The Mana Pool

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...

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...

This is the first episode after Chewie got back from his listener-supplied trip to Grand Prix Las Vegas!  So of course, he has to talk at great length about GP Vegas.  Because it was amazing in so many ways.  Like, SO many ways.  So I'm gonna go ahead and apologize for how long that took, because apparently no one realized just how long we went on about it. Then there's all the other stuff!  Here...

Since Grand Prix Las Vegas just completely destroyed the record for largest Magic event ever, it is a fine time to revisit the previous holder of that record, GP Charlotte.  Of course Chewie was there, armed as always with his trusty digital recorder, his wits, and spare batteries.  He and his fellow dorks concocted this edition of the Three Questions once they arrived in Charlotte, sitting in Buf...

After a brief discussion about being the biggest idiot ever, the dorks head right into the Magic 2014 cards they showed the freakin' night after we recorded the last episode. It's just one per color, so it doesn't take that long.  ZOMG Fish Illusion! Then Mike and Brian tell us all about a PTQ they went to at Atomic Empire in Durham North Carolina. It's a great shop, you should check it out.  If t...

We have an amazing episode lined up for you this time!  We're going all the way back to the first Ravnica block so we can compare it to...wait, what? Oh, never mind.  There's an entire set of Modern Masters and a fair bit of Magic 2014 previews to discuss.  So I guess we'll do that instead.  Do enjoy! There's also a pretty funny No Shyfts too.  Here's that link: http://www.5colorcontrol.com/noshyf...

The dorks are back! After inadvertantly taking a couple of weeks off, we are back with a vengeance.  Of course, there's plenty of big news that has popped up in our absence.  Since Brian loves Maze's End so much, we had to talk about the Maze's End deck that did so well at Pro Tour: Dragon's Maze. There was a big preview of the rules update that is coming up in Magic 2014. Legend rules, playing la...

You've waited all this time, and now it is finally here...again.  Chewie went to Grand Prix Charlotte armed with his trusty digital recorder, his wits, and spare batteries.  After he stopped and bought them on the way.  He and his fellow dorks concocted this edition of the Three Questions once they arrived in Charlotte, sitting in Buffalo Wild Wings actually.  Once the Questions were decided, all...

You’ve waited all this time, and now it is finally here.  Chewie went to Grand Prix Charlotte armed with his trusty digital recorder, his wits, and spare batteries.  After he stopped and bought them on the way.  He and his fellow dorks concocted this edition of the Three Questions once they arrived in Charlotte, sitting in Buffalo Wild Wings actually.  Once the Questions were decided, all that was...

Bryan Prillaman steps in for our own Brian yet again this episode!  Yay having a Bryan! On this episode, we discuss the announcement of Slivers in Magic 2014, Sealed Deck play in Duels 2014, a teeny bit of the Dragon's Maze Rules Update, and of course, the Dragon's Maze Event Deck.  Man that's a lot of capitalization.  Also, nipples on men.  Yes, you read that correctly.  When you went back to rea...

It's prerelease time as Chewie, Mike, and Brian head over to Top Deck Games in Kernersville NC to take on the ten guilds of Ravnica!  Brian's law-school buddy John was there too (as he tends to be when there's a prerelease), as was our old pal Robert Waycaster.  We've got the handy-dandy ditital recorder and we're recording what happens just after it happens so you can get the full story without t...

Bill Bloodworth ( @SqueeGoblnNabob ) joins us again this week, this time in lieu of our usual green man, Dirk.  The new baby caught up with him and he wasn't able to join us.  The first part of the show is a look at the entire set of...oh wait, no.  It's the Banned & Restricted list update, followed by a look at the the full Dragon's... Nope, not yet, then it's the Commander Banned list update.  S...

We've got a full cast plus one this week, as Bill Bloodworth ( @SqueeGoblnNabob ) joins us to talk spoilers.  You know, because we always bring Bill on to talk spoilers.  I bet we bring him back next week too.  But...it's just Dragon's Maze pretty much the whole time.  So there's really nothing else to say here.  We didn't even do final thoughts because we went so long!  And that's pretty much it....

Hey look, Dirk's back! He successfully populated, so now he has two little token dudes at home! We start this episode off with what Brian assures us is quite possibly the most offensive Magic Mad Lib ever.  Sounds awesome!  We go from there to a brief discussion of a recent Standard tournament where a Turbo Fog deck got played!  Also, I point out how Sexy Jake Humphries made the top 8 of a Star Ci...

We are joined this week by none other than Adam Styborski!  He's @the_stybs on Twitter.  For those of you that don't know...what rock have you been living under?  He's the (former) writer for Serious Fun on DailyMTG , the current writer of the brand new Commander column Command Tower on DailyMTG , he's on the text coverage team for Wizards, and he's all about some Pauper Cube.  Oh yeah, he's the C...

We are eschewing the usual April Fool's nonsense this year here on The Mana Pool.  Yes I know you guys look forward to it every year (except perhaps Shred Memory ) but it really gets harder and harder to come up with new original ideas.  So this time, instead of doing something weird (er than usual) we decided to just have a hell of a good episode!  It's guest stars galore on this one!  At various...

Remember the planeswalkers that the dorks made for each other a couple episodes ago?  Yeah?  Well this episode we're doing Story Circles to craft a deck around each of those dorky planeswalkers!  Pretty awesome huh? Of course, that's not all we're up to.  Oh no.  Brian rambles on about Modern just a bit before we get going (weird I know).  We talk for a couple more minutes about the newest You Mak...

This week is a bit of a strange one.  We're short one Lead Rambler, so there's (supposedly) a lot less talking going on.  We're also running out of server space on our hosting site, because Chewie's a big idiot.  Don't worry, all is well now - until he screws it up again.  The way we fixed it, oddly enough, was to record this episode.  With space running low, we realized that the best way to fix i...