Romans in the Decadence of the Empire, 1847 by Thomas Couture.

Jace, Telepath Unbound by Jaime Jones.

Greetings! If you're stumbling upon this column without having read part 1, I'd like to invite you to check out that article here. If you enjoyed last week's look at both my earliest and my most recent attempts at altering cards, welcome back!

Last week I shared four commanders that I've not only got in my personal collection, but which I have pimped out with custom alters that I painted myself. My goal wasn't to show off my mad talent, as my talent isn't that mad and I'm not that much of a show-off. My intention was to try to impress upon you, dear reader, that you too can learn to alter cards. If I can do it, you can do it. I churned out a lot of not-so-amazing alters in the early days, but over time I grew more comfortable with the challenge and at the end I was pretty happy with my work.

This week I'm going to dive deep into what turned out to be an ongoing theme for 2021 for me: Muppet alters!

My choice of making alters using Muppets as my subject matter wasn't a random one. I grew up in the 1970's and watched both Sesame Street and The Muppet Show, but that just explains why Muppets are near and dear to my heart. The real reason is simple - primitive shapes. Muppets are made of very primitive shapes (ovals, circles, etc...) and before I ever try to paint David Bowie's cheekbones or Mark Hamill's jawline, I need to start with something simple. There aren't many subjects that are simpler from a design and layout perspective than painting a Muppet.

That doesn't mean it was easy. I spent hours learning how to do highlights and shadows and figuring out how to give these characters the shape and the personality they deserved. Even with all that work, I still consider myself a bit of a hack - working with old paint that's probably too gloppy and old brushes that probably should have been replaced years ago.

My point in sharing last week's and this week's column is simple: if I can do it, then you can do it. You might even be able to do it better. Do you have a commander deck and an cool idea for how you'd like to have your commander altered? You can always commission a professional artist to do your alter, but you can also learn how to do it yourself.

I asked at the end of last week's column for your thoughts on what legendary creatures you'd pair up with various Muppets. Without further ado, let's look at the choices I wound up making.

Goreclaw, Terror of Qal Sisma

My first really challenging piece after painting my Groot alter of Multani, Maro-Sorcerer was Goreclaw, Terror of Qal Sisma. I have an old air compressor and an airbrush that had been gathering dust for years and I decided to put it to use. My choice for Goreclaw was the one and only Fozzie Bear.

Waka waka indeed. I put down a background brick wall and then used black and white paint with the airbrush to create the look of a background spotlight. That combined with the edge highlight resulted in what is still one of my favorite pieces. I also made a Spore Frog alter using the Kermit drinking Lipton Tea meme as my inspiration. I actually made a bunch of these, with Kermit drinking a martini or a glass of red wine. I quickly found that using a familiar meme for your alter helps make sure it will be easily recognized.

My Goreclaw deck itself isn't exactly a world beater. It's a beast tribal build with no real combos and a relatively fair game plan. I still love the deck, and I don't mind that it's not that powerful. Goreclaw Beasts is a good deck to play against newer players and precons or to switch down in power if I've just crushed a table or combo'ed off to win a game. My Goreclaw has a few wins under its belt, but when I play it I'm kind of "punting" the game and not really expecting anything big to happen. It's a "chill and hang out" deck, not a "push for the win" deck.

My favorite card in Goreclaw might be Curious Herd, which can generate a beast token for every artifact target opponent controls. Nobody ever sees that card coming, and if I'm at a table with a Breya deck (and they haven't won yet) or an equipment deck I can often get a nice little beast army from it.

Jarad, Golgari Lich Lord

If Goreclaw is one of my fairer decks, Jarad, Golgari Lich Lord is definitely one of my stronger decks. It was built on the bones of an old fringe cEDH Marwyn, the Nurturer list and my choice for the alter was the ill-tempered Oscar the Grouch.

I don't airbrush every alter I do, but this was my second attempt at using that technique. Jarad was done months after I painted Goreclaw and it felt right to put Oscar and his trash can in front of yet another brick wall. In the context of this article, it does look like I'm lacking in imagination, but I'm still pretty happy with how this one came out. The look is a little different when just using black for a vignette effect and it makes me wonder why I don't just airbrush every alter I do so I can get better at using that technique.

Jarad can win out of nowhere with Phyrexian Devourer, so it felt appropriate to alter that odd artifact creature as Oscar's little buddy, Slimey. The deck can also do most of the usual infinite mana elf combos using big mana dorks and Staff of Domination, Umbral Mantle or Sword of the Paruns. It certainly doesn't win every game, but I always feel like I've got a shot at a win when I'm playing Jarad. I don't generally play this deck at casual tables, but it can hang with high-powered decks and has even won games at cEDH tables. The only real problem is that I tend to lean on my insta-win Slimey combo and that can get boring for both me and my tablemates.

Syr Konrad, the Grim

A part of me wanted to stay away from doing too many Sesame Street alters. I'm over 50 years old, for goodness' sake, but I also found it hard to resist characters like Oscar the Grouch. When it came to choosing an alter for Syr Konrad, the Grim, who just loves to count how many creatures went in or out of your graveyard, there was only one choice: The Count.

The flavor fail on this card is that Syr Konrad isn't a vampire, but that didn't stop me from doing it anyways. This was another example of taking a big step into putting as much time and effort into the background as I put into the character. For a lot of these alters, the background ended up being a huge part of what makes the piece work. In retrospect I could have done better with getting all those lines right, but I was still pretty happy with the result.

This deck is a fairly typical Konrad deck, with a good amount of removal and a few cards like Morality Shift that can just push out a ton of damage at once. It's one of the few decks I run Bolas's Citadel in, and while I hesitate to call it high-powered, it is a solid deck that has won its share of games. I suspect I would do well to add some ways to give Konrad infect, but I haven't decided to really push this list further up in power yet.

Grumgully the Generous

My Konrad deck might not be fully tuned, but I can't say the same thing about my Grumgully, the Generous deck. This is a persist combo build with enough redundancy to give it a pretty good winrate in casual and even high-powered play. I don't think it's fast or interactive enough for fringe cEDH or cEDH play, but that's all right by me. My choice of alter subjects for Grumgully was largely driven by the color scheme and the feel of the original card. For some reason I was drawn to do my Grumgully as Dr Teeth, from the rock band in The Muppet Movie, Dr Teeth and the Electric Mayhem.

My favorite part of my Dr Teeth alter is his hair. This was when I started really getting good at making Muppet fur and hair look the way I wanted it to look. This card is a great example of the value of learning altering techniques. I was able to really nail the shape and layout of Dr Teeth's face and I was only able to do that by using a lead transfer process.

I printed out my target artwork at the same size as the art box and put pencil lead all over the back of the paper. Then I lay my illustration over the primed art box and used a ballpoint pen to trace over the major shapes. That transfers the lead onto the coat of primer on the card, allowing me to very closely match the design of the illustration I wanted to reproduce. I'd still have to get the colors and shading right, but not having to freehand all the shapes in the design was a huge step in being able to produce quality alters.

My Grumgully deck has a four-part combo with multiple redundancies across all parts of the combo. If the game goes long enough there's a very good chance that I'll end up assembling my persist creature, my sacrifice outlet, my +1/+1 counter source and my payoff. If I do, it's often possible to respond with interaction on the stack to keep the combo going. If a piece is removed I've got a decent chance at finding another. If you've got an appetite for combo and don't mind being in Gruul, I highly recommend Grumgully persist combo. It is fun stuff and it definitely can win you some games.

Wulfgar of Icewind Dale

My next alter was another experiment in doing a close-up of a Muppet's face. When I put together Wulfgar of Icewind Dale I built it up as a Gruul Dragons deck with a healthy assortment of creatures with attack triggers. Any deck that was going to be as focused on going to combat as Wulfgar would be needed to have a wild and crazy Muppet and there was no better choice than the one and only Animal.

This was another alter where didn't care that much about the background. I could have done some sort of gradient but decided to go with black so Animal would really jump out of the design. I think I did a pretty good job with the fur, but it's not perfect and it's not my favorite alter. I like it a lot and it does have a kind of energy that will catch the eye of anyone who hasn't seen it before.

The deck itself has some pretty sweet creatures with attack triggers. I once had a game where I was able to attack with Etali, Primal Storm with Wulfgar on the field in two consecutive turns without either one getting removed. It was fantastic to pile up that many Etali triggers and I was able to turn all that extra value into a win.

The dragons in the deck are the kind that will let me get up to all sorts of shenanigans. Old Gnawbone and Goldspan Dragon are in the mix, but my favorite two might be Hellkite Charger and Savage Ventmaw. When you double up Ventmaw's attack trigger you can activate Hellkite Charger to get an extra combat step. If you've got opponents without reach or flying blockers and they can't remove any of your key pieces, you just win with combat damage.

Vadrik, Astral Archmage

It seems I've been on a bit of a Dragons kick this year. Vadrik, Astral Archmage might be my favorite new deck. I had already done alters for two of the members of the Electric Mayhem band - Dr. Teeth and Animal, so it was easy to go back to that well for Vadrik, Astral Archmage. The feel of that card led me to pick Floyd Pepper for Vadrik's alter.

Floyd Pepper is pink and is dressed in a uniform reminiscent of the way the Beatles are dressed on the cover of Sergeant Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band. I loved the references to Pink Floyd and The Beatles. I put my Floyd in front of a moonlit background with a dragon flying through the air. The dragon isn't exactly brimming with detail, but it's a little thing that was a nod to the fact that this is, above all else, a Dragonstorm deck. I was quite happy with how Floyd's mustache and eyebrows came out. It's important to be able to identify the key parts of a character and get those right, even if other parts aren't quite perfect, and I think I accomplished that with this alter.

My Vadrik deck is a storm deck that is specifically designed to build up a good storm count and then play Dragonstorm. If that resolves and I can put down the right Dragons in the right order, I should be able to win the game outright through enter-the-battlefield damage, or with combat damage on the same turn my dragons hit the field. It's also packing every Niv-Mizzet I could get my hands on, along with the key combo pieces they use.

There are probably better ways to build Vadrik storm, but I like Dragons and I've struggled in the past to find a deck that could put Dragonstorm to any use. Now I have it, and I even have a cool alter to use for my commander.

Grismold the Dreadsower

This next commander was one I struggled with. I knew which Muppet I wanted to use, but I spent weeks trying to set upon exactly how to paint him. Most muppets aren't that hard to figure out, but when you've decided to paint a Muppet that is somewhere around nine feet tall, it's worth thinking hard about how to approach your subject. That subject is the imposing and endearing Sweetums.

I considered painting a full art Sweetums or having him standing, but hunched over so that his immense size was part of the design. I slightly regret not going that route, but when I came across a picture of his face I decided a close-up was the way to go. The only drawback would be that some people wouldn't "get it" and I'd have to explain who I had painted for the alter.

In terms of the feel of the piece and the quality of work I did on the fur, I was very happy with how Sweetums came out. He's got a real horror feel to him and for me that makes up for the lack of a sense of how big the character actually is.

My Grismold deck is another of my relatively fair decks. It generally wins through combat damage after making and killing a lot of small token creatures. If my opponents can't pull into removal it isn't that hard to get Grismold big enough to be a real threat and any commander that naturally plays into a removal-heavy strategy is going to be able to compete in casual EDH. It isn't tuned up or fast enough to play at cEDH tables, but it's nice to have another deck that I can pull out for lower powered games.

Yisan, the Wanderer Bard

Over the past year I made a lot of Kermit the Frog alters, but they were mostly on Spore Frogs. It took until fairly late in the year before I finally broke down and put my first Kermit on a legendary creature. It was actually for one of the guys at the LGS I play at, and I ended up making two and keeping one.

When you paint a character enough times, it gets a lot easier to get the character right. Kermit might not have the level of detail that a Muppet with fur or facial hair demands, but getting the shapes of his eyes, mouth, face and collar right were really important to end up with a good result. I decided to put him in front of a moonlit sea, though I could see an argument that he would have been better in a woodland setting. Having him playing the banjo made sense for Yisan, the Wanderer Bard.

This was one of the very few alters I made where I took apart another deck and rebuilt it so that I could have this alter in the command zone. I had been playing a Yedora, Grave Gardener deck but found that it wasn't working for me. Moving the deck over to Yisan allowed me to drop out a ton of morph creatures and rebuild it as a Yisan deck with a mix of Yisan support cards and Yedora combo cards. At its core it's still looking to hit that silly Temur Charger combo and having Yisan in place to tutor key pieces onto the battlefield seems to work pretty well.

An optimized Yisan deck can still play at fringe cEDH and maybe even cEDH tables, though the high end of our format has sped up a lot since Yisan was a major player in high-powered EDH. My list isn't that highly tuned, but can play at high powered decks with some success and it does well against casual and mid-powered decks.

Garth One-Eye

The decision for what to use for Garth One-Eye was an easy one after I cracked open a showcase variant of that card. The flavor text "Mood: A powerful, quirky, curious man" led me to go with one of the most quirky and curious of Muppets - Gonzo the Great.

I ended up looking to Muppet Treasure Island for a reference image that would give me the Gonzo I ended up using for Garth. Putting him on a pirate ship made sense, and my only real struggle was deciding whether to give him an eye patch or a glowing eye like you see in the original card's artwork. This ended up being another alter where the background was as important as the characters themselves. Getting the shading on the sails right felt as valuable as nailing the highlights on Gonzo's fur and shoulders.

This deck ended up being a high-powered Food Chain combo list with singleton lands so that it could also win with Tainted Pact / Demonic Consultation and Thassa's Oracle. I've won games both ways, and while my list isn't fast enough to compete at cEDH tables, it can hang with high powered decks and occasionally steal a win. My biggest problem is that my local cEDH meta is a turn two or 3 meta, playing the fastest decks in the format, and my Garth list just isn't able to establish a threat or interact fast enough to be relevant in those kinds of games.

Muldrotha, the Gravetide

My Muldrotha, the Gravetide alter might have been my biggest surprise of the year. The dude who asked for a Kermit the Frog Yisan asked what I might do for Muldrotha. I thought about it and realized that I hadn't seriously considered Pepe, the King Prawn for any of my alters yet. Pepe first appeared in 1996, decades after my own introduction to The Muppets, so he was never really on my radar as an option. I knew he existed, but it wasn't until I took a close look that I realized he was really the perfect choice for Muldrotha.

I mocked up the design for this card over on pixlr.com, an online image editor, and realized that Pepe's face and hair (if that even is hair) was very similar in shape to Muldrotha's face and horns, and that it would be easy to add in a couple of extra arms. My only real quandary was whether or not to repaint the entire background or try to overlay the new character on top of the old character.

I wound up deciding to repaint the whole art box. I wasn't confident that I would be able to make my work fit into the original artwork, but more importantly, I also knew that the more painting I do the better I'll get. Re-painting the background would be a challenge, but my own background would fit with my Pepe and that extra work would help me become a better alterist. It's not perfect, but it's clear that it's Muldrotha's background and it fits with my Pepe really well.

This was one of my few decks that picked up a bunch of other alters over the past year.

Muldrotha loves Spore Frog because he can bring it back again each turn by casting it out of the graveyard. This Kermit alter was from a screencap out of The Muppet Movie and was one of my first alters after I did my original Krosan Grovers.

This deck has gotten tuned up a few times, with shiny new combos and a few high price cards. After picking up a Lion's Eye Diamond I had to include one of the Spiderman meme Phantasmal Image alters I had painted and donated to my LGS to sell. This deck is chock full of combos, but one of my favorites has to be Hermit Druid, or as I like to call him - Kermit Druid. This bad boy can tap to mill my entire deck, as this list runs no basic lands.

My Muldrotha deck isn't quite fast enough to play well against today's cEDH decks, but it does well at high powered and fringe cEDH tables. It can win off of Kermit Druid and has Protean Hulk lines, but my favorite play with this deck is to Traumatize or Tunnel Vision myself and then cast Splendid Reclamation to put all the lands in my graveyard onto the battlefield. If I can untap after pulling off that little trick, the deck's winrate shoots up a lot.

Final Thoughts

As 2021 winds down I have to look back and marvel at all the alters I've been able to make. I'm not on the level of the amazing professional alterists you can find online, but I've learned a lot and I now have a bunch of altered Commanders in my collection.

I can see how I've improved and I also see how far I still have to go. I went from painting a bunch of goofy Krosan Grovers to having a sweet Thalisse, Reverent Medium theme deck with a half dozen pretty decent Nightmare Before Christmas alters.

If that sounds like something you'd like to do yourself, then consider yourself challenged.

You can do it. You have cards lying around and you can probably afford a few paint brushes and some cheap acrylic paint. You can do what I did, search up some tutorials online and then start planning, priming, designing and painting your Magic cards!

Will they be terrible at first?

Quite possibly, but the point isn't to paint a masterpiece on your first try.

Commit to painting a card a week and by the end of 2022 I bet you'll be able to look back and see how you've gone from feeling like a hack with a paintbrush to being a slightly more accomplished hack with some pretty cool alters in your collection. That's what I did in 2021. It took time, and it was humbling, but it is absolutely something you can do.

That's all I've got for today. I hope you enjoyed this look at some of my favorite decks and my 2021 adventure in learning how to alter cards. Thanks for reading and I'll see you back here next Monday for my last column of the year.