Note: This was written before the Born of the Gods spoilers really started, so this is very preliminary and I can’t really say whether this is a workable idea, but its fun to speculate.

Kiora, the Crashing Wave 2GU
Planeswalker — Kiora Mythic Rare
+1: Until your next turn, prevent all damage that would be dealt to and dealt by target permanent an opponent controls.
-1: Draw a card. You may play an additional land this turn.
-5: You get an emblem with “At the beginning of your end step, put a 9/9 blue Kraken creature token onto the battlefield.”
Loyalty: 2

So, that’s the new planeswalker and those are always going to be controversial. [scryfall]Ashiok, Nightmare Weaver[/scryfall] was thought to be very poor, but has since become a staple of Esper-decks. The thing is, planeswalkers are just vey hard to evaluate. Here, all Kiora’s abilities are strong, but she also costs four and starts with a pretty low loyalty. On top of that, she’s green, which might not necessarily be the optimal color for what you might want her to do.

On the other hand, four mana for two extra cards and two extra land drops might be great for some decks and the emblem is very powerful, and very much within reach, if she can be protected.

How to protect her? Gladly, she can do some of that herself. Then there’s always [scryfall]Fog[/scryfall]. There are some more such effects in standard currently, but not many, and cards like [scryfall]Defend the Hearth[/scryfall] don’t protect the planeswalker. There is [scryfall]Pay No Heed[/scryfall] for white, which would help, and we might go with white as the third anyhow, for other reasons.

She also needs to be protected from [scryfall]Dreadbore[/scryfall], [scryfall]Hero’s Downfall[/scryfall] and [scryfall]Detention Sphere[/scryfall], so [scryfall]Negate[/scryfall] would be great, as well as some other counterspells, probably [scryfall]Dissolve[/scryfall]. Since we are basically looking to keep Kiora alive long enough to use her ultimate ability, we can also use tempo cards, such as [scryfall]Voyage’s End[/scryfall], [scryfall]Cyclonic Rift[/scryfall] and [scryfall]AEtherize[/scryfall]. [scryfall]Simic Charm[/scryfall] can protect Kiora from two different kinds of threats, so it would probably be good.

[scryfall]Voyage’s End[/scryfall] has another purpose. By being all in on Kiora, we need to find her and scry definitely helps. So, maybe we need [scryfall]Omenspeaker[/scryfall]. Also, its a good blocker. Obviously, we’ll be using [scryfall]Temple of Mystery[/scryfall], because we can, and maybe [scryfall]Temple of Enlightenment[/scryfall] and [scryfall]Temple of Plenty[/scryfall] if we use white.

Some card drawing would be great too. Even [scryfall]Divination[/scryfall] would help. With white, [scryfall]Azorius Charm[/scryfall] is definitely an option, because it does two things for us. [scryfall]Inaction Injunction[/scryfall] hasn’t seen any play, but maybe, just maybe, here.

This probably isn’t enough, though I don’t really know. Of course, [scryfall]Born of the Gods[/scryfall] will probably help this deck somewhat. I bet someone in R&D has been thinking about this. Wizards has a tendency to hire some of the best deckbuilders and the best deckbuilders do a lot of brewing. Someone must have been thinking about this. If so, depending on where they want to go, there might be something great waiting for us.