Alter Sleeves MTG: An Attempt Was Made

I love altered MTG cards. Customizing Commander decks runs deep, I guess. And it runs in all different directions. In my Magic travels, I ran across this website:

https://www.altersleeves.com/

These alters look awesome. I haven't seen any in person, but at least on screen they look awesome. And the idea is simple and brilliant! Mass produced alters! By printing the alters on the inner sleeves, the player can swap the card in without any fuss.

So, I decided that a quick first draft was in order. I pulled a Worn Powerstone from my main Commander deck, grabbed a Sharpie marker, and started drawing on the inner sleeve. It looked like this.

The card on the right is untouched. The Sharpie is only marked up on the inner sleeve on the left. This is a low-risk way to alter a card. Don't like how it turned out? Replace the sleeve and start over. Want to try something new? Great! Grab a new sleeve and start drawing. Want to draw on an expensive card? Go for it. Well, go for it by drawing on the sleeve.

Here's what the card looks like inside the inner sleeve.

Does it look great? Heck no! But for a first try, this plan has promise. The stress level for doing an alter like this is low. 

Here it is in the outer sleeve.

Does it look like a Sharpie alter? Of course it does. That's what it is. The light/camera isn't doing it any favors either. I'm looking forward to trying this with some better markers. Colors! I'll bet even a thin layer of white paint with marker on top would work.

Ultimately, if you find a design you like at a website like Altered Sleeves, that might be the way to go. There are so many cool options. But if you want to try a low-risk, stress-free way to customize your deck, try altering your inner sleeves instead of the cards themselves.

Uncurl Foil MTG Cards For Real

5/16/2021 - Update - I left the cards double sleeved and packed tight in an enclosed space with dehumidifier packets. They warped again. The uncurling was not permanent.

I'm careful with my cards, always have been. I keep them in double sleeves. Temperature controlled. Low moisture. I store my cards in a Pelican case with desiccant packets and in a safe with desiccant packets.

I'm one of those people.

Over the years, I occasionally get a foil card that is already curled. The foils I've opened from packs or that are already flat when I get them stay flat. But the foils that are already curled, they are a different story.

I've tried everything to uncurl the foil cards. Pressing between stacks of books for weeks on end doesn't work, even when I use tissue paper to "draw in the moisture." Physically curling the cards the other way doesn't work, at least not for more than a few minutes. Double sleeving helps to physically hold the cards flatter, but it's still obvious that there's a curled foil in the deck. I've stored cards in sleeves and out of sleeves in sealed containers with desiccant packets. I've tried everything, that is, except putting them in the oven.

Guess what finally worked?

First, a couple of disclaimers. Don't do this to your cards. This worked for me, but maybe I got lucky. Maybe my set up is entirely different from yours. Maybe it's pure coincidence. You've been warned.

Here's the deal. I've had a few cards in one of my Commander decks that drive me crazy. The deck is for casual play, but it's still annoying to have a few cards that are obviously curled foils in the deck. If one gets shuffled to the top or shows up in a cut, it feels bad because everyone knows what it is. They know I'm not cheating, but it can still ruin the moment. I've stored these cards in a tight deck box for years and the curl has never come out.

In other words, these cards were technically unplayable. I had nothing to lose.

My assumption is that the foil layer of the card on the face is plastic or something similar that doesn't absorb moisture. The cardboard layer is paper and does absorb moisture. Too much moisture and the paper layer expands. Since the plastic layer cannot expand, the card curls "up" toward the face. Presumably the opposite happens if the card is too dry.

Like I said, I've tried other methods to remove moisture from the cards with no success. This time, I decided to try putting the cards in the oven.

I started by heating the toaster oven to 150 degrees. Then I turned it off. I only used the residual heat on the cards.

The first plate I put the cards on didn't allow them to lay flat, so I switched to a bigger plate.

I took them out of the oven, then pressed them in a big book between sheets of tissue paper as they cooled.

Nope. Still curled. I decided that I had everything out already, so I might as well give it another try. This time I turned the oven up to 175 degrees and left it on with the door open.

I also put the cards on the edges of the plate so that I could see clearly if they started to bend. The card on the left is starting to bend slightly across the back. I didn't take my eyes off the cards. Once I saw the bend forming the other way, I took the cards out and pressed them in the big book again between sheets of tissue paper.

Success. It's difficult to see in this picture, but the cards are completely flat. I put them back in double sleeves, back in the tight deck box, and left them overnight. When I took them out the next day and shuffled the deck, I could not tell which cards they were in the stack. These cards are as flat as any of the other cards.

All told, this process took about 20 minutes. Now that I know what I'm doing, I could flatten dozens of cards using the same process in less time. The biggest thing is to watch the cards in the oven closely and pull them as soon as you see the curl flatten. You can always put the cards back in if you need to.

Old School MTG: OS Battle Bots!

Are you ready?!

Sunday, Sunday, Sunday. This Sunday, get ready to rumble... with the rough and ready Battle Bots!

Watch as these metal machines smash, grab, rip, tear, and grind through the competition. Marvel as steel and rust monsters shift gears and crash for cash. It's dirty, rusty, and brutal.

We'll sell you the whole seat, but you're only going to need the edge.

Bat-bat-battle bots!

Do you want to see robots and rocket launchers? Do you want to see flying machines and battering rams? Join us this Sunday for Old School Battle Bots!

Who will be able to defeat the unstoppable Juggernaut? Will Urza's Avenger come out on top? Don't miss a second of the action when the Clockwork Beast winds up to drop a hammer on the fire-breathing Dragon Engine. Be there when the Yotian Soldier takes on the Brass Man in the Arena.

You're favorite artificers are all in on the action. Battle Gear, Weaponry, and Grenades. It. will. be. explosive!

Battle Bot fans unite. This Sunday.

Two-for-one coupons available at your local Urza's Mine, Tower, or Power Plant location. Visit any Mishra's Factory or Workshop for a free official Battle Bots! hat or t-shirt. Piston punch your way to a good time for the whole family.

Old School MTG: Old School 40 - Singleton

I've organized a 40 card Old School format tournament for a small group of friends a few times over the past few years, mostly to make the entry into Old School more forgiving and accessible. We change the rules up a bit each time, but basically it's 40 card decks using OS cards.

Earlier this year, I started thinking about building a 40 card singleton OS deck for each color with the intention of playing the decks against each other. Of course, there's still a global pandemic so this is all theoretical. I built decks for Red, Blue, and Black. Keep scrolling for deck selfies.

I played a few "games" of one deck vs. the other. They games play out a lot like the Alpha 40 games, which isn't too surprising. There is almost no deck manipulation or draw, so top decks matter a lot! Drawing lands for a few turns in a row when you need action is a problem if the other deck has pressure on the board. Classic stuff.

Getting the chance to test these decks out enough to tune them will be challenging until we can get together in person again, but it was still fun to put these decks together. I'm always struck by how darkly colorful and saturated the Alpha/Beta cards are compared to other prints/sets. It really jumps out in a side-by-side comparison with a set like Legends. Arabian Nights is in the ballpark, too.

Right now, I'm running Alpha - Fallen Empires. FE could be easily cut. The decks might work better as Alpha/Beta/Unlimited. Since the decks are so small, even with the singleton deck construction limit, it turns into running most of the most obvious cards for each color/slot with a few surprises.

The goal was to have something "ready to play" and simple enough for quick games. After putting these together, the better approach might be a mini-Battle Box designed for 2 players using OS cards. There's a great example of this using Revised cards at MTGBattleBox. We have a Battle Box using bulk cards that is a crowd favorite, so an OS Battle Box could be a good entry point for the OS format. The best part about Battle Box is that card combinations you wouldn't otherwise see come up all the time. It's a way to get surprising mileage out of the cards you've been playing for 25+ years.

Red

Blue

Black

It's Been a Strange Year (2020)

Another Christmas of giving away custom themed Commander MTG packs. Sadly, we didn't get to play much Commander over the course of the year. Maybe next year.

Without putting too fine a point on it, the global pandemic knocked a lot of things for a loop. The pandemic impacted business, family, economy, health care, mental health, and a million other things too numerous to mention. I don't want to discount any of those profound experiences with what I write here. This is my Magic: The Gathering blog. That's the focus. It's a small thing. But that's what it is, nothing more.

At the end of last year, I traded away all my dual lands for Workshops. It was going to be a year of robots and artifacts and machines. And it was. I played "artifact forward" decks in every color this year and even started exploring Old School Brawl. I played in my first webcam tournament(s) this year. I met up with friends online to play by webcam. I made trades and collected new cards, all by mail.

Old School was a big format focus for me this year. Besides webcam games with friends, I also joined the Northern Paladins for the weekly webcam gauntlet tournament. The NPs draw a great group of people for the weekly Old School games and the format is fun!

I also focused on one (and only one) Commander deck all year: Karn, Silver Golem. It was fun to develop the deck for casual games with family, adding and subtracting a few cards at a time to see how the various combinations popped up during games. Another Commander project this year was following the "average" deck at EDHRec for Karn, Silver Golem. It was interesting to see how each new set and reprint affected the average deck in the database.

I've been playing and collecting MTG for well over 20 years. I go through cycles. I fall in love with formats, collect cards for those formats, but find that I don't have the time or access to play them. It's a pattern that usually ends with me selling off a bunch of cards every five years or so. But I always turn that money into more cards because there's always another format. I also have a pattern within the format where I collect staples for decks I'll never get to play, but I convince myself that I can always get the supporting cards when the time comes. The strange and wonderful upside of this pattern is that I literally have every dollar I've ever spent on MTG cards in my collection. Prices have gone up and down, but all of the money is there. It adds up over time. And that's a lot of years of adding.

When I started to get into Old School, the pattern repeated itself. I had kept a lot of OS cards through the years, so I had a good start. I sold a bunch of Vintage, Legacy, and Commander cards to buy more OS. I played a bunch of multicolored decks. Last year, I moved to mono-colored artifact decks in OS. This next year (2021), it's time to complete my usual deckbuilding pattern and play only colorless decks. I am going from being a wild planeswalker with the power to command any color to the artificer that uses colors to support my artifact dreams to becoming the artifacts themselves. It's become more important to me over the years that the decks tell a story, they are characters in a story, and that the cards are story beats as the game unfolds.

The difficult part is the purge. Because every card has a story and a memory, trading cards in my collection for other cards is a painful process. I think that's why it takes me roughly five years to get used to the idea. I kept a log all year of my thoughts about selling cards to pick up more artifacts for OS. It's a rollercoaster to read back through. I always feel better when I'm done with the trading process, but going through it is the worst.

In 2021, I'm also thinking of exploring Karn/X Commander decks. I am playing Karn/Golems now. Karn/Vehicles looks fun. Karn/Equipment looks spicy. There's always Karn/Stax if I want to push those buttons for a while. And even Karn/Combo for more button pushing.

After all these years, MTG is still my favorite game.

Old School Brawl MTG: Sol'Kanar vs. Aladdin

The Sentinels maintain a set of rules for playing Brawl format in Old School. It's a kick in the pants. If you're looking for something new to try, check it out. The banlist is short. The games are full of variance.

Ben and I had a chance to give the format a try recently using a webcam. He brought his Sol'Kanar the swamp king deck. I brought Aladdin. We ended up going 2-2 before calling it a night, but one of my wins was on the back of Ben keeping a two mountain hand and drawing nothing for the first six turns. Otherwise, I felt like I was on the back foot the entire time. Aladdin played like a bad combination of an aggro deck with some light control elements and a defensive deck trying to draw things out for a big X-spell finisher. Not great, but fun games! Lots of decisions. And not just that, decisions that mattered. The format is good at producing those kinds of games.

Here's Ben's Sol'Kanar Brawl deck:

Here's my Aladdin Brawl deck:

I successfully used Falling Star on a Royal Assassin at one point. Whew. Saved.

Old School MTG: Living the Dream with the Northern Paladins

Over the past few months, I've been able to work my schedule to join the Norther Paladin Old School Magic Club for the Tuesday Night Gauntlet (webcam) event a couple of times. It's been a blast!

http://northernpaladins.com/

The Paladins run a fun, casual event on Tuesday night. There's no entry fee, so the stakes are low in this three round tournament. They also have liberal reprint and proxy rules, which makes testing out new decks easy. It also makes it inviting for new players who may not have all the cards. The discord channel for the Paladins is active on Tuesday night with lots of great Old School talk.

If you want to join in (you should!) read up on the modified deck construction rules. They ban/restrict a few cards you are probably running (in multiples) in your other Old School format games. The idea is to open up deck construction space and add some variety to the format. I think it works well.

In my first event, I played this deck:

It's my Robot Reanimator deck. I went 2-1. I did get to beat down with Yawgmoth's Demon, which was sweet. I also finally pulled off the Priest+Su-Chi+Drain Life synergy I had been planning for months.

In my second event, I played this deck:

It's my aggressive Legendary Lands Robots deck. I went 2-1 again, losing to a sweet Bazaar/Reanimator list that was bonkers with Animate Dead and All Hallow's Eve!

I also played one other time just by jumping into the discord on a random night and seeing if anyone was available for a pick-up game. I played this deck:

It's my Sindbad Singleton deck. We weren't playing Paladin rules that night (Library of Alexandria and Strip Mine are banned). The Library is replaced by a Desert and the Strip Mine is replaced by Tolaria.

With the pandemic still in full effect, there understandably hasn't been any in-person events in my area. Having a go-to Tuesday night Old School webcam event is a godsend. The Paladins run the event really well. Round timers are strict, but the event has a casual vibe. Everyone I've played with has been great! And I've met people from across the country who love Old School. Maybe I'll see you there.