Land Searching to Make Friends and Win Games, Pt I

By Brian | Published April 14, 2013 1 Comment
Maze's End

Dragon’s Maze, the final set in the hugely popular Return to Ravnica block, draws nigh. Already we’ve heard about shockland re-reprints, a guild versus guild footrace, and at least 10 new multicolor legends to fuel the Commander fire.

The prerelease for Dragon’s Maze is set for April 27-28, so be sure to check with your local store about specific times and entrance fees. The one card you know you’ll get (although you can’t play with it this time)? Maze’s End. It’s a little funny to me that the first card you get upon “entering” the Maze is, in fact, the very end of the Maze. That aside, Maze’s End is a very interesting card to touch upon, so I’m going to be covering it in a two-part article series.

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Episode 274 – News with Stybs! (and His Lawyers)

By The Mana Pool | Published April 8, 2013 2 Comments
The Stybs

We are joined this week by none other than Adam Styborski!  He’s @the_stybs on Twitter.  For those of you that don’t know…what rock have you been living under?  He’s the (former) writer for Serious Fun on DailyMTG, the current writer of the brand new Commander column Command Tower on DailyMTG, he’s on the text coverage team for Wizards, and he’s all about some Pauper Cube.  Oh yeah, he’s the Content Manager for GatheringMagic too.

But he joins us this week to tell us all about Command Tower, how it came about, what you can expect, and assorted other things.  Really, Stybs just talks on and on about whatever we throw in his direction for a good long time, and it was really awesome.  You can REALLY feel how much he loves Commander as a format.  He even brought a tear to my eye at one point.  That could have been my roommate’s cooking though…

After we had drained Stybs dry of his soul…I mean information…we still had PLENTY of news to talk about.  Rather than list it all here and then list it all again down there…we’re just gonna put it down there.  Go look at all the nifty stuff we hit on!

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Squee GTC Launch Sealed: Bombs Away

By Bill Bloodworth | Published April 7, 2013 Leave a comment
Some days you just can't get rid of a bomb

Squee fails at preparing for GP Charlotte by opening an absolutely absurd pool of cards that no one should ever see in a large event. You know you’ve got something when Mad Skills stays in the sideboard and Borborygmos isn’t even considered for a slot in the deck. Rather than the typical Squee voice, you’ll instead be treated to the smooth sounds of ambient videogame music in the background throughout each round as things get progressively more absurd. More or less every bomb in the format makes an appearance in the deck or on the other side of the virtual table, so this is your chance to get a top-level view of the format’s high points. Round 3 in particular has an absurd turn of events that you know left someone swearing profusely. Sounds like a Squee Sealed!

 

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Episode 273 – Great Big Guest Star Episode!

By The Mana Pool | Published April 1, 2013 13 Comments
The Mana Pool All-Stars Battle Royale

We are eschewing the usual April Fool’s nonsense this year here on The Mana Pool.  Yes I know you guys look forward to it every year (except perhaps Shred Memory) but it really gets harder and harder to come up with new original ideas.  So this time, instead of doing something weird (er than usual) we decided to just have a hell of a good episode!

It’s guest stars galore on this one!  At various points throughout the episode we had Cluze from Card Advantage (@lacluyze), Bryan Prillaman (@BryanPrillaman) from JudgeCast (and Avant-Card Show of course) and we even managed to dig up our old buddy Eric of Many Names (@EricMTGCast)!  We even had Adam Styborski (@the_stybs) on, by virtue of a few off-the-cuff bumpers he recorded for us at GP Charlotte!  We discuss everything from Prillaman’s torried relationship with Claire (nonexistant) to what’s REALLY under Mike’s beard!  Due to the completely bizarre nature of this show, there’s not really a main topic exactly, just a bunch of dorks having fun talking about whatever there is to talk about!  We hope you guys enjoy!

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Episode 272 – Story Circles for Everyone! (On the Show)

By The Mana Pool | Published March 26, 2013 3 Comments
Story Circle (Tenth Edition)

Remember the planeswalkers that the dorks made for each other a couple episodes ago?  Yeah?  Well this episode we’re doing Story Circles to craft a deck around each of those dorky planeswalkers!  Pretty awesome huh?

Of course, that’s not all we’re up to.  Oh no.  Brian rambles on about Modern just a bit before we get going (weird I know).  We talk for a couple more minutes about the newest You Make the Card vote (at the time it was a runoff between land and enchantment).

At the end, we have another amazing rush of gratitude for a listener who, for reasons that continue to baffle us, sent us some stuff.  And I’m talking good stuff too.  Like damn.  Check out the altered Nether Shadow that he sent to Chewie and tell us that’s not awesome:

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