I just want to use the ultimate on Kiora, Master of the Depths a few times, even if I lose most of my games.
This deck is designed to get Kiora onto the battlefield and protect her long enough to get to that juicy, juicy ultimate ability, AND I'd like her to live to see it, so I'm shooting for getting her Loyalty up to 9 before going ultimate.
I'm making my own Octopus tokens that have Squidward on them.
The mana-base is just designed to get the colors I need as quickly as possible. The strictest requirements are double-White, for Planar Outburst, Stasis Snare, and Quarantine Field. The secondary requirement is for double-Blue for Part the Waterveil, but we have until the mid to late game to get those colors. The double-Green for Nissa, Voice of Zendikar doesn't fit here, but I opened that card in a pack, and it does work well in the deck by making disposable chump blockers, so I'm happy with it as a singleton that I'm not likely to actually want to cast on Turn 3 very often.
The Nissa, Vastwood Seer
is more for ensuring a land drop and chump blocking than for flipping in the late game, but it CAN do that and become a really great Planeswalker if the game does go long. I have a second copy in the sideboard for grindier matchups, and may go up to a third after playtesting. I can't have Nissa, Voice of Zendikar AND Nissa, Sage Animist
on the battlefield at the same time because of the Planeswalker rule, so it could be awkward to have that come up very often.
The star of the deck is the Ultimate ability of Kiora, Master of the Depths, but she's otherwise not that great in the deck. She basically provides one extra mana, which can be useful because of the high CMC costs of casting Part the Waterveil or Planar Outburst with Awaken, or can get me from 5 mana to 6 for a vanilla Part the Waterveil. If I DO happen to have some manlands from Awaken, she can basically untap two lands for two extra mana, since one of the lands counts as a creature. I have occasionally used the ability to untap a giant Octopus token after attacking to be able to hold up a big blocker. So she's not terrible, but she's really only here so I can use the ultimate ability in a real game.
Narset Transcendent is really great. I have ZERO creatures in the deck, so she'll often draw a card, and when she doesn't, at least I have information of what my next draw is so I can plan ahead. Also, she starts at really high loyalty, and with an Oath of Gideon on the board she can threaten to go ultimate really early, which provides a nice distraction for the opponent away from my life total and from Kiora's Loyalty. I think, with both Narset on the board at 7 or 8 Loyalty, and a Kiora on the board at 5 or 6 Loyalty, that an opponent will come after Narset first. So she helps a LOT by drawing extra cards and acting as a decoy away from Kiora. Having BOTH Narset and Kiora on the battlefield really provides a lot of problems for the opponent.
Oath of Gideon is PERFECT here, as it provides TWO chump blockers the turn before a Planeswalker comes down, then grants an additional Loyalty counter. They're even fine in multiples as the double chump blockers for 3 CMC is perfectly fine, given the upside of the card otherwise.
Part the Waterveil is pretty fun to cast, even withOUT Awaken. A Turn 4 Kiora, Master of the Depths will pass the turn at 6 Loyalty with an Oath of Gideon in play, and then can allow for casting Part the Waterveil the next turn with only 5 lands, which lets Kiora get up to 7 and then 8 Loyalty while the opponent has had only a single turn to deal with it, which means they'll have only two turns to knock her back down before she can go Ultimate. Her emblem even stacks. In playtesting, I had a couple games in which I used her ultimate ability TWICE, and then the Octopi can fight TWO creatures when they enter. I found that her ultimate is not an instant win, since the Octopi don't have Trample, so I was sometimes going ultimate with one Kiora, then casting a second the same turn and going ultimate again a few turns later. I need to get some more Octopus tokens, since I'd only put 3 in my deckbox, and I was sometimes using six of them.
The rest of the cards are just trying to protect me and my Planeswalkers from taking damage. I've focused the maindeck against protection from creatures, with the sideboard having some tech against burn or control decks. The Planar Outburst is great the turn after casting Narset Transcendent as she can give it Rebound, so I wipe the board on two consecutive turns. I assume the opponent will simply pass on summoning any creatures on their turn following Outburst, buying me a whole additional turn of ticking up Narset to her Ultimate.
With Oath of Gideon in play, Narset gets to 8 Loyalty the turn she resolves, which gets her to her ultimate very quickly.
I think there are some decks this deck simply can not beat, making it not competitively viable, but my goal is to go ultimate with Kiora (and Narset and either Nissa, too, if I can), and there will be some decks that will simply have no way to stop me, so I should get to do that a few times if I play this enough, which is fun enough to make losing a bunch of games acceptable to me.
I spent a lot of time looking for the best things to Rebound with Narset Transcendent. Planar Outburst is pure gold, but I couldn't find anything else that was obvious. I even playtested a little with Sheer Drop because it's something that could be cast with Rebound and either destroy a second creature, or more likely, just stop the opponent from tapping anything valuable since it would/could be destroyed at the start of my next turn. The Awaken was a nice bonus when it happened, but hardly necessary. If I don't care at all about Awaken, I could put Swift Reckoning in that spot, for the lower CMC, but I just decided that the sheer power of Stasis Snare is better, and Quarantine Field provides a catch-all that I will hopefully only play later in the game when I can cast it for 6 and Exile TWO targets. But I can do it on Turn 4 to hit one thing, if I need to. Quarantine Field is also my only real way to remove a resolved Planeswalker from the opponent's side of the table. Sheer Drop was actually great when I could cast it with Awaken once and Rebound it with Narset, but was pretty unexciting otherwise. I really like the idea of having Stasis Snare and Quarantine Field to Exile an Eldrazi titan, when it comes up.
I could maybe have Valorous Stance in that spot, since it can Rebound, but it's just not as powerful as Stasis Snare, so I'm not sure the chance to occasionally Stance twice with the same card is worth the payoff. With Pacifism and Tightening Coils I feel like I already have low CMC ways to "deal with" large creatures, which in this case just means not letting them deal a lot of combat damage, so I'm happy with the higher CMC Stasis Snare and Quarantine Field. Sometimes you need to get rid of a creature for non-combat reasons, like Whisperwood Elemental or Monastery Mentor, so they don't keep piling up extra bonuses, and you really need a Stasis Snare, not Pacifism.
I can Rebound Ugin's Insight from the sideboard, and that would be pretty cool. If I Rebound Displacement Wave I can get rid of tokens that way on the following turn, since they have 0 CMC, which is what X will be when it gets cast with Rebound.
