Welcome to the All New Card Alter Feature!!!

Site Updates forum

Posted on May 9, 2015, 1:18 a.m. by Femme_Fatale

Hi-ho~ Femme_Fatale here to bring you an important update that has been around the site for about a week. This update is the alters function. Where you can upload your own image to a card and have it portrayed as that. Examples:

• Command Tower
• Elixir of Immortality
• Engineered Explosives
• Forest

First question you may be having is: "OMG HOW DO I DO THAT THAT IS SO COOL!" Well, I am here to divulge in the wondrous art of uploading your own alters. Show

That's how you do it. Simple. Now comes how to code your alters into deck lists or comments and descriptions. All you have to do is implement the alter code at the end of the card syntax separated by a space. Here's what they would look like:

• 2x Gaea's Cradle *A=166*
• Gilded Lotus

Now where do I get that code you may ask? Well, you find it on the alters list, the same page where you go to find the "Add Alter" button displayed on the gif. The very middle column is the "alter code" column. And this is where you will find your code to copy and paste.

Do you have to add your own alters? Show

Certainly not! Many other users will be adding their own alters and you will be able to use theirs as well. The easiest method to finding another alter is by just experimenting with the alter code. All you have to do is change the number and a new alter may pop-up.

For reference, I'll post my own alters list and a deck list which will list all the alters and users who have submitted an alter. Please note that this deck list does have some loading problems, so keep that in mind if you have a slow computer or are searching from a mobile device. You'd be better off going straight to my alters list.

deck-large:Alters List

Where do I get all my alters? Everywhere. The biggest three are deviantart, cardkitty and ebay. I even have an overly massive list of alters of which I'm slowly adding to the site.

I am also free for requests. If you wish to have an alter for a particular non-standard, non-fringe card, whether it be from that list of alters that I linked above, from another site, or even if you don't know how to find one, I'll easily find one for you. But if you are going to add your own, please be sure to check those lists to see if I already have one added that you could use instead. This prevents duplicates or needless uploading.

Now I'm going to lay out some guidelines for if you are to submit alters yourself. There are two main things I will be looking at, and there are the same criteria that WotC focuses on when examining the alters of decks themselves. Show

Rule number one: Information must be adequately portrayed and be visible on all alters.

While this isn't as necessary for us as it is for tournament play, the general rules apply. The most important thing on a card is the rules text. The whole point of having roll-overs for us is to have the ability to find out what a card does without having to go into its individual card page. Exceptions are made for non-utility lands (ie, things that aren't like Cavern of Souls or Homeward Path) and for really well known cards that don't have much text.

The next important thing is the card's power and toughness, if it has it. Since there is nothing on T/O that dictates something's P/T. Mana cost comes second since it is generally easy to remember. The card's type is second last since deck-lists do have it sectioned off into categories and name is the least important since, well, you have the name in the alter list and when you put it in decks.

Rule number two: No excessive or blatant sexualization portrayed on magic cards. This game is PG-13, so we cannot have blatant nudity or have sexualized characters on lands just because you like to look at them. Keep it clean, or at the very least, sensual and empowering. An example of two alters that could be considered sexualized, one that many users may dislike and one that many users may be okay with.

If you are uncomfortable with a user's use of alters, politely ask them to remove it, and if they refuse, you can bring the potential offense up to a reputable user on this site or create a thread for it and we'll discuss the acceptance level of that alter. Just be aware that some of us may be more accepting of it than others, like me. If you wish to read a bit more in depth about sexualization of mtg related product, here are links to the important posts I made in a thread that was discussing that very issue.

• Part one.
• Part two.
• Part three.

There are numerous other rules which are not as important, but should still be kept in mind when uploading alters. Show

These include: Keeping the submitted alters MtG related, cropping the borders out of cards that may have them (ie, this Azusa, Lost but Seeking should have been cropped), making sure the uploaded image has a high enough resolution and quality to be seen, keeping the language of the cards as English, giving credit to the original artist wherever you link the card, keeping the submitted alters as actual cards and removing any foreign objects during cropping, like fingers or the table or light glare (example: this Arid Mesa should have been cropped).

For MtG related alters and being kept as actual cards, if you have a custom set made from MSE and wish to make a cube of it on here, you can do that. Just let me know before hand so I know what's happening, and be aware that the draft simulator most likely won't show the alters since the playtester won't show them either. As for cropping, it is pretty easy to crop. Photoshop, paint, iranview and gyazo are all good cropping tools. Remember that the goal is to get the borders out to present the alter in the same way that we present any other image here on T/O, without that black or white border. This doesn't apply to alters whose borders have been coloured/painted completely over. The English language rule is because most of us here do not speak a language other than English, and having a card in another language violates the first rule of legibility.

Finally, giving credit to the artists is the hardest for most to do, and the most tedious, but you can make this much easier by doing the same thing that I've done with the massive alters list pastebin I linked earlier, and just link that wherever you use the alters. This is further easier if you just use my alters since I already make sure to source all the images I use in the massive alters list pastebin I linked earlier. That pastebin shows a variety of things. First, it says the card name, and then it has a bunch of urls right below that. Most of those urls are links to the source of where I found an alter of said card name. If there is a tinyurl, or a gyazo or something that ends in an image format like .png that follows right after the source url, than that is the cropped image or shortened url image (the list was originally made for untap after all) of the above source.

The very last few things I want to mention, is that most of these rules don't really apply if you are using alters that you actually own and/or are trying to sell. So you can freely ignore these ones with the exception of the sexuality rule. While we would be a lot more lenient on the sexuality rule for sellers of alters, keep in mind that we have people under the age of 18 on her and selling sexual alters is grounds for selling pornography to children, which is not allowed. But beyond that, you are free to go.

These rules are not set in stone and nor will they be governed with an iron fist. They are here for you to get a general idea of what is acceptable in our community and to provide users with a enjoyable and convenient experience at all times.

Please keep these in mind when uploading alters, and go out and have some fun :D

EDIT: As some may have noticed the ability to add alters has been removed, this is due to too many people using the alters database as a personal image repository. Users will now have to be manually accepted to be able to add alters.

The alters database is not used for custom cards, please use the custom card feature, it's button is found under the "Cards" tab at the top.

The alters database is not used for missing cards/printings, please make a submission form using the card add/fix form on the given set page also found under the "Cards" tab. Not that the fix button on each individual card's page goes to the most recent printing, not the printing that you want to add.

kengiczar says... #1

Femme_Fatale is this something we can use as an alternative to MSE's Export feature in order to test cards with the play tester here?

May 30, 2015 5:51 a.m.

Femme_Fatale says... #2

No kengiczar, because the play tester does not show alters.

May 30, 2015 8:50 a.m.

kengiczar says... #3

Ok thanks for the reply.

May 30, 2015 6:59 p.m.

Blackshadow415 says... #4

Opps srry Femme_Fatale I'll go fix that

June 1, 2015 3:14 p.m.

Ender666666 says... #5

Hey all, I'm experiencing what I think is a glitch with the alters I uploaded.

When I try to use the * F * (Foil tag), I just get the Black and Rainbow rectangle (Foiling overlay?), and no card image. The scans work otherwise.

Is there a way to allow them to play nicely together?

June 8, 2015 7:34 a.m.

Femme_Fatale says... #6

Don't think so Ender666666. yeaGO?

June 8, 2015 11:12 a.m.

yeaGO says... #7

seems like a bug

June 8, 2015 11:12 a.m.

Ender666666 says... #8

Please let me know if the bug gets squashed.

June 8, 2015 11:20 a.m.

JohnnyBaggins says... #9

I'd absolutely love to add two alters I have printed for myself but it seems like I can't pick a printing for which the alter is. I want to add Karplusan Forest and Brushland, but it doesn't matter, no matter which card I try, it doesn't work. Any idea what might be going wrong?

August 19, 2015 8:01 a.m.

Femme_Fatale says... #10

Give me more detail suislecalme? I have no idea what you are talking about. Do you wish to add alters to the database? Do you wish to print out some of these alters to have them proxied in real life? Do you wish to put them into decks here on T/O?

August 20, 2015 11:09 p.m.

yeaGO says... #11

it's a bug but it should be fixed suislecalme

August 21, 2015 12:18 a.m.

Femme_Fatale says... #12

Alrighty then. So it has to do with our database itself.

August 21, 2015 12:35 a.m.

yeaGO says... #13

"but it seems like I can't pick a printing for which the alter is..."

bug. yes.

August 21, 2015 3:34 a.m.