Alas, we are Dirkless yet again! Luckily (for him), he has a good excuse this time. We are also Mikeless. Is that even a word? Also luckily, he has a good excuse too. I'd hate to have to kill a dork in anger, you know?

Before we got to the show though, Brian and I had to finish a game. Luckily, I was able to summon up a garthok84 from the forums to fight for me. Then he decided to stick around and guest host this episode for us. It's Jason McFarland, guest host extraordinare and third place winner of The Mana Pool Contest!

So yeah, it's more Conflux previews. Nine cards' worth of goodness, in fact. Never mind the random tangent about whether or not narrow cards that work well in block are are good or not. Or the fifteen minute discussion about the last card (arguably the most important, from a tournament perspective). Or the assorted other random nonsense that comes up all the time. Yeah. Thanks for putting up with all our crap. Enjoy the Prerelease!

Conflux Visual Spoiler:
http://www.wizards.com/magic/tcg/article.aspx?x=mtg/tcg/conflux/spoiler


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Brains! No, wait, that's not right.

Previews! After you pay for this episode, you'll get to hear our takes on 13 more Conflux preview cards. Now all you have to do is figure out where to insert the money...

Conflux Visual Spoiler:
http://www.wizards.com/magic/tcg/article.aspx?x=mtg/tcg/conflux/spoiler

Forum thread for this episode: http://cardshark.freeforums.org/episode-64-conflux-previews-3-t288.html
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In this originally-named episode, we're gonna hit more Conflux previews! But first, we're gonna give you the story that won third place in the contest, submitted by Jason McFarland, who is garthok84 on the forums. It involves my favorite format ever and a terrible, horrible, soul-crushing way to lose. But before that, we've got a promo to play for Mr. Suitcase, a podcast over on the MTGCast. Preceding that, there's a bit of a rules issue that recently came to my attention that we wanted to clear up involving Unearth, in case some of you don't know it. I didn't know it.

Before we get to all that though, we introduce you to Ben Ahrendt who is Panahinuva on the forums and the second place story in the contest, who joins us for this stupidly overpowered preview episode. I mean really, Nicol Bolas and Progenitus in the same episode? You're lucky your iPod can hold this entire episode at all. Holy crap.

If you want to see the answer to the Unearth-Blink issue written out, go here and scroll down awhile. You'll find it eventually.

http://www.wizards.com/Magic/Magazine/Article.aspx?x=mtg/daily/askwizards/1008

Conflux Visual Spoiler:

http://www.wizards.com/magic/tcg/article.aspx?x=mtg/tcg/conflux/spoiler

Forum thread for this episode: http://cardshark.freeforums.org/episode-63-conflux-previews-2-t287.html

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In this episode of The Mana Pool, our heroes bravely withstand a goblin attack to bring you the first round of Conflux previews. There are 17 cards to go over, and they manage to hit every one of them without any major casualties, although Dirk may never walk again. Tune in next week to see which of your hosts learns a valuable lesson. The Mana Pool – Mondays on the WB! No wait, they're not that anymore. Never mind then, their TV show got canceled. You'll just have to get your episodes off the internet like everyone else.

And congratulations to the winners of the First Official Mana Pool Contest (Not an Official Name)! What, you don't know who won? Then you haven't listened to this episode yet!

Music for this episode is Dinner Music for a Pack of Hungry Cannibals by Raymond Scott. Again with the music you might recognize from a misspent youth watching Looney Tunes. Next episode will be something different, I assure you. Probably no music at all actually, so you better enjoy this one.

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

Then we get into the meat of the episode. We're going to start a deck evolution sort of thing, much like we did with the Clash Deck, except that we're actually going to do this one more than once. But instead of just building a deck and going from there, we're going to change it up a bit. We're going to take two decks and evolve them parallel to each other. And not just any two decks, no no no. We're starting off with the Duel Decks: Jace vs. Chandra. And boy are these decks a blast to play against each other. We've played some games with them straight out of the box, and we're going to make some changes and get back to you with the results, along with more changes. It'll be a running feature here on the show, at least until Brian gets bored with it.

Music for this episode is Powerhouse by Raymond Scott. It's classic music that was used a lot by Warner Bros for the Looney Tunes. You'll definitely recognize it.

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