The Mana Pool – Magic the Gathering Podcast |

Episode 468 – Hour of Mournful Overtones
The dorks are hitting the first part of Hour of Devastation previews! Wow, this is some dark and depressing stuff going on here.

Episode 467 – Announcement Week!
The dorks are going over all the news that came out of Announcement Week! And there's a LOT of it, so get comfy!

Episode 466 – Brand Expansion (The MTG MMO Episode)
Rampant MMO speculation and discussions of MTG's previous attempts at brand expansion!

Episode 465 – History of the Banhammer, Pt 2
Chris Lansdell joins us again to cover 8 more years of the history of Magic's Banned & Restricted List!

Episode 464 – At Enchantment Speed
A Magic Mad Lib and a Mythic Conscription for Guildpact!

Episode 463 – The Ravnican Conscription
We're giving Ravnica the Mythic Conscription treatment!

Episode 462 – History of the Banhammer, Pt 1
With the recent out-of-sequence Standard banning, it's time to look back at the history of the B&R list in MTG!

Episode 461 – Amonkhet Prerelease Field Recordings
The dorks are live at the Amonkhet prerelease!

Episode 468 – Hour of Mournful Overtones

By The Mana Pool | Published June 25, 2017 Leave a comment

The Hour of Devastation looms near! Brian is getting attacked by malicious flying creatures and Dirk is being stalked by the gods of sleep, but at least Mike’s beard is still glorious. Thank goodness.

In case you can’t tell, we’re covering the early Hour of Devastation previews. The Invocations, the mechanics of the set, and all the really sick stuff that had shown up at this point. Bolas is a bad bad dude, and we’re really concerned about what’s going to happen. This whole story is getting seriously dark and depressing.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 2:17:16 — 47.1MB)

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Posted in PodcastLeave a comment Tags: Hour of Devastation, previews

Episode 467 – Announcement Week!

By The Mana Pool | Published June 19, 2017 Leave a comment

It’s Announcement Week for Magic, and wow they’ve thrown a lot at us! There’s a LOT of good stuff here! First there’s Pro Tour news and yet another Standard banning. Then we’ve got to talk about all the Magic Digital Next news, which is bittersweet but probably still good. Then we spend a LOT of time on MaRo’s Metamorphosis 2.0, which outlines the totally new direction Magic sets will be going in after Ixalan block. We’re actually going through the article point by point to explain why they’re doing what they’re doing. It’s good stuff. Then it’s time to touch on all the upcoming products. Most of them are pretty standard, but there are a few that will BLOW. YOUR. MIND. No kidding.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 2:32:51 — 52.5MB)

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Posted in PodcastLeave a comment Tags: banned & restricted list, discussion, News

Episode 466 – Brand Expansion (The MTG MMO Episode)

By The Mana Pool | Published June 11, 2017 4 Comments

On the day this episode was recorded, it was announced that Cryptic Studios is working on a Magic: The Gathering Massively Multiplayer Online Role Playing Game! This is absolutely unprecedented in MTG’s history of licensing, and we decided to do an entire episode about it! We’re beginning with Dirk’s extensive MMO experience! He goes on at length about what Magic’s world and mechanics could bring the MMO genre, and the rest of us pipe up whenever we have something to add.

After all the rampant speculation, it’s time to talk about the dark side of all this. There has been a massive negative reaction to this from the MTG community, and it’s because nerds are, I’m sorry to say, terrible people when it comes to the properties that they nerd over.

After that we’re going over as many of the other ways MTG has attempted to expand its brand over the years as we can remember. Old video games, books & comics, a miniatures game, Jones Planeswalker Soda…just whatever. Be sure to let us know if we missed any good ones!

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 2:18:23 — 47.5MB)

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Posted in Podcast4 Comments Tags: discussion, licensing, MMO, video games

Episode 465 – History of the Banhammer, Pt 2

By The Mana Pool | Published June 4, 2017 2 Comments

It’s time to go back to the Banned & Restricted List! We’ve grabbed Chris Lansdell to join us again so we can cover the next several years of the banhammer’s history. Since we have sources for some of these and we have some memory of them, we have a bit more to say this time. Last time we went from 1994 to 2001. This time we’re covering 2002 to 2010, just before the inception of Modern as a format and a whole new Banned list to think about.

Timeline of DCI bans & restrictions: http://mtg.gamepedia.com/Timeline_of_DCI_bans_and_restrictions

Check out Chris Lansdell’s articles: http://www.starcitygames.com/tags/ChrisLansdell

The massive book about Gush: http://www.eternalcentral.com/product/understandinggush3e/

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 1:55:23 — 39.6MB)

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Posted in Podcast2 Comments Tags: banned & restricted list, guest host, history

Episode 464 – At Enchantment Speed

By The Mana Pool | Published May 28, 2017 Leave a comment

We begin this episode with a listener-supplied Magic Mad Lib, sent in by lvl99luck. We learn all about enchantment speed and refuse to name Balance. This Mad Lib is nothing to Murder at!

Then it’s time to get down to business. We’re following up the last episode and diving right into a Mythic Conscription for Guildpact. It turns out that the enchantment speed we learned about in the Mad Lib is a pretty big thing in Guildpact. Like a lot. It also turns out that Guildpact’s rares are actually… rares. So yeah, that’s a thing.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 1:55:22 — 33.0MB)

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Posted in PodcastLeave a comment Tags: mad libs, Mythic Conscription