The Mana Pool

Hey it's the first episode of 2026! And the dorks are back in force, with a big look at the different types of aliens and how they're depicted in media. We're talking aliens that are friendly, absolutely not friendly, just sort of passing through, and not even sentient, and how they've been shown in movies, shows, games, comics, and whatever else comes up. And at the end we'll dip into some real s...

For the last episode of 2025, the dorks (except Dirk) spend an entire episode inadvertently discussing a lot of nostalgic stuff. It kicks off with GI Joe movies and Ghostbusters lore (with some Dave Coulier thrown in, for some reason?). Then we move into video games for the majority of the show, pitching ideas for applying a randomizer to old games, point & click adventure game Moon Logic, smashin...

Welcome to Supply Lines, a running feature here on TMP where the dorks will be looking at resource management in games. What games? All games, because Chewie is convinced that they're all just different styles of resource management dressed up in genre pants. This is the third Supply Lines episode, and the second about the most popular tabletop RPG of all time, Dungeons & Dragons. On the first one...

The dorks are discussing the different types of vehicular transporation you can find in video games. From the cutscene/background only vehicles to the ones that essentially are the player, we're covering as many as we can think of, with plenty of suggestions from the TMP Discord (see, that's why you should totally join!) to round us out. Be sure to let us know what your favorite vehicle is!   Come...

The dorks continue checking out the Avatar set! And it's just after Chewie's 45th birthday! What is going on here? Where is the Avatar? What happened to my cabbages? Gallery: https://magic.wizards.com/en/products/avatar-the-last-airbender/card-image-gallery   Come join us in the future! The show is live on Thursdays around 8pm(ish) Eastern time on Twitch. Become a Lifeguard on Patreon! –  patreon....

Yup, the dorks are looking at the Avatar: The Last Airbender set. And it's our 18 year anniversary! Holy crap! Mechanics: https://magic.wizards.com/en/news/feature/avatar-the-last-airbender-mechanics Gallery: https://magic.wizards.com/en/products/avatar-the-last-airbender/card-image-gallery   Come join us in the future! The show is live on Thursdays around 8pm(ish) Eastern time on Twitch. Become a...

The dorks (except Mike) get together to discuss what we've been playing lately along with a bit of personal nonsense. You know how it is, we're dorks and we're just chatting! Come join us in the future! The show is live on Thursdays around 8pm(ish) Eastern time on Twitch. Become a Lifeguard on Patreon! –  patreon.com/themanapool Podcast RSS Feed:  themanapool.libsyn.com/rss YouTube:  youtube.com/T...

Since it's Halloween time the dorks thought they'd get into the spirit of things by telling you all about some spooky stories. These come from folklore, our childhood, the bookstore, and the internet, and all of them spooked us, or unsettled us, or at the very least just stuck with us, and we want to share them with you. We also got several suggestions from the TMP Discord, which you should totall...

Welcome to Supply Lines, a running feature here on TMP where the dorks will be looking at resource management in games. What games? All games, because Chewie is convinced that they're all just different styles of resource management dressed up in genre pants. This is the second Supply Lines episode, after starting with Magic: The Gathering (for obvious reasons) in episode 723. For this one we deci...

On this fictional episode of The Mana Pool, the dorks are taking a look at books that don't actually exist. Whether they're macguffins that drive the story, plot points that provide exposition or power to the protagonists (or antagonists), or a self-referential meta thing that makes your head hurt, fictional books have been important in fiction across all kinds of genres and mediums, and we're goi...

The dorks dive back into the Spider-Man (and the Through the Omenpaths digital nonsense version) Magic set to pick out a mess of cards to talk about. As usual with Universes Beyond stuff, we're talking about what the cards do and what they represent from the source material. Radioactive spider blood! Become a Lifeguard on Patreon! – patreon.com/themanapool Podcast RSS Feed:  themanapool.libsyn.com...

The dorks swing over to both the Spider-Man set and the Arena non-Spidey version at the same time to discuss what the new set looks like. Spider-Man mechanics article - https://magic.wizards.com/en/news/feature/spider-man-mechanics Become a Lifeguard on Patreon! –  patreon.com/themanapool Podcast RSS Feed:  themanapool.libsyn.com/rss YouTube:  youtube.com/TheManaPool The Deep End:  youtube.com/@Th...

The dorks called an audible this week, so here's the Dorks Just Chatting that resulted. We're all over the place this week, talking about Weird Al, how AI art isn't art and how AI just sucks in general, Brian's long-forgotten first RPG waaaay back on the NES, how Chewie has been playing two classic game compilations, a few weird combat encounters in games new and old, the release of Silksong after...

The dorks take on the existence of creatures that science doesn't support, known as cryptids. We're picking out some of them to talk about in a bit more depth, explaining what they are and why they probably don't exist. If there are any more weird stuff topics you want us to talk about be sure to let us know! Become a Lifeguard on Patreon! –  patreon.com/themanapool Podcast RSS Feed:  themanapool....

The dorks head back into the Edge of Eternities gallery, poking around at cards in the set that are neat and tripping into tangents along the way. After a while we pause our gallery perusal and start discussing some of the potential ramifications of EoE and its setting and mechanics. Will we be coming back to the Edge in the future? Will spaceships (or other things to Station) become as ubiquitous...

The dorks return to take their first (and possibly only) look at Edge of Eternities! Because of real life we haven't actually seen terribly much of the set, so a lot of this will be our first reactions to some of the more spicy cards that Twitch chat suggested. At the end, Mike & Chewie sorta forgot they hadn't ended the episode and moved to the Odds & Ends, so you get a good amount of Baldur's Ga...

With Brian still on a boat, the remaining dorks return to just talk about whatever comes to mind! We touch on the recent celebrity deaths before heading into video games we've been playing lately. We spend a fair amount of time on Baldur's Gate 3 since two of us have been playing it (and it's really freakin' good). We complain about Windows 11 hardware requirements too, because that's capitalist n...

The dorks are looking back at their years of playing video games and choosing some of their favorite weapons to share! Sometimes it's for the wow factor, sometimes it taught a valuable lesson, sometimes it's just iconic, and sometimes it's so silly that it is permanently memorable. What are some of your favorite weapons in games, and why? Come join us in the future! The show is live on Thursdays a...

The dorks couldn't settle on a topic for this week, so we turned to our Discord community of Pooligans for some ideas! We're answering three excellent questions on this episode, ranging from relatively simple to "gaining a deeper understanding of how the dorks' minds work" so we hope you enjoy! Thanks to chfuji and Violet Moon for the questions! If you have any questions or topics you'd like the d...

Most of the dorks are back! This week we're talking about world events that happen every four years...for some reason? Then Chewie talks about taking two teenagers, one of whom had not ridden a roller coaster, to Carowinds to ride roller coasters! After all of that of course we have to talk about the Final Fantasy Prerelease because ALL OF US WENT! Dirk & Mike talk about their decks, while Chewie...

The dorks return to finish up with the Final Fantasy Universes Beyond set! Along with the usual tangents and distractions, of course. It is still us after all. Card Image Gallery: https://magic.wizards.com/en/products/final-fantasy/card-image-gallery Come join us in the future! The show is live on Thursdays around 8pm(ish) Eastern time on Twitch Become a Lifeguard on Patreon! –  www.patreon.com/th...

The dorks are back, bouncing around the Card Image Gallery for the Final Fantasy Universes Beyond set! As usual for UB, we're primarily checking out how well these cards reflect their source material. That's it really, you know the drill. There's probably one more episode of this coming, so be sure to let us know or come hang out live to let us know cards you want us to be sure we cover! Card Imag...

Now that the full previews have begun, the dorks dive back into card from the upcoming Universes Beyond Final Fantasy set! We're hitting the mechanics as usual, then poking around to check out the main characters of some of the games. As has become our thing with these UB sets, we're going to be taking a look at how the card mechanics reflect the source material they're based on. So strap in, grab...

Originally we were going to make this episode about everything Star Wars other than the movies, but it turns out we spent WAY too much time on the video games. There are SO MANY video games. And we only covered a fraction of them! We'll dive into 2D platformers, 1st and 3rd person action, racing, grand strategy, real time strategy, Virtual reality, flight simulator, and probably more that I'm forg...

Welcome to Supply Lines, a new running feature here on TMP where the dorks will be looking at resource management in games. What games? All games, because they all have a variety of resources that the player needs to manage to be able to play! To kick it all off, we're starting with the game that we and our audience probably have the most experience with - Magic: the Gathering. We'll sprinkle in s...