Kiora underpowered?

Zelandoni · May 2016

Does anyone else feel that Kiora is kind of underpowered? I seem to have quite a difficult time winning with her. Granted, that might just be because I'm missing powerful cards (Animist's Awakening, I'm looking at you.)

To elaborate, at first glance, all of her abilities seem very powerful. Her first ability costs 6

, subtracts 6 mana from your opponent, and gives you 6 mana. However, I feel that this ability is underwhelming compared to the two closest analogs. Chandra's first ability infamously only costs 3

and does 4 damage to your opponent while destroying a 3x3 square on the board. Nissa's first ability costs 9

, but gives you 3 mana and 3 life, while drawing you a card and converting 3 gems on the board to green. Kiora's ability gives you the most mana upfront, 1 for each

spent, but has no impact on the board at all, and this is why I feel that the other two are much better. Both Chandra and Nissa directly manipulate the board in their favor, almost always resulting in more of a return on investment than Kiora's. In addition, its secondary effect of subtracting 6 mana from your opponent feels much less relevant than either dealing 4 damage to them, or gaining 3 life and drawing a card.

Kiora's second ability costs 12

. In exchange, you get the next creature in your library and it gains 16 mana. In my experience, this has been as powerful as it seems, drawing you a card and often casting that card for free.

Kiora's ultimate is probably the first thing most people noticed. For 24

, you gain a 32/32 creature with both reach and trample, quickly and handily turning the game in your favor. Except for those times that it simply gets Scoured from Existence, or any other removal. Of course, "die to removal" is a cliche in paper Magic for a reason, and, more often than not, I have won the games in which I got this beastly Octopus out. The trick comes in surviving until you have 24

, resisting the temptation to activate any of Kiora's other abilities.

Additionally, Kiora's mana bonuses at 60 are +3 to both

and

and +0 to everything else. A total of +6 is respectable, but the fact that it is concentrated in 2 colors means that Kiora is often slower at mana production than, for example, Ally-Gideon or Garruk, which is only exacerbated when paired against a green or blue opponent.

I feel that Kiora simply does not offer anything substantially different from what we already have. Garruk or Nissa are better at getting out large creatures quickly. Blue in its control guise is already underpowered in the game, and Kiora does not offer anything helpful in that area, either. Kiora's ultimate is arguably the best at ending a game, but ignoring her other abilities and rushing an Octopus feels like a risky strategy. Ignoring her ultimate, and using her first and especially second abilities works sometimes, but can't match the consistent mana of Garruk or the cascades-into-mana and loyality of Chandra.

So, am I just playing Kiora wrong? Do I need a better a card pool? Any other Kiora owners brave enough to weigh in?

Rogan_Josh · May 2016

She's a bit of an odd one but she's far from underpowered.

her mana restrictions are quite a pain and her third ability isn't really worth the cost most of the time, but for that you have access to a huge card pool to play with.

Granted you actually have to have the cards available but don't we all right? (still waiting to pick up a Day's Undoing sadly).

Rootbreaker · May 2016

What's your deck look like?

EDHdad · May 2016

Honestly, if Kiora had no abilities at all, she'd be powerful, only because you could play with 2 colors.

If you have the cards, I'd suggest an enchantment based build with Herald of the Pantheon, Thopter Spy Network, and any supports which turn gems into green.

"Dies to removal" works both ways. Blue has the ability to bounce anything which is giving you a problem and green has creatures like Skysnare Spider which can slam into other creatures and hit the opponent in the face as well.

Plastic · May 2016

Post your deck and we can give you some insight. I feel like she's pretty solid honestly and it might just have to do with which cards a player owns.

Zelandoni · May 2016

It could very well be my card pool. I don't have many of the powerful blue cards (missing Day's, Spy Network, bouncy Merfolk, etc) so I've been running her very similarly to Garruk. Lots of supports, Herald, Dwynen, Mantle of Webs, and Soulblade Djinn as my only blue card because it seemed efficiently costed.

I do have Clutch and Anchor, I could add those in and see how it goes.

BassMuffinFIve · May 2016

I'm not sure that adding blue cards to green's pool really helps out green at all. Jace is one of the worst planeswalkers right now, if not the worst. Bounce is conditional removal, and worse than Scour from Existence, so green doesn't gain anything from blue's "removal". Green already has card draw in the form of Nissa's Revelation and Nissa's first PW ability. Green already cascades like a mofo and blue doesn't further that. So what does blue offer green, if not removal and card draw? **** creatures??

Blasphemous · May 2016

http://i.imgur.com/9AGMOii.jpg

I can't use BBCodes and post a picture or I would. I'm assuming I haven't been given the proper permissions yet or I don't know what I'm doing. The later is probably more true.

This is what I use currently and it kills rather fast. With all those damn Chandras's (sp I know) out there currently, I had to use a card destruction spell from blue. I don't have Disciple unfortunately. I have used her from other decks though

I do have Exert Influence which is pretty sweet. What my build does is establishes a small defense fast while I bounce or take a creature that I like from you and use it for myself. This deck is crazy fast and powerful. I tried out the green's Evolutionary Leap a little but found it to be too expensive to be practical. Overall I've not had any issues with her at all. If any of you have any pointers to make this tweak out better or if the build you're using is better, PLEASE share it.

Plastic · May 2016

If you have Jhessian Thief and Sphinx's Tutelage, they make a good combo with all the ramp green offers in conjunction. Starfish is also decent instead of Thief. I had a semi control deck using those and Alhammeret (creature),as far as blue cards in deck, and did pretty well.

I'll post the deck later when I can.

http://imgur.com/Xs7fHeY

Rootbreaker · May 2016

I think when she goes on sale for crystals, I'll probably try running something like this:

Nissa's Pilgrimage
Yavimaya Coast
Fertile Thicket

Talent of the Telepath
Day's Undoing
Joraga Invocation
Turn to Frog

Woodland Bellower
Outland Colossus
Soulblade Djinn

Wolfwood · May 2016

Harbinger of the tides

Rush of ice (bounding Krasis with haste)
Clutch of currents (more expensive but more flexible harbinger)
Ugin's incite (weakest card)
Animist's awakening (ramp)
Turn to frog(cheapish unconditional removal)

Thopter spy network
Prism array(gas gas and more gas. And a tiny bit of tempo)
Fertile thicket(ramp)
Nissa's pilgrimage (ramp)

This is the deck I am currently running it wins on average in between 2-5 minutes.

The way I aproached the deck was what creature do I want 100% of the time when I use kiora's second power. The best creature I have for it is harbinger (but I think Dwynan or woodland bellower will be better if I get either of them.)
The awakened cards are great good tempo plays that leave bodies behind. Sometimes clutch gets stranded in my hand because the opponent gets stuck on 6 cards. (The ai is really bad and will loop the same two cards once you have them stuck on 6).
I naturally hit Kiora's 3rd ability 75% of the time.( even without Animist's awakening showing up to the party)
I would say the best card in the deck is prism array it punishes any match 4 of the opponent and fills your hand with more ramp/tempo.

Any non chandra game I loss about 10-15 life and against chandra I loss between 20-30.

Hope this helps

EDHdad · May 2016

So what does blue offer green, if not removal and card draw? **** creatures??

Blue offers tempo.

Imagine a blue deck with a Sigiled Starfish on the field, and the next 100 cards in the deck are all Disperse.

Now imagine a green deck with Skysnare Spider on the field, 5 Skysnare Spiders in hand and the next 100 cards in the deck are also Skysnare Spider.

Suppose blue gets 4 mana per turn, while green gets 6 mana per turn.

Blue's turns would look like this:

Bounce the spider, attack for 3.

Green's turns would look like this:

Cast the spider for 6, no attacks, pass turn.

Blue will eventually win that game even though their creature has less power and they receive less mana per turn.

Now, imagine green gets all rampy, and generates 18 mana per turn, while blue still generates 4 mana per turn.

Blue bounces the spider, hits for 3.

Green casts 2 spiders, has a 12/12 spider on the field, passes turn.

Blue bounces the spider, hits for 3.

That's tempo. Blue is using one card and 4 mana to undo what green is doing with 2 cards and 18 mana.

Rogan_Josh · May 2016

EDHdad wrote:

So what does blue offer green, if not removal and card draw? **** creatures??

Blue offers tempo.

......

Thank you for a point well illustrated.

What blue offers is the "no" command.

HomeRn · May 2016

EDHdad wrote:

So what does blue offer green, if not removal and card draw? **** creatures??

Blue offers tempo.

Imagine a blue deck with a Sigiled Starfish on the field, and the next 100 cards in the deck are all Disperse.

Now imagine a green deck with Skysnare Spider on the field, 5 Skysnare Spiders in hand and the next 100 cards in the deck are also Skysnare Spider.

Suppose blue gets 4 mana per turn, while green gets 6 mana per turn.

Blue's turns would look like this:

Bounce the spider, attack for 3.

Green's turns would look like this:

Cast the spider for 6, no attacks, pass turn.

Blue will eventually win that game even though their creature has less power and they receive less mana per turn.

Now, imagine green gets all rampy, and generates 18 mana per turn, while blue still generates 4 mana per turn.

Blue bounces the spider, hits for 3.

Green casts 2 spiders, has a 12/12 spider on the field, passes turn.

Blue bounces the spider, hits for 3.

That's tempo. Blue is using one card and 4 mana to undo what green is doing with 2 cards and 18 mana.

Just one problem. What if Green has a full hand AND that 6/6 on the field as well? You cannot bounce creatures if your opponent's hand is full. Of course, this isn't a likely scenario, but one that has to be addressed. Blue does have that new -6/-0 permanent debuff that also removes flying - while it's more expensive, it's a decent way to permanently stop something from being annoying such as a berserker or defender.

Rootbreaker · May 2016

In the scenario where green's only card is spider, they can't have just played a spider and have 6 cards in their hand.

Meto5000 · May 2016

Rootbreaker wrote:

In the scenario where green's only card is spider, they can't have just played a spider and have 6 cards in their hand.

Obviously, Elemental Bond was in play. Jeez!

BassMuffinFIve · May 2016

Played against my first Kiora last night and all I can say is... wow. Overpowered as ****. Her first ability is Jace's Sanctum on steroids. Good luck ever casting anything again for the rest of the game. I felt pretty helpless

Needless to say, I know what I will be spending my crystals on when she is available. New breed of planeswalkers = strictly better than every single original PW except Chandra

HomeRn · May 2016

Rootbreaker wrote:

In the scenario where green's only card is spider, they can't have just played a spider and have 6 cards in their hand.

Match 5, played spider, get an extra turn due to match 5, use ability to draw a card.

EDHdad · May 2016

I actually just went through a game like this. I was playing my Jace deck. The opponent was a very good Nissa deck who kept getting cascade after cascade after cascade and vomiting their hand.

They cast an Outland Colossus. I bounced it with Harbinger of the Tides.

They had a reinforced Herald of the Pantheon, 8/8. I used Jace's first ability to reduce it to a 3/8, then Tightening Coils to make it a 0/8. Then I hit it with Breaker of Armies to kill it.

They cast Gaea's Revenge, which has hexproof and haste. It hit me for 9. Then the next turn, my Breaker of Armies collided with the Gaea's Revenge and they both died.

At one point they cascaded so much that they got 30 loyalty. Next turn they turned 24 gems to green, which ended up casting 2 Outland Colossus. I bounced it with Disperse, then used Talent of the Telepath to find Day's Undoing and shuffled it away.

They cast Dwynen, Gilt-Leaf Daen. I bounced it. They recast it. I turned it into a frog and then bounced the frog.

They looked like they were going to cast something really big, maybe another Gaea's Revenge. They had maybe one or two mana left to go and then I cast Day's Undoing to shuffle it away.

Eventually I won the game with an 8-power Harbinger of Tides and a 9-power Sigiled Starfish.

I'm sure that if I were piloting that green deck and if the AI was piloting my blue deck, I would have also beaten the AI, since the AI doesn't really sequence cards correctly, never discards to their advantage, never turns off spells so they can cast them at the opportune time, and such.

However, reports of Blue's death are greatly exaggerated. A halfway decent Jace deck can rack up 50 to 100 wins in a row or more.

Plastic · May 2016

Blue is fine holding it's own, but can it cut through games in the same time frame as other colors and as consistently? Not really. The only reason that's an issue is because speed is king with how quick battles work right now.

Kiora doesn't quite suffer since she has green's options of course.

BassMuffinFIve · May 2016

EDHdad wrote:

I actually just went through a game like this. I was playing my Jace deck. The opponent was a very good Nissa deck who kept getting cascade after cascade after cascade and vomiting their hand.

They cast an Outland Colossus. I bounced it with Harbinger of the Tides.

They had a reinforced Herald of the Pantheon, 8/8. I used Jace's first ability to reduce it to a 3/8, then Tightening Coils to make it a 0/8. Then I hit it with Breaker of Armies to kill it.

They cast Gaea's Revenge, which has hexproof and haste. It hit me for 9. Then the next turn, my Breaker of Armies collided with the Gaea's Revenge and they both died.

At one point they cascaded so much that they got 30 loyalty. Next turn they turned 24 gems to green, which ended up casting 2 Outland Colossus. I bounced it with Disperse, then used Talent of the Telepath to find Day's Undoing and shuffled it away.

They cast Dwynen, Gilt-Leaf Daen. I bounced it. They recast it. I turned it into a frog and then bounced the frog.

They looked like they were going to cast something really big, maybe another Gaea's Revenge. They had maybe one or two mana left to go and then I cast Day's Undoing to shuffle it away.

Eventually I won the game with an 8-power Harbinger of Tides and a 9-power Sigiled Starfish.

I'm sure that if I were piloting that green deck and if the AI was piloting my blue deck, I would have also beaten the AI, since the AI doesn't really sequence cards correctly, never discards to their advantage, never turns off spells so they can cast them at the opportune time, and such.

However, reports of Blue's death are greatly exaggerated. A halfway decent Jace deck can rack up 50 to 100 wins in a row or more.

I don't disagree with the statement that blue can win 50-100 games in a row. But Chandra and new Gideon can do it at LEAST 3x as fast, if not more!

Kiora underpowered?

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