The Mana Pool

Neverending Preview Season stays true to its name, and Crimson Vow is the next set to pop up. Since this was recorded on the first day of previews, we're explaining the mechanics and hitting as many cards as we can. We'll talk about how Cleave is a dumb name for a clever mechanic (possibly too clever), an artist that appears to have "borrowed" a cosplayer's likeness, and the importance of remember...

Is that another RPG episode? Wow! Sorry about the delay, we just let the time get away from us. Brian has done some retooling of the systems in the meantime, so that's neat. Our newly-vampiric friend Karim gets a probably-important scroll snatched right out from under his nose. After that we're heading back into the forest to follow the thief and return to Donothir's tower. Along the way shenaniga...

The dorks take a look at movies based on video games! Yes, we are reliving the horror, although there are a lot more that aren't absolutely terrible than you might think at first. After we draw some conclusions about why the movies were bad but have been improving over the years, we dive into the future! We're each trying to find games that we think would make a good movie or series, and of course...

The dorks return with another Mythic Conscription! This time we're taking a look at Odyssey, the first set of the...well, the Odyssey Block. Some sets are great for the Mythic Conscription treatment, giving us plenty of good stuff to talk about. This is not one of those sets. Luckily we still had plenty to talk about all the same! Come join us in the future! The show is live on Thursdays around 8p...

Hey Mike's back! In this non-TMP recording, we finally get his take on the Innistrad: Midnight Hunt mechanics since he missed the two preview episodes. From there we head into some of the announcements made in the Nintendo Direct that had just finished a few hours before recording. First up, the Castlevania Advance Collection, which makes Chewie very happy. That leads us to talk about our experien...

The dorks return to the Midnight Hunt to check out more of the cards! There's really not much else to add. That's what we did this episode. I guess I'm just filling space here. Stop reading this and go listen to the show. There's really nothing else going on here. Innistrad: Midnight Hunt Card Image Gallery -  https://magic.wizards.com/en/articles/archive/card-image-gallery/innistrad-midnight-hunt...

The dorks take a first look at the mechanics of Innistrad: Midnight Hunt! The big addition, of course, is the addition of a day/night cycle to Magic! It's a little weird, but ultimately it does make sense. Then there's the usual preview episode shenanigans of course. Let us know what you think of the new cards and mechanics! Innistrad: Midnight Hunt Card Image Gallery - https://magic.wizards.com/e...

I assure you this isn't a Monday Night Magic episode, even though we're essentially just hitting the news of the day. Seemingly out of nowhere last week Wizards of the Coast dumped all the news of next year's big products on our laps, including a first look at all the Standard sets and the first batch of Universes Beyond IP crossover products. The dorks take a look at all of it. You'll never guess...

The dorks take on a controversial topic that came up lately in the MTG world - cards and mechanics that only exist on Magic Arena. This conversation wanders all over the place, but we're primarily talking about the fact that these cards exist rather than looking at the cards themselves, because what they actually do matters a lot less than them being there in the first place. After that, we do act...

Since we haven't done an actual podcast episode in a couple weeks I decided to put the Just Chatting stream we did on July 29th up on the podcast feed to see what you all thought! There's a bit more swearing than you're used to (because it wasn't a podcast episode), and we went in with no plan whatsoever. Topics include video games, Activision Blizzard's repulsive nonsense (though not in any detai...

After an unexpected week off, the dorks return with the D&D set Commander cards! We're looking at all the Commanders of course, then we're hopping around the card image gallery to take a look at whatever else grabs our attention. Warning: I'm not sure why, but this episode is full of dumb jokes. From Extract Brian to Blink Dog to OH YEAH! we're not even holding back. We apologize for nothing and a...

The dorks head back into the Adventures in the Forgotten Realms Card Image Gallery to check out even more awesome D&D related cards! We'll go through all the Class cards, which are really a neat idea. There are more planeswalkers and flavor words and utter weirdness of course, but that's not what's most important. They have properly given us Minsc and his miniature giant space hamster Boo! Nothing...

The dorks return to guide you through their first look at the Adventures in the Forgotten Realms, or the Magic D&D set. We'll venture into dungeons, roll lots of d20s, and discuss the merits of flavor words on cards! You'll meet goblins, see guards approaching, find some prisoners, and have to make plenty of decisions along the way. There will be modules and monsters and planeswalkers (oh my)! Adv...

What's up with Red Rares? Not the dragons and phoenixes and big burn spells, those are all pretty self-explanatory. We mean those...OTHER Red Rares. You know the ones. The dorks dive into the different flavors of these bizarre cards and try to figure out why they are the way they are. Also, there are a LOT of examples. Just LOADS of them. Holy crap. Come join us in the future! The show is live on...

The dorks are back (sorry for the delay getting the show posted by the way) and we're looking at more Modern Horizons 2! There's a lot of really neat and bizarre stuff in here, but none of that really matters compared to the one major revelation. Travis is back! All hail the unluckiest planeswalker ever! Modern Horizons 2 Card Image Gallery:  https://magic.wizards.com/en/articles/archive/card-imag...

The dorks return to look at the Modern Horizons 2 previews! This set is truly bizarre. It feels more like a Commander set or another Time Spiral set with all the in-jokes and callbacks and utterly ridiculous card designs! Of course there's the one that everyone is talking about...but no one can say. No one, that is, except Mike! It's eerie how quickly he's able to rattle off the name without any k...

The dorks take a week off from MTG to talk about something else entirely - the Marvel Cinematic Universe! It's just a big fun discussion about how ridiculous it is that the MCU even exists, some of our favorite moments, and other topics of that sort. What's your favorite Stan Lee cameo? There will be spoilers for things released before last year, but nothing from WandaVision & The Falcon and the W...

The dorks each create a School of Magic for the forthcoming TMP University of the Arcane! And as usual, each of us took the same idea and each took our own unique take on it. Brian created an entire university (misunderstanding the idea slightly), Dirk focused on flavor and mechanics, Mike honed in on the topics his school would teach, and Chewie prioritized his school's teaching methods and philo...

So incredibly sorry for the delay on this episode! Chewie had lots of real-life stuff come up so he couldn't actually get it all put together for a week. The dorks (most of them anyway) are back to look at Commander 2021 since it has been revealed! Will this be yet another case of a handful of boring Commanders with the usual abilities that are some variation of "whenever you draw a card, draw a c...

The full Strixhaven set has been revealed, so the dorks are combing through it looking for the neat stuff. We've got the Mastery spells, an Eye Bat, a...trudge?, a cycle of weirdly-costed multicolored hybrid cards, and an 11/10 creature for...four mana. Wait, WHAT? Also, PLEASE make sure your podcast app of choice is subscribed to the right RSS feed, because the Feedburner feed will soon stop upda...

The dorks continue with Neverending Preview Season! Strixhaven previews are in full swing, so of course that's our focus for this episode. After hitting the mythics that have been revealed (as is our tradition) we take a look at all the various Deans of Strixhaven. There are a LOT of Deans at Strixhaven. Holy crap. Also, PLEASE make sure your podcast app of choice is subscribed to the right RSS fe...

Neverending Preview Season is upon us again, and the dorks jump headfirst into Strixhaven! We've got a few new mechanics, but nothing overly complicated. Among the revealed cards we find: 1) Chewie's new bae, Professor Onyx (please step on me) 2) The Kenrith twins, attached at the hip again...literally this time 3) Kasmina, giving all planeswalkers new toys 4) Magecraft. Lots and lots of Magecraft...

The dorks make some announcements about the TMP podcast and website, discuss their Covid-19 vaccine experiences (for a good long while because it's important), then look at the freshly released full schedule of Magic sets for the rest of the year.  After that, we head into Magic Legends. The open beta begins extremely soon, so we decided to review the videos on DailyMTG and try to figure out what...

The dorks are back with another non-Magic episode! This time we're talking about music, and this episode, as it is with all the good ones, ended up being more about us than the topic at hand. We'll discuss our history with music, the stuff we like, the stuff we don't like, what we use music for, our history with live music, all kinds of neat stuff.  Also, Chewie announces the dissolution of the TM...

The dorks are back with another surprise news-related episode! Wizards made a massive announcement about upcoming products that are branded with non-Magic properties. The two examples given were Warhammer 40K and...Lord of the Rings? Whaaaaa? So the dorks spend an entire episode discussing this, figuring out what it could mean for the future, and trying to come up with more properties that could t...