The Mana Pool

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...

On this episode the dorks are joined by another of the Kickstarter backers, Clayton Clemens! Clayton is a pretty cool guy (even though he's one of those Canadians) and doesn't afraid of anything. He's here to get us to talk about Cube! Waaaaaaaay back in our first year, Brian built a Cube and we played it and talked about it on an episode. That was episode 29, for those keeping track. But Cubing h...

We're joined this week by fellow podcaster and all-around awesome guy, Mr. Jason Roskam! He's one of the hosts of the Higher Standards podcast, which focuses solely on, oddly enough, the Standard format. Imagine that. But we're not here to talk about Standard! Mr. Roskam tells us all about how he plays Magic with his son! It involves keeping him interested in the game while still helping him to im...

The dorks are joined this week by our third Kickstarter backer, Kim Ho! Kim is really awesome even though he lives in Canada! And that's racist. Prepare yourself, that's one of the running jokes here! You've been warned! After explaining who he is and how he's doing, Kim directs us to a topic we did a while back on Episode 323 - What If It Cost 2 Less? that we didn't actually name. He has a list o...

On this episode the dorks have two main topics. First up, Mike and Brian went to SCG Modern States this weekend! Brian took Jeskai Ascendancy (or Ascension, apparently) and Mike took his Loam Assault (with a dash of Smallpox) to do battle. How'd they do? Well that's why you listen to the episode, of course. I mean, duh. After that it's time for the next entry in our semi-annual-ish series where we...

On this episode, the dorks are taking a look at Exodus, the last set in the Tempest block! We're putting it through the Mythic Conscription, picking out the rares that would have been mythics if that was a thing back then. After we're done with Exodus, we pull up the rares and mythics from Tempest Remastered to see how we did over our last three Conscriptions. Spoiler alert: not bad, not bad at al...

The guys are back for their monthly Hearthstone episode! We begin the episode by answering the frequent question about how the five of us became a long-running Blizzard gaming podcast. If you've ever wondered about our humble origins, this is the episode to listen to! Learn all about how Chewie, Brian, Mike, Dirk, and Squanto (Ecksell) got together! After that it's back to business as usual for a...

This episode begins with a discussion of the new Commander rules change that eliminates tucking and bouncing of Commanders. The dorks are split for and against this particular change, let us know how you feel about it! Next up is a Mythic Conscription for the next set in the Tempest block - Stronghold! This is a seriously strange set, as each of us had trouble actually finding ten mythics! But the...

This episode the dorks are joined by an old friend - Eric of Many Names! ( @EricMTGCast on Twitter) He used to hold the record for most guest appearances on the show (until Bill gradually stole it from him), and he's back this week to talk about Dragons of Tarkir! Rather than do the usual thing where we just pick cards we like seemingly at random, Brian had a neat idea. We're each going to create...

Of course we're gonna talk about all the news that came out of the Magic panel at PAX East! As usual, they dropped quite a few bombs on us, so we're gonna tell you all about it! If you'd like to see more about it, check out the latest TMP News so Chewie can tell you all about it with visual accompaniment! Since the last episode, almost HALF of Dragons of Tarkir has been revealed! Since there were...

Since neverending preview season is upon us yet again, we're taking a look at the first batch of new cards from Dragons of Tarkir. Previews just started the day before we recorded, so there aren't terribly many yet. Don't worry though, we'll make up for that on the next couple episodes. Because we were so short on previews, we had to fill the time with something. Last week they announced Tempest R...

This episode was recorded at Brian's house last weekend! And thank goodness it was, because we didn't record a new episode this week because Chewie got sick and died. How convenient! But yes, in this extra-long episode we play two games of four-player Commander! Nothing fancy this time, no Planechase, no Archenemy, no Tiny Leaders, no Assassin. Just good old EDH at its best! The first game was rea...

Look everyone, Bill joined us this week! After the Duel Decks and From the Vault announcements, we hit up another pre-mythic rarity set so we can pick out the rares we think would be Mythics if it had existed back then. After going over the many many name ideas we got, we decided to go with Mythic Conscription! Thanks a lot for all the suggestions! The set we're tackling this time is Scourge, the...

After some massive pre-show technical difficulties on Brian's part that ultimately resulted in him falling off the call for the duration of the episode, we got a nice fast start this week. One of our listeners (Turner!) gave us an idea for a new recurring segment! We're going back to old sets that existed before the Mythic rarity and picking out which rares would be Mythics now. We don't have a na...

Welcome to our second Kickstarter backer episode! This week we have on Greg, the MadStork, who has been listening to us for far, far too long. And we love him for it! He brings with him an episode idea that really appeals to us. Greg has us combining two things we love - Duel Decks and Commander! The discussion begins with a brief recap of what Duel Decks in Magic actually are. We then roam around...

This is our first episode featuring the Kickstarter backers who chose the "come on the show" reward tier! The inaugural guest is Bosco from Washington, who brings with him a nice wide-open topic. So wide-open in fact that we could easily do several episodes just on this sort of thing. DECKBUILDING! We're taking a look at the various methods that we all use to build casual decks. There are many man...

This week the dorks are going over the two big things that happened in the last few days.  First up is the Banned & Restricted List update. I know, I know, we're a casual podcast and this shouldn't really matter to us, but it does. Chewie doesn't even play tournament Magic and he has very strong opinions on the matter, probably because he holds the DCI to a higher standard than they hold themselve...

Fate Reforged has been revealed in its entirety. So as per usual, we spend this episode poking around the Card Image Gallery pointing out all the cool stuff from the rest of the set. Of course we have to figure out what we're going to play at the prerelease too while we're at it. Oddly enough, we're all leaning towards one clan. Can you guess which one? We also spend some time at the beginning ram...