The Mana Pool

Since Standard rotated with Throne of Eldraine that means Brawl rotated too! And our own rambling dork Brian is ALL ABOUT some Brawl, so he wanted to do an episode about it! So we're gonna hit what left Standard and what that means for Brawl, with Brian's decks as an example. There's a good amount of discussion with the live Twitch chat too, which is why you should come join us live on Thursday ni...

The dorks are back from a two week podcasting break, and we're coming out firing! We're giving the Mythic Conscription treatment to a notoriously overpowered set, Urza's Saga! In this discussion we'll point out the difference between powerful cards and, well, design mistakes. Which color is loaded with potential mythics? Which color just doesn't seem to have much for the discussion? And what about...

It's Prerelease time again! Chewie, Mike, Brian, and Sam (!) all went to House of Cards in Winston-Salem NC to play! First, Chewie tells the story of the weekend of Scott's wedding and the horrible, horrible sunburn while he & Mike are in the car on the way to the shop. We didn't get any pre-tournament recordings with Brian & Sam because they were playing a game of Brawl. Once the tournament begin...

The dorks dive once more into the Throne of Eldraine previews! We've got plenty of cycles to finish - hybrid cards, lands, uncommon knights, legendary creatures and artifacts, lots of stuff! While we're at it we're bouncing around and hitting whatever other good stuff we can find, whether it's super flavorful, an obvious fairy tale reference, or blatantly powerful. We'll even hit that one blue myt...

The dorks are back to discuss even more Throne of Eldraine cards! You like fairy tales? What about knights? What about fairy tales...with knights? What about flavorful cards? Or billy goats? Big bad wolf? Excalibur? Trolls? The Questing Beast? The way every fairy tale begins? Randomly suplexing bears? Is any of this sounding good yet? ...what if I offered you a Bog Naughty? Card Image Gallery:  ht...

Throne of Eldraine is almost upon us, so we're here to talk about as much of the new stuff as we can! We've got Adventures, we've got Food, we've got Knights, we've got Brawl legendaries...there's a lot going on here. And all of it looks neat! So join the dorks as we discuss the cards, the flavor, and the art of a bunch of the Eldraine set! Card Image Gallery:  https://magic.wizards.com/en/article...

We're doing another edition of There's No Plane Like Home, where we take a look at one of the many planes of the Magic multiverse and try to figure out if we'd actually mind living there. This time we're focusing on the home of both Chandra Nalaar and the Inventors' Fair. So fire up the aether harvester, hop in your filigreed race car, and decorate some giants - we're going to Kaladesh! Come join...

Back in June, I got a mystery package in the mail from longtime listener Magnor Criol. Inside was an amazing thing that took an insane amount of time, effort, and dedication to create. We've decided to call it the Magnor Stack. It was a collection of cards, real and custom, that represented a new way for us dorks to play Magic whenever we get together. The custom cards were all in-jokes of some so...

It turns out Commander 2019 was too big for one podcast! So we're back this week with our look at the Naya Populate deck and the Rakdos Madness deck! And we're joined by Chase from Best of 3, who you might remember from our War of the Spark prerelease episode. She's really into eggs. Like...REALLY into them. Like damn. And I assure you we didn't actually kidnap her. She was totally on the show of...

  Commander 2019 is upon us! And since our Mike can't be with us this week, we grabbed another Mike to join us - L2 judge and cohost of the Best of 3 podcast, Mike Moore! It turns out that talking about Commander cards takes a while, so it turns out we're only doing the first two decks this week - the Sultai Morph deck and the Jeskai Flashback deck. We're going into detail on all the new cards in...

What's that? Another episode of Brian's custom MTG RPG already? Why yes actually! Before Neverending Preview Season(tm) kicks off yet again, we're seizing the opportunity to follow up on the semi-cliffhanger from two episodes ago! We're heading into the mountain to see what sort of trial Icolnir has (almost literally it turns out) cooked up for us! Treasure? Check! Brutal combat? Check! Party wipe...

Magic was at San Diego Comic-Con this year, and boy did they drop some doozies on us! On this episode the dorks are diving right into all the art and information revealed about Throne of Eldraine, the next Magic set. Be warned: there's a lot of random speculation and nonsense. And yes we even talked about poop, albeit briefly. After that we're diving into the booster changes outlined in Mark Rosew...

The dorks dive back into the Heirs of Trivester, Brian's custom-made Magic-based RPG game! Last time Karim, Alaric, and the Angel were bumbling around the forest fighting big ants and big cats, but now we're finally getting closer to tracking down the mysterious Icolnir. Apparently we're not supposed to trust her appearance but we are supposed to show her great respect. No problem, right? If you h...

The dorks begin this episode by discussing the MTG Arena State of the Beta announcement. There are elemental cats, a Battle Pass, and the Historic format. Oh, and the London Mulligan and Core Set 2020. Those are important too I guess. After that, the dorks turn their attentions to the full set of Core Set 2020. We're checking out the rest of the mythics and cycles that weren't finished last episod...

First, we have another adorable Sam Quiz! Then Mike & Brian do their brief recap of their time at MagicFest Washington DC. After that we're talking about a gift that we got from a longtime listener after well over a year of work! And then we get to the main topic, going over Core Set 2020 previews! These cards are pretty nuts for a Core Set, and we're very excited to dig our teeth into them! At th...

We begin this episode with brief discussions about losing power. Then we're off to review the three new versions of Chandra that were revealed recently. After that we realized we sort of forgot to mention the upcoming animated Netflix MTG series on this show!  The main topic of this episode, however, is a Mythic Conscription for Weatherlight! Since we just wrapped up a years-long storyline, we tho...

The dorks are back with a listener Mad Lib, even more Modern Horizons cards to talk about, and a whole slew of completely pointless truisms! There's also the full list of Horizons mechanics - but can Chewie read through it all in one breath? Or will he die trying? He better not, otherwise no one's getting this episode! Modern Horizons Mechanics -  https://magic.wizards.com/en/articles/archive/feat...

We're back with more Modern Horizons previews! I've been saying it for a couple weeks now, but this set really is Time Spiral all over again. There's a ridiculous amount of old mechanics coming back, and so many cards are not only good on their own, but are also references to many things throughout the history of Magic. It's so great! Modern Horizons Card Image Gallery -  https://magic.wizards.com...

Modern Horizons previews have begun! This set is like another version of Time Spiral, with old keywords and references to all kinds of old Magic things. So the dorks are going through as many of the previewed cards as we can! Also, Mike may or may not be getting mauled by a bear during the show. No one knows for sure. All hail Queen Ayula! Modern Horizons Card Image Gallery -  https://magic.wizard...

It's time for another Flavor Fight! This time the contestants are mustard, mayo, honey, and...wait, what? NO! Okay, now that THAT'S out of the way, let's actually do another Flavor Fight! As you might have been able to tell from the title and/or thumbnail, we're doing a Planeswalker Flavor Fight! But also because I'm pretty sick of hearing about the 37 planeswalkers that got cards in War of the Sp...

The War of the Spark is upon us! That means it's time for another Prerelease! Three of the dorks are at House of Cards in Winston-Salem, NC to go to battle! But this episode isn't just Chewie, Mike, and Brian talking about their pools! We have a variety of guests on this episode! Mike's cousin Joseph showed up for the Prerelease too! Mike & Brian both played against the lovely Chase ( @ManaCurves...

We've made it to 550! To celebrate, we apparently killed two of our hosts. Hopefully our reanimation spells will resolve before the end of the episode. It's the end of the story of War of the Spark! We're covering all the story-focused cards we can find, so hey, spoiler warning! We're going all the way to the conclusion and talking all about it! Get ready to feel some feels, because once that's al...

  The dorks are back with even more War of the Spark previews! We're starting off with all the cards in the Story Scenes, because the story is the whole point of this episode! Then we're jumping around to the planeswalkers we missed, the Gods (who were being previewed while we were recording), and a few other highlights. And don't worry about the lack of Mike at the beginning, he'll show up partwa...

War of the Spark previews are upon us! And we just happen to have FIVE cards to show off! We're doing something a little different with our previews this time, we hope you enjoy it! Yay free previews! But first Samantha joins us for a Sam Quiz! After that it's time to hit the War of the Spark mechanics and check out all the cards from the story scenes thus far! After finally finishing with all tha...

The dorks have a fun little episode this week, even though Dirk is missing. For...reasons. Also, we weren't able to live stream this episode because of some bizarre issues. Sorry about that. We begin with some news, some of which is real and some of which Brian may have found in questionable corners of the internet. Then it's time for another of Brian's Magic Mad Libs, which are always a hoot. Eve...