The Mana Pool

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...

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're following up last week's undead extravaganza with a more different undead extravaganza - Vampires! Because there were so few vampires in Magic's early days, we'll be focusing a little more on the individual cards. At least until Vampires underwent a mas...

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're starting off with the obvious choice, the undead superstar of pop culture, the zombie! We're going to take a stroll through Magic's history, checking out the different types, flavors, genres, and styles of zombies as we go. We're also looking at the zom...

After taking a week off for the Prerelease episode, we had to come back with something big and awesome. And Brian came up with the perfect idea! We've done episodes like this before, making Magic cards out of our favorite video games, TV shows, movies, and books (links below). So rather than going for a different kind of media, we're going to tackle historical figures! Each dork did some homework,...

The dorks have ventured out into the world to record this episode! We attended the Kaladesh Prerelease at House of Cards in Winston-Salem NC and brought the trusty digital recorder with us! You'll get our reactions to the mechanics and cards immediately after we have them, and you'll get to hear all about how we did at the event! Spoiler alert: it was awesome! Apologies as usual for the way Brian...

The full Kaladesh set has been revealed! That means we're poking around at all the neat stuff that we hadn't gotten to in the last two episodes! That means lots of commons and uncommons and some of the less-impressive rares get touched on. You know, all the stuff that makes the set actually work. We're hitting up more cars, talking about things driving cars, and celebrating those amazing Kaladeshi...

It's time for more Kaladesh! They revealed the existence of the new Masterpiece Series, then they immediately showed off all the Masterpieces for this set, the Kaladesh Inventions. We're covering those first, then we're heading into the Card Image Gallery to check out even more of the crazy fun stuff in this set! There's a LOT of good removal here. Like a lot. The Kaladesh Inventions: http://magic...

After a week off we're back and tackling all the new stuff that has cropped up since we last recorded. First there was Announcement Day, which covered all the ways WotC is going to try to suck out your money in the next several months. PAX West also happened, which means a ridiculous amount of information about the new block was vomited out all over us. That's cool though, the new set actually loo...

More Conspiracy! We're poking around the full set, looking at all the cool stuff that wasn't out last week! This includes plenty of cards that do stuff during the draft, the Council's Dilemma cards, and the super-ridiculous money reprints. Oh, and the big dumb awesome reprints. And basically all the other stuff. There are a lot of really interesting things going on in this set, so we hope you all...

The latest version of Conspiracy brings with it a fascinating new meta-game. Not metagame like "what should I put in my sideboard?" but a new layer of game within the game. Much like the show on HBO, it's a Game of Delicious Potato. Who wants to be the Monarch? EVERYONE! In case you can't tell, we're doing Conspiracy: Take the Crown previews. There are some doozies. Conspiracy: Take the Crown mech...

It's that time again! We're heading back into Brian's Magic RPG to figure out what's happening with the plane of Trivester, which we're all conveniently trapped on. Join Alaric, Karim, and The Angel as we explore the city we discovered at the end of Episode 423 . Maybe I'll finally be able to get a sword! Be sure to let us know what you think! Remember, this is only our second time in Brian's worl...

After being unable to record last week because Skype hates us, we're back! Skype still hates us, but we outsmarted its hate. If this episode sounds funny, it's because Chewie recorded it using his game capture software instead of something that hooks into Skype directly. We begin this episode with a guest! Joe Hout, a local player and first-time game designer, is an awesome guy. And he's doing a K...

Hey look, a prerelease happened. Ordinarily that would mean a live episode recorded at said prerelease, but we didn't do this that time. Instead we're doing it old-school style and talking about it on the next episode! And since Dirk didn't hit a prerelease and we didn't want to bore him, we grabbed our old buddy Bill to take his place this week! You know Bill. He's also known as Squee over on Mon...

A few weeks ago the dorks all gathered at Brian's house to play some Magic! And since we weren't able to record this week for various reasons, you get to hear it now. Yay! On this episode we began with a game of Commander Planechase. It went for just about an hour and was a fun and (relatively) fast game! After that, we decided to just say screw it and do another one. But this time Brian had the i...

It's that time again! I went to a Grand Prix, so now you get more Three Questions! This is the third of four shows from GP Charlotte 2016. When I find myself at a big Magic tournament, I take my trusty digital recorder and ask lots of people three questions that are a bit silly, because I'm not going to ask serious hard-hitting stuff to players between rounds, to judges during their shift, and to...

These no-job-having zombies are a drain on the fragile (and tentacled) Innistradian economy! Once we overthrow this giant monster cosmic horror thing, they either need to become productive members of society or they need to go right back where they came from, whether that be a hole in the ground, the bottom of the sea, or all the way back to Hell itself! Make Innistrad great again! Oh yeah, we're...

It's preview time! We're running through the Eldritch Moon cards that have been revealed thus far. Emrakul or not, the set looks pretty cool thus far. We've got good and useful new mechanics, expected returning mechanics, new takes on double-faced cards, tentacles, gentacles, not-quite-werewolves, and one amazing horse. Oh, and Meld. You can turn two normal-sized creature cards into one hugely awe...

On this episode we're spending the entire time discussing the big Emrakul reveal for Eldritch Moon. We go into detail about our reactions so everyone understands exactly what we're disappointed about and why. We really like the three cards they revealed though! We touched on a few other things, and you can find links to those things below! Emrakul's reveal -  http://magic.wizards.com/en/articles/a...