Stormblessed Approved Crafty Kira

This is Kira. Know it, love it, embrace it!

Kira has been a good deck for a while, but new card Crafty Infiltration is crazy and especially crazy in Kira. Card wants a deck filled with good or great two and three drops and Kira already exists and is already preexistingly filled with said cards.

Quick card breakdown? Quick card breakdown.

First of all: the Kiras. Kira Ascending, Hojan, Crownbreaker, Hooru Envoy. These three cards make up the backbone of any Kira deck by helping convert the sixteen different 1 cost spells into powerful advantage engines. Hooru Envoy has always been the weakest, yet necessary inclusion into Hooru Kira. It's possible my opinion on it changes if I find Crafty Infiltration provides enough consistency for finding the other Kiras. However, I expect it'll remain a 2-of.

Second: the spell suite. Silverblade Intrusion, Justice Etchings, Bubble Shield, Levitate.

Of these four, Levitate is secretly the most important and is one of the biggest reasons to play Primal with Kira instead of one of the other factions. Levitate on one of the ten Kiras is a simple 2 for 1, a one cost Wisdom of the Elders with additional potential trickery that can impact the board! If you take the Primal out of Hooru Kira, you only have 4 out of 16 one cost spells that get to be unconditional 2 for 1s (Justice Etchings). It helps fuel the card and provides the card quantity (and cycling in a pinch) that the deck really wants.

Etchings in general are incredibly powerful. Going to the market at a very cheap power investment cost. However, they are all both board state situational and deck specific. Hooru Kira meets all the requirements of Etchings the best of any deck while also having one of the best Markets in the entire game. So combine one of the most powerful Market access around with a deck that is uniquely primed to take perfect advantage of it and it feels incredible to use every time.

Bubble Shield and Silverblade Intrusion are you most interactive suite. Rather than play traditional removal, Kira plays to the board and tries to leverage these two cards to gain both tempo and card advantage. Intrusion especially is crazy as it both interacts with common forms of removal as well as completely swings any unit based combat in your favor. While drawing cards (both from deck and 3/3 Flyers) and/or permanently ramping you while giving Hojan +2/+2 and Lifesteal.

Thirdly: the 2 drop units. Here I have Plunk Wumpkin, Icaria, Valkyrie Captain, Combrei Lawmage, and Steyer's Eyes. Each of them can easily just be played on turn 2 to ensure you can put something on board and curve out.

The main issue with the Kiras is that none of them really cost 2. If you are commonly playing them on turn 2 you are playing the deck incorrectly. On turn 2, Kira and Hojan are vulnerable to removal. More often they should be played on turn 3+ where you can play one of your spells on the same turn to maximize the odds you can actually get the tempo and card advantage out of them. This does leave a gap on turn 2 that needs to be filled. Luckily at this point there's a number of good options.

General rule of thumb here is that if you have options, Icaria, Valkyrie Captain is best played on turn 2 and threaten to curve into its Ultimate next turn. Going up in power and influence is great in all decks and especially this one. Every extra bit of power can let you play an addition 1 cost spell to disrupt the opponent and draw a card off of Kira Ascending or Hooru Envoy.

Steyer's Eyes is "terrible", but does just enough to smooth out draws while also providing utility late game (and in some void-based matchups) to warrant a 2 of inclusion. Notably it does get a lot, a lot better with Crafty Infiltration as any Hunt on it transforms it into great value (ie: 3JP 3/3 Flying, Summon Draw a Justice sigil is sooo much better than its base rate).

We're on the final stretch now. Valkyrie Enforcer. This card exists as it always have since set 1. Flying is nice, unit based interaction is nice. Its nice.

The new spice: Crafty Infiltration. More experience will be needed to see if there's any more optimal line, but general rule of thumb I feel would be "post combat" with a more general "post-combat unless you need, need, to dig for some way to impact combat this specific turn. Scenarios like that would include "you have Silverblade Intrusion and want to dig for a second 'Kira'-style unit". So basically post combat is likely far better, but again there are a number of vaguely specific scenarios like the one above. The big reason for post-combat is that you want to turn on Onslaught to make Merchant an incredibly prime target as the Hunt happens before the Market swap so if you get an Advantage you can immediately swap it away (or use it to play Bring to Justice that turn if power is tight).

Finally the market. Rime Conclave Smuggler is both a nice aegis body on board and face Aegis is always nice to have. Plus it synergizes incredibly well with Bring to Justice

Bring to Justice - it's a 1 cost way to deal with almost any unit. Often it'll straight up remove it permanently, but often even Silence + Stun has been enough to win the game in a pinch.

Trickshot Ruffian - this enables most of the explosive finishes in a game with this deck. Being able to close the game out quickly is great to have which also has useful utility in aggressive match-ups where you can use for a mid-game Lifesteal swing (with either Hojan, Crownbreaker or Steyer's Eyes

Pristine Light - this is an incredible efficient powerful swing. It's a board clear for the really big Units while also being cheap. While it'll generally perform a different function, doubling up on removal in conjunction with Bring to Justice helps ensure that the Hooru Kira market will continue to have good options throughout the whole game not just the first one or two swaps. It remains one of the very few 3 cost cards I like in general Merchant based Markets.

Korovyat Palace - this is incredible and also one of the key reasons to be Hooru Kira. It's both a finisher and a card advantage engine, and the best tool against control decks, and one of the best proactive plays the deck can make.

Vision of Austerity - this remains the flex slot in Hooru Kira markets. As long as The Creation Project remains relevant in the metagame, I'd be hard pressed to want to remove this card from the market.

That about wraps it up. It can be a tricky deck to play, but is very rewarding. Unlike most other decks, almost every game I play with this deck makes me feel like I'm making decisions - and a majority of losses feel like they could've been winnable or elongated significantly if I made different choices.

Hooru Kira! Go forth and enjoy Crafty Infiltration! I've only played a couple dozen games with the list so far, but Crafty has felt powerful every time I've played it!