We begin by taking a quick look at the Avacyn Restored Event Decks, in all their glorious whatever-it-is.  After that, we have a riveting discussion about what happens when you cast Eaten by Spiders on Avacyn.  Another listener-inspired topic that we tackled is a simple one: What was the first card you ever really coveted?  This leads us to all kinds of nostalgia and manages to infiltrate the main topic of the episode.

Main topic you say?  Well AVR has lots of shiny new angels and a fair number of new demons, but what about the old guard?  Both have been around since the first printing of Magic, but what are we dealing with here?  What have these two types looked like throughout the history of the game?  We'll discuss some of the ancient creatures of each type and throw out plenty of personal experiences with them too of course.

Two things should become pretty obvious from this discussion.  First, Brian doesn't actually know the names of any angels or demons in the game of Magic.  And second, demons DO NOT get along with Mike, so much so that we named the episode after this phenomenon.  You're gonna love these horrible, horrible demonic bad beats stories all the more when you realize that these ALL come from the demons that Mike is playing WITH, not against!

Avacyn Restored Event Decks: http://www.wizards.com/Magic/Magazine/Article.aspx?x=mtg/daily/arcana/967


Intro & Outro Music – Diamond by Swift – http://www.swift-band.com
Break Music – Lights Out by Pitch the Woo – http://www.facebook.com/pitchthewooband

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Yeah, we just had 3 episodes of previews, so you know what that means - the Prerelease episode!  Bill Bloodworth (you know, @SqueeGoblnNabob) joins us for this one, since he was the cause of the funniest thing any of us have seen at a Prerelease for a VERY long time.  Brian talked about his experience, Bill told his story, and Mike and Chewie covered their two apiece.  Definitely a lot of fun.  So be sure to tune in to hear about the bitch scoop, slamming the door, How to Miracle (from Bill), How Not to Miracle (from Mike), Chewie Righteously Blowing things, and of course...GRISELBRAND!

Of course, before we get to the Sealed events, we have a few things to discuss.  In a quick message on DailyMTG by Helene Bergeot (and aren't they all quick?), it was revealed that Guillaume Matignon's suspension was cut in half.  If you'll recall, he was one of the Guillaumes responsible for GuillaumeGate.  Guillaume Guillaume.  Okay, I think that's out of my system now.  But he was one of the guys behind the New Phyrexia godbook leak.  Or so we thought...*dramatic pause*

Also, there was plenty of talk about the Helvault promotion on the whole.  We'll go over the ups, the downs, why it was or wasn't crazy good, and bat around a few ideas for improving future events and stuff.  Let us know what you think!

GRISELBRAND!


Intro & Outro Music – Diamond by Swift – http://www.swift-band.com
Break Music – Sympathy for the Devil by The Rolling Stones

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This episode, there's not much going on other than the full reveal of Avacyn Restored.  So we go through each color, pointing stuff out.  Powerful cards, awesome (or gross) art, cards we can't wait to play with, stuff that we think is utter crap.  You know the drill.  Everyone's doing it this time of year.  But we do it with our own dorky style!  There's actually not much else to talk about on this one, so I'll leave you with a link to the full set so you can check it out yourself.

Avacyn Restored Card Image Gallery

Intro & Outro Music – Diamond by Swift – http://www.swift-band.com
Break Music – Blue (Da Ba Dee) by Eiffel 65

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We're not even screwing around this episode, as we dive right into the Avacyn Restored previews.  Of course by now everyone has heard about the Soratami planeswalker that we speculated about at the end of the last episode.  A mere 2 hours later she was revealed in her entirety.  Then they threw a dapper devil dude at us!  Of course we covered both of those, along with everything else that had been previewed by the time we recorded!  Good stuff, man.

But when Brian unexpectedly had to leave just before we got to the inverted Zombie Apocalypse angel, something else happened.  After finishing up the previewed cards, we had a bit of a poetry reading.  It was a poem by our own KhaosKontrol over on the Mana Pool/Cardshark forums, and it was so awesome that we just had to read it on air.  Hope you all enjoy it as much as we did.

Sprinkled throughout the rest of the show, Dirk has a strangest voice problem ever, Mike and Chewie recap some streaming shenanigans, Chewie recounts some powerful parental advice, and there are many dick jokes left unsaid.  Thanks for listening!


Intro & Outro Music – Diamond by Swift – http://www.swift-band.com
Break Music – All I Need is a Miracle by Mike and the Mechanics
Background Music - Mantis' Hymn by Konami Computer Entertainment Sound Team Japan

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We're joined this episode by Bill, the voice of Squee, who haven't heard from in a good while.  We kick it off with a quick rules correction from last episode - Mike missed one small detail on the question about the single spell with Cascade, Storm, and Ripple.  Imagine that, something got missed in the most complicated spell ever.  No one is allowed to give Mike any crap about that one. All the others are fair game as usual though.

After that Chewie gives a quick rundown of all the podcast whoring he's been doing lately.  By lately we mean in the last couple months, because some of these took a while to show up.  He's been on Off-Color Cast, Kitchen Finks, Horde of Notions, and was one of the guys on the new Five Minutes of Magic cast that is, in fact, only five minutes long. He also had another video for CMDR Decks, his Spirit of the Night deck, which you can find right here:
http://themanapool.com/the-deck-box/cmdrspiritofthenight/

By now everyone's heard the news that came out of PAX East, and if not you'll hear it for the first time right here!  There's the Return to Ravnica, Duels of the Planeswalkers 2013, and Nicol Bolas showing up in the M13 Core Set.  Holy crap that's a lotta news keeping us from the spoilers!  There's one last thing before the spoilers though, as Chewie gets all mushy and heartfelt for once in his miserable life to extend a special thanks to some listeners for their generosity.

Oh, and then there's a whole MESS of Avacyn Restored previews.  We've got angels, demons, devils, BOOM, pants-crapping, stunned silence, angry eyebrows, miracles, and Elmer Fudd.  It's gonna be great.


Follow Bill/Squee on Twitter @SqueeGoblnNabob

Intro & Outro Music – Diamond by Swift – http://www.swift-band.com
Break Music – Dinner Music for a Pack of Hungry Cannibals by Raymond Scott

For a list of the rest of the music, check out the this episode's forum post.

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We begin this episode with a discussion of Avacyn, the first reveal from Avacyn Restored, and boy is she something!  From there we move into the double-faced tokens that were given away at FNM (sorry about the delay) and the fansite toolkit available from Wizards, featuring some nifty images for you to use whether you have a site or not.  Also, a big shoutout to Jeffrey Lombaro, who is @MuttZippy on Twitter, for buying us all lunch the last time we all got together to play Magic!  He's a sweetheart of a guy and he's doing giveaways and stuff on Twitter, so go follow him!

And since it's Springtime, Brian thought we should talk about those things that make people absolutely miserable and unable to see or breathe, plants!  Yes there are plenty of plants in Magic, we by the end of the show we'll have talked about almost all of them!  We even asked Twitter for some favorite plant creatures, which we promptly made fun of.  Okay, not all of them, just the ones that deserved it.  But if you've ever wanted to know about the Plant creature type in Magic, look no further!  Be sure to pack Benadryl and some tissues!


Decked Builder Giveaway!
Cardshark prices are now available on Decked Builder, an iPhone/iPad app that covers all your Magic deckbuilding needs!  If you want a chance to win a free redemption code, just go to this episode's post on TheManaPool.com and comment intelligently (also let us know that you want the app).  Keep an eye on our Twitter, Facebook, and Forums for more chances to win!


Avacyn Revealed:
http://sphotos.xx.fbcdn.net/hphotos-ash3/525246_10151450289785307_201120755306_23094082_859257884_n.jpg

Double-faced Tokens:
http://www.wizards.com/Magic/Magazine/Article.aspx?x=mtg/daily/arcana/938

Fansite Toolkits:
http://www.wizards.com/Magic/Magazine/Downloads.aspx

Ralph McQuarrie's Website: http://www.ralphmcquarrie.com/


Orbitars: A Kid Icarus Uprising Competitive Community
Blog: http://orbitars.wordpress.com/
Forums: http://orbitars.forumotion.com/
Twitter: @orbitars


Intro by Tosus!
Intro & Outro Music – Diamond by Swift – http://www.swift-band.com
Break Music – Requiem of the Gods from Castlevania: Symphony of the Night by Michiru Yamane

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For episode 223, the dorks gathered to discuss the Avacyn Restored trailer. After rambling on that for a while, we indulged the self-proclaimed Vorthos King and set some time aside to discuss the art and flavor of Venser vs Koth. We closed out the opener (does that even work?) with a Mad Lib about the new "Dark Romance" genre of teenage fiction.

Our main topic for the episode was the latest installment in our series "That's How We'd Do It." This time around, we tackled what we thought would be the best mechanics to bring back as the non-evergreen inclusion in Magic 2013. We touch on a number of recent and classic mechanics and try to decide how best to integrate the flavor and mechanics of the standard environment 2013 will be spending its otherwise lonely evenings with. We also talk about our candidates for who will replace the titans as the big mythic meanies of the new format.

After the break, we moved on to a popular recurring segment: the latest division of our flavorful throwdown between creatures from throughout the multiverse! Which creature will wield a mighty hobo knife? Which creature is the honey badger in disguise? Which card creeps us the eff out? You'll have to listen to find out!

Oh, and we had a guest join us at the end of the show. We don't really want to give away who it is, mainly because we're ashamed to admit we had him on.  We apologize ahead of time for that.

Follow your hosts!
Bill: @SqueeGoblnNabob
Jack: @JackLacroix
Ben: @Panahinuva
Eric: @EricMTGcast


Intro & Outro Music – Diamond by Swift – http://www.swift-band.com
Break Music - Theme from Sliders (Season 3)

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-223-seismic-counter-bash-pro-head-to-head-etc-t791.html
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For episode 222, we are joined by The Many-Named One himself, Eric!  He's here to pick up the slack for Brian, who had no power at home and thus couldn't join us.

But because it's episode 222, we just had to spend a ton of time on everyone's favorite bears! You know, 2/2's for 2!  We're talking about bears of all shapes and sizes.  How the two-drop 2/2 impacts drafts and cubes, the original Alpha bears, the plethora of bears that are Knights.  We even touch on bears that have made an impact on the tournament scene and just which ones we've enjoyed over the years. 

After a while however, we ran out of gas on bears.  And without Brian's rambling, we sort of lost our focus.  We talked a fair bit about video games.  Chewie's playing Castlevania: Symphony of the Night for the FIRST TIME so we had to spend some time there.  Really now.

And what's this talk of an Easter Egg on the site?

Eric's custom RK Post playmats (for the kids!)
http://yfrog.com/a/img736/1020/d11oq.jpg
http://yfrog.com/a/img861/5258/ja5go.jpg


Intro & Outro Music – Diamond by Swift – http://www.swift-band.com
Break Music - The Bare Necessities (from Walt Disney's ''The Jungle Book'') by Phil Harris & Bruce Reitherman

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

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We begin the episode with a listener question (from Bacon!) about our favorite and least favorite cards.  And because of how our answers played into each other, I thought that might be a good one to answer on the air.  Yay Bacon!

That leads (almost) naturally into the rest of the show!  We go from favorite cards to favorite planeswalkers, which leads us to nice roundtable discussion about the 'walkers in general.  Favorites, most powerful in multiplayer and not, how do you play them, when do you put them in a deck, how do you play against them, etc etc.  All kinds of stuff came up, so hopefully you'll find it either interesting or informative.  If nothing else, you can laugh at how Brian's long confusing question caused Mike to completely lose track of the conversation. That was pretty awesome.

Also, I'd like to apologize ahead of time for the nonsense you'll find in the break music and the full nonsense at the end of the episode.  Once the notion took hold in my brain, I just couldn't resist.  For the full list of songs used, check the forum post that goes with this episode, the link is right down there.


Cast a Spell on MS charity Magic tournament - http://www.castaspellonms.org

Intro Music – Diamond by Swift – http://www.swift-band.com
Break & Outro Music - Planeswalker, Memphis Ranger Medley by Chewie (I got bored)

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

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Chewie note: Eric wanted his GP Nashville episodes to go up as soon as possible, and Chris Otwell is unavailable to upload casts to the MTGCast Network until Sunday.  So I offered to help a brother out and get his casts out there ASAP for everyone’s listening enjoyment.  Keep an eye out, they’ll be going up as soon as I get them from him!

This episode starts with a conversation with Richard F. Castle, creator of Inside the Deck, a featured documentary-style video cast on Gathering Magic. We talk about his origin and what he does. Check out his blog at www.insidethedeck.com.

Next up is Evan Erwin (@misterorange on Twitter) of Star City Games. We talk about his expanding role in the SCG organization and he reveals that the life tracker in the Star City Mobile App will be getting an overhaul.

Then Sam Black (@SamuelHBlack on Twitter) takes some time to go over his 50 card draft deck with me (yes, you read that right). He answers the question “Can you draft too many Selhoff Occultist?” He certainly has an interesting view on the drafting format.

I end the episode by talking with Ethan Heilicher who has an amazing set of decks put together for battling with his friends. Some might call it a block of blocks. He was featured on the main coverage site. He is the president of RAWG (Rochester Wargamer’s Association & Guild). You can find him and contact him on Twitter as @Pokezel

I'd like to give a special thanks to Chewie for hosting these shows on his site and getting them up (almost) live for me.  And another special thanks goes out to Mana Deprived for hosting my text write-up, which will be going up after the weekend is over!

If you have any specific things you would like to hear on the show, please reach out to me on Twitter!  You can find me as @EricMTGCast there.