Alter 37 - Rafiq of the Many

The first card that I ever really latched onto as far as power level was this fella right here. I worked on a deck with him in it for my first big sanctioned tournament, which was Regionals. I ended up with a pretty sweet list, but a few days before the tournament people realized how good Finest Hour was. I used a modified decklist that basically combined what I was running already with both Finest Hour and Rafiq. I went X-2 at that tournament, even though I had zero clue what I was doing. I remember 2 main things now from it:

1. Beating people down with Birds Of Paradise for 6+ damage.
2. Losing to Jon Loucks, now my fellow Limited Resources podcaster and friend.

I will always have a soft spot in my heart for old Rafiq :)

Project: Desert Bus 5 Donation Complete

The last few posts on here have been about the DesertBus 5 donation project that I have been doing. It's all sent off so I thought I would put up a pic of all the alters together.

Alter 37 - Lightning Greaves

As part of the project for Desertbus For Hope's annual charity event I did an alter of a Lightning Greaves for the set of Commander cards which I was donating. I have always found the art on the original Greaves pretty boring. It's some boots with some generic green earthy stuff going on in the back ground. Meh.

So I decided to push the boundaries and try to snazz it up. Now all of the other alters I have done for this project have been extensions and I have tried to the best of my skill level to do justice to the original card. But for the Greaves I wanted to mix it up a bit.

I failed.

As is often the case when one is pushing boundaries, you learn a lot during the process, but the final product is often lacking. And that was the case here as well. Unfortunately I put a nights effort into that one, and had to scramble the next evening to redo a normal one. I am pretty happy with the result on this one, and learned a *lot* from my experiment gone wrong with the original as well. :)

Check out desertbus.org if you are interested in bidding for these particular boots, along with their friends :)

Alter 36 - Karn Liberated

I recently did an alter for my buddy @James_LRR from LoadingReadyRun, and through that he had an idea. Every year the guys from LRR do a charity event called Desert Bus for Hope. They raise money for the Child's Play charity by playing the worlds most boring video game for dangerously long periods of time. Awesome!

Along side the Desert Bus stuff, they do auctions to raise money for the charity. This is where I come in. James asked if I would be willing to donate some alters that they could auction off. Naturally I said yes, and immediately started thinking about what cards to offer.

I asked around, but our fellow Community Cup teammate and just awesome person Michelle (@Sunie_FDC) came up with the winning idea as she is prone to do. Her idea was to do popular Commander cards. This way we could concentrate on colorless cards, which broadened the potential customer base. It also ensured that the cards would have longer term play value than say a Standard staple or maybe a themed set of older cards.

I was on board right away, and we decided on the following list:

1. Sol Ring (new one)
2. Solemn Simulacrum (new one)
3. Lightning Greaves
4. Command Tower
5. ????

I wanted to do something big for the last one, but Darksteel Colossus or Blightsteel Colossus seemed out of place to me. As did Sundering Titan, Wurmcoil Engine, and everything else I could think of. I wanted something splashy and cool, but also that could go in all decks.

Karn to the rescue! Our newly Liberated friend seemed like a great fit, so we settled on that and here he is in finished form :)

If you are so inclined, I suggest you to check out the Desert Bus and Child's Play sites I linked to above and look into donating. Also, if you want a shot to bid on this set of alters, the info should be on there. (I'm not 100% sure how that part works).

Alter 35 - Sphinx Summoner

I know this card isn't wildly relevant, but it's been one of my favorites for both what it does and also the artwork on it for a while now. I picked up a Japanese version and just had to bust out the paintbrushes for it. :)

Alter 34 - Garruk, Primal Hunter

I won a set of paper M12 this year playing in some MTGO tournaments at PAX. I hadn't really sorted the cards yet, but when I did I realized that the Garruk, Primal Hunter has a big damaged spot on the front (about half the size of a dime) with all the ink missing and the paper showing below :(

Never fear, I decided to just make this my first Planeswalker alter :D

It came out pretty well, and he will fit right into some Commander deck or something I'm sure.

Alter 33 - Seshiro The Anointed

I had the privilege of being invited to the Community Cup for MTGO earlier this year and had a truly amazing time there. The best part was meeting all the cool people and making new friends within the Magic community. I hit it off with the guys from Loading Ready Run right away and have stayed in contact with them since. If you don't know them, they do sketch comedy on their site www.loadingreadyrun.com which then gets featured on other sites as well. I got to meet up with them again at PAX this year, and promised James to do an alter of his Commander... um, commander, Seshiro for him. I had to do the Swords alters first, but finally found some time for the snake of all snakes :) Hope you like it James!