The Mana Pool

The dorks are back on Ikoria! Since time is forever limited we weren't able to take a look at the ENTIRE set, but we did hit a lot of the high points. Brian is blown away by the Triomes (for some reason), the new cycle of wedge Ultimatums are pretty amazing, and the rest of the Companions are bizarrely entertaining. Then we circle around and hit the rest of the Mythic Rares that we hadn't covered...

Right smack in the middle of Ikoria previews, WotC decided to preview all of Commander 2020. Since that was confusing for a lot of people, we've decided to separate C20 and Ikoria previews on The Mana Pool. This episode is all about Commander, in case you couldn't tell from the title. We're starting with the three-color legends and moving into the partnered legends. From there it's a free-for-all...

The dorks are back! Why are we back? Because Godzilla! No, seriously. Godzilla cards. In Magic. Like for real. Well, sort of for real. It's...bizarre. Ikoria: Lair of Behemoths previews are here! And there's some pretty awesome stuff here other than just the inclusion of everyone's favorite Kaiju. Join us as we talk about all the awesome new stuff! Card Image Gallery: https://magic.wizards.com/en/...

This episode is going be a bit different. With all the coronavirus stuff going on across the world and tensions running high everywhere, the dorks couldn't just ignore it all and talk about Magic. While escapism is great, sometimes you've got to face the facts. So the first part of this episode is all about how COVID-19 is affecting us and why we need to embrace social distancing. This is genuinel...

The dorks are back! We're doing a Mythic Conscription for the original Gold set, Invasion! This was before they really figured out how to do a set focused on multicolored well, so there's some bizarre stuff in here. The gold cards are, by and large, REALLY good. The monocolored stuff is...well it's definitely monocolored. And yes, we did talk about Fact or Fiction. A couple times. There was an exc...

You like dragons, right? Of course you like dragons! Who doesn't like dragons? Dragons are quite possibly the biggest and most well known...thing to come out of fantasy. Ever. They're all over the place these days, from video games to a mega popular HBO series. And we love dragons too! And since this is a Magic podcast, we're actually just going to talk about dragons in Magic. Like, the cards. Not...

The dorks are back, now that Chewie is no longer a walking corpse! And what are we doing for our triumphant return? We're doing another installment of There's No Plane Like Home, where we take a look at one of the planes of Magic to determine if it would be a good place to live. We'll take a look at the different locations of Kamigawa, the different groups and races that live in those locations, a...

The dorks are finishing up their Mythic Conscription of the Urza block with the final set, Urza's Destiny! As is usually the case with older sets, some colors have plenty of possible mythics, and some just...don't. Old sets are kind of inconsistent like that. Also, Chewie blows his own mind with a pair of clever ways to remember the order of the Urza block sets. Oh, and there's a brief discussion...

Out of nowhere, Unsanctioned was revealed on Tuesday. Unsanctioned is the latest silver-bordered product from WotC, but it's not a full new Un set. It's a boxed set that features five decks full of some of the greatest hits of silver-bordered cards along with a few new cards in each color. The dorks go in-depth on all the new cards and drop a few honorable mentions of the reprints. During the fina...

The dorks are back to cover the rest of the cards in Theros Beyond Death! Well, as many as we can get through in a single episode anyway. There are demigods, a new planeswalker, an elegantly designed cycle of Omens, a cycle of Interventions, a pair of Titans, plenty of analogues for Greek heroes, and more Sagas! Since this is apparently the wordiest set ever released, there's a LOT to get through....

For the first TMP episode of 2020 we're continuing with Neverending Preview Season! We're looking at all the sweet Theros Beyond Death stuff that has popped up since our last episode. This includes some crazy new gods, a "fixed" Yawgmoth's Will, and a few neat Sagas. The new set looks pretty awesome! Apologies for Chewie sounding weird in this episode. Something happened to his audio settings. To...

Neverending Preview Season has returned! We're talking about all the Theros Beyond Death cards that had been previewed when we recorded! We're covering the mechanics, the planeswalkers, and everything else! We're also discussing (briefly but importantly) the lack of a colon in the title of the set, when the next set clearly has a colon in it. Chewie has a theory! Also, it's the last episode of TMP...

It's time for another installation of Brian's custom MTG RPG, Heirs of Trivester! The last time we saw our heroes they had barely taken out a vicious noggle mage controlled by Icolnir after making their way through a cavernous labyrinth. This episode picks up right there, with our weary travelers still bleeding on the floor of the cave. We'll hear all about what is happening on this plane, get a b...

The dorks are back after taking the week off for Thanksgiving, and we are in rare form. The actual point of this episode is simple - do a Mythic Conscription for Urza's Legacy. Nice and simple, right? But since the dorks were in such rare form, we sort of strayed off topic. A lot. Pretty much everyone says something that, in a perfect world, would be cut from the final podcast. But as this is not...

The dorks are back with more timely content! First up we have to comment on the recent massive B&R update, because it was pretty big. But then we're shifting to the Historic Anthology announcement for Magic Arena! They're adding 20 cards from the pre-Historic era (can't believe we missed that joke on the show!) to Arena for use in the new format and Chewie thought we could totally do that too! Eac...

The dorks are back with a big episode all about Commander! First off we have to discuss all the Commander products that were announced for 2020. We'll also address the potential for supplemental product fatigue that might come from these products, but it's not as bad as you might think at first blush. Plus, find out who finally has a suggestion of legs after all these years... From there, we're tu...

Pioneer was announced as a brand new competitive format, which is something that hasn't happened on this scale since Modern was announced 8 years ago. We thought it would be cool to go back and look at the history of competitive Magic formats since the beginning. We're talking Type I, Type II, Type 1.5, and even Type 1.x. Remember Extended? Poor Extended. To clarify, we're only talking about Const...

Since Standard rotated with Throne of Eldraine that means Brawl rotated too! And our own rambling dork Brian is ALL ABOUT some Brawl, so he wanted to do an episode about it! So we're gonna hit what left Standard and what that means for Brawl, with Brian's decks as an example. There's a good amount of discussion with the live Twitch chat too, which is why you should come join us live on Thursday ni...

The dorks are back from a two week podcasting break, and we're coming out firing! We're giving the Mythic Conscription treatment to a notoriously overpowered set, Urza's Saga! In this discussion we'll point out the difference between powerful cards and, well, design mistakes. Which color is loaded with potential mythics? Which color just doesn't seem to have much for the discussion? And what about...

It's Prerelease time again! Chewie, Mike, Brian, and Sam (!) all went to House of Cards in Winston-Salem NC to play! First, Chewie tells the story of the weekend of Scott's wedding and the horrible, horrible sunburn while he & Mike are in the car on the way to the shop. We didn't get any pre-tournament recordings with Brian & Sam because they were playing a game of Brawl. Once the tournament begin...

The dorks dive once more into the Throne of Eldraine previews! We've got plenty of cycles to finish - hybrid cards, lands, uncommon knights, legendary creatures and artifacts, lots of stuff! While we're at it we're bouncing around and hitting whatever other good stuff we can find, whether it's super flavorful, an obvious fairy tale reference, or blatantly powerful. We'll even hit that one blue myt...

The dorks are back to discuss even more Throne of Eldraine cards! You like fairy tales? What about knights? What about fairy tales...with knights? What about flavorful cards? Or billy goats? Big bad wolf? Excalibur? Trolls? The Questing Beast? The way every fairy tale begins? Randomly suplexing bears? Is any of this sounding good yet? ...what if I offered you a Bog Naughty? Card Image Gallery:  ht...

Throne of Eldraine is almost upon us, so we're here to talk about as much of the new stuff as we can! We've got Adventures, we've got Food, we've got Knights, we've got Brawl legendaries...there's a lot going on here. And all of it looks neat! So join the dorks as we discuss the cards, the flavor, and the art of a bunch of the Eldraine set! Card Image Gallery:  https://magic.wizards.com/en/article...

We're doing another edition of There's No Plane Like Home, where we take a look at one of the many planes of the Magic multiverse and try to figure out if we'd actually mind living there. This time we're focusing on the home of both Chandra Nalaar and the Inventors' Fair. So fire up the aether harvester, hop in your filigreed race car, and decorate some giants - we're going to Kaladesh! Come join...

Back in June, I got a mystery package in the mail from longtime listener Magnor Criol. Inside was an amazing thing that took an insane amount of time, effort, and dedication to create. We've decided to call it the Magnor Stack. It was a collection of cards, real and custom, that represented a new way for us dorks to play Magic whenever we get together. The custom cards were all in-jokes of some so...