The Mana Pool

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,...

Hey look, we actually did the follow-up to last week's episode!  Because this was a topic suggested by our friend JT ( @NerdPop140 ), we brought him on this week to help us tell you all about it.  But first, we have news!  Anyone under 18 planning to attend Grand Prix Vienna needs to have written parental permission, so click the link below for all that information.  WotC also released the full de...

On this episode, the dorks cover a few more bits of news. Last week we missed that some of the Conspiracy cards are going to not be legal in Vintage and Legacy, which sparks some discussion about why that could be.  Hasbro is loving the Magic, because it's making them lots of money.  Not only that, but they're gonna be making some Pop! vinyl figures and actual action figures of your favorite plane...

Warning: Chewie is sick.  So he sounds a little different than usual, and he's muted a lot.  The dorks bring lots of news this week!  Since the last episode was a live one, we've got two weeks' worth of stuff to talk about! They revealed an Event Deck, announced a new From the Vault, and teased us with a bizarre coded webpage.  Luckily, people much more motivated than us went ahead and decoded it,...

It's the Born of the Gods Prerelease, so you know what that means!  We took the recorder with us and recorded a bunch of stuff that happened!  Listen as Chewie, Mike, and Brian let you know what happened after (almost) each round! We're joined by lots of guests, including our old friend Gabe!  He's the one that taught Mike how to play a thousand years ago!  There are also appearances from listener...

In case you couldn't tell from the amazing title, the dorks are joined this week by our favorite Level 2 judge and Monday Night Magic cohost, Cluze!  I can say that because Prillaman is a Level 3 now.  Dr. Science comes on to help us take a look at the full Born of the Gods set before the prerelease.  Yes I know it's after the prerelease now, but give me a break here.  There's not much else to say...

In case you weren't aware, we're still knocking out those Born of the Gods previews.  We recorded this the day the FAQ was accidentally put up, but we didn't actually do any of those cards.  That would have been a really long show, and that's turrible.  As has become tradition during preview season, we reached through the internet and snatched up our old buddy Bill Bloodworth ( @SqueeGoblnNabob )...

On this episode, the dorks take on all the news and the first round of Born of the Gods spoilers!  There's a serious amount of bizarre news, from coins to a movie to a high-priced Modern Event Deck announcement.  News you can use?  Probably not, but there's plenty enough news here!  All the links are down below, so follow along if you want! After that, we have a super secret special guest!  So sec...

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. ...