molten Pinnacle


Compared to the older decklist on Cardshark, I notice I've gone more heavily into the theme at the expense of utility. Huh. But that's not what I'm here to talk about! As far as what the deck does, it's pretty straightforward. I play creatures with a high power-to-cost ratio and then I toss them at my opponents. Ball Lightning and Blistering Firecat are the poster children for this. Elemental Appeal is another one that has the possibility of being super huge in the late game. Torpid Moloch is a good early drop, plus he can do a wonderful impression of a Lightning Bolt when necessary. Thunderblust is great because it won't die at end of turn and I can get two uses out of it. Speaking of double usage, Spitebellows is another great addition. I can Evoke it at half price, then respond to the sacrifice trigger by chucking it, doing six damage from the chuck and six damage from its ability. Or I can just play it at normal cost so it'll sit there until I need it, then get the double damage for chucking it. Firemaw Kavu gets triple usage if I chuck it, but sadly it costs way too much to have more than two copies.

Of course, the Bloodshot Cyclops is the centerpiece of the deck. As I said way back in that Cardshark article – in the Chuck deck, he's Chuck. Backing him up are Fling, Grab the Reins, and Brion Stoutarm, who has the added bonus of Lifelink. The latest addition is the Fling-less Fling, Soul's Fire. For just a single mana more, you get to keep your creature! It's amazing!

When Magic 2010 changed the way combat worked, this deck took a major nosedive. No longer could I assign damage from a blocked Ball Lightning, then chuck it at someone's face for double the damage. I had almost given up hope when I realized I could give everyone first strike with a two-cost goblin. Thanks to Duels of the Planeswalkers on the Xbox Live Arcade for reminding me of this little dude. To really break things open in the late game, I added in some Rage Reflection for double strike to make my hasty beaters even more terrifying. Of course, this doesn't completely bring the deck back to its former power level, but nothing ever will. So why cry about it? Evolve or die, right?

Kiki-Jiki allows for some great trickiness. Why attack with a single Ball Lightning when I can attack with a pair? If nothing else, I can copy the Bloodshot Cyclops and have it chuck itself at an opponent or creature before my turn starts. Homura is there to be chucked and make all my guys pseudo-Shivans. Definitely a bargain at six mana. In the Web of War is another singleton that is just too good to not have in here. All my swing-and-die guys get a power pump! And there's Grafted Wargear, which is really just a free boost to chuck damage. Play a Ball Lightning, equip for free, and swing for nine damage! Then Fling it at an opponent for nine more! Yay! Oh no, I have to sacrifice the creature if it becomes unattached? Big deal, the only ones I'll attach it to are the ones that are destined to die anyway! Ha!

So what did I end up doing to this 64 card deck? First off, I wasn't happy with the mana base. The set of Boros Garrison was there purely for Brion Stoutarm, but the two never seemed to come out at the same time. Well that's an easy enough fix. While I'm looking at the lands, I wasn't happy with the Valakut pair. I originally wanted them in for some late game creature control, but I found a deck better suited to a pair of Valakut, so they had to come out. Of course, I recently realized I have three others in my binder (no idea how) so they might make their way back to the deck after some more playing. Either way, five Mountains replaced the six removed lands to bring the land count back to the base of 22, the number all my decks reverted to during the 60 Card Challenge. I'll see how they run from there and adjust as needed for each one of course.

But that's only two cards down. I keep looking at Torpid Moloch. He's excellent to have on the first three turns or so, but after that he becomes somewhat silly. Sure he's great if I can get him out on the first turn and then chuck him at a blocker once he's useless, but is he really worth the slot in the deck? I don't think so. So out they come, and now I'm five cards down.

Now there's the matter of Seething Song. Don't get me wrong, I love Seething Song, I really do. But it seemed to me that EVERY time I drew it, it was either early in the game where it only did me a tiny bit of good, or late in the game when I was really hoping for a something else. And if the acceleration isn't accelerating, then it needs to be removed, which is exactly what I did. But now we're nine cards down, and I need to find something else to go in.

First off, I finally tracked down another copy of Soul's Fire, so that has to go right in. The loss of the extra Chuck (Brion Stoutarm) means I should probably put another Fling back in to maximize the creature-tossing. For the last hole, I wanted something I could recur that would have some effect on the board. I had just recently acquired a Magma Phoenix, and it fit that bill wonderfully. I can chuck it at an opponent or a larger creature and the big Pyroclasm will do even more damage, wiping out anything with a toughness of three or less. The deck has a bit of a problem with swarms of small creatures, so this will help out a little bit. And if I need to I can always bring it back for more board-wiping fun! I also realized the deck had absolutely no acceleration or deck-thinning of any sort. So to help that out a bit, I dug up a pair of Chartooth Cougars for just that purpose. Plus they can attack and block and have firebreathing, which goes so well with Fling and its ilk.

As usual, here's a concise retelling of the changes made:


-4 Boros Garrison
-1 Brion Stoutarm
-2 Valakut, the Molten Pinnacle
+5 Mountain
-3 Torpid Moloch
-4 Seething Song
+1 Soul's Fire
+1 Fling
+1 Magma Phoenix


And the deck in its full finished state can be found right here:


Chuck!
Creatures
3 Bloodshot Cyclops
3 Bloodmark Mentor
3 Thunderblust
2 Ball Lightning
2 Blistering Firecat
2 Spitebellows
2 Firemaw Kavu
2 Kiki-Jiki, Mirror Breaker
2 Chartooth Cougar
1 Magma Phoenix
1 Homura, Human Ascendant

Noncreatures
4 Soul's Fire
3 Fling
2 Grab the Reins
2 Grafted Wargear
2 Rage Reflection
1 Elemental Appeal
1 In the Web of War

Land
22 Mountain


So now comes the final analysis. I noticed that my white splash was completely silly, so I took it out. In a deck with this many red mana symbols, trying to splash one white card just wasn't worth it to me. Of course I'm going to miss the life gain, so it's possible that an artifact source of life gain might come in at some point. I was thinking maybe Loxodon Warhammer, but that's too expensive. There's always Basilisk Collar, but I don't have any more of those past the ones in my previously-written-about Sgt. Chewie's Howling Commandos deck. There are other possibilities that could help the deck in a variety of ways. Elixir of Immortality can gain some life and reuse all my one-shot spells. Angelheart Vial can gain some life and draw cards, two things that Red usually doesn't do so well. Paradise Plume can gain some life and get the deck ahead on mana. Let me know if you, dear readers, think any of these are decent ideas.

Then there's the matter of the recently-discovered copies of Valakut, the Molten Pinnacle in my binder. I think they might return to the deck since they only have the very minor downside of entering the battlefield tapped, yet their upside in the late game is staggering. If I don't have any other uses for them, they might go back in after I post this.

I'm also still unsure about the lack of true acceleration. One-shot acceleration just doesn't do much for me, which is why Seething Songs and Dark Rituals are missing from virtually all my decks. There's really no long-term acceleration in red. There are cards like Wayfarer's Bauble and Solemn Simulacrum that would definitely help though. The problem that always comes is that in order to have these boons like life gain or mana acceleration is that something else must be cut to make room. But that's what this whole 60 Card Challenge is all about!

I hope you all enjoyed my return to the blogosphere. Again, if any of you reading this have any ideas then please feel free to let me know. I'm always up for suggestions.

Other than the random technical issues that caused us to start late, caused Mike to sound funny this entire episode, and caused Brian to be muted for most of the episode, it went off without a hitch!  We went over a mess of emails, then did the White section of Brian's Core Set: Mana Pool Edition.  And to go along with the White section of that, Brian requested an Out of the Deck Box for Mike's mono-green mana ramp deck.

Yeah, it made no sense to us either.  Check the forum post for this episode for the deck list as usual.  Hope you guys enjoy!


Intro Music - Diamond by Swift - http://www.swift-band.com

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What's that?  A live episode?  Where did this come from?  Well honestly it came from Brian's house, but that's not important.  Due to a lack of Dirk during this episode's recording, Brian decided Mike and I should roll over there to play his newly-bought Scars of Mirrodin Intro Packs.  He had Myr of Mirrodin, Metalcraft, and Phyrexian Poison.  We played a three-man game, then traded decks and did it again, then traded again and did it one more time.  It was a lot of fun, and you'll get to hear some of our usual nonsense, including me trying to coax Brian's wife to actually say something on the air.  Spoiler alert - it doesn't work.

If you want to know what's in the decks, check here:
http://www.wizards.com/Magic/Magazine/Article.aspx?x=mtg/daily/arcana/547


Intro Music - Diamond by Swift - http://www.swift-band.com

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Moo.

After beginning with a study into arcane languages and comic strips, we're gonna set this thing on FIRE!  We'll take a look at a few of the new products Wizards has in store, the Magic Online Deck Series: Legacy and the Premium Deck Series: Fire & Lightning, then move into Brian's new idea for a segment.  There's no official name, so I'm going to call it Core Set: Mana Pool Edition. 

He has come up with 6 staple card ideas from each color and instructed us to pick cards to fulfill these roles in our Core Set.  The catch is, we have to use cards that have previously been printed that have never been in a Core Set before.  So to coincide with our Burn episode, we're doing Red.  Let us know what you think, and what your choices would be.

Then we take a closer look at Burn.  We're gonna focus on its role in multiplayer, a role that is classically underestimated.  We'll take a look at all the ways Burn can be used in multiplayer, as well as which flavors work the best.  All you red mages out there take note!

Magic Online Deck Series: Legacy
http://www.wizards.com/Magic/Magazine/Article.aspx?x=mtg/daily/arcana/579

Premium Deck Series: Fire & Lightning
http://www.wizards.com/Magic/Magazine/Article.aspx?x=mtg/daily/arcana/576


Intro Music - Diamond by Swift - http://www.swift-band.com
Break Music - Trogdor by the Brothers Chaps - http://www.homestarrunner.com/sbemail58.html

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In this action-packed episode of The Mana Pool, we're taking a look at all the two-for-ones in Magic.  No, not Buy One Get One Free, and not killing a creature in response to it being targeted by an aura.  We're talking about a whopping TWO power for ONE mana!  Back in the day this defined entire tournament scenes, but were all of them that good?  Well stay tuned and find out, because we're gonna hit them all. 

While we're at it, we've got email spam replies (yes really), news about the third Duels of the Planeswalkers expansion, a couple of rules questions, and a discussion of Fran Drescher as a harpy.  I love doing this show sometimes.  Hope you all enjoy!


Intro Music - Diamond by Swift
Break Music - Double Dragon (Opening Theme) by Kazunaka Yamane

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This episode is a little random.  We begin with a brief discussion of why not to buy cheap ice cream sandwiches.  I then offer up Mike's phone number in case anyone wants to call him.  Then we point out how we're not going to take money from our listeners, but gifts are appreciated when appropriate.

Of course, we have a main topic.  It's Mortal Instinct Fighter Calibur Vs 2 - 3D Alpha Forever!  Once again we use the Random Card button in Gatherer to draft up 16 fighters to go head to head (or claw, or tentacle, or stump, or whatever) for your enjoyment!  During the tournament you'll hear about vicious assistant birds, over-eager anti-assistant knights, and one contestant possibly passing a pearl to not be a dragon.  I didn't say it would make sense, I just said you'd hear it.  Who will join Troll Ascetic in our winner's circle?

And after the dust has settled, we have to bring back one of our favorite segments - Out of the Deck Box!  This time around we're taking a look at Brian's Archenemy Deck and the Scheme Deck that goes with it.  It's appropriately evil, and we hope you enjoy it!


Intro by Tosus, featuring Diamond by Swift - http://www.swift-band.com
Break music - Release the Wolves by Swift, at Mike's request

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Hello again, and welcome to the show notes!  This is Mike, filling in on this for Chewie while he puts the finishing touches on the previous episode (the secret ingredient is love).

When Wizards decided to go back to Mirrodin for another block, of course they had to have in mind what had come before.  Today we all take the time to think and talk about cards from the original Mirrodin block that would be really awesome (or possibly miserable) to have around in this modern age, and also discuss the most probable reasons why things just can't be that way.

As always, we include in our ramblings some responses to listener emails, comments on notable Magical news, and the ever popular rant on a touchy subject.  Also - and I don't even remember what started it - Dirk, in his alternate role as the Greatest Ever, leaves us with one of the most truly amazing final thoughts we've ever had the pleasure of pondering.

Thank you all for reading, and go listen to some podcasts!


Intro Music - Diamond by Swift - http://www.swift-band.com

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Here it is, the long-awaited Episode 150!  What are we doing special to celebrate this landmark occasion?

...not much, really.  Eric of the Many Names made up a Mad Lib for us, which you'll hear in the intro.  He's a sweetie like that.  We talk about the new Premium Deck Series a bit, hit the announcement for the new Duel Decks (Knights vs. Dragons) and talk about the Faction Packs that will be in Mirrodin Besieged.

Then, as we always do when the time comes, we look back with fondness at the stuff that is leaving Standard forever.  Well, maybe not forever.  But at least until it gets reprinted in some other set in the future.  But we'll bid adieu to tournament staples, crazy Johnny cards, and the random multiplayer-only stuff that would never see the inside of a FNM.  It'll be great!

We finish it up with more of our signature nonsense, which turns somber for a minute before heading back into full-on ballyhoo.  So listen up and enjoy, my dorks!

...Oh yeah, you'll notice Brian isn't with us on this landmark episode.  Well that's because he and his wife were at the hospital having Samantha, their daughter!  Congratulations to you both, B!


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On this fun-filled episode of The Mana Pool, we join three of our four heroes in a flashback to the Scars of Mirrodin Prerelease, where two of the three did very well, and the third of three did not so well.  And one of the three heroes opened two Mythics, but to find out which hero opened which Mythics, you'll have to listen!

Also included in this action-packed episode is a look at the Scars Intro Packs (teaser - which may be featured in an upcoming episode!) which are actually good for a change!  And for the kids, there is another Magic Mad Lib for wacky fun!  Don't wait, download now!


Intro Music - Diamond by Swift - http://www.swift-band.com

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This episode marks the somewhat-awaited return of Brian's Magic Mad Libs! We also take a look at the changes to the Banned & Restricted List as well as some of the changes in the Comprehensive Rules. Don't worry, Mike actually had some notes this time instead of just randomly poking through the list.

And it's time for us to take a look at the full card list for Scars of Mirrodin and poke through it. We'll dig around, and any card that catches our collective eye is going to get discussed, starting with the new rare dual lands and ending with us all sort of meandering around the visual spoiler aimlessly. We're sure to hit all the high notes during the trip though! Let us know how you feel about any of the cards in the set!


Intro Music - Diamond by Swift - http://www.swift-band.com
Break Music - Bruces' Philosophers Song by Monty Python - http://pythonline.com

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Sorry to break the streak, but due to extreme overwork there is not a guest host this week.  Unless you count Zombie Chewie, who is filling in for Chewie this week.  It's hard to tell the difference but trust me, he's there.  Is two episodes in a row even considered a streak?  We'll start over if work ever calms down for me.  But instead, enjoy our admittedly late takes on some of the new cards from Scars.  They weren't new yet when we did this episode, but now they're new.  Yay new cards!


Intro Music - Diamond by Swift - http://www.swift-band.com
Break Music - The Beast Appears by Yuzo Koshiro, from the SNES game ActRaiser

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We are joined this week by Trevor and Tom from MTG Radio, another fabulous podcast on the MTGCast Network, one that focuses primarily on the excellent format known as Elder Dragon Highlander.  If you're at all interested in EDH, you should definitely check them out.  If you're not interested in EDH, you should listen to them anyway because they're awesome.  Otherwise we wouldn't have them on the show, duh.  You can find them here:
http://www.mtgcast.com/?cat=63


So this episode it's all about Scars of Mirrodin previews!  Yes I know it's late, but I worked 75 hours last week, so I was delayed in getting it posted.  Check out some of the new planeswalkers (like the best card in the set, and the one that's actually better than that), new mechanics (one of which I absolutely can't pronounce), and all the rest of the cool new stuff right here in this episode!  Here's the Visual Spoiler:
http://www.wizards.com/magic/tcg/article.aspx?x=mtg/tcg/scarsofmirrodin/spoiler

Intro Music - Diamond by Swift - http://www.swift-band.com
Break Music - The Moon, from the NES game DuckTales, composed by Yoshihiro Sakaguchi

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Kicking off our series of episodes with guests hosts from all over the place, we are joined by none of than Jungle Rat Rob! You may know Rob as the guy who did No One Expects the Mana Pool and Mana Pool 2: Electric Boogaloo for us. He's also one of the hosts of The Retro League, a podcast about classic video games, which I've been listening to religiously for a few months now. It's awesome, you can find it here:

http://www.theretroleague.com

They showed the Elspeth vs. Tezzeret Duel Deck lists (yes I know they're out now, but they weren't when we recorded this) and we decided to take a look through them. Good stuff, good stuff.

Because of the revelation that Rob had never done any sort of Limited play, we thought we'd take a Sealed pool of M11 and see what we could do with it live on the air. It was a lot of fun and led to some very good discussion about how to build a Sealed deck. Not that we're experts or anything, but I think the debate about the deck was educational.

Then, while we were on the deckbuilding kick, we decided to do a Story Circle with Rob. The deck came out looking like a blast. If you want to see the completed list, hit the forum thread listed below to see it.


Intro Music - Intro Theme to Justice League, the animated series from Cartoon Network
Break Music - Penguin Cap by CarboHydroM - http://www.carbohydrom.net/ (Not actually on OCRemix...blame Mike)

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In this episode, we're going to veer off the usual beaten path a little bit.  First off, we have to talk some more about our last get-together at Dirk's house that was featured on the last episode.  Especially once we get to what happened after the last episode - Respawn Magic!  After we finished the Planechase game that you listened to, we shuffled up some decks and played one game of Magic that lasted for several hours!  Not the miserable kind of "this game's never gonna FREAKIN' END" several hours, but the "holy crap I can't believe this is still awesome" kind.  Find out who was the elephant, which unlikely decks lasted the longest, and which decks might not work so well in this format.

Of course, there's Infect.  At this point it's a little late, but don't worry, there's more coming.  Not next episode, but the one after that.

Then we have to reach into our massive mailbag.  Apparently 3 weeks worth of email tend to pile up when you don't get to any of it.  So this is our giant Listener Appreciation Week episode, where we touch on all the email we can find.  Since we read all these, we need some more, so send us an email!


Intro music - Diamond by Swift: http://www.swift-band.com
Break Music - Chainsaw Hedge Maze Mayhem from Zombies Ate My Neighbors (Super NES). Composed by George Alistair Sanger - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Sanger_%28musician%29

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On Game Day, we all gathered at Dirk's place to play some Magic!  And you are listening to the fruits of that labor.  We started off with a quick recap of the day's events thus far, then played a knock-down, drag-out game of Archenemy, featuring Brian's custom Archenemy deck and Scheme deck.  No I'm not going to tell you who won.  Really now, listen to the episode.  The ending was really freakin' epic though.

But that didn't take nearly as long as we thought it would, so as an added bonus we decided to play a game of Planechase.  That also ended in epic fashion, but only after a string of griefer planes tortured us for a while.  So what did you guys think?

Featuring a cameo by Dirk's lovely wife Chelsea!


Intro by Tosus
Intro music - Diamond by Swift: http://www.swift-band.com

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Are you ready for this? I CAN’T HEAR YOU! Are you ready for the latest, (probably not the) greatest, absolutely most current episode of the Mana Pool?! I hope so, because HERE IT IS!

Pumped yet? Well, you will be. This is Brian, here to bring you the highlights and higher-lights of episode 142 of the Mana Pool.

First off, we go over listener emails. Listen closely, listeners, because while you’re listening you just might get to listen to an email that you sent us (probably after listening to a previously listened to episode). Seriously, we really do appreciate the feedback that we get from you guys. Without you, we’d have about 141 copies of episode 1, and who wants that? Then we launch right into a review of a draft that Chewie, Mike, and myself participated in not too long ago. Actually, it was two different drafts, with two different groups of Mana Pool dorks. Why? You’ll have to find out… by listening!

We then cover an announcement regarding the Scars of Mirrodin Game Day. This hasn’t been covered too extensively elsewhere yet, and we only really found out because Mike is resourceful, but this is 100% accurate. What announcement? Keep listening to find out! If you don't want to hear it, skip ahead to 1:04:30 in the episode after we announce the spoiler section. After that, Chewie and I go over the first game of Archenemy that we had a chance to play. I know, I know, we’re about two months behind the rest of the world in that area, but it’s totally my fault. Listen to discover how it turned out, especially with Chewie’s multi-deck management skills.

Finally, we discover that we don’t actually have time to go over what we thought would be the main topic for this episode. I’d act surprised, but this has happened before. Instead, we take Dirk through his first Story Circle, a feature that we started way back in episode 117. While that may not sound too long ago- a short 25 episodes if my math is correct- that episode was recorded and put up way back in February. While this isn’t the first time we’ve come back to it, it’s definitely Dirk’s first time, and he approaches it with his own unique style. What style is that? I think you know what to do by now!
...
...
...
Listen!


Intro Music - Diamond by Swift: http://www.swift-band.com
Break Music - Tetris Music B, and we still don't know who it's by

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Greetings!  A big hello and welcome to all of you Mana Pool listeners out there!  This is Brian!  I’m talking like this because I’ve taken the BAR EXAM and thus don’t have to/can’t complain about it anymore!

Ahem.

Thanks for tuning in.  We’ve got quite the interesting show for you hear today/tonight/tomorrow (how is that possible?).  However, we misplaced our Dirk, so you’ll have to wait til next week (or later- no spoilers!) for you to hear the glistening wisdom off of his tongue.  But let’s get back to what we do actually have for you this time.

First, we go over emails.  I know, I know, we do that every time, but we really do appreciate it when you guys take the time to send us your thoughts.  It makes us warm and fuzzy inside.  To prove it, we spend a fair amount of the first part of this episode talking about the emails that we’ve gotten.  We try to respond to each and every email that we get, provided that the content is appropriate for the show (a very low bar indeed).

Then, we talk for some length about a particular topic.  In fact, we talk about it so much you’d think that that was the actual theme for the show, but no!  So what was it?  Well, here’s the trick.  See, I’m a cryptic kind of guy.  Just ask the other players.  You already read the title for the episode, so you should know the main topic.  Let’s just call this preliminary topic the “secret thing.”  How you do discover the identity of the “secret thing?”  Why, by listening to the episode!  The actual idea behind this show is our next, and final, discussion.  It’s based off of a listener email (hint, hint) inquiring as to the role of control.  We take some liberty with the question and actually interpret it to refer to threats versus answers.  The dialog that results is quite fascinating, stimulating, and exhilarating.  Especially the part where Chewie wanders off.

That’s it for this week.  Be sure to check back next week, when the secret of the baboon is revealed!  No, that’s a different “secret thing” kind of thing.


Intro Music - Diamond by Swift: http://www.swift-band.com
Break Music - Mega Man 3 Selection Theme by Bun Bun

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Between vacations to Canada and the Bar exam, half of the host dorks have gone missing!  But never fear, we'll find them.  But until then, you're stuck with just me and Mike, taking it nice and easy this week.  We start off with a little bit of random nonsense, then jump right into the big spoiler for Scars of Mirrodin.  If you're looking to avoid this, skip ahead to about the 13 minute mark and you'll be good. 

Then we take up some Duel Decks, brought to you live!  It's a best of three with Garruk vs. Liliana followed by Phyrexia vs. the Coalition.  We'll talk you through the games while we play, and there's always the usual conversation and silliness.  Hope you enjoy this laid-back, no pressure episode as much as we did.


Intro Music - Diamond by Swift: http://www.swift-band.com
Break Music - FlashFire (Mega Man 2 Flash Man remix) remixed by AE: http://ocremix.org/remix/OCR00067

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Attention!  Listen up, rookie!  You have just been dropped into the latest 60 Card Challenge of the Dominarian Armed Forces!  I am going to whip you into shape or you'll die trying!  You hear me maggot?!?!

You goldbricks have it easy these days!  Back in my day we didn't have such amazing leadership!  If you wanted to be inspired to do better in battle, you had to wait for the angels to belt out a Glorious Anthem or go on a Crusade!  That's not even military!  Back then, the army was more of a militia, real men working to keep back the goblin horde or fend off those prissy little elvish buggers.  We used whatever we could find on our way to each hard-fought victory.

And then came the Onslaught.  By the gods those were great days.  The first of the Daru Warchiefs stepped up then, infusing all of us soldiers with a sort of holy strength.  There were Mobilizations going on all over the place, keeping us ever vigilant and increasing our numbers.  The Aven Brigadier took command, but he was partial to his fellow Aven.  The really great thing was the formation of the Catapult Squads under the Catapult Masters.  They were able to take out enemies at extreme long range, removing threats before they were close enough to hurt us. 

Other places had other attempts at military organization as well.  Over on Mirrodin, the Auriok Steelshapers could outfit their armies with better equipment, but without the better equipment he was basically useless.  In the time of the Coldsnap, after the great Ice Age, the Field Marshals taught combat tactics, allowing their soldiers to take out their enemies before taking a single hit.  During the chaos of the Time Spiral, Benalish Commanders stuck in time somehow managed to call in more recruits.  They didn't so much make their troops better as much as they used those troops to make themselves better, but they were still effective leaders.

Then came what's now known as the M10 Age.  Rhox Pikemasters came up from the southern regions to share their skill with the long-handled blade.  Veteran Armorsmiths and Swordsmiths offered us tempered steel to strengthen our armor plates and sharpen our dulled blades.  But then came the saving grace for soldiers everywhere.  The Watch.  More specifically, the Captain of the Watch.  The one I met was a woman, but don't let that fool you.  Everywhere she went, she was accompanied by her three-man retinue of guards.  Without her, they were pretty useless except to help out the Catapult Squads, but when they were by her side, they were vicious.  In fact, all of us felt more powerful by her side.  We never feared a counterattack, because not only did she see everything on the battlefield, but she somehow made us see it all too, keeping us ever vigilant.

But you maggots didn't come here for a history lesson, did you?  No, you wanted to fight!  Some of you might think you're tough, and some of you might actually be tough.  Some of you just joined so you could stab goblins without getting in trouble!  But you're not all going to make it!  To give you a taste of the trials to come, you're going to sit in as the higher-ups take our best unit, Sgt. Chewie's Howling Commandos, and make some improvements!  Let's take a look at the unit as it stands now before anyone gets cut:

Sgt. Chewie's Howling Commandos

Land (23)

2 Secluded Steppe

21 Plains

Creatures (27)

4 Captain of the Watch

3 Daru Warchief

4 Catapult Squad

2 Catapult Master

3 Knight-Captain of Eos

2 Stormfront Riders

2 Benalish Commander

1 Field Marshal

1 Darien, King of Kjeldor

2 Patrol Signaler

1 Gustcloak Savior

1 Intrepid Hero

1 Frontline Strategist

Noncreatures (13)

2 Mobilization

1 Cenn's Enlistment

2 Spirit Loop

2 Prismatic Strands

2 Disenchant

2 Unified Strike

2 Roar of the Kha

As you can see if you've got any sort of strategic mind at all, this is a well-oiled combat machine.  The Commandos have Captains of the Watch, Daru Warchiefs, and even a Field Marshal to make them all more effective fighters.   There's even a highly experienced Frontline Strategist, who can turn even the most terrible battle into an amazing rout.

They are fully capable of calling in reinforcements of any sort for any reason.  Knight-captains have a small retinue of soldiers, Stormfront Riders drop off a soldier every time they blink out existence, and Benalish Commanders can reach through time to recruit.  If Kithkin are needed, the Patrol Signalers can bring in more, or we can rely on the Cenn's Enlistment procedures.  Darien, King of Kjeldor has his own army that he is more than willing to send in for assistance.  And if all else fails, there's the old standby of calling for a Mobilization of the troops.

But the real stars of this unit are the Catapult Squads and their Masters.  The sheer number of reinforcements leads to a veritable barrage of catapult fire for any potential attackers.  The Patrol Signalers can also help out here, lending a hand to the Catapult Squad and then signaling for more troops.  There's even a Gustcloak Savior attached to the unit, specifically for helping the troops draw an enemy into range, vanish (leaving the enemy in the open and confused), and man the catapults to knock it down.  The troops are capable of staging a Unified Strike to take down attacking enemies, using the unique Prismatic Strands to protect themselves, project a Roar of the Kha to give them more strength and abilities, and even utilize a Spirit Loop to keep themselves in the battle.

But an army that doesn't change is an army that doesn't win!  We can't just stagnate!  Our enemies are constantly trying to adapt to our tactics, so we should change those tactics to further thwart them!  Let's see what the brass has in store!  That's our Field Marshal talking now, and the Frontline Strategist is across from him.

"We need to take the Nomads' Assembly into consideration!  Those Kor are highly skilled and vicious in battle.  They have agreed to match the number of troops on the battlefield, and there are always two waves of the assembly!  And while we're discussing the Kor, don't forget the recently signed Conqueror's Pledge, which guarantees us at least a small number of Kor soldiers!"

"Personally, I think we have too many of those Knight-Captains of Eos.  The third one that came in a while back just isn't pulling his weight with the other two already there.  I think he should be transferred to a new unit where his skills can actually be put to use."

"And if you'll notice, that so-called Intrepid Hero has been less than spectacular.  He shouldn't even be a soldier, but more of a lone warrior type of thing, since he very rarely works with the rest of the unit anyway.  I move to have both him and the extra Knight-Captain stationed at the training facility to share their talents with new recruits.  Now, what about tactical changes?"

"I think the use of the Unified Strike is outdated and predictable.  Our enemies have come to expect it and can use it against us.  Perhaps if we want to remove enemy threats we should move towards using the latest magical technology of Oblivion Rings.  They're able to handle more diverse threats and can take out those powerful Planeswalkers we've encountered from time to time."

"I see your point, but surely having more troops at our disposal makes the Unified Strike more effective.  I don't think we should abandon it so easily.  Perhaps if we instruct the troops to use the O-Rings for a while and see how they fare compared to the tried-and-true Strike, we can get a better idea of which is more effective and adapt our strategies accordingly."

"No, the Unified Strike is still a very narrow tactic that only works in certain situations, while there is always a use for a well-timed Oblivion Ring.  Just because we can pull off a Unified Strike more easily does not change the fact that it just isn't versatile.  Let's switch over to the O-Rings, and if by some miracle a Strike would be a better tactic, we'll revise later.  Now, I have this piece of equipment recently recovered from some ruins in Zendikar.  As far as we can tell, it's a Basilisk Collar, which increases both the life expectancy and deadliness of the wearer.  I think we should integrate this with the use of the Spirit Loop to study the effects.  How about splitting the use of both right down the middle?"

"Agreed.  It performs the same function and adds something extra without losing any real value, so let's do it.  I also think that, since his passing, using the Roar of the Kha is having the opposite effect on the troops.  And since it's not as effective as we'd like, I suggest we just stop using it.  If such a time comes that we feel like we need it again, we can always reintegrate it.  Is that good enough for now?"

"I think it is.  Let's hit the mess tent.  Let's remind the new recruits here about the full changes made to the unit before we eat."

+1 Nomad's Assembly

+1 Conqueror's Pledge

-1 Intrepid Hero

-1 Knight-Captain of Eos

-2 Unified Strike

+2 Oblivion Ring

-1 Spirit Loop

+1 Basilisk Collar

-2 Roar of the Kha

-1 Plains

Sgt. Chewie's Howling Commandos

Land (22)

2 Secluded Steppe

20 Plains

Creatures (25)

4 Captain of the Watch

3 Daru Warchief

4 Catapult Squad

2 Catapult Master

2 Knight-Captain of Eos

2 Stormfront Riders

2 Benalish Commander

1 Field Marshal

1 Darien, King of Kjeldor

2 Patrol Signaler

1 Gustcloak Savior

1 Frontline Strategist

Noncreatures (13)

2 Mobilization

1 Conqueror's Pledge

1 Nomads' Assembly

1 Cenn's Enlistment

1 Basilisk Collar

1 Spirit Loop

2 Oblivion Ring

2 Prismatic Strands

2 Disenchant

There you have it, maggots!  I hope you took something from this little discussion!  If you didn't, then you're not gonna last long here in the Dominarian Armed Forces!  You should have figured out some strategy!  They found an artifact that does everything one of the standard issue enchantments can do and then some, so they're going to integrate it into battle.  If there's a gain in abilities without a loss somewhere else, and cost isn't an issue, then that's a fine strategic move.  Also, even though there will be more soldiers available to perform a Unified Strike, a narrow maneuver is still a narrow maneuver no matter how easy it might be to pull off.  If an Oblivion Ring is more useful on a broad scale, then that's what should be used.  And finally, men and even tactics that aren't pulling their weight or aren't as useful as hoped for should be dismissed!  If having the third Knight-Captain of Eos in the unit is a waste of resources then let's shuffle him off to a place where he can serve the most good. 

And that's just what we'll do with any of you maggots that prove to be a waste of space!  Lesson over, now drop and give me twenty!

Well hello there everybody.  This is Mike, filling in for Chewie on the show notes because something something I don't even know.  There's probably a perfectly reasonable explanation.  But hey, that's what friends are for.  Speaking of, by way of Brian's creative genius, we have a very special episode for you tonight.

I'm sure all of you out there at some point have dreamed up some custom cards, or at least thought of some wacky abilities or nifty text to put onto a card.  Because Magic is a 2+ person game, I'm also assuming most of you play it with other people, some of them fairly regularly.  Every player has his or her own special quirks and characteristics (some endearing, some infuriating), so what if you took those gameplay elements and translated them onto cards?  Brian gave us all a homework assignment to do just that, and you'll be both surprised and unsurprised at many of our results.

Oh, and something about movies.  Rant rant rant.


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Well we've got lots of stuff for you this episode. First off, there's a Magic Mad Lib, provided by jars from the forums. Then we have some controversial stuff. We kick it off with Hornet Sting again, this time going into a deeper discussion about what may or may not be wrong with the card on any number of levels. Then we hit the Esper Charm incident described by Cedric Phillips on StarCityGames. This one gets deep. Feelings are hurt, friendships are destroyed, podcasts are forever ruined...and then Dirk proves once again why he's a genius.

Then we've got M11 as a whole. Two of us hit the Prerelease, which we'll tell you about. Then we all take a look at M11 in its entirety and ruminate and marinate on it for your amusement and edification.

Oh yeah, check out this awesome Legend of Zelda set that Monday Night Magic mentioned. It's awesome.
http://www.gamesradar.com/f/behold-our- ... 4459310090


Intro Music - Diamond by Swift: http://www.swift-band.com
Break Music - Chrono Trigger Main Theme (Orchestrated) composed by Yasunori Mitsuda

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Hey there, all of you Mana Pool listeners! If you’re not a Mana Pool listener, you’re in the wrong place. Otherwise, hey! This is Brian. My rambling has spilled over onto the show notes, no longer content to take up 80% of the podcast air space.

Mike and I handle the usual tasks of intro matters, listener emails, and Cardshark member promotions for July. Why us instead of Chewie? You’ll have to find out!

Then it’s time for M11 previews. We definitely take our time with a fair number of these, but that’s because they are both sweet and great. By now, you can see the entire spoiler up on the Wizards page, but you’ll find exclusive ramble-lore-chewie content here that you can’t find anywhere else. If you happen to hear an inappropriate joke here or there, don’t worry about it- it’s just the voices in your head. Lines of Lay, Lichs (Liches?) that beat down, cards that aren’t Twincast, Destructive Force and the creatures that survive it (but only if you have enough Mountains), and the worst color pie related crime since ever await. We hope that you are just as excited about M11 as we are, and if you have your own thoughts about the previewed cards in this episode, head over to the forums and voice your opinion.

Sit back, turn down the lights, turn up the volume and leave the heat at medium well. The Mana Pool is here


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Chewie here again, this time with a deck I actually did something to.  I've mentioned my multiplayer discard deck several times, whether it be in articles or on the show.  It's one of my oldest deck ideas, and the basic tenets haven't changed since I first came up with the idea.  But before I go into any sort of detail, here's the list (complete with made-up impressive sounding deck name that's never been used before):

The Mountains of Madness
Land (22)
12 Swamp
3 Island
2 Tainted Isle
1 Creeping Tar Pit
2 Mikokoro, Center of the Sea
2 Dimir Aqueduct

Creatures (19)
4 Abyssal Nocturnus
4 Lore Broker
4 Screeching Buzzard
4 Solemn Simulacrum
1 Magus of the Jar
1 Nihilith
1 Myojin of Night's Reach

Noncreatures (23)
4 Megrim
1 Words of Waste
1 Debtor's Knell
1 Oversold Cemetery
2 Howling Mine
1 Memory Jar
1 Well of Knowledge
2 Time Spiral
2 Ill-Gotten Gains
1 Windfall
1 Prosperity
1 Bribery
3 Wheel and Deal
2 Evacuation

So the idea is pretty simple.  Keep cards in everyone's hand, play a Megrim, then make everyone discard their hands.  This used to be a lot harder, trust me.  Let's go through some of the key cards.  Megrim is the main kill condition.  Each card discarded means 2 damage.  Ideally, I only have to make each person discard 10 cards to win.  And of course, I have a full crapload of ways to fill (and then empty) hands.  Howling Mine gives an extra card a turn.  Mikikoro can draw everyone an extra card when I have some leftover mana.  The Well of Knowledge can draw anyone an extra card when they have some leftover mana.  Time Spiral gives everyone a full hand and gives me plenty of mana to play with after casting it.  Windfall and Ill-gotten gains give me a full-hand discard AND puts cards back in their hand so they can discard more!  The various Jar-related guys give me a slightly dirty way to win out of nowhere.  However, Wheel and Deal is by far the easiest way to just say "I win, let's play another one."  And for the extreme late game, there's the Myojin of Night's Reach.

But I'm not JUST out to win with massive discard all at once.  Lore Broker gives me the chance to inflict some serious chip damage, as does Words of Waste.  The Abyssal Nocturnus gets seriously big really quickly, and he gets evasion to punch through.  Nihilith is another big guy who comes out pretty quickly and can evade his way into someone's face.  The Screeching Buzzard is primarily a deterrent to keep people from swinging at me, which actually works better than you might think.

And finally, some assorted other.  Creeping Tar Pits are great for sneaking in the last few points of damage when my Megrim gets destroyed.  Solemn Simulacrum helps smooth out some draws and can profitably chump block if necessary.  Debtor's Knell and Oversold Cemetery let me reuse the few creatures I have.  Evacuation functions as both a panic button to save my ass and a way to fill up everyone's hand for a coup de grace.  Bribery is just cool, and since my creature count is kind of low I thought I'd throw it in.  You know, for fun and profit.

Now as you can see, this deck is sitting pretty at 64 cards.  So I need to somehow knock 4 cards out in order to reach my destination.  But first, I want to add in some cards!  I acquired 3 more Creeping Tar Pits, so they simply must go in.  That's an easy fix though, I'll knock out the 2 conditional duals, the Tainted Isles and a Swamp and be good to go.

Still sitting at +4 cards.  The first two choices were pretty simple, actually.  I took out the singleton Bribery because I've started building EDH decks, and a single Bribery sounds just right for EDH.  Prosperity is the next to go, because it just doesn't really do enough.  I'm pretty sure it's a holdover from a time when I was still short one of the mass draw spells.  That and to maximize its card drawing potential, I need to use up enough mana to not be able to cast one of the mass discard spells and actually capitalize on my opponents' full hands.  The Well of Knowledge is something similar, as it just doesn't do enough on its own to warrant taking up a space in the deck.  And since it's totally dependent on my opponents' willingness to pay to draw cards, it is entirely possible that it'll just sit there and do nothing.  So out it comes.

Hey, we're down to +1 card!  This one was both really tough, and stupidly easy.  I could have gone with the Debtor's Knell or the Myojin, since they cost a million.  I could have taken out the singleton Words of Waste or Nihilith.  I don't even have the Geth's Grimiore to go with the Words anymore (but that's because I tried to stop being that guy), so it's not like it's living up to its full potential, but it's still good enough by itself to leave in for now.  I almost tried taking out the Howling Mines, but then I remembered that they tend to take the heat off of me in the early game.  Instead, I decided to take out the Memory Jar.  Why you ask?  Because even though I am a bit of a jerk, I'm a complete ass.  The Memory Jar is just wrong.  Sure it basically does the same thing as Windfall or Ill-Gotten Gains, but it's going to knock out 7 cards almost every time for almost every player.  There's a reason it's as infamous as it is, you know?  I left in the Magus of the Jar because at least then they have a have a turn to either kill him off or prepare for the worst.  Sometimes being civil is more important than winning, you know?

Here's the full list of changes, in case you want it in an easily digestable format:

+3 Creeping Tar Pit
-2 Tainted Isle
-1 Swamp
-1 Bribery
-1 Prosperity
-1 Well of Knowledge
-1 Memory Jar

And here's the final list, just in case you wanted to see that too.

The Mountains of Madness
Land (22)
11 Swamp
3 Island
4 Creeping Tar Pit
2 Mikokoro, Center of the Sea
2 Dimir Aqueduct

Creatures (19)
4 Abyssal Nocturnus
4 Lore Broker
4 Screeching Buzzard
4 Solemn Simulacrum
1 Magus of the Jar
1 Nihilith
1 Myojin of Night's Reach

Noncreatures (19)
4 Megrim
1 Words of Waste
1 Debtor's Knell
1 Oversold Cemetery
2 Howling Mine
2 Time Spiral
2 Ill-Gotten Gains
1 Windfall
3 Wheel and Deal
2 Evacuation

In an effort to have this be more than just a showcase of my decks, this final paragraph in each of these posts will be dedicated to larger lessons you should take away with you.  Of course, lots of them are going to be the same, but hopefully you won't notice.  Of course, when you only have 60 slots to work with and you're trying to craft a deck that can take down multiple opponents, every card has to pull its own weight.  If there's a card that isn't worth it, get rid of it!  Personal preference is also a factor.  I don't want to be too much of a horrible prick (gameplay-wise, that is) so I removed the stuff I see as unfair and unfun.  For those people who care more about winning than increasing the group's amount of fun (and there's nothing wrong with that, it's just not how my brain works), taking out the Memory Jar seems like a stupid choice.  And for them, of course, it would be.  And finally, when it comes to playing lots of multiplayer fun games, be sure to keep the big picture in mind.  I don't mean to pay attention to what everyone is doing (that's a given), I'm talking the big picture that extends outside of this game.  I have lots of decks built at all times.  If I have a card in this deck, but it really doesn't do much here or would definitely be more effective in that deck over there, then there's no reason to hamstring that other deck just because this card is already in this one.  Bribery would be most excellent in one of my EDH decks that contain blue, so I'm going to let it shine over there rather than leaving it here just because it's neat.

And of course, after I write this they reveal the new Megrim in M11, Lilliana's Caress.  It's Megrim except it costs 1 less and instead of damage, which is more easily prevented or redirected, it causes loss of life.  As soon as I get my hands on a any of these, they'll begin replacing the Megrims.  It's entirely possible that something like the Words of Waste or maybe a Buzzard will come out to increase the number of cards with this effect, but I'll have to play it out a few times to see how it works.

Hope you enjoyed taking this look at my process.  As always, any and all feedback, positive or negative, is welcome.  Since I'll probably be doing a lot of these, please let me know what you liked and didn't like.  You can comment right here or roll over to our forums at http://cardshark.freeforums.org.  Thanks for reading and uh, go play some Magic!

Well hello there. What's a dork like you doing on an internet like this? Ah, that makes sense. No, I won't tell your mom. This is Mike, taking the reins of the show notes while Chewie is working hard preparing the previous episode, sneaking it in underneath our rolling storage limit on the hosting site. You'll notice a familiar unfamiliar voice on this episode, as we once again have Eric the Pluronymic joining us for a fun time all around.

M11 previews are still trucking right along, as would be expected. Thankfully, Wizards didn't drop another 80+ cards on us since the last time we recorded, so we're able to hit all of them. Among cards like Almost Johnny Magic, Sort of Man-o-War, Not Really Vengevine, and What Would Give You the Idea Scars of Mirrodin Has Artifacts, we have plenty to talk about. We start to bring home the second half of the show with a discussion of what the new Deathtouch templating actually means (for real this time [seriously]). It's a little embarassing to have jumped the gun when all the information I needed could have been inferred from what was already out there, but that just happens sometimes. Finally, we close with a special Out of the Deck Box segment from Eric, detailing a really amazing sounding deck that's all about wolves (feel free to Lock Up, Release, or associate with Winter, as appropriate to your personal Metal preference).


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​Hello again my faithful readers!  This one's simple yet entertaining.  When I started playing again around the time Onslaught came out, I noticed that Birds seemed to be a tribe they were pushing.  This was cemented when I saw Aven Brigadier, who is just ridiculous with the various Bird Soldiers.  But it wasn't until I saw the Judgement card Soulcatcher's Aerie that I was completely blown away.  Every time a bird dies, ALL these other birds get bigger?  HOLY CRAP!  So I set to work building a Bird deck.  The first one was just a bunch of big expensive awesome birds, a Brigadier, and a pair of Aeries.  As the years have gone by, I've tweaked and changed and fixed and focused the deck.  Here's the pre-60CC list:


Flock of Seagulls
Land (22)
8 Plains
7 Island
2 Azorius Chancery
2 Coastal Tower
1 Sejiri Refuge
2 Seaside Haven

Creatures (30)
4 Soulcatcher
2 Courier Hawk
2 Keeper of the Nine Gales
2 Aven Riftwatcher
2 Jotun Owl Keeper
1 Lieutenant Kirtar
1 Pride of the Clouds
1 Emeria Angel
1 Commander Eesha
2 Aven Fisher
2 Aven Augur
2 Celestial Gatekeeper
2 Phantom Flock
2 Crookclaw Elder
1 Aven Brigadier
1 Windbrisk Raptor
2 Shoreline Ranger

Noncreatures (10)
4 Soulcatcher's Aerie
4 Battle Screech
2 Disenchant


Seaside Haven baby!  The Soulcatcher makes an appearance all the way from Odyssey to keep watch over his Aerie.  I have a few birds that can off themselves for the good of the flock, like Aven Augur, Lieutenant Kirtar and the Aven Riftwatchers.  With a single counter on the Aerie, the Phantom Flock becomes impossible to kill with damage.  I have a bit of a bird token generating subtheme rolling around in here too, what with the Owl Keeper, Pride of the Clouds, Emeria Angel, and the set of Battle Screeches.  More small birds for cheap in the early game means more giant Serrakeet birds for cheap in the late game!  The Keeper of the Nine Gales and Crookclaw Elder take advantage of my fairly ridiculous number of birds to do nifty things like bounce threats or refill my hand.  And let's not forget the Windbrisk Raptor as a nice way to change the game in a single swing.

But you see, then I started opening packs from the Zendikar block.  I nabbed a second Emeria Angel which of course MUST go in this deck.  I also opened an Archon of Redemption.  The more I looked at it, the more it spoke to me.  It whispered to me of three counters on an Aerie and not paying for the third upkeep on an Owl Keeper, then playing a land with Emeria Angel out, then flashing back a Battle Screech.  Such riches are more than even my considerable imagination could conjure, and I was weak in the knees.  In that moment of weakness, I agreed to put this evil Archon in the deck where it clearly belonged.  But only as a single, for multiples would surely bring about the end of days!  *ahem* Sorry about that.  What was I saying?

Oh yeah, I'm putting in new cards.  The Pride of the Clouds makes bird tokens, but it has to be in my hand and it takes 4 mana BEFORE I draw for the turn!  The Emeria Angel has to be on the battlefield and I have to play lands.  Holy crap, I was gonna do that anyway!  So an even 1-for-1 swap on those two seems fair to me.  If this deck was more about a swarm of tiny birds, then the Pride could be absolutely amazing, but it's actually about making a swarm of huge birds, so it loses some value when I could just include another bird or a more efficient token-maker.  I looked at the Soulcatcher next.  There's a full set in there.  I don't think a full set is really necessary, especially since I already have the full set of Aeries.  And for some strange reason, I feel compelled to put the Archon in here.  Not quite sure what that's about.  so let's just do another swap there.

At this point, I'm still sitting at +2 cards.  Let's see what's left.  Disenchant!  What good does that crap do?  It does all kinds of good, the hell is wrong with you?  What about...Courier Hawk?  It's small and vigilant, which works really well with the Aerie later in the game, but it's a possibility.  My favorite thing to do with Aven Fisher is sacrifice it to a Seaside Haven to draw two cards and bump up the rest of my birds, and even if I don't get to do that it still replaces itself when death comes for it.  No, at this point I decided to knock off the Shoreline Rangers.  The deck runs pretty well on 4 mana, so the islandcycling isn't as necessary as it was in previous incarnations.  In other words, it's a holdover from the time I had a whole mess of 5 and 6 cost birds in the deck.  With the smaller, sleeker creature the deck has become, the Rangers are unnecessary.  They're still good, just not here.

As always (well, it will be always), here's the full list of changes:

+1 Emeria Angel
-1 Pride of the Clouds
+1 Archon of Redemption
-1 Soulcatcher
-2 Shoreline Ranger

And here's the final list, sitting right at 60 cards:


Flock of Seagulls
Land (22)
8 Plains
7 Island
2 Azorius Chancery
2 Coastal Tower
1 Sejiri Refuge
2 Seaside Haven

Creatures (28)
3 Soulcatcher
2 Courier Hawk
2 Keeper of the Nine Gales
2 Aven Riftwatcher
2 Jotun Owl Keeper
1 Lieutenant Kirtar
2 Emeria Angel
1 Commander Eesha
2 Aven Fisher
2 Aven Augur
2 Celestial Gatekeeper
2 Phantom Flock
1 Archon of Redemption
2 Crookclaw Elder
1 Aven Brigadier
1 Windbrisk Raptor

Noncreatures (10)
4 Soulcatcher's Aerie
4 Battle Screech
2 Disenchant


So now for the educational part of this post.  First off, keep an eye out for cards that do the same thing only better, like the Emeria Angel replacing the Pride here.  Also, if you're like me, you keep decks for a long time and tweak and change them as new cards come out.  Watch out for those cards that were required to make the deck run smoothly back in the day.  Sometimes you just have to go back to first assumptions and take a good look at those cards that you just leave in there because they've always been there.  Question everything!  And that's not just a lesson in casual deckbuilding, that's a life lesson.  But enough of all that.  Hope you've enjoyed the little birdies.  Thanks for reading and uh, go play some Magic.

Thunder roars unheard above the sounds of the battlefield. Lightning flashes, momentarily illuminating a scene of intense combat through the downpour. The invading army’s captain sat stoically on his mount, keeping his veteran eye on the shadows of movement that told him of his force’s progress against the keep. The battle was going well for him, and the sounds of metal on metal had been gradually decreasing as the defenders were put down. He turned down to the commander of his advance units.

“Has there been word of those that I ordered to proceed into the stronghold?” he asked, slight irritation purposefully showing behind his otherwise flat demeanor. He was not one to be kept waiting, and his troops knew this.

“No sir,” was the reply, the commander respectfully meeting the captain’s eyes, “but the conditions are making reconnaissance nearly impossible. I have no reason to believe that they have met anything but success. There is no one here whom we fear.”

Pleased with the soldier’s earned bravado, the captain returned his gaze to the skirmish. “Order in another two units. I want information of what defenses the inner keep holds, if any.” He laughed. “And I’m soaking wet, and I dislike the sensation. See to it.”

The scouts went forward, following the trail of the first troop around the most pitched fighting and watching for hidden dangers. No enemy combatants waited in ambush, but that only made them the more suspicious. Finally, they found the wall of the keep and began to make their way around. The foremost scout wordlessly commanded the others to stop upon seeing a large shape looming in the darkness, but breathed a sigh of relief when he realized that it was only a statue.

As the troop came forward, the first scout started to move past the statue. As he did so, he saw another shape, or rather a series of shapes. He drew his sword at the sight of the other soldiers, preparing his men to cut them down as they lay resting. They drew near, but at the last moment another bolt of lightning revealed the scene of the first group of scouts. None had survived. The second group stood in shock, certain now of danger but not sure of what to guard against. Above them, the statue stared down.

A few hours later, the captain was alone, watching what he could from his vantage point. The defenders had found a second wind with reinforcements from an unknown source. He needed his men to rally to him, but the continuing storm hampered communication. His men at the keep, the advance parties, were unaccounted for. He believed that this was the reason he was alone, as even his second-in-command feared the captain’s temper at its height.

“Cowards,” he muttered to his steed, “afraid to face my wrath for this failure. Where are they? Alonze, come to me!” he shouted into the darkness. Only at hearing his own bellow did the captain realize just how quiet the scene had become. He heard a sound, like and unlike approaching footsteps, from the direction of the battlefield. He stared at the dark in front of him, willing it to reveal whether it was the forces of the enemy or his own soldiers, but no one was in front of him for some distance. The sound increased in intensity, and suddenly he was snatched off of his horse and lifted impossibly into the air.

He let out a harsh cry, but upon gazing up and seeing his captor, he began to laugh. It was a long, hard laugh, coming out uncontrollably from the man who was so close to victory and now so far from the ground. The sound echoed off of the stone hide of the beast, almost seeming to become louder to his own ears. The captain recognized his opponent’s true forces at last, and knew that his failure had always been inevitable.

Hey there, Mana Pool friends and listeners. This is Brian, he of the rambling. I’m here today to discuss one of the special preview cards we were assigned from Magic 2011 in a bit more depth than we could give on the show. The card, as you should hopefully be able to tell from the narrative above, is Gargoyle Sentinel.

I’m going to first go over the obvious uses and implications of this card, both as a practical matter of analysis and then specific to limited, which is the format where he is likely to see the most play (in my humble opinion). Then, I will attempt to look at some aspects of the card which lend themselves to more interesting application. For more information on the flavor-tasticness of this card, be sure to listen to the review that we give him on the show. I won’t repeat it here, because I think it would really just be repetition of my thoughts I said on the show. Plus, everybody loves the sound of Chewie’s voice, am I right?

First of all, this guy is pretty efficient. A 3/3 body (albeit with defender) for three mana is very solid, usually only found in green. The fact that he is colorless opens him up to all colors, most remarkably for the otherwise creature-weak blue. The fact that he does have defender makes him comparable to Ogre Sentry from Rise of the Eldrazi in red, which costs one less but (1) is color-specific and (2) cannot itself lose defender without help. The end result? Even if he never takes off, the Sentinel is a pretty solid defender for his cost.

He can take off, however, and therein lies the true potential. The Sentinel is made for coming out early and having the beef to hold back the opponent for some time. Don’t underestimate the relatively high power for a defender; the ability to not just block but kill a fair number of attackers is pretty significant. Once the ground is more or less safe, he can join the races by adding his considerable weight to the airborne offensive. The fact that he is an artifact limits some of the removal that can be thrown at him, and protection from artifacts is pretty rare, so there is a good chance he will connect. If things become problematic, just keep him at home until it is most efficient for him to go on the attack. Don’t forget that he can also spread his wings to block an incoming aerial attacker (thanks, Mike!).

In summation, for at least the purposes of sealed or draft, Gargoyle Sentinel is pretty nice. His body is a great way to dissuade the opponent from trying to attack, and his later-game presence is something that the opponent will have to take into consideration at the very least. Heck, even if the opponent has to use a Lightning Bolt to clear him out, that’s a Lightning Bolt they can’t use again! Overall, he seems decidedly solid to fairly strong, depending on how efficient M11’s creatures are and how aggressive the limited format proves to be. I’d strongly consider playing him where possible unless he’s just simply outclassed.

Finally, let’s get a little more interesting. What other uses can Gargoyle Sentinel have? Well, he’s a Gargoyle, so if you’ve been waiting to finish out your Wakestone Gargoyle deck, here you go! Also, he’s an artifact, so he plays nicely with Etherium Sculptor and friends from Esper. Speaking of Esper, try this guy out with Skill Borrower; as long as Gargoyle Sentinel is the top card of your library, you can send your Borrower to the skies. For a version of this combo that does not require you to have the Gargoyle on top of your library, combo with Experiment Kraj. Since we’re focusing on the activated ability here, I feel obliged to mention Training Grounds; this ability gets significantly better when it costs 1 (2 less).

Of course, sometimes even just being a defender has an upside. Check out Vent Sentinel (woo, Sentinels unite!) for some damage and Overgrown Battlement for mana production purposes. Don’t like getting beaten down by your opponents? Get out a Gargoyle Sentinel and wait for your opponent to go to his combat step (preferably with little or no mana open) and cast Mirrorweave or Cytoshape.

That’s about all I can say about Gargoyle Sentinel, a deceptively simple-looking card. Just remember when you’re at the Magic 2011 prerelease or release events, that’s probably not a bird, plane, or Superman up there. Just because it doesn’t look like it can move… doesn’t mean it won’t eat you.

You’re going to read and hear comments running the entire length of the spectrum from “best idea ever” to “kill me now” when it comes to this card. I’ll go ahead and let you know now that I’m one of the ones happy to see it.

I like counter-magic, but not in the usual “to crush your enemies, see them driven before you, and to hear the lamentations of their women” kind of way. I like it because it’s a very versatile class of removal, balanced by the need to apply careful thought in order to use it properly. When a spell worth countering comes around, first of all you have to be ready for it. You have to have the mana up. That means you need to carefully consider how you spend the turn before it, thinking about what benefit any threats you could play would add to your position and how safe you already are against the opponent’s threats currently on the table. Then you have to decide how dangerous the spell is for you. Will it only be a temporary inconvenience or will it set up a long-term problem? What could be following it based on the mana the opponent still has open? I have more fun during a game when I have more interesting choices to make that will really test my skills as a player.

Anyway: about the card. Lots of decks tap out nowadays. In my personal opinion, a play environment is at its worst when there are too many decks that just go on autopilot. Having Mana Leak around forces players to stop and think when there’s 1U up on the other side of the table. Is it there? Is it a bluff? Is it a coincidence? How sad would I be in the long run if this play or series of plays got nullified? Can I trick the opponent into using it now so I can do what I really want later?

Besides the interesting strategic choices it brings to the metagame, Mana Leak is also just a good card. 3 is a lot to leave open at any given time in the early and mid game, so most of the time it’s just a classic Counterspell. Even if the opponent has 3 or more extra mana open, you can use the leverage to screw up a multi-spell play that the current spell is trying to open. But, of course, one of the best and most powerful features of Mana Leak is the minimal colored mana requirement. You can get the ease of play of something like a Negate or Essence Scatter without the targeting restriction that might randomly leave a dead card in your hand. With that versatility, you can also just staple it into an existing deck that wouldn’t mind having it around (I’m envisioning a situation where a removal attempt on your Kiln Fiend turns into something hilarious).

There’s tons more that can be said, but I’ll let you all have a go at it. Please do comment, because we really appreciate all the feedback we get from our audience.

Hello everyone, and welcome back to The Mana Pool’s little corner of the blogosphere. Chewie here, and we’re back on the 60 Card Challenge. The first step was to count up the cards in all my decks. This is nowhere as much fun as it sounds, and it doesn’t sound like any fun at all. During the course of this, I found a small handful of decks that already had the requisite 60 cards already. So I thought I’d go ahead and share some of those with you guys to get them out of the way. Since I’m going to be showing everyone the rest of my decks, I figured I’d show you all of them. I’m also going to attempt to come up with some nifty names for them that aren’t so utilitarian. No reason, just as a mental exercise and to jazz them up a bit.

I have two decks built around the Suspend mechanic from Time Spiral block. The first and foremost is basically mono-blue with a small red splash for Jhoira. Looking at it again, I’m considering changing it around some, but that’s not what this about. Here’s the list:

Suspension of Disbelief
Land (21)
4 Terramorphic Expanse
3 Mountain
14 Island

Creatures (28)
3 Jhoira of the Ghitu
3 Riftwing Cloudskate
3 Errant Ephemeron
3 Chronozoa
3 Infiltrator il-Kor
1 Maelstrom Djinn
4 Aeon Chronicler
3 Deep-Sea Kraken
2 Timebender
3 Jhoira's Timebug

Noncreatures (11)
2 Paradox Haze
3 Ancestral Vision
3 Clockspinning
2 Reality Strobe
1 Time Stretch

It’s pretty simple. Lots of time counters, lots of things that manipulate time counters, and land. The Chronozoa and Maelstrom Djinn are fun with the time counter shenanigans, and the various suspended creatures can jump into play in a hurry. My personal favorite thing to do is use Jhoira to suspend an Aeon Chronicler for 4 extra card draws on the cheap. As far as changing it around, I might knock out a Jhoira and a Chronicler to finish the set of Ephemeron and Cloudskate, but I haven’t decided yet. Any thoughts?


If any of you have read my articles or listened to me ramble about my decks, you’ve heard of the Words Deck. A while back, I took all the green out of the Words deck to make room for blue, because a deck that wants to draw lots of cards really needs blue. But I really missed having the Words of Wilding in there to make lots of bears. I missed it so much that I made it a deck to call its own. Here it is:

Words of Wilding
Land (22)
20 Forest
2 Oran-Rief the Vastwood

Creatures (23)
2 Hystrodon
2 Heartwood Storyteller
2 Regal Force
2 Skullmulcher
2 Kavu Climber
3 Wistful Selkie
2 Elvish Visionary
2 Magus of the Library
2 Maro
1 Overbeing of Myth
1 Primordial Sage
1 Masumaro, First to Live
1 Kamahl, Fist of Krosa

Noncreatures (15)
4 Words of Wilding
3 Harmonize
2 Sylvan Library
2 Snakeform
2 Overrun
2 Naturalize

As you can probably tell, it’s just a bunch of green card draw. Since it’s green, it’s mostly creature based. Play dudes, draw cards or make bears, swing for the win. The Maros and the Magus can take advantage of full hands. Skullmulcher can chow down on any spare bear tokens or pointless creatures like Elvish Visionary. Overrun and green Kamahl are win conditions (of course) since I should have a fair number of bear tokens wandering around. Snakeform is a funny little combat trick that gets me another card (or bear) in the process. Plus there's Oran-Rief for when I play a creature and make a bear, or make lots of bears, or whatever. I haven’t played it that many times, but every time that I have it has been a lot of fun. What do you think?

So there you have it. Two straightforward decks that were already sitting at 60 cards, submitted for your approval. Or amusement. Whatever. Hope you enjoyed, I’ll be back before too long with a deck that actually went through some changes. Thanks for reading and uh, go play some Magic!

http://www.wizards.com/Magic/Magazine/Article.aspx?x=mtg/daily/arcana/457

Then we have the announcement for the next Duel Decks. This time it's gonna be Elspeth vs. Tezzeret. Maybe that means we'll be able to snag a few copies of Elspeth for less than 30 bucks apiece!
http://www.wizards.com/Magic/Magazine/Article.aspx?x=mtg/daily/arcana/459

Then we have a decklist for the first of the Archenemy decks, Assemble the Doomsday Machine. We go over all the schemes and give you a quick look at the deck itself, which looks entertaining to say the least.
http://www.wizards.com/Magic/Magazine/Article.aspx?x=mtg/daily/arcana/462

Then we come to the point. Brian bought a Deck Builder's Toolkit. So of course, we're going to crack it open, check out all the cards, and...then what? Well it's the Deck Builder's Toolkit, so we're gonna build a deck! This time, we're going to go for a multiplayer deck instead of the usual sealed pool stuff. As always, check the forums if you want the full list. The link is right down there. Here's what the Toolkit is, in case you're not aware.
http://www.wizards.com/magic/tcg/productarticle.aspx?x=mtg/tcg/dbt/productinfo


Intro music is Diamond by Swift - http://www.swift-band.com

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And the letter 6! We start off this episode with lots of little things. Explanations for late episodes, listener emails, new products (Archenemy) and old products available to new people (Duels of the Planeswalkers on PC). Easy enough, right? Of course, we're a little silly after such a long time away from our microphones.

Archenemy feature article:
http://www.wizards.com/Magic/Magazine/Article.aspx?x=mtg/daily/feature/91

Then there's another Rise of the Eldrazi Sealed pool. But instead of building it live on the air, we each built our own deck before we recorded. And we're going to do a compare and contrast sort of thing. Do we go with the levelers? What about burn? Should we ramp up into all these Eldrazi? We might even do all of those things! As always, if you want to see the entire pool, check the forum post for this episode. The link is right down there at the end of these show notes. What sort of deck would you build with this pool?


Intro music is Diamond by Swift - http://www.swift-band.com
Break music is Just to Piss You Off by Social Outcast ub -http://www.myspace.com/socialoutcastub

Forum thread for this episode:http://cardshark.freeforums.org/episode-131-brought-to-you-by-the-number-l-t531.html
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Yes, we're finally doing an episode about EDH! Not just any episode about EDH, but a LIVE episode about EDH! You'll see Brian piloting a Doran the Siege Tower deck, Dirk with my Wort, Boggart Auntie build, Mike with his brutal take on Scion of the Ur-Dragon, a terribly mana-screwed Chewie playing his Progenitus crazy good stuff nonsense, and finally our special guest AJ with his monowhite Commander Eesha. Sure it's long, sure it's crazy, and of course it's impossible to follow, but we know that no one listens to our live episodes to follow along closely with the game, so it'll be okay.