There's an interesting contrast in the design of
Kiora's two cards so far, one that relates to
flavor - when Kiora was introduced, she was
mainly an explorer who sought to understand the
multiverse's oceans, but this version of her is
what she looks like when going to war. Her
ultimate ability is like a multiverse-level
warning that you don't really understand the
ocean and it will mess you up, but the fact is
that her other abilities can equally win the
game when used appropriately. In fact, each one
is appropriate for different situations that a
deck may face, and as such I think that there
are very few times when you will be unhappy to
have included Kiora in your deck.
Today's card of the day is Kiora, Master of the
Depths which is a four mana Green and Blue
planeswalker with four loyalty. The +1 is
reminiscent of Garruk Wildspeaker's +1 for
untapping two lands, but with one land and one
creature instead. This may provide less
mana, but it does offer many options for tap
effect creatures or pseudo Vigilance.
The -2 can add two cards to hand which is solid
and often more useful in the long run when
compared to the untap effect. The -8 is
very strong and should outright win games, but
barring Doubling Season is going to take a very
long time to achieve with an opponent actively
trying to prevent it. Overall this can
offer good acceleration or card advantage to a
Simic build that functions mostly as support
with the potential of the game dominating emblem
as more of a threat than likelihood.
In Limited this is a top pick like most
planeswalkers and the off color can be splashed,
though Green as a support is usually viable in
most pools. Even just using the -2 once or
twice is the full value of the mana cost and
there is no reason other than the two colors to
not draft it first in Booster. In Sealed
Blue or Green have to be strong to make this
worth building around as it is minimally
aggressive, but enables the rest of the deck
like few other cards in the set can.
