CardShark

In a world where Shards of Alara preview cards are shown at a rate much less frequent than in previous sets, there is no need for two episodes of The Mana Pool in a week. In this world, episode 47 of The Mana Pool is just being released, instead of coming out late last week. It covers the preview cards shown from September 10 to September 17 on the Magic website's Shards of Alara Visual Spoiler, found here:
http://www.wizards.com/magic/tcg/articl ... ra/spoiler

Also in this world, there is no Dirk on episode 47. Instead, he has been replaced by AJ, one of the other dorks that played Magic with the host dorks in college. He may or may not be using a Rock Band microphone to record. Please feel free to make fun of him either way, because it's funny. However, using a Logitech USB Desktop Microphone to do vocals in Rock Band would be funnier.

And finally, in this world gone mad, the new Magic Player Rewards textless cards have been shown, and we totally tell you all about them. If you'd like to see them as well as listen to us rant and rave about them, all you have to do is click the following link:
http://www.wizards.com/magic/TCG/Resour ... ds/welcome

Download this episode here: http://themanapool.libsyn.com/index.php?post_id=382337
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I think the Master of Etherium (and the Esper shard in general) is rightfully undercosted to counter the fact that any form of artifact hate acts as a silver bullet and the fact that any artifact Wrath effects are going to be almost entirely one-sided against them. Naturalize came up in the orb, so barring a cool card like Supernaturalize that gives super powers I think they'll be on the raw end of the deal from the 3 shards that host green.

A more unusual (though not as cool as Maralen) application of Mindlock Orb would be as sideboard against decks that use cranial extraction/counterbore/etc. effects. If you could get it down sooner, I'd say use it against Thoughtseize, but we both know that won't happen. Oh well, at least we can laugh when someone going blue artifact crazy has a Tezzeret in play, drops Mindlock Orb, and offloads a bunch of loyalty in an attempt to search for something.

Wait, how would Mindlock Orb do anything against Thoughtseize?

It wouldn't; I'm just stupid and put in the wrong card name for no known reason. I meant to type Extirpate, which is pretty funny given it isn't even in standard when this hits.