The Mana Pool

It's been a LONG time, but we're back with Brian's custom-made Magic-based RPG system! Karim, Alaric, and the Angel are still stuck on the mysterious plane of Trivester with no idea what's going on. Since it has been SO LONG, Brian gives a quick recap of what's happened thus far and then we dive right in! Did you ever interrupt two Giant Warthogs during rutting season? Or set fire to an angry Prim...

Since Commander 2018 comes out this weekend, we've decided to do a couple Story Circles this episode! But since we're streaming the shows now, we've decided to give Twitch Chat some input. They get one entry per round AND they picked from three possibilities to decide who our second Commander would be! See? You should totally come hang out and watch the show live! Also, Dirk is a monster. Come joi...

This episode we're taking a look at ALL the rest of the cards in Commander 2018 that we missed last episode! This leads to discussions about the HR manager in charge of hiring Humiliators, the Bane of enchanters, how the Ravenous Slime uses its skulls, and of course the titular arterial spritz of the Bloodtracker. We may or may not have been extra silly this episode. Please, give us feedback! Let...

  This is the first of our new live episodes! This one is ALL Commander 2018, because there's a lot of it. In fact, we didn't even finish it all, so we'll probably come back to it next week. We're covering all the new planeswalkers, all the new Commanders we could find, and a handful of the most entertaining/powerful/bizarre new cards in the set! Oh, and the Commander Storm cycle, because Twitch c...

This episode begins with a little bit (like, a seriously tiny bit) of Commander 2018 news from the announcement that came from a stream on the day we recorded. We get deck names, colors, and a few pieces of art. But hey, we go over all that for you! Then it's time for a glorious Battlebond Story Circle! Somehow we just never did one with any of the neat partner pairs, so it's time to fix that! The...

With Core Set 2019 marking the return of the Core Set the dorks decided to take a look back at all its previous iterations. Starting with Alpha and moving through all the Nth Editions that happened every other year with their white-bordered insanity, through the Magic 201X that introduced new cards every year, we're hitting them all! All the trends (the removal of trample?), all the big news (RULE...

The dorks are back for more Core Set 2019! In fact, it's ALL of Core Set 2019, since there was apparently only one week of previews. We're jumping around the set, talking about all the awesome flavor, sweet art, powerful cards, and useful answers that it's bringing us!  Some of these cards really do rev Brian up. Seriously. Also, bear with Mike, we're still working on teaching him how to read. And...

After not recording for a staggering 2 weeks in a row, the dorks are back! We've got a very cheeky Sam Quiz to kick off the whole thing, because what's a better way to get back into the groove? After that, we're all-in on Core Set 2019 previews! After 3 years without a Core Set, Magic has decided that it's a necessity. So they've changed the way they build these sets, with beginner-friendly cards...

This episode was recorded a few weeks ago, but it's going up now since we're not recording this week! But here's the hitch - it's not a live episode! Man, the title is right - time travel is weird. On this episode we're going all the way back to the beginning. Not the VERY beginning, just after that. We're doing a pair of Mythic Conscriptions for Magic's first two expansions - Arabian Nights and A...

What's that? A Sam Quiz for a card none of us expected? And a listener-submitted Mad Lib? AND even more discussion of the crazy stuff going on in Battlebond? All in the same episode? That's awesome! Where do I sign up? And get that look of Frog Tongue off your face! Battlebond Card Image Gallery:  https://magic.wizards.com/en/articles/archive/card-image-gallery/battlebond-2018-05-25 The new TMP su...

The dorks are here to discuss Announcement Day and our reactions to all the news that came out of it. Warning: some of these reactions might surprise you. They sure surprised me! After that it's time to jump onto Battlebond previews! There's a lot of really neat stuff going on here. The mechanics are neat, the new cards are awesome, and the reprints are absolutely bonkers. Plus we get to explore a...

The dorks gathered at Dirk's house to try out Brawl! Despite half of us not knowing how turn order actually works, we actually managed to play with the four Brawl decks Brian built for us! Our Brawl Commanders are Aryel, Muldrotha, Firesong & Sunspeaker, and Radha! Have you given Brawl a shot yet? Let us know what you think about it! Support us on Patreon! –  https://www.patreon.com/themanapool In...

Graveyards in Magic are an interesting thing. In so many other games it's just a discard pile, but MTG uses the graveyard for a variety of functions. Mike (Professor Beard) is going to walk us through the history of the graveyard from its origins in Alpha, set by set, until the current day. He'll point out mechanics (both keyworded and not) and new design space and ways to interact with the gravey...

The dorks are back from our long recording hiatus! To celebrate the release of Dominaria, we're diving into not one but TWO Story Circles! There are a lot of legends, so we've narrowed it down to a small handful and randomly selected two for deckbuilding purposes! Also I finally remembered to put the Sam Quiz recorded weeks ago into the episode. Yay! Support us on Patreon! –  https://www.patreon.c...

Magic is finally going home! The Dominaria prerelease is here, which means Chewie breaks out his trusty digital recorder! This year he did something a little different though. On Saturday he headed out to House of Cards in Winston-Salem, NC to hang out with Mike (not that one), Carter, and Andy to talk about Dominaria. There are discussions about broken cards they'll never print, Brawl, Prison dec...

To celebrate The Mana Pool's 500th episode our old buddy Jungle Rat Rob of The Retro League podcast put together another of his famous audio montages with the help of his girlfriend Cassandra! He's done this a few times before (links down below), but it has been a LONG time! There are bits from the other hundred episode milestones along with the usual assortment of nonsense from random places and...

A few weeks ago we recorded a live episode at Dirk's house! We were playing the Explorers of Ixalan multiplayer experience using the preconstructed decks that come with it. Dinosaurs, Pirates, Merfolk, and Vampires slam headfirst into each other to determine who will win the golden city of Orazca! Seriously though, this was a lot of fun. The rules are set up to keep things from getting out of cont...

Dominaria is absolutely insane. The set is good on SO. MANY. LEVELS. The cards are good and interesting. The flavor is delicious. The nostalgia levels are through the roof, but not to the exclusion of fun and ease of understanding (looking at you, Time Spiral). And there's even another layer below that, for the hardcore and old-school MTG fans. The full set was conveniently revealed the day we rec...

This is it! The Mana Pool has finally gotten our very own never-before-seen preview card! It seems fitting since we just hit 500 episodes AND we're going back home to Dominaria! Not only are we talking about our sweet card, but we're also covering a lot of the other completely awesome cards that have been revealed! The discussions to be had are a combination of power, flavor, value, and sheer awes...

This one should be a lot of fun! We've got Eric of Many Names with us for the first time in far too long! He's pretty awesome, which is why he's here of course. Brian's got a really long mad lib for us, but he assures us it will be totally worth it. Since it's extra long we'll be giving him card names throughout the episode while we talk about even more sweet Dominaria cards! More sagas, sweet fla...

There's SO MUCH STUFF! We've inundated with loads of Dominaria! The official explanations of the rules changes, mechanics, sick promos, and the shiny new Dominarian Crown Molding. Also we've got Jace's Signature Spellbook, a new format straight from Wizards, and a few "voice of reason" moments from the dorks. There's not much else to say, so let's dive right in! Enjoy the giant collection of links...

As we mentioned briefly at the beginning of 500, the release notes for Dominaria were accidentally released early. Bill (you know, that guy on Monday Night Magic) joins us to talk about it. Don't worry, we're spoiler-free here! The dorks go over the removal of the Planeswalker Redirection Rule, the upcoming templating changes, and the sweet first card reveal, Phyrexian Scriptures. From there, Bria...

Note: We livestreamed the entire episode complete with dork face cams, so if you want to watch that then check out the YouTube link down below. This is it! Episode 500! We're celebrating with a full-on live stream game show. Due to legal reasons, we're calling it Jeopanaria! Our game show host is none other than Magic Judge and robotics guy Jake Janssens (@ ZueluGaming ), who just happened to have...

This episode is all about Masters 25! We're looking at all the cards that had been revealed by Thursday night, and there's SO MUCH AWESOME in it! Seriously, the episode is named this way because we said it so many times! There's even a Stangg Twin token! Come on man, this is just too good! Masters 25 Card Image Gallery:  https://magic.wizards.com/en/articles/archive/card-image-gallery/masters-25 S...

Magic is venturing out into video games again! With Arena, a MOBA, and an MMO all in the works, we started wondering what other flavors of video games Magic would fit into. It turns out MTG fits into almost anything, from city building to fighting to 4X grand strategy to kart racing, with plenty of others besides. This is a fun one you guys! Because we're talking about many different video game ge...