March of the Machine: The Aftermath has been fully previewed, and 21 of the 50 cards are legendary creatures that can be your commander. Commander fans have long been used to having goodies in every Magic set, but this percentage seems overly generous! The fun thing about these legends is that most of them seem to be what I’d call “flexible, but niche” commanders; they aren’t just generically powerful and require decks to be built to specifically unleash the commander’s power, but they’re also flexible enough that building a deck around them offers up plenty of individualized choices that can make the deck truly your own.
Take for instance the commander I’m going to dive into today — Kiora, Sovereign of the Deep!
Kiora is a Simic commander that wants you to play with the creature types Kraken, Leviathan, Octopus, or Serpent, however Kiora herself is not any of these creature types. Being a Merfolk, she has a ton of great tribal support in the Simic colors, so your Kiora deck could either be mostly Merfolk synergies with a smattering of the big sea monsters to get that triggered ability every once in a while, or it could split the difference between Merfolk and sea monsters – perhaps tying it together with changelings like Maskwood Nexus and Arcane Adaptation. Or you could lean more heavily into ramping into the big sea monsters, with Kiora triggers fueling card advantage.
For me personally, I’ve been itching to pull together a sweet sea monsters deck for a while, so that last approach is what I’m going to look into here, but it’s really cool that you can approach Kiora from several different angles.
Let’s jump in, the water’s fine!
Kraken, Leviathan, Octopus, or Serpent Matters
The first cards I would look for are the ones that care about Krakens, Leviathans, Octopi or Serpents, and it turns out there are a fair number of them. What’s cool about these cards, is that they keep popping up year after year, so this theme should strengthen over time with more choices. Kenessos, Priest of Thassa came out just last year in Jumpstart 2022 and fits nicely here even though it is also a Merfolk rather than one of the sea monsters. I also really love Quest for Ula’s Temple since once you accumulate three or more quest counters you get to just put a sea monster onto the battlefield from your hand.
The best of the bunch is likely Whelming Wave, which should leave your sea monsters as the only creatures on the battlefield and allow them to crash in. Serpent of Yawning Depths is a little less swingy but it does make it very difficult for most opponents to block your huge creatures.
Krakens
Release the Krakens! Turns out there are brutally powerful Krakens these days, with Hullbreaker Horror at the top of the list. Arixmethes is a sweet ramp spell that will eventually shake off its slumber counters to become a 12/12 beatdown machine.
Tromokratis is a wild creature, hexproof unless it’s attacking or blocking, and unless an opponent has all their creatures available for blocking that opponent cannot block the 8/8. Boom!
Leviathans
The roster of good Leviathan creatures is a little shallower than Krakens, but these three certainly deserve a slot. Charix, the Raging Isle is more powerful in a monoblue deck that’s mostly Islands, but it’s a fantastic creature to come down early and pretty much be able to block any non-flying threat that might come your way. Later in the game, it’s certainly possible its activated ability becomes relevant, especially if you grab Islands when you’re mana ramping. Stormtide Leviathan makes all lands Islands, but it does stop any creature from attacking unless it has flying or islandwalk. I might be tempted to add a Power Matrix to the deck to give one of my sea monsters flying to get around this.
Octopi
I’m not sure that I’d be playing enough instant and sorcery cards in the deck to get the discount on Octavia, Living Thesis, but if I can get there casting a ten mana Octopus for just two blue mana could do some serious digging with the Kiora trigger!
The coolest Octopus of the bunch is probably Sharktocrab, even if we don’t have any other ways to add +1/+1 counters, it’s a Shark Octopus Crab!
Serpents
In addition to Serpent of Yawning Depths, we’ve got two more heavy-hitting Serpents we can add to the mix. Aesi, Tyrant of Gyre Strait is fantastic in a deck that’s going to be ramping anyway, and then there’s Koma, Cosmos Serpent that can’t be countered and churns out 3/3 Serpent tokens.
I’ve been running Sword Coast Serpent in some of my Dragon decks, but since it’s a Serpent Dragon it fits here too! I like that these Adventure creatures effectively give you a spell you can play early on, and a creature you can play later that’s immune to discard effects since it’s in exile.
Shapeshifters
Since most of the sea monsters are rather expensive, and your commander costs five mana, I’d like to round out the lower mana curve with some Shapeshifters with the changeling ability that can still be played later to get Kiora’s trigger. Maskwood Nexus is a card that might still be playing in this style of Kiora, letting Kiora take advantage of any of the sea monster synergy going on.
Mana Discounts
A nice way to leverage Kiora’s ability – and to help cast expensive sea monsters – is to play cards that help discount the cost of casting the creatures. I’m thinking Sapphire Medallion, Kefnet’s Monument and The Immortal Sun. Goreclaw doesn’t fit the tribal theme but it does provide a hefty two mana discount for most of the sea monsters, and also gives them trample if it’s attacking with them.
Deep-Sea Kraken can be played with suspend, and in a typical pod of three opponents you can knock off the time counters pretty quickly and hopefully you’ll have Kiora on the battlefield when the last one ticks off and you cast your ten mana creature for free!
If you’ve got a bunch of Snow lands looking for a home, Icebreaker Kraken is a whopping twelve mana creature that can be cast for a lot less.
Then there’s Elder Deep-Fiend, which can use its emerge ability and flash to surprise hit the battlefield and tap down four target permanents.
Mosswort Bridge is another way to cast a big spell for free, especially with so many huge monsters that the deck will be churning out.
Top of the Library
You can nudge Kiora’s trigger a bit by manipulating the top of your deck. In particular, Brainstorm and Scroll Rack are awesome ways to put an appropriately costed spell on top of your deck before you cast your sea monster and get the Kiora trigger. Kiora’s trigger is also a great way to clear away unwanted cards that you’ve left on top of your deck with Sylvan Library, Sensei’s Divining Top, or Mirri’s Guile.
Preordain, Serum Visions, and Ponder are all nice spells to smooth out your draws, and in this sort of deck, they’re awesome since you’ll want to shuffle away the big expensive spells you aren’t close to casting and instead finding your ramp spells and other cards to help you bridge to the later game.
Mana Ramp
Speaking of ramp, Simic offers a lot of great options and I’d put a fair number of them in the deck (especially if we’re going for the Octavia, Living Thesis discount). I especially would lean on draw spells that also let you make extra land drops like Growth Spiral and Eureka Moment. Plasm Capture is nice interaction that should help to cast one of your more expensive sea monsters. Nissa’s Renewal is a card I would strongly consider since you could ramp up to three basic Islands (or Snow-Covered Islands) if you wanted to really shore up your blue sources, and ramping from six to nine should unlock just about all your big creature spells.
Merfolk Matters
Even if we don’t lean heavily into Merfolk tribal synergies, I’d be tempted to toss some of these cards into the deck. Swift Warden offers protection for Kiora from pinpoint removal. Crashing Tide can be cast as if it had flash if you control a Merfolk and could also be used to protect Kiora.
Large Creatures Matter
One final thing to consider: green offers a lot of “huge creatures matter” cards. Typically, you turn these on with gigantic green creatures, but we can take advantage of them in this deck to synergize with our huge sea monsters. Few things feel as good than cashing in a big monster that’s targeted for removal with Greater Good for a bunch of fresh new cards. We can even pay homage to Kiora’s planeswalker days with Kiora, Behemoth Beckoner to draw us cards.
What are you planning on doing with Kiora, Sovereign of the Deep? Are there any awesome cards I overlooked that you think are slam dunk includes?
Talk to Me
Do me a solid and follow me on Twitter! I run polls and get conversations started about Commander all the time, so get in on the fun! You can also find my LinkTree on my profile page there with links to all my content.
I’d also love it if you followed my Twitch channel TheCompleteCommander, where I do Commander, Brawl and sometimes other Magic-related streams when I can. If you can’t join me live, the videos are available on demand for a few weeks on Twitch, but I also upload them to my YouTube channel. You can also find the lists for my paper decks over on Archidekt if you want to dig into how I put together my own decks and brews.
And lastly, I just want to say: let us love each other and stay healthy and happy.
Visit my Decklist Database to see my decklists and the articles where they appeared!
