Kiora underpowered?

supernatural

My Kiora deck is way more consistent than any other deck I have. I usually win all of my matches with less than 5 health lost. I think she is super overpowered.

Primary Cards

6 Days Undoing (Discard hand: Draw 6 each card gets 3 mana)
possible to use multiple times in one turn
6 Sphinx Tutelage (Whenever you draw a card, the first card in your opponents hand cost 2 more)
permanent lockdown

Mana Ramp

2 Fertile Thicket (Covert 3 to Green)
3 Natural Connection (Convert 3 to Green)
when triggering a cascade it'll allow you to cast Days Undoing if drawn again

Control

4 Disperse (Return a creature, it gains 6 mana)
Can delay a deck long enough for you to get out a Sphinx or a Days Undoing which shuffles the creature away
3 Stratus Walk (Give a creature flying, draw a card)
4 Plummet Destroy target creature with flying
The two card combo allows you to deal with any creature they might get in due to a cascade. Drawing a card is an additional bonus. You can use Stratus to just draw a card and improve lock down or search. Discard plummet if opponent is locked down to make room in your full hand.

Draw

2 Artificer's Epiphany (Draw 1 or 2 if you control a support)
Enhances sphinx lock down and lets you search for Day's Undoing

Creatures

8 Sigiled Starfish (Draw and additional card each turn)
9 Jhessian Thief (Draw a card when doing damage to a planeswalker, gets +1/+1 until end of turn when you cast a support or spell)

Together they keep your hand completely full and your opponent locked down, the shear amount of spells and supports you spit out with days undoing will ramp your thief a lot.

EDHdad

Great deck. I love the low mana curve (average 4.7 by my calculation). Stratus Walk + Plummet is brilliant.

If you have it, I'd suggest Coastal Discovery over Artificier's Epiphany. It always draws 2, and casts for free with Day's Undoing. But there might also be times when you want to cast it for its awakening cost and put 4 power onto the board.

supernatural

I have been trying to pull coastal discovery with no success. My only fear is that it will overload when I cascade and not fill the other spells. I may swap the starfish with coastal discovery instead. That way I consistently get the thief with my second ability and can use my first ability to charge days.

I tried swapping disperse for elvish visionary. That worked well except against Nissa decks that cascaded quickly. I'd rather have near 100% wins than to go a little faster.

I'd also like to try managorger Hydra but I don't own that either.

shteev

I love everything about this deck. You, sir, are a genius

supernatural

Thanks, the bad hands are usually either all plummet and status walk which usually will stop their tempo either way or all high casting creatures which stall the momentum. Either way you win but it might just seem less fun. Really you can only lose to a lucky cascade with Nissa who uses low cost creatures and you don't draw a bounce or plummet combo which is difficult.

EDHdad

The Plummet + Stratus Walk combo may be satisfying to pull off, but it's still 2 cards with a combined total of 7 mana. Neither one does much on its own. You might try just running a straight up removal spell (Turn to Frog / Scour from Existence) plus maybe a good draw spell in its place. Talent of the Telepath works well if you have it, since it would cast nearly any other card in your deck for free.

There's also synergy with Scour from Existence + Murk Strider. Murk Strider casts for free with Day's Undoing and can put early pressure on the board. Scour from Existence creates void gems. Murk Strider can process a void gem and bounce an opponent's creature.

All of these might mess up your low mana curve somewhat, but they could make your deck more resilient against an out-of control board state.

HelloWorld

EDHdad wrote:

There's also synergy with Scour from Existence + Murk Strider.

An alternative to that might simply be Anchor to the Aether, 7 mana disperse with card draw. If you're using Days Undoing to reshuffle the hands, there is no sense is paying the 12 mana it takes to use Scour from Existence and Murk, while a cheap creature, is useless unless you've already ingested.

Also I think Noyan Dar should get an honorable mention, he is simply amazing in low cost spell decks. His 15 cost can be reduced using Kiora's 2nd ability but unlike Jhessian he permanently gets +3/+3 per spell. So if you think Jhessian can swing pretty big on a good turn, imagine triple that figure and it stacks with last round's gain. It's why creature removal is so helpful. I don't have a Days Undoing, but Sphinx Tutelage + Artificer's Epiphany does pretty well on it's own at preventing the AI from casting anything unless it cascades (which is unfairly often), adding another five card draw to that really should give you enough to warrant the creature change.

Fetch also doesn't seem to process Sphinx's Tutelage, so Talent of the Telepath would be a spend 5 mana to cast a 3 mana spell, previewing three cards is larger devalued when you just keep recycling your hand or spamming card draws anyway. I'd leave it out. And alternatively, life gain really really helps sustainability with playing multiple quick battles in a row if you want to use a single walker. So while you'd lose some speed and repetition but Alhammarret's Archive + Herald Of The Pantheon would double your card draws and give you +6 life per support (ideally lots of fertile thickets) played. You could drop the Sigiled Starfish if you need to make room to since Artificer's Epiphany would kick out four cards each time it's used, your biggest problem should be not being able to discard in the middle of things.

And here is an updated list of possible cards that try to use this combination.

Creatures
Noyan Dar or Jhessian Thief
Sigiled Starfish

Spells
Days Undoing
Disperse
Natural Connection
Artificer's Epiphany or Costal Discovery

Support
Sphinx's Tutelage
Fertile Thicket

Additional Creature Removal Choices
Scour from Existence + Murk Strider or Plummet + Stratus Walk or Anchor to the Aether

Honorable Mentions
Alhammarret's Archive + Herald Of The Pantheon (++card draw & life gain but higher costing)
Conclave Naturalists or Reclaiming Vines (support removal, useful vs heroics)

Feel free to adept based on what cards you have or round out some edges. Like Nissa's Removal (convert 20 gems to green & +30 life) would give you all the life gain you need if you need it. And most of the cards are blue so you can easily adapt this to Jace or Tezzert.

Wolfwood

The stratus walk plummet combo is great the card draw really makes it a 1 card cost combo. It also gives the deck alot more velocity. When deck building I would still highly recommend cutting down to just a single creature to maximize the second ability. I have been really impressed with grip of ice as a second creature. Like I said in my deck post it is a bounding krasis with haste.

I am running a "budget" version of my deck and it feels pretty solid with all of her abilities being useful. But she feels pretty bad when behind I may slot in disperse or something instead of Spawning bed as Spawning bed feels way to slow.

Jhessian theif

Spawning bed (not to sure about this pick)
Fertile thicket
Nissa's pilgrimage
Sphinx's tutelage

Plummet
Stratus walk
Artificers epiphany
Grip of ice
Foundry of the counsel

HelloWorld

@Wolfwood, what is "grip of ice"?

Also, tried it and stratus/plummet is too card extensive. Same with the alt suggestion. Disperse & Anchor are far easier but it simply cannot keep up with your opponents creatures until the mana combo is completed which means a lot of HP loss for each round just trying to get set up. The build pretty much cannot perform without Days Undoing's hand cycling and rapid casting so it's a little out of my reach. Maybe one of these days the dev's will have enough money to satisfy their insatiable lust for greed that they allow will us, in some manner, to trade cards around so I will try to remember this combo if I ever get one.

Plastic

Here's my Kiora vs Chandra within 4 minutes.

https://youtu.be/lHaRrSh-3Pw

Deck used:


http://imgur.com/fs5xvvz

supernatural

The Plummet + Stratus Walk combo may be satisfying to pull off, but it's still 2 cards with a combined total of 7 mana. Neither one does much on its own. You might try just running a straight up removal spell (Turn to Frog / Scour from Existence) plus maybe a good draw spell in its place. Talent of the Telepath works well if you have it, since it would cast nearly any other card in your deck for free.

Turn to frog was too expensive and slowed down the Days of Undoing combo. Stratus Walk just for the draw is solid enough to run alone. Plummet is otherwise useless but if they eek out a good creature and fill up their hand you're screwed. With Days of Undoing you and the two creatures you will have a full hand every turn so the two cards isn't a problem. Plus since they both fill up 3 mana you're only paying 1 to remove a creature.

There's also synergy with Scour from Existence + Murk Strider. Murk Strider casts for free with Day's Undoing and can put early pressure on the board. Scour from Existence creates void gems. Murk Strider can process a void gem and bounce an opponent's creature.

Murk Strider was great at low levels but was too dependant on Days to get a good body. Using ability 2 was disappointing as well. Scour from existence is super mana intensive and would add another stalling card and reduce cascades.

Noyan Dar is a solid card just like Managorger Hydra. You lose draw power by removing thief or starfish but that may not be a problem. I am unable to test those unfortunately.

Anchor really takes the mana away from what you really want to cast. I've tried it and the draw is nice but by the time you generated the extra mana you might have lost your window to bounce the creature since the opponents hand is full.

I might try grip of ice, instead of the starfish. I've been eyeing it for awhile now. I'm not sure how it'll work without a creature on the board but it is worth a shot.

supernatural

Rush of Ice is a nice addition. It is even more quick control and a possible body or quick boost spell. I lost a little card advantage but have yet to max out on drawing which is nice. If I could get coastal discovery I'd try without disperse since it is soft control. Only downside is that I need a creature on the board.

Wolfwood

@helloworld sorry it should be "rush of ice" it cost 1 with awaken 12 for 3 1/1 islands with haste. So it is 2 more mana and 1 less p/t then bounding krasis and it does not take up a creature slot.

So my real deck looks like this

Dywnen

Plummet
Stratus walk
Artificers epiphany
Rush of ice
Animist's awakening

Thopter spy network
Prism array
Fertile thicket
Nissa's pilgrimage

supernatural

I ran prism array for a little while until I found it was kind of slow, but it is probably the best substitution for days if you don't have it.

Ethyde

Hi !

Well, at this moment i run something like a "premium" deck with Kiora lvl 50 :

Spell :
Reclaim
Adverse Conditions
Talent of the Telepath

Support :
Meteorite
Sphinx's Tutelage
Shrine of the Forsaken Gods

Creature :
Blight Herder
Herald of the Pantheon
Drowner of Hope
Ulamog, the Ceaseless Hunger

Realy efficient

Ap00calypse

Plastic wrote:

Here's my Kiora vs Chandra within 4 minutes.

https://youtu.be/lHaRrSh-3Pw

Deck used:


http://imgur.com/fs5xvvz

Unrelated - what app do you use for recording ? Mobizen lags the bejesus out of playback.

Plastic

Ap00calypse wrote:

Plastic wrote:

Here's my Kiora vs Chandra within 4 minutes.

https://youtu.be/lHaRrSh-3Pw

Deck used:


http://imgur.com/fs5xvvz

Unrelated - what app do you use for recording ? Mobizen lags the bejesus out of playback.

https://play.google.com/store/apps/deta ... .rec&hl=en