Kiora / Prism Array is ridiculously broken

Ryudhyn

I've played against this deck many times, and it is way too powerful and the games grind out forever. If you don't know it, the deck features Prism Array to stall and draw cards, along with several supports and spells that convert gems to green. Then, with all the supports out, Crush of Tentacles wipes the board and leaves them with a 16 reach creature. Before you can even get creatures to be able to kill the blocker, they have more supports and play their whole hand again (including another Crush if needed) and board wipe.

I feel this deck is dominant because A) Kiora being able to use blue and green together is far more powerful than any other combination (extra mana, then draw more cards, repeat), and Prism Array being able to constantly refill their hand every turn (because everything becomes green, so landfall always happens). One of these things needs to change.

PapiLouis4

Ryudhyn wrote:

I've played against this deck many times, and it is way too powerful and the games grind out forever. If you don't know it, the deck features Prism Array to stall and draw cards, along with several supports and spells that convert gems to green. Then, with all the supports out, Crush of Tentacles wipes the board and leaves them with a 16 reach creature. Before you can even get creatures to be able to kill the blocker, they have more supports and play their whole hand again (including another Crush if needed) and board wipe.

I feel this deck is dominant because A) Kiora being able to use blue and green together is far more powerful than any other combination (extra mana, then draw more cards, repeat), and Prism Array being able to constantly refill their hand every turn (because everything becomes green, so landfall always happens). One of these things needs to change.

this, my friend, is one of the reasons why kiora costs 950 crystals to buy

EDHdad

Every color has the ability to deal with this.

Scour from Existence will kill the Octopus in all colors. Anything with Ingest will convert green / blue gems to void, possibly slowing Kiora down.

White can disable and/or Kill the Octopus.

Blue can bounce, disable or kill the Octopus, or cast its own Crush of Tentacles if possible.

Black can kill the Octopus, and force discard of the larger spells while they're still in hand.

Red can destroy the support, possibly burn the Octopus (though Scour from Existence works better), and also throw down Berserker creatures in a hurry.

Green can reset the board with The Great Aurora (subject to availability), destroy the support, and possibly throw down some beefy creatures to deal with the Octopus (or, Scour from Existence).

I played against a Kiora deck which had Crush of Tentacles. It would throw down a bunch of fat creatures, destroy them with its own Crush of Tentacles, and then just as its octopus was poised to attack, kill it by using another Crush of Tentacles.

shteev

Just give up, mate. Nobody cares.

It's so blatantly obvious, especially now we have PvP, that Kiora is head and shoulders above all the other Planeswalkers, but everyone around here seems to be OK with that. You think Prism Array is busted? Try playing against a deck that looks something like this:


Scour from Existence
Blight Herder
Drowner of Hope
Matter Reshaper
Part the Waterveil
Zendikar Resurgence
Nissa's Pilgrimage
Fertile Growth
Mirror pool
Crush of Tentacles


Drowner of Hope gives you an 8/8 which freezes your opponent's entire team, and a 4/4 defender that gives you 12 mana when it dies. It costs 17 mana, which means the net cost is 5 mana. Fair?

Crush of Tentacles gives you a Displacement Wave (=14 mana) and then a 16/16 with Reach and Trample (lets say, 32 mana, thats what 2x6/6 Skysnare Spiders cost) for 21 mana, rather than the 46 you'd expect... and of course Kiora is built for all kinds of combos so it'll probably cost even less than that.

Bottom line is, yes the game is imbalanced, and no-one really gives a toss.

Ryudhyn

Every color has the ability to deal with this.

Scour from Existence will kill the Octopus in all colors. Anything with Ingest will convert green / blue gems to void, possibly slowing Kiora down.

White can disable and/or Kill the Octopus.

Blue can bounce, disable or kill the Octopus, or cast its own Crush of Tentacles if possible.

Black can kill the Octopus, and force discard of the larger spells while they're still in hand.

Red can destroy the support, possibly burn the Octopus (though Scour from Existence works better), and also throw down Berserker creatures in a hurry.

Green can reset the board with The Great Aurora (subject to availability), destroy the support, and possibly throw down some beefy creatures to deal with the Octopus (or, Scour from Existence).

I played against a Kiora deck which had Crush of Tentacles. It would throw down a bunch of fat creatures, destroy them with its own Crush of Tentacles, and then just as its octopus was poised to attack, kill it by using another Crush of Tentacles.

Scour from Existence costs 12, so unless I'm preparing for this and not setting up my board, I'm not gonna be able to Scour in one turn. Plus, even if I do, Kiora gets access to another Crush of Tentacles very quickly from the card draw.

White and Blue can disable it, sure, but Kiora gets so many matches that their supports that disable will be gone very quickly.

Black's discard is ineffective because Prism Array just draws her hand back, so unless I had some way to KEEP her hand empty (which is almost impossible turn after turn when she's refilling).

Red can't burn the octopus, don't be ridiculous. Red can use board destruction to get rid of the supports, on a good day when it draws the right cards. Red is probably the best at defeating this Kiora deck.

Green's creatures don't match up well with the octopus OR with Crush of Tentacles bouncing them. If they're big enough to do anything, they'll be too expensive to replay; and if they're small enough to replay, they won't affect the board with Octo in play. Sure, if I draw a 1-of Great Aurora (which I don't have, but even if I did) then I can kill the supports, and then still not be able to kill my opponent in time before they can get the combo rolling again.

this, my friend, is one of the reasons why kiora costs 950 crystals to buy

Costing crystals (aka real money, for most people) shouldn't be a reason to do broken things. Doing cool and exciting things is all great, and I am all for letting people pay extra to get amazing things, but it still has to be balanced. In paper magic, Tarmogoyf costs 150-200$, and it still isn't BROKEN. It dies to almost all removal in the format, and can be dealt with by any deck that wants to.

Bottom line is, yes the game is imbalanced, and no-one really gives a toss.

Clearly, at least I do. And if I do, then there are some others that do. I would venture a guess that most people DO care, they just have given up. I do not plan to give up, because I want a game that's fun for everyone, not a game that's super imbalanced and fun only until you play against the one walker that people pay way more money for.
--

Being totally honest and looking at all cards everyone has available, Kiora simply has access to too many super powerful spells and can ramp to them, making her broken. No one can deal with a well built Kiora deck unless you build the deck SPECIFICALLY to fight Kiora (in which case you're worse against everything else). That is the definition of format breaking, and needs to be fixed.

shteev

Ryudhyn wrote:

Prism Array being able to constantly refill their hand every turn (because everything becomes green, so landfall always happens). One of these things needs to change.

What's really insane is that Prism Array has been buffed recently. Before the last update (or two), if I had no creatures in play, and your Prism Array Landfall triggered, you would draw no cards; you needed to actually disable a creature to draw cards.

A valid tactic for playing against Prism Array decks used to be not to play any creatures until you could play 3 large ones at the same same; not any more.

The dev team chose to fix Prism Array by making it more powerful, rather than changing the wording on the card to reflect the fact that you do not draw if no creature is disabled.

Irving

I get the frustration, but think it's overstated. That Kiora deck is probably the best deck out there. It's definitely challenging to play against, but I beat it around 75% of the time with the 5 regular PWs. It takes time, patience and situational awareness (and yeah, some good cards), not unlike beating a control deck in paper MTG.

Is Prism in play? Be willing to take less mana to avoid landfalling, at least if you've got a creature and her hand is empty.

Did Kiora just play out her hand on a bunch of cheap supports, so you know there's no Crush coming right away? Spend your mana on getting power onto the board and knocking her life total down. Is she charging an expensive card? Crush could be coming - time for the Scatter, the Transgress, or charging up a Scour or some bounce. Basically, be ready to shift gears instantly from aggressive to defensive and back.

Don't spend a lot of resources on reinforcing or buffing creatures - expect the board to get reset once or twice before it's over. Sometimes you have time to charge a Outland Colossus halfway up and leave it in hand (next to your Scour, of course) for a faster recovery from Crush.

Exile aggressively and never get caught not drawing due to hand size, unless you really have *exactly* what you need, which you basically never do.

And sure, she has answers for some of these strategies. But she doesn't have them all the time.

Overall it takes a good deal more concentration and time than beating most other PWs - it's not the semi-mindless phone game that it can sometimes otherwise be, like when grinding Quick Battles. It may well be in line for a power adjustment, since it does change the game. But I enjoy the challenge and all the little decisions that have to be made.

*Note: Not sure how much your mileage may vary depending on how invested in the game you are. I spent a bit of money on the game at first, but since the drop rate got nerfed, the return on your money is really depressingly low - would have been happy to spend more, but $20-25 for ~6 random rares and no way to buy/trade for the ones you need is hugely unsatisfying. So I have all but one of the Origins rares and 3/4 of the mythics, but much worse results from BFZ/OGW since I barely played for a month or two. Color mastery brought me back to playing a lot - cool to be rewarded for trying out other deck builds, though it's painful to use the **** you need to get the last few points for gold. So I have good decks, but no premium PWs.