[Article] The Demigod Deck

[Anusien]

Rather than being offended by my comment, could you just respond to my specific examples?

Your comments are basically saying, "I don't believe you, explain it all to me." But I'll go through it. The real question is, "If I respond to your specific examples, will you believe me? Or will you argue with me?" Are you asking because you don't know, or because you're already convinced I'm wrong?

Maybe it's just me, but I have no idea how this deck is better than the normal aggro control decks out there. Lets look at creatures. This deck runs Goyf and demigods, with minimal counters to back either up. Right now, the largest beaters in legacy are Goyf, Tombstalker, and possibly Doran. These are 2 mana, 2 mana, and 3 mana respectively, and all as powerful if not more powerful than the Demigod.

Demigod comes in through Blood Moon (which is relevant). It has haste (which is super relevant) and the fact that they chain is super relevant. Tombstalker might be okay except that it doesn't accomplish the primary goal of coming down through Blood Moon. It also gets worse when you recur it through Stronghold, and doesn't do damage all at once. Dredging makes Demigod good in a way that it doesn't for Tombstalker. It's much harder for one StP to stop Demigod than Tombstalker.

The 5 mana set-up of getting out a Demigod is almost laughable, and haste is no way to get around it. Tombstalker comes out through land-hate much much earlier than Demigod does, meaning you'll probably get in 2-3 swings before the average Demigod gets in play.

Sure. But I have Edicts and Force to deal with Tombstalker. If you try to go all-in on a Tombstalker in many decks, you will eat Swords to Plowshares and just lose. The point isn't to have a speedy creature, it's "I only have three slots left to win the game, let's get the best possible creature there." Plus, I don't feed the graveyard much early and I have lighter black mana requirements, meaning I can't Turbo-Tombstalker.

Assuming every deck runs Goyfs (true story), lets just see him for what he is. A big dumb wall. Sure if your demigod trick doesn't work out you'll still get a chance to go goyf control, but you're lacking on control parts, and you're playing far too much for the late game, where recursions will actually matter. Goyf usually won't swing for the win when he's getting blocked by other big dumb goyfs.

Right. Goyf ground stalls are why I go to Demigod to win. I'm perfectly fine with Goyf being a blocker most of the time.
However, I'm not certain how Counterbalance/Top, Force of Will, Pernicious Deed, and then Raven's Crime/Tombstalker/Wasteland/Engineered Explosives/Vedalken Shackles RECURSION is considered lacking on control parts. Like, sure, I have few counters. But I have something like my lands and 7 creatures and 15 draw spells as non-control elements in the entire deck.

The other point I'd love to mention is that drawing the Demigod is going to make your other demigods even worse, as you don't get to reanimate 2 of them anymore. Then when you intuition for the other 2 and they put 1 in your hand, you get to watch your 2 dead cards eat away your hand. Lets face it, 10 damage isn't all that much of a combo when it takes 8+ mana to set up. Couldn't you just rely on a Tombstalker swinging much sooner for that flying damage?

I don't often Intuition for Demigods. The vast majority of games are won by going for Intuition into Raven's Crime, devastating their hand, dredging Demigods and either drawing the third or Volrath's Strongholding it to the top and winning that way. Some smaller number of games are won by either setting up a single Tarmogoyf or Vedalken Shackles in this position and riding it to victory. I think I win more games by just putting one Demigod on the table and attacking than I do by EOT Intuition for 3x Demigod, untap and bash for 15.
Here's the thing: Tombstalker won't be doing that damage early. It's not like I'm never tapping mana on turns 2-4. I'm doing things like Topping, Deeding, Edicting, Shacklesing. Demigod costs 5 mana, but that's okay because I don't need it before turn 5.

Lastly, when you get the demigod or 2 out, I have to imagine your life is low and that you probably need to chump with one off them just to stop from dying.

You'd imagine that, but you'd be wrong; most of the time when I go to Demigods the board is clear. As it turns out though, Demigod is a supreme chump blocker (what kills Demigod without dying?) I had one situation against Goblins where he was recurring Gempalm Incinerator with Wort and I was recurring Demigods with Volrath's Stronghold. I won that one. Tombstalker would have lost.

Plus, the goal is to never, ever miss a land drop (Loam helps a lot!) so it's not like 5 mana is a lot.

It's also not insignificant that Demigod of Revenge is a 5 mana spell to counter Force of Will via Counterbalance.

[juventus]

You mean, there are few varifiable ways to prove you know what you are talking about.

My qualm with the standard and extended scene is that there is very little to prove as far as most things are concerned because the pros are the people that make the decks that everyone plays. What the fuck is there to discuss or prove when everybody is playing a variant of Quick and Toast or NLB?

Yes, the legacy format's players are generally too far-flung to give quantifiable results in tangible tournaments, yes. Keep in mind that the whole proving yourself by playing actual cards was but a part of your grossly self-defamatory statement. Why would you even bother to have over two hundred posts if you seem to think so little of the format and the people that play it?

I used to play legacy a lot, but that was mostly because it was a big thing in Rochester and because it was easier for me when I first started playing magic to play a deck that didn't "rotate out." I don't hate legacy, I just definitely prefer more competitive formats and I think that t2, extended, limited are just inherently more competitive formats because that's where all the real professional tournaments are.

Also, standard is much more wide open than you think. And you're saying that there is nothing to discuss in standard or extended which is laughable. Another thing to consider is if a format becomes more restricted as far as deck choices due to professionalism. Maybe after rigorous testing certain archetypes are just considered to be inferior to others, thereby making the format "more simple" as you put it.

I don't think you can safely assume that because a format has a wider range of decks it has a higher class of player.

[Mordel]

I don't think you can safely assume that because a format has a wider range of decks it has a higher class of player.

I was heavily involved in type two for years. I can easily. People seem to think that the future league that r&d has plays a way smaller role than it really does, which is cute. A highly controlled and conformed format with people that play it as job instead of a game is obviously going to have less to explore for the average competitive player. I don't see how this could possibly be argued against...at all. I guess this is an example of why arguing a mostly subjective opinion is pointless.

This is dragging on and on though and doesn't belong on this thread at all.

You win?

[Happy Gilmore]

Is Intuitioin demigod that much better than Intuition for Gigapede + wonder? Atleast it doesn't require Urborg.

It just occured to me that it would be a really tech sb option in alluren lol.

[etrigan]

From the Article
Many of the games Demigod wins, Tarmogoyf plus careful play could probably win anyway.

Originally posted by Anusien
I don't often Intuition for Demigods. (...) I think I win more games by just putting one Demigod on the table and attacking than I do by EOT Intuition for 3x Demigod, untap and bash for 15.

Have you actually tested anything else in the Demigod slot? Can you not get there with Tarmogoyf and 3 more removal/counter spells? Can you not get there with Tarmogoyf, Gigapede/Morphling/Tombstalker and 1-2 more removal/counter spells?

If you dont actually need it most of the time, why do you need a card that you cant cast without Urborg or an opposing Blood Moon, does nothing to protect you and cant be pitched to Force of Will? And why do you need three of them?

[Brehn]

Yep, this is the biggest flaw of the articles about the Demigod deck. You could do these changes:

-3 Urborg, Tomb of Yawgmoth
-3 Demigod of Revenge
-1 Shriekmaw/Raven's Crime
+1 Underground Sea
+1 Engineered Explosives
+2 Counterspell
+1 Eternal Witness
+1 Diabolic Edict
+1 Pernicious Deed

and you have ITF without the white splash. Yet none of the articles have talked about or even mentioned ITF (or did I miss something here?). The deck Anusien presents here is good, because ITF is good; and I believe him if he talks about having a good matchup against Deck XY, because I know ITF has a good matchup against Deck XY. Rather then present "Demigod Control" as a new archetype, which it isn't, Anusien should argue why ITF needs Demigods.

[frogboy]

Because instead of trying to win going long with Counterbalance and opening yourself up to Grip and having to finesse through a Tarmogoyf win on the ground, you can just go ahead and kill your opponent with Intuition. And you actually get to play 24 lands.

[Tosh]

Because instead of trying to win going long with Counterbalance and opening yourself up to Grip and having to finesse through a Tarmogoyf win on the ground, you can just go ahead and kill your opponent with Intuition. And you actually get to play 24 lands.

Having played against frogboy with my ITF (I know it's a little different, but w/e) I can easily say that there is a big difference between Tarmogoyfs on the ground and Demigods in the air. One game just ended in 1 turn with Intuition -> Demigod fairly early and there wasn't a whole lot I could do about it.

In short, do not underestimate the evasion and explosiveness of Demigods.

[etrigan]

Because instead of trying to win going long with Counterbalance and opening yourself up to Grip and having to finesse through a Tarmogoyf win on the ground, you can just go ahead and kill your opponent with Intuition. And you actually get to play 24 lands.

I have no problem with wanting more than just Tarmogoyfs, but is Demigod the BEST finisher you have available? Did you test anything else in the slot?

[frogboy]

No, but Gigapede takes for fucking ever to kill the other guy and doesn't mitigate the whole 'ground stall' issue. Morphling is stupid mana intensive. etc.

[etrigan]

No,

Okie dokie.

How can you successfully argue something if you have not explored the alternatives?

[Forbiddian]

Okie dokie.

How can you successfully argue something if you have not explored the alternatives?

Gigapede takes for fucking ever to kill the other guy and doesn't mitigate the whole 'ground stall' issue. Morphling is stupid mana intensive. etc.

This.

[Anusien]

Is Intuitioin demigod that much better than Intuition for Gigapede + wonder? Atleast it doesn't require Urborg.

Intuition for Gigapede + Wonder + Gigapede (I'm guessing) is like 5 mana per Gigapede and it isn't hasty. Versus, you know, five mana for just 15.

P.S., to everyone that bitches about Demigod's mana requirements, why is everyone so hot on Etched Oracle in ITF? Its mana requirements are actually worse: five mana in four colors. Possibly six if you expect Daze.

Did we test other creatures? No. I don't need to test other creatures in this slot. First off, one of the goals was to have a finisher playable through Blood Moon that was castable without it. That was the entire point of that slot. MattH and I went through just about all of Shadowmoor/Eventide and a good deal of Magic besides before we ended on Demigods. If you establish the requirement as: "Can be played through a devastating Blood Moon. Can be played without Blood Moon. Doesn't suck." you're literally just down to Demigod of Revenge and some other shitty cards (Dominus of Fealty was the only other card even in the same ballpark).
Plus, just about every other card you suggest has the benefit of not requiring Urborg, Tomb of Yawgmoth and the downside of not winning in like two turns.
And everyone that wants to find a way to cut Urborg has clearly never put Life from the Loam, Urborg and Raven's Crime together. It's the silliest, and if you draw the Urborg you can put Wasteland or something equally silly in the stack.

Yep, this is the biggest flaw of the articles about the Demigod deck. You could do these changes:

-3 Urborg, Tomb of Yawgmoth
-3 Demigod of Revenge
-1 Shriekmaw/Raven's Crime
+1 Underground Sea
+1 Engineered Explosives
+2 Counterspell
+1 Eternal Witness
+1 Diabolic Edict
+1 Pernicious Deed

and you have ITF without the white splash. Yet none of the articles have talked about or even mentioned ITF (or did I miss something here?). The deck Anusien presents here is good, because ITF is good; and I believe him if he talks about having a good matchup against Deck XY, because I know ITF has a good matchup against Deck XY. Rather then present "Demigod Control" as a new archetype, which it isn't, Anusien should argue why ITF needs Demigods.

Nope, I intentionally didn't mention ITF in the article. I wanted to write something that could stand on its own and do a good job of presenting the deck. It feels like it's a poor "In Depth on Demigod" article if it requires you to know all about ITF first.

I covered this slightly before, but I feel the difference between ITF and Demigod is the difference between BBS that kills with Ophidians and BBS that kills with Morphling. They both want to cast powerful counters, removal and card drawing spells until they survive. The first one slowly beats down over like 20 turns drawing cards and doing one and two points of damage. The second can switch gears and just win. There's a big difference between controlling the game for 20 turns and controlling it for 4.

More verbosely, the problem with ITF is that it has a ton of cards that become incredibly relevant after you've already set up. After I've already cast Loam, the last thing I want to do is try and put together a more expensive card advantage engine in the form of Oracle or Witness. I'd rather devote a minimum of slots to a combo and use the rest to not die. Inclusion of cards like Counterspell, Eternal Witness and Etched Oracle smack of this to me: they're too few to be consistent pre-Loam and too worthless post-Loam.

Plus, deep6er hates Raven's Crime and that's one of the best cards in the deck (Top, Counterbalance, Loam, then Raven's Crime I think).

Plus, while we came to similar conclusions, I really evolved this from Vorosh separately of ITF. ITF and Demigod try to do different things and I don't think it's fair, strategically, to call this ITF with Demigod, especially since Raven's Crime is one of the principal points of the deck. I think ITF would shudder to ever go to 0 cards in hand and go all in on some 5/4 dorks.

[Obfuscate Freely]

You keep justifying your goofy, Timmy-riffic win condition by talking about Blood Moon. When are you going to address the fact that nobody fucking plays that card?

[AngryTroll]

I really enjoyed the article. I've been following the deck in every article, watched Frogboy play it to the Top 4 of that tournament, and it's been on my build list since then.

Everyone should chill out. Seriously. Wah, no one on the East Coast plays this (besides Anusian), it can't be good.

As far as the Star City Articles go, this was one of the better one ("premier" or not). Well written, thorough, talking about a list that is actually:
1) interesting
2) developed
3) tested (not thoroughly enough to be THE NEWEST BESTEST DECK EVAR), but with more testing than most lists
4) Covered new material, not just "This is Aggro Loam. Here's what it does."
Out of all the Star City Articles I have seen recently, this was probably the best of them.

I enjoyed the read, and I agree that the deck deserves more attention than it gets.

Also, Intuition for Demigods = Awesome
Intuition for LftL, Urborg, and Raven's Crime= nuts
I think those two things alone (especially the second one) make this better than ITF.

[Anusien]

You keep justifying your goofy, Timmy-riffic win condition by talking about Blood Moon. When are you going to address the fact that nobody fucking plays that card?

Intuition for Demigods is very Johnny.

Deckcheck reveals me a ton of Blood Moon decks. Many of them are in Europe. Many of them also represented at Worlds 2007. You're right though, they'll magically not reappear this year at Worlds when the metagame is just as ripe for them.

[Deep6er]

Do you know why I hate Raven's Crime? If you have a deck with Counterbalance, why spend more time and mana to do Raven's Crime when you can just as effectively (with less mana) use Counterbalance and Sensei's Divining Top to lock them out? Plus, Raven's Crime doesn't stop topdecks.

Etched Oracle is there as a method of gaining Card Advantage, not to be a beater. You don't need any extra beaters, you already have Tarmogoyf. Demigod's awful when you draw him, and as a three of, you're guaranteed to draw him occasionally.

You are right about one thing, I would hate to go to zero cards and go "all-in" on some 5/4 dorks. That's because they're bad. Why do that when I can stay at a comfortable two to five cards in hand and beat in with Tarmogoyf. Because I have more recursion than you, I don't have to worry about ground stalls quite so much.

Every single time I look at your deck, I wonder why you would ever weaken It's the Fear to add in gimmicky cards like Demigod. It just doesn't make sense. If you wanted to beat Dragon Stompy it's easy, just play Nevinyrral's Disk. That doesn't require you to play shitty creatures like Demigod.

There you go. I didn't even need to write an article for that one.

[Hanni]

While Intuition -> Demigod for "15, Brah" is nice, it just seems too complicated to even bother with, when the deck can just as easily replace Demigod with Tombstalker.

For Demigod to be good, you must first have Urborg and 4 other lands in play, which means you probably need to use the first Intuition to grab a Loam pile. Demigod is rather lackluster when you cast it without putting 2 other ones in the graveyard, so you're more than likely going to need to cast a second Intuition for Demigod x3. Tombstalker is strong without Urborg and without Intuition, which makes him much less dependant and a much stronger stand alone threat. Tombstalker is not as devastating as Demigod if you've got everything set up, but it's also not a dead draw if you topdeck it.

If you want a strong win condition that you can fit into Intuition piles, Gigapede is the guy for you. You don't even need to Intuition for 3 of him; you can squeeze him into any Intuition pile. Plus the guy keeps coming back on his own if for whatever reason he gets answered, whereas you'd be reliant on Stronghold otherwise. Yea sure, he can get chump blocked, which can be problematic if the ground game is stalled... but you're the control deck, you should more often than not be keeping the table clear.

Also, I really dislike the synergy between Pernicious Deed and Counterbalance. Yea, I know, it's a 3cc spell for Counterbalance, and it wipes away other Counterbalances (typically) out of Counterbalance range. But it still blows up your own Counterbalance, which sucks when the opponent does manage to slip something through and you don't wanna remove your CounterTop lock. I'd definitely agree that Deed in the sideboard would be a very good idea, but I'd much rather run Damnation maindeck.

Just my opinion on the deck, though. Otherwise, I definitely agree with Intuition/Loam, Raven's Crime, CounterTop, and so on.

Do you know why I hate Raven's Crime? If you have a deck with Counterbalance, why spend more time and mana to do Raven's Crime when you can just as effectively (with less mana) use Counterbalance and Sensei's Divining Top to lock them out? Plus, Raven's Crime doesn't stop topdecks

Yea, but you can't fit Counterbalance into Intuition piles with Loam. I'd much rather grab Loam/Crime/X than CB/CB/CB. Alot of decks in the meta these days like to keep a full stock of cards throughout the game, where Raven's Crime is fantastic (basically rapes most blue based decks). Once it's topdeck mode, sure, the card is no longer relevant... but it did it's job, and the deck has answers to topdecks.

[Obfuscate Freely]

Why are you designing a deck for Worlds? Will you or your readers be playing there?

Assuming that you have even the slightest pretension of preparing for a real-life Legacy tournament, you should be looking forward to Chicago, which will also be more relevant to the average StarCity reader. However, based on my experiences playing in actual Legacy tournaments (both in the Northeast and elsewhere), as well as the worldwide Top 8 information gathered here on The Source, I see very little evidence to suggest that Dragon Stompy is going to see any serious play in the Windy City, or in any other upcoming Legacy event.

You say that the "entire point" of playing Demigod is to win through Blood Moon, but Moon effects are, at best, a minor metagame concern right now. How can you still think it's worth it to bastardize your deck in fear of the card?

[Anusien]

For Demigod to be good, you must first have Urborg and 4 other lands in play

If you want a strong win condition that you can fit into Intuition piles, Gigapede is the guy for you.

How much do you think Gigapede costs?

P.S., why is Tombstalker awesome on its own (assuming you can cast it) as a 5/5 Flyer and Demigod sucks as a 5/4 Flyer with Haste? It's not like I can Tombstalker on turn 3 anyway, I don't put enough cards into the graveyard.

@deep6er:
If I always had Counterbalance + Sensei's Divining Top and the opponent never had Krosan Grip, I wouldn't bother with Raven's Crime.

I know that Oracle is for card advantage. But if you already have Academy Ruins or Volrath's Stronghold (and theoretically, you've already Intuitioned for Loam), why would you want more card advantage? Why not just win? If you can't win after drawing 3 cards a turn without going to extra card drawing engines, something is wrong here.

P.S., I like drawing Demigod. It's kinda nice knowing you never have to win Tarmogoyf wars, and it becomes really nice when you dredge one.

And yeah, Deep6er is right on one aspect. You probably certainly can win the long, drawn out fight on the board through ground stalls by recurring Goyfs and Pernicious Deeds. But why bother? The whole reason I play Counterbalance is because I just win a bunch without having to do any work (and because it's really good). I might be able to win with Ophidians and manlands... but Morphling is nicer.


P.S., how does Magus of the Moon sound in the blue control mirror? Seems like it would do a number on ITF, Landstill, etc.