The Mana Pool – Magic the Gathering Podcast |

Episode 470 – Learning to Attack Charitably
The dorks cover the rest of the Hour of Devastation set! There's some really great art in this set too. And camels.

Episode 469 – This Plane is So Boned
The dorks tackle even more Hour of Devastation previews! There's a zombie camel!

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 470 – Learning to Attack Charitably

By The Mana Pool | Published July 9, 2017 2 Comments

The dorks are covering the rest of Hour of Devastation since the full set was revealed immediately after we recorded last week. There are quite a few bits of good stuff left. There’s a lot of art on commons and uncommons that is just awesome too, so we’ll be sure to point that out.

And there are discussions of StarCraft and copyright claim at the end. Just a warning.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 2:13:10 — 45.7MB)

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Posted in Podcast2 Comments Tags: Hour of Devastation, previews

Episode 469 – This Plane is So Boned

By The Mana Pool | Published July 2, 2017 Leave a comment

The dorks are taking another look at Hour of Devastation previews! Torments, afflictions, curses, eternalization, more Hours, and lots of sand. I hate sand. It’s coarse and rough and irritating…and it gets everywhere.

Also, now ALL my horses can be amazing, and there’s a zombie camel. Oh yeah, you read that right.

Hour of Devastation Card Image Gallery – http://magic.wizards.com/en/articles/archive/card-image-gallery/hour-devastation
Hour of Devastation Tokens – http://magic.wizards.com/en/articles/archive/feature/tokens-hour-devastation-2017-06-29

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 1:54:55 — 39.5MB)

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

Episode 468 – Hour of Mournful Overtones

By The Mana Pool | Published June 25, 2017 2 Comments

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 Podcast2 Comments 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