Alter 56 - Animar, Soul of Elements

Ah yes, my favorite 3 color combo in Magic. I think RUG my favorite, it might be BUG though. Forced to choose, I would take RUG so I thought this guy would make a great Commander for my latest deck.

I have had a hard time really grasping Commander as a format, always feeling like my decks were either too good or woefully underpowered. Finding the balance is really tough it turns out.

One thing I really like about Commander though is the deckbuilding process. I get excited to play with all these cool old cards, and getting a sweet altered Commander to get things going is a great place to start in my opinion :)

I did this alter on the magic cruise, but I found a pretty calm part of the ship to paint on and had a great experience painting and hanging with people finishing a cube draft and such. I'll always have a good memory of that to associate with this alter.

Alter 55 - Jaya Ballard, Task Mage

 This was the 2nd of the alters for Graham. Jaya Ballard has pretty tame artwork overall, and even though I realized there was some risk involved, I decided to push it in a direction that I personally like. I like bold earthy tones and decided to throw caution to the wind and make this how I would want it. I hope that Graham does too.

Alter 54 - Sigarda, Host of Herons

This was part 1 of a 2 part commission for some Commander generals. They are for my friend Graham from Loading Ready Run (@graham_lrr) commissioned by his lady friend Kathleen (@kathleen_lrr). The artwork on this card is particularly good in my estimation, and this made it so that no matter what I came up with I wouldn't be 100% happy.

Then again, I never am when it comes to these alters :) I was satisfied with this one however. One note, I did do this alter on a cruise ship (yes, during the Magic Cruise 2012) and this presented some unique challenges. Ships move around a lot it turns out, and keeping a steady hand on them is about impossible. I was able to find a reasonable zone to alter in though, and it all worked out in the end. :)

Alter 53 - Drogskol Reaver

It's interesting what kind of journey you take just by reading a card and piecing together what it actually does. I saw this guy and was like "NOPE, 7-DROP", but after working through what actually happens when you have this card, I changed my tune. Drawing 2 cards, gaining 6 life and hitting for 6 before you even start any shenanigans is just awesome. I hope that after some rotations happen we see a format where we can play this guy, I probably will if I can :)

Alter 52 - ?

See what I did? ;)

Alter 51 - Evolving Wilds

My podcasting co-host and good friend Jon Loucks (@jonloucks) is a man who loves many cards. Most of the decks he builds feature a rotating cast of Reveillarks, 2 power guys, crazy lifegain, or just plain greedy builds. I was trying to decide which of these was the Loucksiest, when I came to the conclusion that made the most sense: Evolving Wilds.

The Loucksasaurus doesn't play mono colored decks, and the fact that this is A) Slow and B) Gets any color of mana means that it perfectly fits into his deck style on both levels. This is the card that Jon wants to have access to the most, in Standard as well as Limited. Also, the artwork is sweet and I just happened to have a Japanese version too :)

I'm happy with how it turned out, and I hope he is too.

Alter 50 - Thalia, Guardian of Thraben

This card has made a bit of a splash. Easy to see why, they clearly pushed it a bit. Giving her the full ability of Thorn of Amethyst along with a very useable and aggressive 2/1 with first strike means that this card sees play all the way back to Legacy.

I like the art a lot, and wanted to make it sort of darker with more contrast overall. I wanted the background to be more brooding, but have some lighter colored highlights on her sash. I also wanted to clean up some of the other elements like the grass.

Normally these are used for framing purposes, but sometimes they can act as distractions, which I felt they did a bit of here.

Well, I made the background more brooding, livened up the sash a bit, and cleaned up the distractions. That said, I'm not really happy with this one.

It was harder than I expected for starters. Beyond that, my vision for it didn't really quite materialize and I was left a bit frustrated. I decided to leave it as is, and I'll revisit this type of project another time I think.

For now, she still attacks, blocks, and messes up their game plan :)

(I will note that the sloppy parts on the edges you see are not in fact me being lazy, but me being a little over-exuberant with the toothpick, marring the cards surface. I haven't done this in a while but it does happen sometimes)