CardShark

In this episode, we cover a fair bit of news. There's a new look on our forums page. There's a new look for the Magic website. There are lots more pictures of your host dorks on our Facebook group, in case you want to know what we have looked like over the years. Here's a hint: We looked like dorks.

There's also the matter of Shards of Alara previews. No, don't worry, the official previews haven't started yet. But they have shown a couple of interesting things. One is the Hellkite Overlord, which we mentioned on the last show. This time, we give you the full rundown of what the card does. If you'd like to follow along, go to Gatherer and look it up. The other interesting bit of info is the unveiling of the Shards of Alara Prerelease and Launch Party card. Just one for both this time, but boy is it amazing. It's a planeswalker. If you'd like to follow along, check it out here:
http://www.wizards.com/Magic/Magazine/A ... rcana/1660

Then we get into the meat of the episode. Since these episodes seem to be very popular, we like to do them whenever we get a chance. Last weekend, your four host dorks managed to get together to play some Magic. We got in four good games and one horrible waste of time. Don't play Assassin with just four people, okay? Trust us. Each game came complete with ridiculous card interactions that you just won't see anywhere but a multiplayer casual game, and we kept note of all the hilarity so we could bring it to you, our faithful listeners. We hope you enjoy listening as much as we enjoyed playing.

Quick aside: For anyone interested in how my fantasy draft went, I got Adrian Peterson, Clinton Portis, Carson Palmer, TJ Houshmandzadeh, and Braylon Edwards for my core starters. Aw yeah.


Music for this episode: Swift - To Phoenix by Foot, off their third album A Communication Manual


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Brian, there's a great new book out there that I've been reading called "The Dirty Dozen: How 12 Supreme Court Cases Radically Expanded Government and Eroded Freedom" by Robert Levy & William Mellor. The title says it all and it has a section on the Commerce Clause. Check it out if you're interested!

Anyway, back to the episode stuff. The dragon looks cool, but the third color does complicate things a bit. All the Timmies who like dragons will love it. The planeswalker is alright. I agree with Chewie (the limit break ability sucks but the second ability is good). I could throw this guy in my Tamanoa deck for that second ability. It's a little slow to get to his second ability, so I might try a one-of and see if it works. In case you don't recall the deck, here's the article I submitted to Cardshark a while back: http://www.cardshark.com/content/view_a ... le_id=3999

First game: poor Mike. And that was a great play by Brian to simultaneously kill Mike and Dirk.

Second game: Brian's deck sounds like a beast. You should really write an article about it, B. And that was a great idea for Master Warcraft, Mike, wow.

And the freaking Inktreader is crazy. One random combo thought of with it is Oblation. Every creature is reshuffled and everyone draws 2 cards for each creature they lost this way. Maybe combine that with stuff that damages a person for drawing or having cards in hand. Anyone want to run with this idea?

Final thought, Chewie was the talkative one. The other guys were kinda quiet for most of the time, as compared to previous episodes. Just noticing it.

The reason for me being talkative is very simple: I'm the one who took all the notes, so I'm the one that was reading them.

What was Brian's deck in the second game? I've slept since then. And I actually used Master Warcraft yesterday on someone else's turn to pick off 3 annoying creatures and seriously injure two players. It was great. Dude stole my Garruk with a Dominus of Fealty, used the Overrun ability, and I snatched his combat phase.