What are your aesthetic hang-ups?

[toctheyounger]

cringe-worthy Anime alters

Yes, yes, 100 times yes. Especially when they're overly sexualised. Like, it's a swamp man, what does a huge breasted scantily clad anime woman have to do with literally a piece of landscape? It's gross, and in a competitive environment I know for a fact people get DQ'd for this. I think it's creepy.

Yeah, I've never understood that trend. I've never seen anyone play them in real life but I keep seeing them on altered art galleries online! I'm perfectly okay with altered art proxies and I sometimes see amazing stuff but this ... this is just ... why? I mean there's dedicated websites for that kind of stuff...

Yeah, it's weird. I mostly play online, so I see a lot of them, and most of them are sexualized. I can't help but wonder if the guy on the other side of the computer screen is even wearing pants.

Aside from beating that gross dead horse, from a gameplay perspective a lot of alters also don't really take into consideration portraying the intended use of the card or it's play text. So many times I'm like 'that's a nice piece of art, but what does it do?' and that's pretty annoying. I know most cards I'd see in this format at least passingly well, but for someone who doesn't this is probably very frustrating.

[JWK]

cringe-worthy Anime alters

Yes, yes, 100 times yes. Especially when they're overly sexualised. Like, it's a swamp man, what does a huge breasted scantily clad anime woman have to do with literally a piece of landscape? It's gross, and in a competitive environment I know for a fact people get DQ'd for this. I think it's creepy.

A thousand times from me as well. One time this guy brought this deck into the store, all the lands were altered, but they went straight past anime into hentai. I pointed out that it was a family store, the guy didn't care, so I informed the store staff, who definitely did care. I am cool with people doing porn on their own time, but context is important, and we did have kids who play in the store and who didn't need to see tentacle porn Swamps.

[toctheyounger]

I am cool with people doing porn on their own time, but context is important, and we did have kids who play in the store and who didn't need to see tentacle porn Swamps.

To be fair, no one else needs to see that, not just kids. Keep it in the bedroom. There does seem to be a little gray area with the line between anime and hentai, but personally I think it's pretty cringe to even get close to that line.

[TheAmericanSpirit]

cringe-worthy Anime alters

Yes, yes, 100 times yes. Especially when they're overly sexualised. Like, it's a swamp man, what does a huge breasted scantily clad anime woman have to do with literally a piece of landscape? It's gross, and in a competitive environment I know for a fact people get DQ'd for this. I think it's creepy.

A thousand times from me as well. One time this guy brought this deck into the store, all the lands were altered, but they went straight past anime into hentai. I pointed out that it was a family store, the guy didn't care, so I informed the store staff, who definitely did care. I am cool with people doing porn on their own time, but context is important, and we did have kids who play in the store and who didn't need to see tentacle porn Swamps.

Bleh. I've seen one of those decks with the inappropriate anime altered lands... it is truly baffling to me why someone would want to advertise those vile preferences in public through an unrelated game. Thankfully, these creeps are like 1/1000000 in my experience, but geez, some people are sick.

The true evil of the anime-alter-abomination is not only its very existence though, I think it damages the reputation of altered cards in general. I remember way back in 8th grade, I wanted to use my mom's ebay account to pick up an altered OG Nissa. But when I saw that the little row of recommendations below the item was all essentially cartoon porn, I just called it a wash and figured I'd rather never type "mtg alter" into the search bar on our family computer again. Which is a shame, considering the real talent in the card alter community. But one shouldn't need to sift through gigabytes of such perverse trash to find good painting.

[CrazyPierre]

Sweet thread, thanks for posting!

Basic lands: From same expansion as Commander. For example, built Kambahl and the lands are from Kaladesh.
Sigarda, Host of Herons had lands from her expansion.
Why, because the mana comes from lands and they feel more comfortable on their own turf.

Jasmine Boreal is from Legends, which did not have basics, so probably will default to Alpha or Beta basics here.
Thankfully plains and forests from those sets are not crazy $.

Foils: OG foils preferred. My Urborg, Tomb of Yawgmoth and Cabal Coffers were from original printings.
Where there is no foil originally, I reserve right to not use a foil if the art on a new foil does not use OG art. Example, if Worldly Tutor foil is not Mirage art, I will not be using that foil.

[Rorseph]

I personally don't like running proxies (unless they're gold-bordered. Hi, Survival of the Fittest! ). I don't like doing the printed card face over a basic land or draft chaff unless I'm trying to decide if a pricey card is actually worth it for the decks it's destined for.

My lands are almost always full art, though this is mostly to make them easier to find off of Cultivate. However, they do have to be all of the same art.

I don't like foils because my first experience with them was in the dark days when they were prone to curling. There's also the fact that they don't look so hot in my preferred sleeves. Foils are only allowed in the command zone and only for Volrath, the Shapestealer.

[Novead]

I do have a few "rules" I follow when building my decks.

-Basics must all be different within the deck (no duplicate art) and if possible go with the theme (Innistrad-basics for a Vampire deck).

-If there's a clear theme to a deck (eg. tribal) the card art must match that theme. So, no Kindred Discovery in my Garza Zol, Plague Queen Vampire deck. Why would a bunch of merfolks give benefit to her vampires?

-Only commanders with art I like. The art is often what draws me to build a certain commander in the first place.

-Commanders get their own sleeve (on theme, if possible) separate from the rest of the deck.

Art in general is important, and I often end up playing a less optimal card simply because of greater art. My meta is very casual, so it seldom matters anyway if I play weaker cards.

[PrimevalCommander]

I don't play off color fetches, for flavor, not looks. Makes it easier on my collection too when every deck doesn't need 4-9 fetches. I break this rule for Titania because it is mono-G and needs all the fetches it can get.
I don't play proxies of cards I don't already own, but have been playing a while so my collection is deep. I usually don't want for old cards barring the super high end. This may make me biased against proxies, but if no one is proxying a ton of cards, then I wouldn't make a fuss.
I like my basics to match if there are only a few. Honestly I think there are only 2 decks I own that care about matching basics. All the others don't. Yawgmoth uses matching SNOW Swamps by default because they are the full art swamps with only one art. Most of my decks are all Full Art basics now since they are so easy to get.
NO white border if I can help it. I make exceptions for anything prohibitively expensive to get in black border, or never offered in BB.
I try to choose the art I like better when practical. In my foil decks I have been known to use a less desirable art for the sake of foiling. Looking at you Kiki-Jiki, Mirror Breaker. I am still running judge promo Vindicate (the good one) over other removal because I like the card and love the art. Plus it is still a playable card.

I usually try to pick power over looks, except in a few corner cases where I bend the rules. The game is not just about winning and having cards I enjoy playing with, either by design, or art, makes the game more fun.

[Hazzenko]

Overall, I prefer arts that I like the most, but in my area is difficult to find some of them, so will pick the others arts to use anyway. My specific cases are:

- Grenzo, Havoc Raiser uses only foils cards, even with less optimal and very dubious choices, and my most prized thing is the 30 same art Mountain from Onslaught. Was hard to find all of it, but worth it.

SPOILER

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- Infernal Kirin uses only basic lands from Kamigawa, and every legend in it are foil.

- Mogis, God of Slaughter uses full art basic lands of the same art.