The Mana Pool

  We begin this episode with a listener-supplied Magic Mad Lib, sent in by lvl99luck. We learn all about enchantment speed and refuse to name Balance. This Mad Lib is nothing to Murder at! Then it's time to get down to business. We're following up the last episode and diving right into a Mythic Conscription for Guildpact. It turns out that the enchantment speed we learned about in the Mad Lib is a...

This episode is pretty simple. After the always-adorable Sam Quiz, we're doing a Mythic Conscription of Ravnica: City of Guilds! Depending on how you look at it, this one is either really easy or really hard, because the power level seems to be concentrated in just a few cards. But don't worry, there's plenty of discussion to be had! There are also some discussions about streaming, cruises, and ou...

With the weird out-of-sequence Felidar Guardian ban that just went down, we thought it would be a good time to look at the history of the Banned & Restricted Lists in Magic. Joining us for this adventure is none other than SCG writer, brewer, and longtime player Chris Lansdell! We're starting at the very beginning, waaaay back in 1994, with the first B&R update that predated even the existence of...

The dorks are live from the Amonkhet prerelease! Who did well? Who went undefeated? Who's the slow player? Who opened a shiny new Invocation? Who spat processed chicken parts at the person sitting next to them? Just how sexy is Sexy Jarod? All these answers (except the last one) and more are waiting in this very episode, recorded live from Lucky's Card Shop in Greensboro, NC!    Support us on Patr...

There are a few bits of quick news that popped up over the last few days, but none of that matters. What matters is the full Amonkhet set is up! Sadly, you don't get to hear us discuss the whole thing, because some manner of technical difficulty resulted in the loss of the last...hour? Or so? Sorry about that, I have no idea what happened or why. It sucks. Let the cavalcade of links begin! Amonkhe...

We have now seen all the Gods of Amonkhet, and they're pretty neat. We've also got a few stand out cards that will be powerful in various formats, like Harsh Mentor. We've got a few completely bizarre cards that will hopefully snatch a few games for people. We've also got a new and possibly improved Krosan Tusker, a new Desert, a fixed Unstable Mutation, and Fling. What is going on here? Also, som...

The Age of Amonkhet is upon us! The new Masterpieces are called Invocations and they have the entire internet in an uproar. We'll touch on all the problems people have had and give our opinions. Then we'll cover all the mechanics and a handful of cards that are just sick, including a pair of awesome planeswalkers. The new set looks like fun!   Amonkhet Invocations -  http://magic.wizards.com/en/ar...

  A report of all the shenanigans the four of us got up to at GP Orlando! So sorry if we missed any of you while we were there! I'm exhausted so that's all I'm writing. GP Orlando Coverage - http://magic.wizards.com/en/events/coverage/gporl17   Support us on Patreon! – https://www.patreon.com/themanapool Intro & Outro Music – Diamond by Swift – https://myspace.com/swiftband This episode's post: ht...

This episode is a truly strange one. Brian's not here, he got sick and died since I saw him the previous night. We have a sponsor this week, Easy Roller Dice Co. We grabbed Cap from Lair of Lore to join us. We've got a truly epic listener-submitted Mad Lib. And our Flavor Fight has a dance number in it. Yup, it's definitely a weird one. For those that don't know, the original incarnation of this s...

Woo! Cosmic Larva in 2020! It's got to be better than the Desecration Elemental, right? Guys? In this episode we're finishing off our look at Modern Masters 2017! The whole set looks like a lot of fun to draft. There are a few more rarity shifts to discuss, looking at how the overall strategies of each allied color pair overlap with each other, and more jaw-dropping and reminiscing. Ah yes, good s...

No really. Have you seen the cards in Modern Masters 2017? It's completely bonkers. They've pulled out all the stops with this one, presumably to make up for the last two Masters sets. We're just diving right in and looking at all the stuff that has been revealed thus far, with plenty of talk about rarity shifts up and down. It's a fun one for remembering the amazing cards that defined their respe...

Not sure why we're talking about television shows at the beginning. We're just weird. We begin the actual show by thinking about some things that may or may not (and also almost certainly won't) be in Modern Masters 2017. It turns out Dirk might be a terrible person. My money was on me or Mike. Oh well. After that it's off to a Mythic Conscription for Darksteel! Could it be that none of the colore...

This episode begins with an extremely quick Sam Quiz followed by another user-submitted Magic Mad Lib from lvl99luck. Little did he know that it would play into our episode's theme! We didn't know that either! It's an amazing coincidence! Buy lottery tickets now! After the awesome Mad Lib we're doing a neat twist on the Story Circle! This time we're randomly picking two legends with Partner and bu...

It's time for a new episode of The Mana Pool! We've got a brand new Magic Mad Lib, except this one was written by Chewie for the first time ever! Be afraid, it's based on some of his recent experiences. After that we're doing a Mythic Conscription of the first modern artifact-centric set, Mirrodin! This set is a little weird. So many of the rares are super lame and could never be Mythic...and then...

It is time! Karim, Alaric, and The Angel are back to track down the mysteries of Trivester! Not because we want to, but because we can't freakin' leave the plane and we'd really rather be somewhere else. Plus apparently the dice have decided that we're going to have a nice easy time of it, and that is bothering Brian, our Game Master. Apparently he wanted us to suffer a bit more. In case you're co...

It's Aether Revolt prerelease time! Since we all went to different prereleases, there were no field recordings this time. But don't worry, we did grab the one and only Chris Lansdell to join us, since he did 3x as many prereleases as the rest of the cast put together. Yeah, do that math and try not to let your jaw drop too far. Anyway, find out how everyone did and what we think of the set in gene...

We've got to talk about the big news first, of course. There were cards banned in Standard for the first time since 2011. This is big. Like really big. But after that we're back to more Aether Revolt! Yay new cards! And poor, poor Howard. I feel for that guy. But he does it to himself, so maybe I shouldn't. But I can't help it.   Banned & Restricted List Update - http://magic.wizards.com/en/articl...

We're back for a new year and a new set! Of course Aether Revolt previews are going on, so that's what we're focusing on this episode! After a heartfelt talk from Chewie about his recent charity stream and depression and stuff that is. We've got Aether Revolt mechanics, the Planeswalker Deck cards, plenty of new cards, and even some Star Wars Rebels to talk about this episode! All the links are do...

For the final episode of 2016 we've decided to take it easy. We're starting off with a listener-supplied Magic Mad Lib, sent in by Lvl99Luck. It's pretty great. From there it's on to a few more Aether Revolt previews. Then we're going over some feedback on last week's episode, both from Mike and the listeners! It turns out we came up with some entertaining and controversial ideas last week and sev...

  First we have to talk about Ajani's upcoming induction into the Gatewatch, since it was revealed today and all. We're not sure how close we got when we made up an Oath for Ajani, feel free to let us know! After that we're looking forward to Aether Revolt! And we're speculating WILDLY! We're trying to figure out what exactly we'd like to see in the new set. We're starting with the mechanics of Ka...

We have Aether Revolt previews! But wait, Aether Revolt previews haven't actually...started. And yet we have this stack of cards on the official site to talk about? I'm very confused. Clearly we did this to ourselves. After we're done with those we're taking a look at various forms of vehicular transportation in Magic's history and sort of trying to turn them into modern Vehicle cards. There are p...

We spent the last two episodes telling you all about these decks, it's high time that we actually play them! The dorks gathered at Brian's house just before the American Thanksgiving holiday to fool around, eat chili, and play some Magic! And since Mike picked up all the new Commander decks we just had to record a game with them, you know? Otherwise we'd have broken the streak, and we just can't h...

After an accidental week off during our ninth anniversary (whoops) we're back to finish off what we started in the last episode! We're taking a look at the rest of the new cards in Commander 2016 and poking around in the reprints to see what's good there. In the next episode we're actually going to play a live game with four of these new decks, so be sure to come back then!   Commander 2016 Card I...

The dorks are tackling the Commander 2016 set! Now that the whole thing is revealed we have plenty of stuff to go over - so much so that we didn't even finish this time. We are going into great detail about all the new legendary creatures since they are the focus of the Commander format in general, as well as a handful of the new cards! If nothing better comes along then next week we'll look at th...

It's Halloween time! So we're celebrating by checking out some of the favorite creature types of the horror genre for the rest of the month. We've already covered the two most obvious types, Zombies and Vampires. Because the other horror creature types in Magic are either boring or extremely limited, we decided to lump all the rest together in one episode, and it's awesome! I do have to apologize...