The Mana Pool
Join Brian, Mike, Dirk and Chewie as they discuss all things Magic: The Gathering. Since there are plenty of tournament and strategy podcasts out there, we've decided to focus on the fun of the game in all its many forms, from Prereleases to multiplayer free-for-alls to whatever else we can come up with. Give us a listen!

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Syndication

This is our first episode featuring the Kickstarter backers who chose the "come on the show" reward tier! The inaugural guest is Bosco from Washington, who brings with him a nice wide-open topic. So wide-open in fact that we could easily do several episodes just on this sort of thing.

DECKBUILDING! We're taking a look at the various methods that we all use to build casual decks. There are many many ways to build a deck, whether it's a 60-card casual deck, a Commander deck, or a tournament deck. Building around a specific card, a mechanic, a tribe, flavor, tweaking something that's already been built, and more. We're taking a very quick look at them all, because taking a long look at each one would take several hours. I'm pretty sure we'll end up coming back to some of this in the future.

We hope you guys enjoy! Big thanks to Bosco for backing us and coming onto the show with an excellent topic! Keep an ear out for more Fifteen Minutes of Fame! episodes (Bosco's great idea for a title) in the next few weeks! Hopefully anyway.

 

Intro & Outro Music – Diamond by Swift – http://www.myspace.com/swiftband
Break Music - No breaks! We're talking deckbuilding here!

This episode’s post: http://themanapool.com/podcast/episode-357
Forum thread for this episode: http://cardshark.freeforums.org/episode-357-bosco-s-fifteen-minutes-of-fame-t1058.html
Check out our archive at http://themanapool.com/category/podcast
Email us at dorks@themanapool.com
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Cardshark Member Promotions: http://www.cardshark.com/Promotions/Member-Promotions.aspx
Subscribe to our RSS feed: http://feeds.feedburner.com/themanapool

Direct download: Episode_357_-_Boscos_Fifteen_Minutes_of_Fame.mp3
Category:podcasts -- posted at: 3:00am EDT

This week the dorks are going over the two big things that happened in the last few days.  First up is the Banned & Restricted List update. I know, I know, we're a casual podcast and this shouldn't really matter to us, but it does. Chewie doesn't even play tournament Magic and he has very strong opinions on the matter, probably because he holds the DCI to a higher standard than they hold themselves. But there's plenty of good discussion about the big news since Modern, Legacy, and Vintage all had big changes.

Then we have to talk about the Fate Reforged Prerelease! Three of us each went to one prerelease apiece. We played Temur, Abzan, and Sultai! Some of us did better than others, of course. But we'll tell you all about it, then we'll go over some cards that were great, or better than we thought, or whatever. Hopefully our technical difficulties this week don't bleed over into the episode too much!

 

Intro & Outro Music – Diamond by Swift – http://www.myspace.com/swiftband
Break Music - Battle Theme from Final Fantasy VI by Nobuo Uematsu

This episode’s post: http://themanapool.com/podcast/episode-356
Forum thread for this episode: http://cardshark.freeforums.org/episode-356-banned-in-sealed-t1057.html
Check out our archive at http://themanapool.com/category/podcast
Email us at dorks@themanapool.com
Follow us on Twitter at @TheManaPool
Our Facebook page: http://www.facebook.com/TheManaPool
Our YouTube channel: http://www.youtube.com/user/TheManaPoolTube
Our Google+ page: http://gplus.to/themanapool
Cardshark Member Promotions: http://www.cardshark.com/Promotions/Member-Promotions.aspx
Subscribe to our RSS feed: http://feeds.feedburner.com/themanapool

Direct download: Episode_356_-_Banned_in_Sealed.mp3
Category:podcasts -- posted at: 3:00am EDT

Fate Reforged has been revealed in its entirety. So as per usual, we spend this episode poking around the Card Image Gallery pointing out all the cool stuff from the rest of the set. Of course we have to figure out what we're going to play at the prerelease too while we're at it. Oddly enough, we're all leaning towards one clan. Can you guess which one?

We also spend some time at the beginning rambling pointlessly about some potential upcoming bannings or unbannings, but what do we know?

Fate Reforged Card Image Gallery: http://magic.wizards.com/en/articles/archive/frf-cig-en
Prerelease Primer (Ugin's Fate Packs): http://magic.wizards.com/en/articles/archive/feature/fate-reforged-prerelease-primer-2015-01-12

 

Intro & Outro Music – Diamond by Swift – http://www.myspace.com/swiftband
Break Music - Can't stop this cast!

This episode’s post: http://themanapool.com/podcast/episode-355
Forum thread for this episode: http://cardshark.freeforums.org/episode-355-zigzag-muttdraggers-t1056.html
Check out our archive at http://themanapool.com/category/podcast
Email us at dorks@themanapool.com
Follow us on Twitter at @TheManaPool
Our Facebook page: http://www.facebook.com/TheManaPool
Our YouTube channel: http://www.youtube.com/user/TheManaPoolTube
Our Google+ page: http://gplus.to/themanapool
Cardshark Member Promotions: http://www.cardshark.com/Promotions/Member-Promotions.aspx
Subscribe to our RSS feed: http://feeds.feedburner.com/themanapool

Direct download: Episode_355_-_Zigzag_Muttdraggers.mp3
Category:podcasts -- posted at: 4:00am EDT

It's preview season! That means we brought Bill (Squee) on, as is tradition. We start with a look at the newly-revealed Clash Packs, which are full of nifty rares and new art. And from there we move directly to the previews. There are dragon cycles, ridiculous cards, proto-Khans, non-legendary mythics, a spider-elephant, broken windows, and butt-fighting. Hope everyone enjoys!

Fate Reforged Clash Packs: http://magic.wizards.com/en/articles/archive/arcana/fate-reforged-clash-pack-2015-01-06
Fate Reforged Card Image Gallery: http://magic.wizards.com/en/articles/archive/frf-cig-en
Click here when you get to Grim Contest: http://img4.wikia.nocookie.net/__cb20140929040830/donbluth/images/c/c3/Kinggator.jpg
Check out Squire Cast, another casual podcast! - http://mtgcast.com/topics/mtgcast-podcast-shows/active-podcast-shows/squirecast

Intro & Outro Music – Diamond by Swift – http://www.myspace.com/swiftband
Break Music - Can't stop this cast!

This episode’s post: http://themanapool.com/podcast/episode-354
Forum thread for this episode: http://cardshark.freeforums.org/episode-354-turtle-moose-human-i-win-t1055.html
Check out our archive at http://themanapool.com/category/podcast
Email us at dorks@themanapool.com
Follow us on Twitter at @TheManaPool
Our Facebook page: http://www.facebook.com/TheManaPool
Our YouTube channel: http://www.youtube.com/user/TheManaPoolTube
Our Google+ page: http://gplus.to/themanapool
Cardshark Member Promotions: http://www.cardshark.com/Promotions/Member-Promotions.aspx
Subscribe to our RSS feed: http://feeds.feedburner.com/themanapool

Direct download: Episode_354_-_Turtle_Moose_Human_I_Win.mp3
Category:podcasts -- posted at: 5:00am EDT

It's the first week of Fate Reforged previews, and none of us are completely with it. Seriously, we can't seem to get our words working properly. We're bad at this game.

As we usually do during the first week, we begin with the mechanics of the new set! So of course we spent a nice long time on Manifest, which is easily one of the most interesting Magic mechanics in recent memory, possibly ever. From the mechanics we move on to the rest of the Card Image Gallery and hit up every card that was listed there at the time!

Be prepared for lots of Back to the Future references this episode. Seriously, we refer to Khans as the beginning of the film's version of 1985, Fate Reforged as 1955, and Dragons as end of the film's 1985. If you haven't seen the first movie, I HIGHLY recommend you look it up. Not because of this episode, but because it's FREAKIN' AWESOME!

 

Fate Reforged Mechanics: http://magic.wizards.com/en/articles/archive/feature/mechanics-fate-reforged-2014-12-29
Fate Reforged Card Image Gallery: http://magic.wizards.com/en/articles/archive/frf-cig-en

 

Intro & Outro Music – Diamond by Swift – http://www.myspace.com/swiftband
Break Music - Can't stop this cast!

This episode’s post: http://themanapool.com/podcast/episode-353
Forum thread for this episode: http://cardshark.freeforums.org/episode-353-we-totally-showed-up-this-week-t1054.html
Check out our archive at http://themanapool.com/category/podcast
Email us at dorks@themanapool.com
Follow us on Twitter at @TheManaPool
Our Facebook page: http://www.facebook.com/TheManaPool
Our YouTube channel: http://www.youtube.com/user/TheManaPoolTube
Our Google+ page: http://gplus.to/themanapool
Cardshark Member Promotions: http://www.cardshark.com/Promotions/Member-Promotions.aspx
Subscribe to our RSS feed: http://feeds.feedburner.com/themanapool

Direct download: Episode_353_-_We_Totally_Showed_Up_This_Week.mp3
Category:podcasts -- posted at: 2:00am EDT