Still Life with a Skull and a Writing Quill by Pieter Claeszoon (1628).

Cat Dragon by Cynthia Sheppard.

Happy Holidays everybody!

I've written up a ton of decks over the past year. Some of those decks are ones I built in paper, and some are ones I played online, but many were just exercises in brainstorming how I'd build around a specific new legendary creature. Over the next two weeks I'm going to do something a little different. I'd like to share a journey I've gone on.

A year ago, I was an experienced deck-builder, a somewhat accomplished EDH player, a guy who organized and ran my LGS's EDH League, and a columnist for this fine website. I was also a guy who thought and talked about all manner of goofy alters I wish I could have in my collection.

For the unaware, an "alter" is a card that has been painted on so that it looks different. Some alters are simple border extensions. Some are glorious, full art masterpieces that cover the text box and nearly everything else on the card, usually leaving only the card name and casting cost. Some are simple art box replacements or even characters drawn on top of the existing art, but without replacing the original background.

My alter ideas weren't always hilarious, but I couldn't get one funny (to me) idea out of my head. Every time I played the card Krosan Drover, I'd think of how much I wanted an alter of it with Grover from Sesame Street. Krosan Grover. Get it? Drover. Grover. Maybe it's because I grew up in the 70's and watched Sesame Street as a kid. Maybe it's the fact that I'm a writer and I'm naturally drawn to wordplay - both clever and not-so-clever. Whatever the reason, I just couldn't get Krosan Grover out of my head.

Last December we were heading into a winter where our LGS had been closed for months and everyone in our local community was nervous that it might go under. It didn't, thank goodness, but lots of local players were worried the store wouldn't make it.

My dive into learning how to alter cards might have been inspired by my need to turn Magic cards into Dad jokes, but it was also driven by my desire to help out my local game store. I started painting cards and donating them to NexGen comics for them to sell to help bring in money. I probably didn't end up doing that much to help keep the store afloat but it was something I could do and I'm really glad I did it.

Over the past year I've gone from painting a slew of silly Krosan Grover alters to doing work good enough to sell. I'm no professional and still have a lot to learn, but it's been a fantastic journey.

This week and next week I'm going to put a spotlight on decks in my personal collection that have gotten the "alter treatment." Some have just a single alter in the command zone, and some have a half dozen, all done to a single theme.

Multani, Maro-Sorcerer

While I started with a set of Krosan Grovers, my first foray into doing an alter that wasn't just a cartoon or a muppet was my Multani, Maro-Sorcerer alter. I loved the moment in The Avengers where Groot murders an entire corridor worth of bad guys and then turns and grins at his fellow heroes. That grin wasn't something I was sure I'd be able to capture, but I really wanted to try.

Multani, Maro-Sorcerer is a delightful commander. His power and toughness can be ridiculously high, especially in the early game or at a five-player table, and shroud makes him hard to remove. This deck became the home for a motley assortment of my early attempts at altering cards and it remains one of my favorite decks.

My best friend, partner, and wife of 25 years tried her hand at altering, and while she didn't get into it as much as I did, she gave me a Noble Quarry inspired by the old Rankin-Bass animated film The Last Unicorn. I love it, and I love having something she made in one of my favorite decks. Swinging Multani alongside a Noble Quarry will often result in someone dying if they can't remove it before blockers are declared.

While technically a muppet, the little caterpillar from Labyrinth was another of my early alters. That little guy isn't very caustic, but he graces a Caustic Caterpillar in my Multani deck. This was one of many that I did two copies of, keeping one and donating one to the LGS to sell. Sometimes having this little guy on the field will keep someone from daring to play a key combo piece, so in ways he is every bit as good as instant-speed removal.

One of my favorite alters from the past year is my Grothama, All-Devouring, done as Cookie Monster from Sesame Street. It was one of my first attempts at having parts of the artwork extend outside of the art box and it's just amazing with Multani. If there are as few as 12 cards in all players' hands, I can play Grothama, attack, have Multani fight and kill Grothama, and then draw cards equal to Multani's power. That will make Multani double in power, puts cards into my hand, and will probably kill someone if all goes as planned.

I painted a bunch of simple Krosan Grovers with the kids' picture book "There's a Monster at the End of this Book" as the inspiration, but I did one with a fancy background and a Super Grover for the artwork. Krosan Grover will save me two mana on creature spells I cast with a mana value of six or more. He plays well in a lot of casual decks with high mana value commanders, and being able to get Multani out a turn or two early can make a huge difference.

I did make my share of mistakes over the past year, and I learned a lot from them. One of my experiments was to paint up a bunch of old Rampant Growths. I did them with different layouts and backgrounds, and the biggest thing I learned was that I didn't want to paint cards that wouldn't stick around. Instants and sorceries get put into the graveyard. I wanted to be able to look at my work as I played so it didn't make sense to paint anything but permanents. It's not a hard and fast rule, but it's stuck with me. Cards in graveyards get covered up and forgotten about. Permanents might end up in the graveyard, but usually they spend a little more time in the light of day before they find their way to the bin.

If I have a favorite alter in this Multani, Maro-Sorcerer deck, it might be my Sol Ring. I saw a Sol Ring altered by Mark Tedin with Gollum holding the ring and decided to try to replicate the concept using Groot. This card looks more like a baby Groot, or at least a teenaged Groot, but I love it so much I might try it again with different commanders holding a Sol Ring.

My Multani deck is a bit slow for today's high-powered EDH, but is still able to pack a punch and win games at the right tables. It's incredibly fun to play your commander and watch your opponents realize it's huge, it's scary, and they can't target it. While using a Lure effect to swing at someone can be fun, it's even more fun to play Traverse the Outlands and put a ton of lands onto the field or play Fungal Sprouting and make a mess of Saprolings. Drawing cards equal to the greatest power among creatures you control can also feel pretty sweet - especially when Groot is a 20/20 or bigger.

Hallar, the Firefletcher

Not every alter I've painted was an easy choice. I knew I wanted to alter Hallar, the Firefletcher but I didn't know if I wanted to do him as Bard the Archer from the Rankin-Bass version of The Hobbit, or as Daffy Duck from the classic Chuck Jones short, Robin Hood Daffy.

I wound up going with Chuck Jones, but I was never that happy with how it came out. I was (and am) still learning about how to properly thin my paint and I'm still figuring out which brushes to use for what purposes. I'm learning by doing, and part of that process is that I will inevitably wind up with some alters that I like but don't love. That's OK. In fact, that's probably an essential part of learning to do anything even remotely challenging.

The reason I didn't go with Bard from The Hobbit (1977) is simple. I didn't want to find myself constantly explaining what my Hallar was supposed to be. Most people playing Magic weren't around in 1977 and certainly don't have a soft spot in their hearts for that old animated film. I do, but if I went with Bard from The Hobbit, I figured I'd be the only one with any idea of who was painted on my card.

My Hallar deck is pretty simple and not particularly strong, but it can surprise a table if it's not ready for it. The basic goal is to put +1/+1 counters on Hallar and to play kicker spells. The fact that he pushes out damage to all of your opponents at once is what makes Hallar even vaguely playable in today's EDH.

Toggo and Kodama

When Commander Legends gave us a bunch of new partners I found myself writing about the same partner pairing that Josh Lee Kwai played on Game Knights. My build was more combo-oriented and seemed to struggle to get all of the right pieces to be able to combo off and win the game.

The driving force behind these alters was simple. I really, really wanted to paint a Toggo, Goblin Weaponsmith as Charlie Brown looking in his halloween candy sack and saying "I got a ROCK". I thought it was hilarious. I still think it's hilarious. Making alters that tickle my funny bone is possibly the single biggest reason I picked up a paintbrush in the first place.

I had to have Toggo's partner also be from Charles M. Schulz's Peanuts comics so when I decided to pair him with Kodama of the East Tree, it didn't take long to figure it out. Kodama could be the Kite-Eating Tree that Charlie Brown always gets his kite stuck in.

While I wasn't thrilled with my effort to reproduce Chuck Jones' unique art style, I was very happy with how my Peanuts alters came out. I was still very early in my altering journey, but I was figuring things out.

My Toggo and Kodama deck won a few games, but I didn't have enough redundancy in the various parts of the combo. It was fun, but I didn't enjoy the games where my game plan didn't come together. That was my fault as the deck-builder, not building it to be versatile enough. I eventually ended up taking the deck apart to use the sleeves for another project.

I am happy to report that one of my favorite players in our EDH League showed up one day with a Toggo and Kodama deck and took me up on my offer to lend him those alters to use for as long as he has the deck together. More than anything, I want these cards to be played so it made me happy to pass them on to someone else with a Toggo and Kodama deck.

Aegar, the Freezing Flame

I'm again showing my age, but my reference for Aegar, the Freezing Flame is actually from before my time. The stop-motion Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer holiday special is from 1964, but over the years it became so popular that nearly every child growing up in the US has seen it. Most of my tablemates would recognize the Abominable Snowman from Rudolph even if they didn't know that his name is Bumble.

This big boy was another relatively early alter, and was another chance to work on extending artwork outside of the frame. I was still learning how to do fur and shading and was mostly excited that other players recognized Bumble fairly easily.

This deck sports one other alter: the damage doubler Dictate of the Twin Gods, done with Waldorf and Statler from The Muppet Show. I did four of these and gave three to the good folks over at Commandercast. They'd joke occasionally about being like Statler and Waldorf so it felt like a good choice and a nice gesture for all the great content they've given us over many years. Commandercast is the longest-running EDH podcast in the world and I've gotten to know host Mark Mahler over the years and wanted to share some alters with Mark, co-host Adam and Calvin, who handles the audio side of things for the podcast.

My Aegar, the Freezing Flame deck tries to control the board and draw cards by burning out every little creature my opponents play. At one point I had the list pumped up with fast mana and tried playing it at high powered tables. My theory was that it was loaded up with stack interaction and had a combo finish so I should try playing it at the cEDH level. It never really held up to fringe cEDH or cEDH play, but that shouldn't surprise anyone. Aegar is not a cEDH commander.

I've since pulled out all that fast mana and I haven't been drawn to play the deck very often, but I'm not quite ready to pull the plug on it. The basic problem is that the finisher for the deck used to be infinite mana into lots of draw and something like a Comet Storm with counterspell backup. Moving the best mana rocks over to another deck made sense, but also made it harder to hit that Dramatic Scepter combo.

So far, you've seen quite an assortment of odds and ends, but there's no strong theme. The alters I've shared are all from early in my process of learning how to paint on Magic cards. They're not terrible, and some of them I'm quite proud of, but they only show you my starting point. I hadn't learned how to do fur very well, nor was I that good with gradients.

You've seen my "starting point" as an alterist. Now let me show you my current work.

Thalisse, Reverent Medium

My most recent project was to alter a half dozen cards inspired by the Tim Burton classic The Nightmare Before Christmas.

My criteria for choosing an alter subject has been simple. I want to paint something I care about, something other people will recognize and hopefully also care about, and something that isn't so realistic or intricate that it's beyond my capabilities. The Nightmare Before Christmas hit all of those notes, but it took me a while to figure out which deck to choose.

I could have picked a new commander and built a deck for this project, but I decided to go with Thalisse, Reverent Medium. It's a decent mid-powered deck that can win games and is basically fair. Thalisse as Sally isn't the most obvious match, but once I had found some reference art to work from and thought about it a little, I decided it was the way to go.

Casting Jack Skellington as Corpse Knight might seem a bit random, but the two work pretty well together and I wasn't stuck on having to make Jack a legendary creature. If I had a legendary skeleton in the deck that might have made for a perfect fit, but I didn't want to just toss someone in for the purposes of making the perfect Jack Skellington. Sally isn't a Medium, nor is she particularly Reverent. I worked with what I had; and, in the end, I was very happy with the results.

Including Zero, the ghost dog, as a card in this deck wasn't as easy. Rambunctious Mutt might have been a good match, but I really, really didn't want to add in a five-mana creature unless it could bring a lot to the table. Overcosted removal is still overcosted, even if you paint a different picture in the art box. Ravenous Chupacabra might be a Beast Horror, but it's eminently playable and I decided that I liked the irony of having happy little Zero for its artwork instead of the scary Hyena-looking thing that's on the original card.

My biggest oversight in this set of alters might have been not painting Oogie Boogie with glow-in-the-dark paint. I just didn't think of it, but I was pretty happy with how this bad boy came out and I have to thank a buddy from NexGen Comics, Matt Buchanan, for his help in figuring out some of these choices. Grave Titan was the perfect match for Oogie Boogie. I'm still not sure if I should have put in more detail on his skin to give him a better burlap texture, but all in all I really liked how he came out.

The last two in this set were added after I thought I was done. I was happy with the first four cards, but there were and still are lots of characters from Nightmare Before Christmas that just begged to be included in the deck somehow. The wheelchair-bound Dr. Finkelstein was a good fit for Endrek Sahr, though my original intention was to have the skull break out over the right side of the card frame. I ended up finishing the card, realizing I had missed that little detail, and not going back to rework it. I still might go back and re-do that skull, as I think the alter is OK but not as good as it could be.

Solemn Simulacrum was another tough pick. There's a weird clown dude in Nightmare Before Christmas that I was thinking of using, but it simply didn't feel very... solemn. The Behemoth, better known as the dude with an axe in his head, felt more "right". While he's not a robot, I thought the feel of the character was good for "sad robot."

The deck itself is fun, but not exactly fast or overly powerful. You make tokens and then make more tokens on the end step if Thalisse is on the battlefield. If I land the right combination of pieces I can definitely make a push to win the game, but there are no "I win" combos and I usually have to get there the old fashioned way: through combat. The one combo is a Kithkin that can untap to poop out more Kithkin using Paradise Mantle to untap. I'm not (yet) running Ashnod's Altar or Phyrexian Altar, so it's limited by how much mana I can put into it.

Getting From There to Here

I don't know if you can see my progress between those early alters and that last set, but I feel like I've definitely gotten better. I'm still a long way from being able to compare my work to the folks you see selling their work online. There are some amazing talents out there, and I have no idea if I'll ever get to their level.

Painting cards at my own pace and largely for my own enjoyment has been a great experience. There were months where I only churned out one or two alters, but there were also weeks where I was pushing out a new card every day. I was usually happy with my work, and I even ended up selling alters to people in my LGS's commander meta. Seeing other players excitedly showing my work to their tablemates would always make my day and I never get tired of pulling out a new piece and seeing what people thought of it.

You may not realize this, but I've left a pretty huge gap between my early work and those last six cards. Next week I'm going to go on an even deeper dive into the many, many commanders I painted between those early attempts and that recent Nightmare Before Christmas project.

I often kid that I don't do alters of actual people because my painting skill isn't that good yet, and I'd end up leaving them "looking like a freaking Muppet." You might not think that's a bad thing - most of us have some appreciation for Jim Henson's Muppets, but when I paint my first Captain America, Arya Stark or even Jim Henson, I want it to look like a person, not a sock puppet.

If my Krosan Grover, Cookie Monster or Waldorf and Statler alters caught your attention, please come back next week for part two. There's a very good reason I joke about Muppets - all ten of next week's decks happen to have commanders who have been altered have a Muppet in the art box!

Can you guess the commander I picked for Kermit? What about Animal or Gonzo the Great?

How would YOU pair up Muppets with legendary creatures in Magic?

Leave a comment below, and see if you can guess which pairings I ended up choosing!

Thanks for reading! You can check out Altered Decks, Part 2 here!