The Mana Pool

It's time to discuss that yearly occurrence - the rotation of old Standard into new Standard. The dorks are taking a look at the cards and decks that came from Magic 2015 and the Theros block and bidding them a fond farewell. Or in a few cases, laughing maniacally as they disappear. Whichever. But first, a bit of news about the upcoming Arena of the Planeswalkers expansion! Literally, just a bit....

It's time to do another Mythic Conscription! We're continuing on with Masques Block, so the next set is Nemesis. And yes, this set was our nemesis. There just...isn't much going on here. But we had a lot of fun discussing it as usual! But before that we're catching up on some of the news we've missed since our last non-live recording. The new Sealed Pool procedure for BFZ block, the Banned & Restr...

It's Prerelease time! Mike, Brian, and Chewie rolled out to Kit Kringle in Winston-Salem to play with Battle for Zendikar for the first time. It's a nice little shop, if somewhat unprepared for the massive turnout, and I highly recommend anyone in the area check it out. As for the Prerelease itself, it turned out to be pretty awesome. Mike was playing Grixis Colorless, Brian was in Mardu Allies/El...

The full set has been revealed, so on this episode we're talking about even more cards from Battle for Zendikar! Completely by happenstance, we focused a lot more on commons and uncommons this episode. Seriously, we didn't to that on purpose. This episode begins with a Sam Quiz and ends with a rant and nostalgia. In the middle, Brian keeps bringing it back to the allies, Chewie runs off on tangent...

PREVIEWS! We're all excited for the Scars of...no wait. The Return to...hang on. The Battle for Zendikar! That's the one. This episode is seriously just us looking at a bunch of the preview cards and going off on them. Starting with art that Chewie just CANNOT UNSEE and going every which way after that, this one is a good one. At the beginning of the show Brian was sick, Chewie was in a really fou...

It's time to do a segment that we do so incredibly infrequently that it doesn't even have a name! It begins with a simple topic that we each build a deck around. The other two times we did it, the topics were "lifegain" and "counters". This time, it was equally simple - "lands". The other times we've done this we each built vastly different decks from our simple one-word prompt, and this time is n...

It's that time again! Due to scheduling and technological problems we weren't able to record a normal episode this week, but thankfully we had a canned episode ready! A couple weekends ago the dorks gathered for some good old Magic-playing fun! Dirk is playing Damia, Sage of Stone. Mike is playing Dakkon Blackblade. Brian is playing Maelstrom Wanderer. And Chewie is debuting his new Marath, Will o...

We begin this episode with a first-impressions review of the Arena of the Planeswalkers miniatures board game! Three of us took the time to figure out how to play (sort of) and successfully completed a game! We're coming at it from the perspective of Magic players trying it out, since most of us have no experience with miniatures games. After that Brian's got another Magic Mad Lib, which is more h...

It's time for another Mythic Conscription here on The Mana Pool! We're going through Mercadian Masques and trying (accent on trying) to find the rares that might possibly have been mythics if there was such a thing back then. We had some trouble this time around. Masques block was the beginning of a period of powering down, since the last block was the stupidly overpowered Urza block. After that w...

The full list for From the Vault: Angels was revealed! Because so many of the included angels were touchstones of our Magic-playing careers, we decided to actually go deep on these! We're taking a look at each one and discussing why it's in the FTV, drooling over new art, and remembering our own experiences. And that's only half the episode! One of our awesome Kickstarter rewards was for a Story C...

After an unexpected hiatus last week, most of the dorks are back with a vengeance this week! Dirk is unforunately unable to join us, but we've got a replacement that is very much suited to the topic at hand. Chris Lansdell, former podcasting whore, is with us to talk coverage. Magic coverage has been a thing for a long time, and it's been a fairly regular thing for a pretty good amount of time. Bu...

The real purpose of this show, like most of the stuff I do, is to entertain you – the listener. Rather than asking the same old questions that everyone else does, I’m looking to give you a slightly more off-the-wall look into these Magic players and judges and what-have-you by catching them off guard and putting them on the spot. This episode is the last of four from Grand Prix Charlotte 2015! App...

This week the dorks are going back to everyone's favorite giant scaly fire-breathing mythical creatures - Dragons! We're heading over to Dirk's Creature Corner so he can tell us all the reasons that Dragons can't actually exist. Whether it's because they can fly even though they shouldn't be able to, because they don't make sense compared to the rest of the fossil record, or because they, you know...

This episode begins with a brief recap of the Magic Origins Prerelease that Mike and Chewie went to. Then we head over to the San Diego Comic-Con Magic panel, which was really just about story and flavor. Fun stuff. After that we go into Brian's topic idea, and boy is it a good one. Since Magic Origins seems to be so universally lauded, we figure it won't be too long until WotC decides to do Magic...

The dorks are what the French call "sans Brian" this episode, but luckily Bill is able to join us! Yay Bill! We begin with a bit of news, like the Arena of the Planeswalkers board game and the sudden appearance and new information about Magic Duels. Get that Hearthstone money! After that it's just a mess of Magic Origins previews! The full set is out, and we're just looking around at all the cool...

The real purpose of this show, like most of the stuff I do, is to entertain you – the listener. Rather than asking the same old questions that everyone else does, I’m looking to give you a slightly more off-the-wall look into these Magic players and judges and what-have-you by catching them off guard and putting them on the spot. This episode is the first of four, and covers the first handful of p...

PREVIEWS! Magic Origins is right around the corner, so we've got a lot of cards to hit! Since the new preview method makes hitting every card virtually impossible, we're just hitting up the mythics and then whatever else catches our eye. There are a lot of awesome cards in the new set, so we're pretty excited! There's also some discussion at the beginning about the upcoming rules changes. I think...

We're joined by another Kickstarter backer this week! Aaron comes on to talk about being That Guy. No no, not THAT That Guy. Not one of the bad ones. But the guy that's been playing forever and has lots of cards and lots of decks and actually has some money to spend on the game. Some casual players frown on That Guy, which gives That Guy some kind of stigma. Aaron wants to address that stigma and...

The real purpose of this show, like most of the stuff I do, is to entertain you – the listener. Rather than asking the same old questions that everyone else does, I’m looking to give you a slightly more off-the-wall look into these Magic players and judges and what-have-you by catching them off guard and putting them on the spot. This episode is the first of four, and covers the first handful of p...

The dorks are loose at Grand Prix Charlotte! Chewie is there with his fancy-schmancy media badge asking people Three Questions and also checking in with the other dorks between rounds. Brian is playing his Jeskai Ascendancy combo deck! Mike is playing his Loam Assault deck! The other guys from our room (#Team230) are also playing in the main event. JT, who you know from previous episodes, is playi...

Grand Prix Charlotte happened last weekend, so of course I was there asking Three Questions!   The real purpose of this show, like most of the stuff I do, is to entertain you – the listener. Rather than asking the same old questions that everyone else does, I’m looking to give you a slightly more off-the-wall look into these Magic players and judges and what-have-you by catching them off guard and...

The dorks are taking a look at everyone's favorite big scary red creatures, Dragons! With a long and storied history dating back to the very beginning of MTG, Dragons are terribly popular. A constant source of wonder and amazement nowadays, you might be surprised to know that dragons weren't always so omnipresent in the early days, and it's really only recently that they've become super ridiculous...

After taking an unintentional week off, we're back with another of our Kickstarter backers! This week Elliot Hunter ( @erjhunter ) joins us, and he's awesome! We know this is a really long episode, just think of it as a bonus since you didn't get a new episode last week. First off there is a tiny bit of news involving the planeswalkers in Magic Origins! The ten planes that comprise their original...

After several straight weeks of guest hosts, the dorks have decided to break the streak and go it alone. And what better way to kick it off than with another of our trademark Magic Mad Libs! Brian whipped up a good one this week, leaving us all laughing our various and sundry bits off. After that we venture into the territory of nostalgia and do a Mythic Conscription for Onslaught! This was the fi...

The dorks are joined by another Kickstarter backer this week, Stark Maximum! Stark has a thing for the flavor of the game, so he has two very Vorthosy topics for us to discuss! First, he wants to discuss everyone's favorite italicized words, flavor text! He and the dorks talk about some of their favorite flavor texts, touch on a few different kinds (flavors?) of flavor text, and discuss some of th...