In this episode, your four hosts definitely do NOT get lives. Trust me on this.

First up, there's the big news regarding 11th Edition. There isn't going to be one! The next core set will be Magic 2010. It will contain roughly half new cards. Yeah that's right, new cards in a core set. Weird. We'll go over all this and the other assorted bits of news that aren't worth putting in the show notes, as well as give you our opinions on the matter.

Then there's the title of the episode. In this new segment that we've decided to call “An Excellent Bit of Deckbuilding Nonsense”. It'll be another of those segments that shows up for a while, then disappears, then shows up again when someone asks where it went. Sound good? The point of this exercise is to give each of the hosts a deckbuilding idea and turn them loose. This time we decided to go with “Life Gain”. Use life gain for something other than “I just happen to gain some life when I do X”. Dirk's idea was a great basic use for gaining life. Mike made life gain a major focus of the deck's theme. Brian took the concept and turned it completely on its head. And I decided to make life gain the win conditions in the deck. And yes that's supposed to be plural.

If you'd like to take a look at the decks we built, just click on the forum link down below. They'll be there.


Music for this episode: the Metal Mario theme from Super Mario 64 on the Nintendo 64

Forum thread for this episode: http://cardshark.freeforums.org/episode-69-get-a-life-t301.html
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For anyone joining us from the MTGCast, welcome to The Mana Pool! Come on in, the water's fine. For everyone else, welcome back. Please use your assigned locker space for changing into your trunks. Also, please wait until us hosts get out of the locker room, because we definitely don't need to be here to see that.

It's a product review and a set review! But first, we have to read the contest winning story, the one submitted by kurai_seraphim (that's Bill). Featuring Mike as the Lord of Atlantis!

Then we jump back in time for Brian and I to take a comparative look at the new 6 card Conflux boosters that are available at the large retail stores. I bought five of the 6 card boosters and two of the standard 15 card boosters, giving me 30 cards from each type of pack. We'll take a look at the contents of each, then draw some conclusions about which type of booster pack is the better deal.

Fast forward back to the present, and Mike, Dirk, and I take a look at the original five-color gold set, Invasion. We'll take a quick look at the story and the mechanics of the set, but primarily we're just going to be going over some of the more memorable and awesome cards in the set. Hope you enjoy!


Music for this episode: No One Expects the Mana Pool by JungleRatRob
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Forum thread for this episode: http://cardshark.freeforums.org/episode-68-the-reviews-are-in-t296.html
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Welcome to our random nonsense episode. I'm dying slowly and pitifully, Mike's sleep schedule is being treated like a pinball, Brian's classes are eating into his social activities, and Dirk plays WoW. Not only that, but we're going to attempt to humanize ourselves just a little bit. We're gonna give you a look at your dorky hosts from a different perspective – what we're doing when we're not playing Magic or podcasting about Magic. Are we really big dorks, or are we actually cool people who play Magic? Find out here!

Next up is the contest story that won second place, from Ben Ahrendt. That's Panahinuva on the forums, and the guest host on episode 63. It's a great story, as narrated by our own Brian Baker. We tried to get Ken Follett, but he didn't return our calls. And Don LaFontaine died last year, so he was out. So we went with our third choice, the guy that does the game footage recap commentary on Inside the NFL, but we have no idea who he is. So it was up to Brian, and he performed admirably.

There were some recent changes to the Comprehensive Rules that were posted on the Magic website. Mike wanted to go over a few of the more interesting ones (in theory). He covered Eye for an Eye, Gilded Drake, Guardian Beast, and Sorrow's Path. Turns out they finally made it not completely useless, but still absolutely terrible. You can find the full list here:

http://www.wizards.com/magic/magazine/article.aspx?x=mtg/daily/feature/23c&page=1

And then we move into the second round of Jace vs. Chandra games. We made a few changes to each deck and pitted them against each other yet again. After listening to the results, hit the forums and let us know if you have any recommendations for the next round of changes.

Music for this episode is the Main Theme from Super Smash Bros. Brawl on the Wii. Holy crap it's great.

Forum thread for this episode: http://cardshark.freeforums.org/episode-67-potent-potables-t294.html

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It's the Conflux Prerelease Bonanza! Okay, I'm totally not gonna call it that. But in this episode, we all get together and tell you about the Prerelease. Spoiler alert: Mike the did the worst of us all. We also get Bill, winner of the Mana Pool Contest and Kurai_Seraphim on the forums, to join us to tell us how he fared. There's also a brief sidebar on cheating, a bit of discussion about some of the cards in the new set, and even a quick look ahead at Alara Reborn. I mean quick, too. Like just a few seconds. But it's in there! And there are new member promotions on Cardshark (since it's a new month) and new members on the forums to welcome. Yay new people!

Forum thread for this episode: http://cardshark.freeforums.org/episode-66-conflux-prerelease-t293.html
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