The Mana Pool

Latest Episodes:

Mr. Suitcase #36 - Drafting with Sam Black Mar 19, 2012

Show notes

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.

Mr. Suitcase #35 - Drafting with Jon Finkel Mar 19, 2012

Show notes

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!I managed to follow Jon Finkel's draft, watching him pick up an aggressive black-blue deck. I managed to sit down with Jonny Magic after his deck building, and we talked about that as well as several other topics, including what he's doing at a Grand Prix. He gave me an update on the charity that he has been working on lately, Gamers Helping Gamers. Check out the site (which is currently still under construction) and follow @jonnymagic00 on Twitter for updates on when scholarship applications will be available.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 while I'm here in Nashville, please reach out to me on Twitter! You can find me as @EricMTGCast there.

Mr. Suitcase #34 - GP Nashville: Head Judge and Zac Hill Mar 18, 2012

Show notes

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!In this episode, I talk about what it takes to run a large 1000+ player Grand Prix with the Head Judge here in Nashville, level 4 judge Jeff Marrow. We also covered how to recover when an event starts to slow down.Later I run the chats with Zac Hill (@zdch on Twitter), member of Magic R&D and author of the Latest Developments column on Daily MTG. We talk about card design process and how a recent column he wrote influenced how I and others build our cubes.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 while I'm here in Nashville, please reach out to me on Twitter! You can find me as @EricMTGCast there.

Mr. Suitcase #33 - GP Nashville: The Main Event and Cube Talk Mar 17, 2012

Show notes

I start this episode with a recap of the EDH (Commander) game that I played on site yesterday. Throughout the cast I talk about my struggles and successes in the main event of a 1000 person GP with no byes.

The meat of the show is a talk with Usman Jamil (@UsmanTheRad on Twitter), Reuben Bresler (@MoxReuby on Twitter), and Anthony Avitollo (@antknee42 on Twitter), all great cube experts. We talk about the introduction of cube drafts on Magic Online, as well as the viability of storm in cube. The discussion definitely shows off our passion for this wonderful format, especially when we talk about how it has been impacted by the thefts at recent GPs.Check out the sites these guys maintain:www.incontentionmagic.comwww.idratherbecubing.wordpress.comI'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 while I'm here in Nashville, please reach out to me on Twitter! You can find me as @EricMTGCast there.

Mr. Suitcase #32 - GP Nashville: LSV Plus Sealed Deck Analysis Mar 17, 2012

Show notes

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!For my second show from GP Nashville, I sat down for a brief chat with Luis Scott-Vargas himself (@LSV on Twitter). He gave some of his opinions about the new Grand Prix structure, the amount of teamwork that Team ChannelFireball puts into GP preparation, and the current Sealed Deck format. (Chewie note: He even tried to get LSV to talk smack about double-faced cards!)After that, there's some commentary about my sealed pool and performance in Grinder 4. My friend Tony and I go over my pool again later to see what, if anything, could have been done differently. If you have any specific things you would like to hear on the show while I'm here in Nashville, please reach out to me on Twitter! You can find me as @EricMTGCast there.And 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!

Mr Suitcase #31 - GP Nashville Introductions Mar 16, 2012

Show notes

Just arrived in Nashville! Now to introduce the cast of characters for the weekend, including the one and only Usman from the Third Power podcast (@UsmanTheRad on Twitter), and to go over some of the plans for the weekend (spoilers: this includes a grinder and hitting up some artists. Oh, and the GP itself of course). If you have any specific things you would like to hear on the show while I'm here in Nashville, please reach out to me on Twitter! I'm @EricMTGCast there.And 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!

Episode 220 - Confronting the Horde (Live) Mar 09, 2012

Show notes

It's the long-lost live episode of The Mana Pool! Well, not "lost" exactly. More like "we haven't had a hole in recording to fill with this episode" but you know what I mean. But yeah, this was recorded back in January when we all got together to play at Dirk's house. We were joined by Ian Shepherd, a kid Dirk knows. Turns out this kid is the son of the proprietor of Hypermind, a gaming shop not far from Dirk in Burlington, NC. If you wanna check them out, you should click the link down there!As for what we did this episode...I'm not going tell you. Be surprised!Okay fine, you waited me out. In case you couldn't tell from the title, we played a couple games of Horde Magic, which we've discussed before, against Brian's monogreen Horde deck. It was pretty cool, though I think the Horde deck still needs a bit of tweaking. After we got done with the Horde Magic, we switched over to our normal 60-card casual decks. To be honest, it's been a long time and I don't remember anything about these games, so I guess we'll be finding out together. I do know the last game took a fair amount of time, but I don't think it was long in a bad way. I could be wrong. Feel free to let us know in the comments or the forums or an email or any of the other ways to get in touch with us if I was wrong.Check out Hypermind - www.hypermindonline.comIntro & Outro Music – Diamond by Swift – http://www.swift-band.comBreak Music - When Push Comes to Shove by A Light Divided - http://www.facebook.com/ALightDivided or http://www.reverbnation.com/alightdividedBe sure to check out all the great stuff on the website! – http://themanapool.comForum thread for this episode: http://cardshark.freeforums.org/episode-220-confronting-the-horde-live-t776.htmlCheck out our archive at http://themanapool.comOur Facebook page: http://www.facebook.com/TheManaPoolOur Google+ page: https://plus.google.com/u/0/103949524686616854873Email us at dorks@themanapool.comFollow us on Twitter at http://twitter.com/themanapoolCardshark Member Promotions: http://www.cardshark.com/Promotions/Member-Promotions.aspxSubscribe to our RSS feed: http://feeds.feedburner.com/themanapool

Episode 219 - Commander Month: The (First?) One with Bennie Smith Mar 04, 2012

Show notes

Yeah, you read it right - we got Bennie Smith! He writes for Star City Games now, he used to write for DailyMTG, and he's here with us to close out Commander Month! I'm pretty sure this is what's known as "doing it right". We spent a while picking his brain and asking all about his Magic history - all you've ever wanted to know about Bennie Smith? Aw yeah.We got Bennie to help us answer some excellent listener questions, like how to deal with mass removal when you're playing a heavily creature-centric deck. Tosus asked if he should use EDH to teach new players the game or if that risked scaring them away forever. And there was the obligatory most over- and under-rated generals question, which we kinda sorta answered mostly. Then we moved from there into a Story Circle, with everyone's favorite not-vigilance-giving (Johangilence?) general, Johan! You can find the complete list for that right below this paragraph so you can follow along at home. Holy crap I loved the deck we came up with. As soon as this is done uploading, I'm gonna trade Mike for his. No really, he's sitting right here behind me!http://themanapool.com/the-deck-box/storycircle219edh/

Oh, and if you're in or around London or you just enjoy tabletop, role-playing, or war games (or Magic of course) you should go visit Roll of the Dice Online Games (yes, it spells ROTDOG) - ROTDOG.co.uk/blog.

Follow Bennie on Twitter: @blairwitchgreen

Intro & Outro Music – Diamond by Swift – http://www.swift-band.comBreak Music - The Geeks Will Inherit the Earth by I Fight Dragons - http://ifightdragons.comBe sure to check out all the great stuff on the website! – http://themanapool.comForum thread for this episode: http://cardshark.freeforums.org/episode-219-cmdr-month-the-1st-one-with-bennie-smith-t774.htmlCheck out our archive at http://themanapool.comJoin our Facebook group at http://www.facebook.com/TheManaPoolEmail us at dorks@themanapool.comFollow us on Twitter at http://twitter.com/themanapoolCardshark Member Promotions: http://www.cardshark.com/Promotions/Member-Promotions.aspxSubscribe to our RSS feed: http://feeds.feedburner.com/themanapool

Episode 218 - Commander Month: Leaving a Crater with Laura by Spruke Feb 25, 2012

Show notes

We are joined this episode by none other than Laura Diemer and Bill Boulden, aka Laura by Spruke. You might know them from clips played right here on the show, or perhaps you bought their album, Katana & Tonic, on iTunes or one of the other digital music distribution services. If not, then maybe you should!Last weekend most of us went to the SCG Open in Charlotte. We played lots of EDH, so of course we're gonna talk about some of the crazy stuff that went on in a few of those games. Bill (Bloodworth, not Spruke) and Brian played in the Standard Open. Bill's going to write up a tourney report that I'll put on the site once it's done. Brian went into detail about his rounds at the beginning of this episode. If you wanna check out his deck, then I have the link for you!http://themanapool.com/the-deck-box/brians-bw-tokensAfter having a few random musical and Magical discussions with Laura, she tagged out and Bill took over. Bizarre last-minute scheduling issues work out well every once in while, you know? With Bill we did more random discussions and a Story Circle with one of the most...let's say interesting (yeah, that's it) generals ever. If you'd like to follow along at home, you can find that right here:http://themanapool.com/the-deck-box/storycircle218edhBill and Laura were both a lot of fun to have on the show! If you guys enjoyed their presence, let us know and we'll see if we can't get one or both of them on again sometime in the future. In the meantime, why not go buy their album over on iTunes? It's called Katana & Tonic, and it's awesome!Follow Bill on Twitter: @ThaGatherinFollow Laura on Twitter: @LauraGDiemerIntro Music – Diamond by Swift – http://www.swift-band.comQuick Break Music from Double Dragon by Kazunaka YamaneOutro Music - Armchair Girlfriend by Laura by Spruke - http://youtube.com/SprukeBe sure to check out all the great stuff on the website! – http://themanapool.comForum thread for this episode: http://cardshark.freeforums.org/episode-218-cmdr-month-leaving-a-crater-w-laura-by-spruke-t767.htmlCheck out our archive at http://themanapool.comJoin our Facebook group at http://www.facebook.com/TheManaPoolEmail us at dorks@themanapool.comFollow us on Twitter at http://twitter.com/themanapoolCardshark Member Promotions: http://www.cardshark.com/Promotions/Member-Promotions.aspxSubscribe to our RSS feed: http://feeds.feedburner.com/themanapool

For You (Mana Pool Mix) - Spruke (mix by Daniel Beach) Feb 20, 2012

Show notes

As featured in Episode 216, here is the awesome new audio montage made for us by Daniel Beach (who was also a guest host on that one). He took an unfinished Sprukestep track from the upcoming Factor Friction album that Spruke posted up to SoundCloud and peppered in a lot of random Mana Pool goodness. He said he did it entirely in Audacity, which is pretty ridiculous for a free program.Just like Jungle Rat Rob before him, Beach has managed to capture the essence of The Mana Pool. As I've been saying for a very long time now, we're here for your entertainment first and foremost. If you learn something along the way, that's freakin' great, but our primary function is just to ensure that you have fun listening to us.And just because he gave it to me, here's the list of sources that Beach used to make this little bit of awesome. I hope you all enjoy!Background song: For You (Eldrazi Stomp Mix) by SprukeEpisode 85 - M10 Rules Update DiscussionEpisode 88 - Magic 2010 Preview 2Episode 97 - Land Before TimeEpisode 113 - Multiplayer Mayhem LiveEpisode 122 - Multiplayer Mayhem Live 2Episode 129 - Mortal Instinct Fighter Calibur Vs!Episode 140 - Duel Decks at Ten PacesEpisode 163 - All of MBS (and Half of Chewie)Episode 172 - Adventures on Zendikar (Live)Episode 200 - Blame It On the ListenersEpisode 209 - Dirk and a HalfEpisode 213 - Rant Over (DKA Preview 2)Episode 214 - Crisis II: Dork Harder (DKA Preview 3)Avant-Card Show Episode 32

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