The Mana Pool

We had lots of news to cover since we hadn't recorded in two weeks.  We took the holiday weeks off don't you know.  There's the new planeswalker, the new card frame, and some other less impressive stuff.  We'll give you our take on all of it, no matter how lame and/or insignificant. After that we're off to our wrap up of the Old vs. New series.  Since we covered all the guilds, we decided to take...

Hey everyone!  During the holidays, what better way to celebrate the season than by doing the last of the Old vs. New discussions!  And how appropriate that we did the "organized religion" guild for the holidays?  Actually, that's probably not terribly appropriate.  But either way, it's time for the Orzhov!  Sure the guild leader and the lieutenant are the same character for both discussions, but...

It's been a long time since the four of us actually recorded an episode, so we've got a lot of ground to cover on this one.  First off, we have to apologize for the sound quality of the last episode.  And we know we screwed up how Vorel of the Hull Clade works.  Our bad.  We're allowed one major screw up every couple years, right?  Then Mike tells us about some drafting he's been doing.  After tha...

Since we didn't want to skip another week, we looked around and dug up an old episode we had in the can.  Originally recorded back in August (probably), this live episode is...a little weird.  For some reason, Audacity decided to ignore the usual desktop mic and listen to the crappy built-in mic on the laptop.  So because of that...it sorta sounds like we recorded it in a bathroom.  Sorry about th...

You knew it was coming.  Deep down, you knew.  Once they announced the new Commander product, you even started asking for it.  As the decks were revealed, you even demanded it.  Well who are we to ignore the pleas of our beloved fans?  So here we go.  The four of us gathered at Brian's house along with John, The Fifth One.  You might recognize him from some of our Prerelease Field Recordings, he's...

It's all Simic, all the time in this episode!  Well that's a slight exaggeration.  First we had to shoot the breeze, discussing the True-Name Nemesis, Grand Prix DC's imminent encroachment by Chewie, and the state of MTGCast.  But THEN, then it was the whole Simic thing.  Yeah, we've got another Old vs. New for you.  It turns out that Simic is pretty deep, so we spent a long freakin' time on this...

Chewie enjoyed asking people Three Questions at GP Charlotte so much that he decided to truck up to Pittsburgh and do it again! As always, Chewie's asking Three Questions to anyone willing to answer them, whether they're a listener, judge, pro player, innocent bystander, or just someone that catches his eye.  The real purpose of this show, like most of the stuff Chewie does, is to entertain you, t...

Mike and Brian kick off the episode by telling us all about the SCG Classic they went to last weekend.  Brian played a green-red deck, while Mike took his Maze's End construction. After that, Chewie joined them for a couple games of EDH.  Then we spend a bit of time discussing the Commander 2013 card that was TEARING UP the top tables at the Legacy AND Vintage Champs.  How completely random. Then,...

Well, here it is.  We've been at it virtually nonstop for six years.  We started 300 (plus) episodes ago in November of 2007 and haven't looked back. And that's the reason for this episode!  We've actually never looked back, and that's ridiculous.  So this episode is all about the past.  It starts with a look back at the various firsts and notable things we've done, be it segments or popular episo...

We are joined this episode by Uriah Oxford, the progenitor of the CMDR Decks video series!  Why?  Because he's awesome!  And because we have the entirety of the Commander 2013 decks to talk about!  But first, there's a bit of other news to discuss.  Mike and Brian have to tell us about their latest foray into FNM, or Standard, or drafting, or whatever.  It was all of the above mixed together.  The...

As if you couldn't tell from the title, we're joined this episode by former Muse, former Gathering Magic writer, former Star City Games writer, current DailyMTG writer and longtime Mana Pool listener Bruce Richard!  Be sure you pronounce that all French-like, it turns out he's Canadian.  But don't hold that against him, he's still completely awesome! You can follow him on Twitter @manaburned We be...

It's time for another edition of Old vs. New on The Mana Pool!  Finishing up the guilds in Return to Ravnica, we're hitting the old Azorius guild this time around.  How do the various Isperias stack up against each other?  Well they don't, because they don't go in the same category!  Yeah, Chewie didn't know any better either.  This one actually gave us some of our closest matches ever, along with...

Sadly this episode we are one Dirk short of a full cast due to grad school holding him down and beating him.  But to replace him, we brought along two guest hosts! We have a half-Dirk veteran, our old buddy Bill Bloodworth ( @SqueeGoblnNabob ) joining us again!  And the other half of Dirk is our buddy from GP Charlotte and GP Pittsburgh, JT Kohnen ( @NerdPop140 )! You know and love him as CyberPun...

All the dorks are present and accounted for this episode, as we cover the entire Theros set!  As usual, we jump around kind of haphazardly to discuss any and all of the cards that catch our fancy. There's really nothing else to say, so now I'm just filling space on the website.  How are you doing?  Everything okay?  Did you remember to eat?  You should probably do that.  Also, have you called your...

We're joined this week by Tom Delia, formerly of the now-defunct MTG Radio podcast, current streaming guy on TwitchTV , and member of this year's winning Community Cup team !  After talking a bit with Tom, which is only fair because he's on the show and all, we jump right into the previews!  And goodness knows there are lots.  And lots.  And we didn't even get them all.  Seriously.  But anyway, en...

Preview season is alive and well here on The Mana Pool!  Since we're short one Mike, we decided to draft one of our oldest young listeners, Ben Ahrendt!  He's been around for almost as long as we have!  You can follow him on Twitter @Panahinuva . But there's really nothing else going on, so here's the link to the Card Image Gallery: http://www.wizards.com/magic/tcg/article.aspx?x=mtg/tcg/theros/ci...

Hey look, there's a small handful of Theros previews out already!  And then an Izzet Old vs. New.  Izzet Old vs. New? Yes, yes it is!  Look, these are the jokes, get used to them.  But we didn't do it that many times.  I don't think.  Anyway, we did those two things.  We also took a look at Mark Rosewater's State of Design column and the Theros teasers contained within.  That was pretty much it. ...

The decklists for Duel Decks: Heroes vs. Monsters have been revealed, and with them two of the mechanics from Theros along with a small handful of cards.  The dorks go over all of this new stuff and and decks themselves.  Spoiler alert: They look like fun. After that, we did another Old vs. New, this time focusing on the horrific antics of the Rakdos guild.  Two versions of Rakdos himself, a pair...

Hey look, another live episode!  The dorks gathered at Dirk's house to hang out, play some Magic, and try to remember what each of us actually look like.  Oddly enough we look just like our cartoons on the website, only slightly less cartoony.  Hey, I said slightly! We played a rousing game of Commander right off the bat, with some happenings that happened that were seriously awesome.  Okay, so I...

On this episode, the dorks take a nice long look at From the Vault: Twenty.  We're taking a long look at each card in it and explaining (to the best of our ability anyway) why it deserves to be there.  Of course, with an in-depth discussion of each card, this topic went on longer than we thought it would.  So after that we did some quickfire news, taking a look at the Hall of Fame, Worlds, and the...

So by now you've heard all about this from any number of other sources, but you still haven't heard it from us!  At the San Diego Comic Con and Pax Australia, Wizards decided to announce a lot of nonsense about the future of Magic.  So of course, we decided to give our two cents about all of that.  There's plenty of talk about some upcoming Helvault-style silliness for Theros, From the Vault: Twen...

Hey look, here's the episode you probably should have gotten last time.  But you didn't, you got it this time.  So there. Chewie, Mike, and Brian set out for Atomic Empire in Durham, North Carolina for the Magic 2014 Core Set Release.  While there, we met up with our old buddy AJ, everyone's favorite bowtie wearing L2 Cluze, and several other assorted listeners, opponents, judges, and what-have-yo...

This episode is going to sound a little silly.  You see, we recorded a bunch of stuff at the M14 Prerelease, but I wanted to do some more.  So we recorded a "quick" Old vs. New to append to the end and have a full episode.  Of course, we're pretty much incapable of doing anything quickly, so we ended up with an hour and a half of Golgari discussion.  You know how we do it. So, rather than release...

Hey look, it's the full Magic 2014 set!  That's what we've got this episode.  It's all M14 all the time!  And because it's tradition, we brought our old buddy Bill Bloodworth to talk spoilers.  Or the full set.  Or whatever.  He's @SqueeGoblnNabob on Twitter, and you should totally follow him.  But yeah, there's nothing else to say here.  We did the Card Image Gallery the whole episode.  I should...

On this episode, we finally overcome one of our greatest weaknesses as podcasters - the inability to have Myke Okuhara on the show!  The scourge of TheManaPool.com's comments joins us from Honolulu, where the dolphins are ferrying his internet back and forth to us with great speed.  And to celebrate (not really, but it sounded good) we've got a brand new Magic Mad Lib courtesy of Brian!  This one...