The Mana Pool

What exactly is a roguelike? Well it's a video game...genre? Sort of? Genres are all made up and stupid. In this episode, the dorks will dive into what makes a roguelike a roguelike, with lots of relevant conversations about various aspects of the whole thing. And be sure to let us know your favorite roguelikes and why! Stay tuned for the end when Mike & Chewie get all caught up in...D&D stuff? Wa...

Oh hey, the set about dragons has a bunch of dragons in it! Weird. Guess we should probably take a look at some of them huh? Card Image Gallery - https://magic.wizards.com/en/products/tarkir-dragonstorm/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/themanapool Podcast RSS Feed: ...

The dorks are back! First Chewie recaps Cheevos For Charity 2025, which was a glorious time that raised over $1500 for Trans Lifeline! After that we give Tarkir: DragonStorm the usual treatment. You know, looking at the mechanics and then bouncing around the gallery calling out whatever we like. Don't worry, we'll be back again to check out all the big scary dragons and stuff. Tarkir Dragonstorm M...

If you've ever been slept, poisoned, charmed, stunned, slowed, or...made an atheist (?) then this episode is for you! The dorks are talking about (as the title says) status effects in games. Of course we spend a lot of time on RPGs, but status effects are common in all kinds of games. We brought up several different action games and card games just to hammer this point home. Let us know what you t...

The dorks couldn't come up with something to talk about this episode, so we asked the Pooligans in our Discord community for some ideas! Mycroft wanted to know if we had anything to say about building toys, from Lego to Gunpla, so we talked about that for a while. Then Pana was curious which cartoons we thought might be good to bring back for another run, sort of like DuckTales or She-Ra or any nu...

The dorks take their first look at the long-awaited Final Fantasy Universes Beyond MTG set! We're all FF dorks to one degree or another, so we're doing like we did with the Lord of the Rings set - taking a look at how the mechanics of the card matches up to the thing it is depicting. Between the four of us we have all the games covered (for the most part) so this should be fun. Find out which comm...

No, you're not hallucinating and you haven't fallen into a time portal (unless you're coming from the future, in which case SAVE US!). It's Chewie, Cluze, and Squee, together again! No we're not resurrecting anything, we just wanted to get back together and try desperately to ignore the direction the world is going by talking about whatever nerdy nonsense we've been fooling with lately. We bounced...

To celebrate the fake retail holiday Valentine's Day (which was the day after we recorded this), the dorks wanted to shift gears away from the negativity of episode 715. So for this episode we're each talking about some things that we love! Not our partners or families or any of that stuff, we mean nerdy nonsense! Movies, games, shows, whatever we want! So tell us, what are some nerdy things YOU l...

The dorks take a look at the mechanics and gallery of Aetherdrift. You know the drill, we do this sort of thing all the time. Sorry we missed the blue shell by the way. Aetherdrift Mechanics -  https://magic.wizards.com/en/news/feature/aetherdrift-mechanics Aetherdrift Gallery - https://magic.wizards.com/en/products/aetherdrift/card-image-gallery Come join us in the future! The show is live on Thu...

Gamers, amirite? Whether it's opponents across the table, friends next to you, or randos online, eventually they're all going to do something while you're playing that just grinds your gears. The dorks are going to get into all the things that gamers do that annoy them. Not just to vent, but also to help us all recognize that some of our quirks or tics or whatever that we don't pay attention to mi...

The dorks take a look at the main antagonists & final bosses of the first six Final Fantasy games! These range from just nothing to one of the best villains in gaming, period! We'll be going through each game in order to see how the big bad evolved (or didn't) over time. And don't worry, we'll come back to this again in the future to cover more that we didn't get to! Come join us in the future! Th...

The dorks kick off 2025 by looking back at the stuff that happened to us over the last year. Life events, games we played, shows we recorded, that sort of thing. Apologies for anyone going into excruciating details. We're also taking a look forward at things we're hoping to do or experience in the next year. You know, it's your typical year transition introspection thing. Be sure to let us know wh...

The dorks round out 2024 by finishing up our Castlevania discussion! We're hitting all the remaining games, which includes the Game Boy Advance and Nintendo DS Metroidvanias, the PS2 3D games, the Lords of Shadow reboot, and whatever else we missed in the last show. We'll also hit up some of the places Castlevania has popped up in crossovers with other games! Thanks so much to all of you for stick...

The dorks are doing something a little different this episode. We're taking a look at the Castlevania franchise as a whole! Castlevania is a franchise that all of us have experience with, and it's just so good! There are SO many games, a Netflix anime series, absolutely stunning music, and lots of crossovers into other games! Of course that's a lot to talk about, so this episode is mainly about th...

The dorks return! This time we're Just Chatting about all kinds of stuff! First up is our Thanksgiving holidays and food experiences. Then Brian has a question about parenting, which we tangent off of several times. We talk about what scared or bothered us when we were kids, when sex and/or violence are okay to show them, and lots of other stuff. Then Brian disappears, so Chewie talks about all th...

The dorks have returned! We're taking a look at the MTG Foundations change to combat, discussing all the new stuff coming up next year, digging into the idea that Universes Beyond sets are gonna be Standard Legal, and more! There was going to be a second topic this episode but we ran out of time. Look forward to that in the future! Foundations mechanics: https://magic.wizards.com/en/news/feature/f...

We're mashing stuff up! First up we're looking at the mashup of Marvel & MTG. The first batch of the Marvel cards were revealed at New York Comic Con so of course, we're gonna check them out. Then it's a mashup of our own creation, the good old Magic Mad Lib. To finish up we're going into one of the most famous mashups in video games! What happens when you smash Disney into Final Fantasy? You get...

The dorks are pointing out the horror movie tropes and references in the new set, and a dorky discussion ensues as usual. Duskmourn Gallery: https://magic.wizards.com/en/products/duskmourn-house-of-horror/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/themanapool Podcast RSS Feed:...

Fear is a powerful and ever-present aspect of our lives. The dorks look at the Fears from Duskmourn, and use them as a jumping-off point to discuss our own fears.  What are you afraid of? Duskmourn Gallery: https://magic.wizards.com/en/products/duskmourn-house-of-horror/card-image-gallery Come join us in the future! The show is live on Thursdays around 8pm(ish) Eastern time on Twitch Become a Life...

The dorks dive into the horror tropes of Duskmourn! You know the drill by now - mechanics first then we dive into the card image gallery. And Chewie finds a new word that makes him happy. Heh, boilerbilges. Mechanics: https://magic.wizards.com/en/news/feature/duskmourn-house-of-horror-mechanics Gallery: https://magic.wizards.com/en/products/duskmourn-house-of-horror/card-image-gallery Come join us...

After all this time, the dorks are finally closing the door on the Heirs of Trivester. Did you want a big boss fight? Because we've got a big boss fight! We started this journey back in 2016, though the seeds were actually planted in 2009. To celebrate, I've gathered up all the episodes from before the show was posted on YouTube, made them into videos, and created a playlist of the whole RPG saga!...

The dorks take a look at one of their favorite game genres - Role-Playing Games! We're bouncing around between games that we've loved over the years, both video and tabletop, and talking about why we feel how we do about them. Plus Chewie has to rant about how video game genres are complete nonsense (because they totally are - guess who writes these show notes?) Tell us about your favorite RPGs! C...

This place is overrun with adorable and/or terrifying woodland critters! Yup, we're poking around in Bloomburrow again. Try not to step on the frogs. Or get caught up in a two-card game-winning combo. Gallery: https://magic.wizards.com/en/products/bloomburrow/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 Pa...

The dorks return for real this time! Since we got the full update of where the hell we've been for the last couple months out of the way, this episode is all about Furry Ravnica. I mean, Bloomburrow.  Mechanics:  https://magic.wizards.com/en/news/feature/bloomburrow-mechanics Gallery: https://magic.wizards.com/en/products/bloomburrow/card-image-gallery Come join us in the future! The show is live...

The dorks explain where they've been for the last, uh....TWO MONTHS? Wait, what? 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/themanapool Podcast RSS Feed:  https://themanapool.libsyn.com/rss YouTube:  www.youtube.com/TheManaPool The Deep End:  https://www.youtube.com/@TheDeepEndTMP Twitch:  www.t...