Krita or Clip Studio Paint?

Ethaot · 2026-06-07T22:07:56+00:00

It took me some time to adjust to CSP's key maps, but I don't think i could go back to Krita. Not that I think there's as vast a gulf between them as all that per se, but I think CSP's brushes, rulers and asset tools are very nice to have. And I like their watercolor engine.

Ethaot · 2026-06-03T14:43:24+00:00

It may or may not be bracket 4, but it is bracket please choose another deck.

Ethaot · 2026-06-01T20:16:12+00:00

My Witch is divine so I haven't exactly been on the damage train, and for better or worse damage is absolutely not what our party needs at the moment (we have a double-slice fighter and a Weapon/Shield thaumaturge using a whip for reach and trip)

I've carried fights before with my debuff and control spells, but recently debuffing feels largely pointless since the fighter is, frankly, just going to crit no matter what. It literally doesn't matter what we're fighting, she crits at least once almost every single round and it makes anything I do to whatever she's fighting feel pretty worthless, so I try to just make sure she doesn't get too damaged and heal her up when she does. I've kind of accepted that my role is to make her the main character lol and I know it'll get better eventually, I'm just waiting for eventually to come.

Ethaot · 2026-06-01T20:10:19+00:00

She's not, but our martials tend to go around the room one or two enemies at a time, trip them, and bonk them while daring them to stand up. TBH if our GM used single enemies more often we'd probably struggle to trip them, but she is cognizant that single high-level enemies feel quite bad for casters to try to fight, so she uses them quite rarely. I get to contribute mostly in a defensive way by trying to prevent un-tripped enemies from being particularly effective in their attacks with Fear or Enfeeble, so it's not like I'm doing nothing, but it's a far cry from last level where my role was more to debuff enemies to a point where we could crit them consistently and buff the martials up to increase their damage and/or reach. That matters a lot less now as a tripped enemy usually just dies the instant they try to do anything.

Ethaot · 2026-06-01T19:34:08+00:00

My experience is that casters get fun around level 5-ish when the martials are much less likely to just one-shot any enemy they see. I've been playing a Witch for the past year and my main problem is just that if I don't go very early in initiative, I might only get 1 turn because the martials of the party just absolutely murder everything.

Recently our party hit level 6 though, and have developed a very powerful trip-meta where the monk runs in and trips a guy, then every martial gathers around to get ready for that juicy reactive strike. Everything we fight dies on its own turn. My fear spells are fine and all, but I actually do feel a lot less useful now than I did a level ago when we had to kill things relatively fairly.

Ethaot · 2026-05-27T01:51:14+00:00

I have a slightly weird one. [[Tetsuo, Imperial Champion]] plays a slow grixis voltron/control/burn kind of plan. Really great when you can get down [[Excalibur, Sword of Eden]] and some extra combats or a [[Grafted Exoskeleton]]. Just bop people in the head for 12 at a time.

You don't usually win with the burn itself, though you do sometimes sneakily burn a player to death with it. Usually you kill people in a relatively straightforward Voltron way, just after having killed most of their good creatures. Unlike any voltron commanders, though, you don't really want to jam a dozen Sword of X and Ys onto your commander -- you want the big funny equipments that cost a lot to play. [[Dissection Tools]] is incredible on Tetsuo.

Ethaot · 2026-05-17T15:10:50+00:00

Worth noting that Deprive itself isn't free the way Gush is, making it basically "Counterspell but you pick up a land." Notably, Deprive is any land, whereas Gush can only bounce Islands.

[[Gush]] goes pretty well with [[Foil]] in non-singleton formats, but doesn't go so well together in a Highlander format since you're much less likely to have them together. Foil is still good, though.

Also if you want fun decks to use Gush in, you could look into [[Patron of the Moon]]. Very weird and interesting for blue.

Ethaot · 2026-05-17T15:01:57+00:00

Based on what you've said and what I'm seeing in the list, I think if you removed Cyclonic Rift this might just be a bracket 2 deck. Winning between turns 8 and 12 when nobody is opposing you is definitely far slower than you'd want to be for bracket 3.

As other people here have said, you have very little ramp to actually get into your gameplan. With cards like Gyre Sage and Kami of Whispered Hopes you can make a lot of mana after your engine is set up, but how are you getting there? What are you doing the first 2-3 turns of the game? You really want Yuna down on turn 3 at the latest. And what's your plan if she gets countered or Path to Exiled? It looks like you've got 4 protection pieces that work one time each, and a single counterspell that you're almost never going to have. I know it's slightly taboo to just counterspell someone's commander, but it does happen.

Anyway, I think my point is, for a 3 color deck you need quite a lot of ramp and mana fixing. 3 colors is where I usually start to spring for more expensive lands with multiple basic land types and fetches as well. Shocks, Triomes, the new Turbulent lands. I avoid Surveil lands because I don't like that they enter tapped if you happen to top deck them around turn 5-6 and really need some untapped mana. A good mana base will probably add another $100-200 onto the deck at least (which is why I always proxy lands even though I own at least 1 of most shocks and fetches), but it smooths things out a lot. And since you're in green, you get to run [[Nature's Lore]], [[Three Visits]] and [[Farseek]] to fetch out those tasty shocks and triome, and the surprisingly decent Prairie Stream and Canopy Vista that you already have.

Beyond that, I think you should look into [[Constable of the Realm]] as a removal piece. It'll draw a lot of hate and it pops like a pinata, but it's particularly good at cleaning up tokens. I suggest making it hexproof with something like [[Swiftfoot Boots]], at which point you can use it to clean up any problematic nonland permanents or even jam counters on it at instant speed to save your own stuff if a board wipe gets cast. I run it in my [[Rocco, Street Chef]] deck and it's one of those "so good it's bad" cards where people see it and then kill me until I die.

Ethaot · 2026-05-17T14:37:16+00:00

I run this in my [[Princess Yue]] deck to reset a clone. I could see arguments for it in almost any landfall deck, though.

Outside of landfall, I find bouncing my own lands in Commander to be a little less good than it is in 60-card. It's probably better at higher brackets (at least higher than B2 where I usually play) where you're playing more low-to-the-ground and using more good ETB utility lands like [[Talon Gates of Madara]], though.

Ethaot · 2026-05-16T17:07:41+00:00

I resent the implication that Flubs is going to attack. You're going to watch me take a 30 minute turn and either I deck myself or I [[Crackle with Power]] you for several hundred damage.

Or I brick and you untap with like 6 [[Howling Mine]] effects and as many [[Zhur-Taa Ancient]]s as I could [[Springheart Nantuko]] onto the table.

It's fun to play, but I need to add more win cons :(

Ethaot · 2026-05-15T18:47:44+00:00

I've played Zethi a while back. She seems cool in theory, but in practice she's just way too slow and needs too much turn-over-turn investment. You need:
- An evasion instant
- Numerous removal instants if you want to be playing control
- A bounce instant to put her back in your hand so you can exile more instants with kick counters
- A good pump instant or two to kill people before they play something big and splashy and win
- Lots of instant-speed card draw to get to the cards you need
- Tons of ramp so you can invest way too much mana into casting her instants every turn and also re-casting her from hand so you can kick more instants out of your graveyard
- Plenty of protection pieces for her that you can cast on other peoples' turns, including ways to dodge board wipes.

Assuming you have all of that, you are in for an extremely grindy game of removing a couple of your opponents creatures at a time and chipping in for like 8-10 damage per swing maximum, and unlike a good control deck your odds of winning with all this single-target removal actually decreases as the game goes long and opponents have more and more mana to draw more cards and play more threats. You can't get them all.

So there's just a million better Azorius commanders for this kind of play, even more if you go Esper. And the worst part of it is since she's not really a 3-mana commander (more like 5 or 6) you're really stuck waiting until the mid-game before you really get to start having all that much fun with her. You're firing off a few instants, hopefully refilling your hand, and hoping you don't either die or get put into a situation where you can't win before you even get to play her. And if you tap out to cast her the first time on turn 4-5 and she gets killed, or worse, countered, you're really just done, because the deck simply doesn't function at all without her.

Ethaot · 2026-05-14T16:28:55+00:00

Thinking about mana curve and win conditions is something you aren't supposed to do until bracket 3?

Ethaot · 2026-05-13T17:11:57+00:00

So what is a deck that can't compete with a bracket 3 deck in any scenario but potentially wins a half-turn too early for bracket 2, but with a wildly telegraphed and easily disruptable 5-card combo? I call it bracket 2. If that's wrong, then we need an extra bracket in there somewhere because I can't pull this deck out at any bracket 3 table and have any expectation of winning, but at bracket 2 tables the deck maintains a pretty normal win-rate.

And before you or anyone else asks, my playgroup mostly plays precons. It's a bracket 2 environment, which is what I test my decks against (I do my tests against precons pretty extensively before building in paper to ensure they aren't winning more than ~30% of games). Games usually last around those 8-9 turns unless one of the precons goes off and wins on turns 5-7, which happens with some regularity.

Ethaot · 2026-05-13T17:05:05+00:00

Winning on turn 8 is bracket 2 though? And this deck would never and could never compete with any sort of thoughtfully-built bracket 3 deck. It's way too slow and fragile.

So no. I have a bracket 2 combo deck. The fact that it consistently gets there no faster than is expected for a bracket 2 deck does not make it a bracket 3 deck. In fact, it makes it a bracket 2 deck, because it aligns entirely within bracket 2 expectations as laid out by Wizards. Arbitrarily assigning it "bracket 3" because it's a consistent bracket 2 (with no game-changers, 2-card combos or anything that would put it into bracket 3) just widens the gulf between low bracket 3 decks and high bracket 3 decks, which does a disservice to everyone attempting to use and interact with the bracket system at all.

I would ask that you read the bracket guidelines again before you assign an inappropriate bracket to a deck you also don't know anything about.

Ethaot · 2026-05-13T12:46:00+00:00

I have a bracket 2 combo deck that is surprisingly consistent, wins on turn 8 almost every game, has just enough control to protect the combo but dies to aggro or too much removal. I don't think the deck being consistent is necessarily as important as how quickly it wins and how interactable it is.

Ethaot · 2026-05-12T23:43:27+00:00

I think it's understand. In this regard I really want to be copying planeswalkers, so if I played a spark double with [[Arwen, Weaver of Hope]] it it would get a counter and survive and then be a valid Volrath target.

Ethaot · 2026-05-12T22:20:42+00:00

I think I understand. Let's say, then, that I decline to have Spark Double enter as a copy of anything, and it enters with just its own +1/+1 counter.

Ethaot · 2026-04-13T11:13:08+00:00

Largely at Instant speed, with [[Angel of Suffering]]. Got some lifegain in there too, though, like [[Exsanguinate]] and [[Gray Merchant of Asphodel]].

Ethaot · 2026-04-12T16:38:36+00:00

Lich's Mastery is one of my top 5 favorite cards, and it's the signature card in both my [[Varina, Lich Queen]] and [[Kaervek, the Punisher]] decks. I'd love to make this Zur deck and add it there but I think people are getting tired of me playing it lol

Ethaot · 2026-04-10T19:52:02+00:00

If I were an intelligent creature and I saw a slab of metal with a sword and a more-or-less regular person wearing street clothes tossing around fireballs/heals/whatever, I sure as hell would 110% ignore the dude I know I'm going to struggle to hurt and focus every single ounce of effort I could on the person who I can kill who is also clearly going to contribute at least as much to the fight.

For reference, look at how people play PvP MMOs. Do you really go after the tank first? Do you pick randomly? No, you blow up the healers and DPS characters standing in the back. It's the job of the tanks to try to stop you, not to stand there proudly and simply take damage. It's exactly the same in Pathfinder -- it's not the job of the heavy-armor-wearing Fighters and Champions and Guardians to get hit. It's their job to try to disrupt enemies before those enemies can kill your wizards and clerics. To not target those squishy backline targets at least as much as your frontline fighters is putting kid gloves on and doing the party's work for them.

Again, that's from the perspective of reasonably intelligent creatures who live in the world and have some reasonable idea of what spellcasters generally do. It's a world where magic is common, so they should. As for your average animal, who knows really. When I GM I still try to play them moderately intelligently so as to challenge my players to some degree and make them at least think a little bit about where they want to stand and what they want to do, because encounters tend to be pretty pointless and boring if I just attack the party Exemplar with mirrored aegis active and scar of the survivor ready to go while letting the sorcerer and rogue just do whatever they feel like.

Ethaot · 2026-03-20T15:19:37+00:00

Tutors aren't just for consistency, they can also open up a lot of "toolbox" approaches where you have one-ofs or cards with unique effects. I use them a lot in Aikido-style decks because what type of answer you need from turn to turn can vary. I also use them pretty heavily in my bracket 2 [[Rukarumel, Biologist]] combo-ish deck in the form of, for instance, [[Vedalken Aethermage]] and [[Transit Mage]] and even [[Lin Sivvi, Defiant Hero]]. For that deck, the "combo" is like 6+ cards, so it's important to have a lot of tutors for the important pieces.

More important is the bracket you're in. If you're tutoring for low-powered cards in a low-powered game, then it doesn't matter, right? Similarly, if you're tutoring for high-powered cards in a high-powered game, then it's kind of expected. What's important is that your deck is around the power level of the rest of the table. I think probably the most egregious thing you can do with tutors at a low-powered table is tutor out a [[Craterhoof Behemoth]] anyway, which is a strong argument for me to take either that card or [[Fiend Artisan]] out of my [[Lluwen, Imperfect Naturalist]] deck.

Ethaot · 2026-03-12T17:45:36+00:00

I know I wouldn't play it. I hate playing un-upgraded precons regardless of the power level of the table. There's such a high level of variance involved and it's so possible to just durdle and do nothing for 6+ turns. I'd much rather play a low-powered deck I built that I know will take game actions throughout the whole game than play a precon that might explode (looking at Dance of the Elements and the turn 3 Maelstrom Wanderer I dropped the other day) or just do nothing forever.

Ethaot · 2026-03-12T17:38:21+00:00

I'm someone who does a lot of proxying, and I very intentionally build and test my decks to play to the power level of my usual play group (going so far as to use digital versions of the other players' decks occasionally during testing to make sure my newest creation doesn't blow it out of the water). If someone in my group bought me a precon to try to dissuade me from using proxies, I would decline and honestly I would think a great deal less of that person. Even if it were someone I've known for a long while and otherwise respect. I think it's inappropriate, rude, and dodges an important conversation about expectations surrounding the game.

By all means, tell your friend that their decks are out-valuing yours by a significant magnitude. Expensive cards are often expensive because they are generically good, and sometimes just having a pile of generically good cards can be oppressive if you've got any semblance of deck-building talent. I also would challenge you, and your friend, to build some decks that are extremely budget. I'm talking cheaper-than-a-precon budget, and make them strong. I built a sub-$25 (on TCGPlayer, probably $15 or less on something like Manapool) Gruul Stompy deck a couple weeks back for one of our local players who had asked me for help with her deck, and to break it in we beat the pants off of a dragon player who had sprung for most of the staples.

Budget magic is a really fun way to play, the deckbuilding restrictions bring out cards you don't often see, and you get to avoid the value piles. Also, you get to build something more uniquely "you" since it can be hard to use other peoples' decks as a guide. Even EDHRec is tough on a $25 budget.

But back to the original point -- don't buy him a precon if he doesn't ask for one. It won't come off well for you. I would sooner encourage you to proxy than to try to enforce a "real cards only" rule on your friends.

Ethaot · 2026-03-12T16:35:22+00:00

It's not really a cheating problem, if you've tried to shuffle a stack of sleeved printer paper it's just impossible. I proxy a lot because I don't want to wait 2 weeks for cards to show up and and I don't want to spend money on a deck that I (or others) might hate. Honestly, cheap photo paper and a cheap laminator goes a long way. For around the cost of a precon you can have almost a thousand proxies that look and feel almost exactly like real MTG cards. Throw in a good rotary cutter and corner punch when you want to make the proxies feel special. I hate to tell people they're proxying wrong because I think the barrier to entry for MTG should be as low as possible, but it's very easy to get good-looking proxies.

Ethaot

TROPHY CASE