Alter 62 - Prime Speaker Zegana

Simic has been easily my favorite guild from Gatecrash. It's the most fun to draft, and many of the cards are really interesting. I love the artwork on this card, in addition to just being an awesome card. I think this has a home in my Animar Commander deck, but even if it doesn't, I'm sure someone will pick it up as their general.

Alter 61 - Experiment Kraj

A friend of mine from the local game store runs this blob as his general in Commander. It seemed sort of obvious to make it for him, so I did.

I haven't had as much time as I had thought to do alters, and it felt good to bust out the paints today. I'll continue to fit it in where I can.

Alter 60 - Edric, Spymaster of Trest

Being on the coverage team for GPs is interesting. You get exposed to a lot of different people, none more different than Rusty. Rusty is a true character, and one you just want to be around to see what he says next. He is also a Commander fan, and has a pretty sweet Edric deck. Seems appropriate to make him a full art version.

Alter 59 - Ghost Council of Orzhova

My buddy Chuck wanted to make a Commander deck so we looked up some lists and did some tweaking. I don't get a chance to play much Commander (and vastly prefer playing one on one), but he plays even less. Interestingly, he loves building and putting together Commander decks, so he did for this one. I have been able to play with it more times than he did, but either way I figured an alter was in order.

Alter 58 - Brion Stoutarm

Another buddy of mine from Renton, Harry, enjoys using Brion here to throw helpless mammals in the general direction of his opponents. It felt appropriate to alter one of these up for him :)

I had a realization whilst painting this one. I like to change some stuff on these cards, and there is a pattern forming. I seem to be into punching up the backgrounds and kind of giving my alters a bit of a dramatic vibe.

I used to get nervous that it wouldn't turn out well, or that the person I was making it for wouldn't agree with my take on it.

I have gotten over it.

I realized that while not everyone will agree with how I do these, I have started to develop my own style and that is part of what I enjoy about altering. If someone brings an alter to me, they can expect to get something along these lines.

If they wanted something else they would have gone to someone else right? :)

 I'll just keep telling myself that.

Alter 57 - Tamiyo, the Moon Sage

I won't be doing too much painting during the summer as I have motorcylces to ride, mountains to hike, and events to cover. That said, I set aside some time to do this one (and will be doing a couple more shortly as well)

A friend of mine from Renton promised that if I did this alter for him, he would do some crazy combo using this card. Who am I to stand in the way of such ambition??

I thought the artwork for Tamiyo was really good when I first saw it, and it has grown on me even more since then. I like how she is understated yet has this sort of menacing feel about her. Like a kind but strict teacher, if you cross her you will pay dearly for it. But otherwise she is pretty cool.

Also, socks with sandals.

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.