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. :)