kishkisan joins us to provide an extremely in-depth guide to his creation: Disk of Circadia.
About me
My name is kishkisan, you can see me around in Mythril ladder having made the climb from Gold using a pretty unique deck of my creation, Peach of Circadia.
Deck Overview
Peach of Circadia is a control deck that uses Disk of Circadia. It is a variant of what is normally referred to as Peach Control. Like Peach Control, the deck tries to control the board in the early game using Racer in Shadow, but is overall less reliant on big minions to finish the game. Instead, this deck relies on Smite to apply pressure on the opponent while drawing cards and using its minions reactively against the board. The green package (Wake, Born Again, Shroud), which is rarely run in Peach Control, allows for insane value at the late game and supplements the deck’s lack of late game minions. This deck traces its origins in Tunestar’s “I have the Power of Anime and God” where I was experimenting with tweaking the deck toward the more “controlling” side prior to the purple patch.
Why play Peach of Circadia instead of Peach Control that runs ToS?
If you run into an Orange Purple deck on ladder, it most likely runs ToS. The ToS path has its upside of giving an extra draw once every 4 turns (in fall), and downside of giving your minions one less health once every 4 turns as well (in winter). So, for us to choose to run Disk instead of ToS, we need to build our deck differently such that we “at least” draw a card every 4 turns. Splashing the green card “Born-Again” allows us to get a draw once every two turns, and this becomes the main reason to run Disk. Not only does Born Again give us free draws, it also improves our draws due to the divination effect from disk. Disk affects the board symmetrically at day, giving all minions slayer 1. This can seem like a downside comparable to winter from ToS, but in fact, it can be abused to make trades that otherwise wouldn’t be possible. Knowing when to flip disk is a crucial skill for this deck. All these advantages of disk come at a cost, however. In comparison with ToS, the deck runs much less top end, due to having to accommodate the discard fodder cards. This leads the deck to be very reactive, and more towards the control side of the spectrum than the ToS variant. However, the Smite power allows us to put the opponent on a timer, even without ever using minions to attack face. In the end, both are good decks, and if you enjoy ToS peach control, give this deck a try, its a lot of fun!
Deck list and budget version
Note that the main list focuses on shroud for the value engine, but the budget one focuses on five spirit gate. So main priority is to sub in shroud for five spirit gate on your way from the budget deck to the full list. Smite vs Mend: Smite deals constant pressure and effectively puts our opponent on a timer, while Mend can allow us to alter the deck by removing our sword saints and making it more top heavy. Both are viable paths to take the deck towards, this article features a Smite power deck, but I also have a similar Mend build, which is definitely worth your time if you enjoy the Smite deck.
Card discussion
Green:
Wake the Bones: the purpose of this card depends largely on the match up. While it allows replaying Armageddon Angel or Perfect Grade, it is also right to play wake the bones and get back a Perri for draw if we are starved for it, Sword Saint for healing, or even a Racer. In this sense, I see Wake the Bones as a tutor.
Born Again: the main reason to play Disk of Circadia as explained above.
Shroud of the Pit: Our value engine. We will use it mostly to return Racer from boneyard, but as it starts at 4 energy, it also allows us to return Perri or Scion in the beginning.
Orange:
Eager Recruit: gives us Eager Recruit which is used as discard fodder. Also a solid 1-drop.
Dark Passenger: draw and deadly, very good to play on Racer as single target removal. We usually want to burn this early unless we are up against a reanimator deck.
Lamp of wonder: divination 4 allows us to look at 1/10th of our deck with each charge, greatly improving our chances of finding Born Again early while having the final charge be used to draw the perfect card reactively to the board state.
Desertification Engine: this is the flex spot in the deck, it is particularly good against aggro due to its good body, but you can test out different options like Insurance Broker for extra draw, a second Muttonmorphisis, or even try to push the curve toward the top end by adding a Master of Shadows, Terragon, Celestial Dragon, or Lantern Colossus, and perhaps even a Dire Benediction as a cheeky finisher.
Serendipity Iftreet: a strong body with upside. The divination effect is quite useful throughout the game. The downside of losing 1 hp per draw is minuscule.
Perri at the Gates: solid draw with a body.
Scion of Pride: while Pride of Place can be used on one of your tokens to push more face damage, i think the deck rarely wants to do that. Instead, it wants to use it to banish threatening minions that your opponent has ability to replay.
To Heaven and Back: insane value generation, and the cost reduction is specially relevant for reanimating with Shroud.
Armageddon Angel: one of the best minions in the game. Board clear along with good body.
Purple:
Defy Death: One of the best defensive cards in the game, and if your opponent doesn’t play around it you can make a comeback easily with all the healing in the deck. However, I wouldn’t say it is essential for the deck, and you can run a second copy of Wake the Bones instead. Never burn this card, as ideally you don’t want to give your opponent information that you have this in your deck. If you don’t see many OTK decks, you may be better served by not running it.
Steam bun: Pike is excellent discard fodder. However, we need to be careful that our opponent doesn't value trade into our steam bun either by killing it off ourself for the draw if it is threatened, or keeping the disk on day to make it a 2/1. I haven’t used the new ability for steam bun useful except in very niche situations.
Racer in Shadow: Along with born again, this is what makes this deck viable.
Sword saint: the item can be used as discard fodder or for gaining health. I have included three of it in this deck, but feel free to experiment with only 2.
Peach of Life: the namesake of the archetype. Solid life gain on top of the draw. We can often play it on turn 7-8 against fast decks, while against slow decks we want to play it in late game to gain 15+ health.
Hotel Barkeep: Powerful Ramen can give us a free disk flip, or even act as discard fodder, and the 3/4 body is very sturdy.
Muttonmorphosis: I have found this quite useful to get pesky minions your Racers aren't able to reach (Zolea, Jin-Sook, Bragi, etc), without wasting a Spirit Away.
Nine Tailed Vixen: to be honest, Shroud is a better Vixen, but Vixen can often be played before our Shroud is set up, and would often demand removal from our opponent.
God of Gamers: keeping Homeward Crown for Perfect Grade is a trap most often, use it to trade up with your minion. My preferred minions to use it on are Scion and the God of Gamers himself. I would consider this a flex spot as well, where you can replace it with a Feng Shui Master.
Jin-Sook: the movement ability can win games, while the -2/-2 can be a huge pain for aggro decks. The ultimate is game winning, but is often hard to get.
Spirit Away: we run more purple cards than orange so in comparison to Seal of Exile, Spirit Away makes more sense. You can still try to use Seal, but i wouldn't recommend more than 1 copy of Seal.
Perfect Grade: While it costs a lot at 8 mana and 3 purple gems, the ability to use its abilities several times per turn makes it a premier minion.
Possible Inclusions:
Troikasekt: could be very good against Reanimator and Fire of Creation decks, but the fact it is green makes it hard to play when you need it.
Xerxian Recruiter: I have tried it the deck a lot, but usually I cant play it on 2 due to weird gem burns it would require (burning purple is much easier than burning orange in this build).
Ghūl: As a 2-drop it suffers from same issue mentioned for Xerxian Recruiter, and on top of that, this deck does well against Necromantic strategies.
Dire Benediction: Can serve as a finisher, definitely try it out if you feel like it.
Seal of Exile: I am of the opinion that Spirit Away is a better card for this deck, losing 1 mana and gem as part of the cost for Seal makes Spirit Away much more attractive. But by all means, if you prefer Seal to Spirit Away give it a go, but I wouldn’t recommend more than 1 copy.
Herald of Conquest: I include him as a finisher in the Mend build (mentioned above) and I have been pretty impressed with him.
Night Market: Definitely a solid inclusion which can make the deck less reliant on finding Born Again.
Red Cliffs: Shuts down all rush minions, can be very good against rush decks, but is often a dead card in other match-ups, specially since we don't run Impel.
Five Spirit Gate: Already mentioned this as a budget replacement for Shroud. But I would not play both Shroud and 5SG in the same deck.
Feng Shui Master: meta dependent: if you face a lot of Heaven/Hades decks it becomes very good and also very good against some of the greedier YG lists going around that run Bald Mountain.
Master of Shadows: Very hard to deal with if your opponent has no single target removal, but not impressive against yellow decks that have access to blight or Orbital Jamming Satellite.
Reincarnation: Can act as discard fodder in early game, while it can being back late game minions. Overall, however, I think Wake the Bones is more consistent, but this card is definitely worth some experimentation.
Celestial Dragon: You can definitely play this instead of God of Gamers, I prefer to keep a lower curve myself, definitely give it a try if you have the card. Along with Defy Death, this can open the deck to racing the opponent.
Notable Omissions:
Bald Mountain: I think splashing this along with the rest of the green package is not worth it here, and is too greedy.
Shadhavar Beast: I think as a 1/3 it trades poorly now, which is contrary to what our deck wants: each minion needs to trade well. It does aid other minions to trade, but I find better success running other things.
Kushiel the Unforgiving/Daigoju: Before the patch I ran Kushiel, but Perfect Grade is just on a different power level that I would only play Kushiel if I don't have Perfect Grade.
Mind Freak: While it can be extremely annoying for your opponent to deal with, you would need to run 2-3 of this card, which is not what the deck wants.
Rogue Idolon: Can be used instead of Desertification Engine, however, I find its power level quite low without running Impel, and it essentially does nothing against decks that do run Impel.
Misfortune: In my early deck prototype I used to run Misfortune instead of 1 Dark Passenger. I have concluded however that I prefer 2 of the Dark Passenger-both for consistency and cost-wise.
Pentacle of Flavors: I don’t think this makes the cut without running Impel.
Game plan
Early Game:
At this stage, we are essentially looking for Born Again. We discard items and Parsa Recruits, and use divination effects to filter through our deck. Lamp of Wonder divination effect should be used while digging for Born Again, however, the final charge for Lamp should be used reactively. We might leave a Wake the Bones or a second born again in hand in early game. We only burn for a single green gem when we already have 2 orange gems and 2-3 purple gems. In general, the deck wants to play a turn 1 minion like Eager Recruit or Steam Bun and flip the disk on turn 2. Usually Sword Saint is not played as a 2-drop, but it depends on how urgently we need to have board presence. Turn 3, you want to play either a Barkeep or Ifreet, but it depends on whether you are on night or day states. I prefer to drop Ifreet at night and Barkeep at day. Lamp of Wonders is usually a safe burn if you have Born Again in hand. In general, the safe burns in the early game are these: Dark Passenger, Spirit Away, Perfect Grade, To Heaven and Back. It is often right to burn: Sword Saint, Peach of Life, God of Gamers.
Note: Avoid using multiple divination effects on the same turn.
Mid game:
After having found our Born Again, we now start digging through our deck for Shroud.On finding Shroud, we burn a green gem, and play Shroud. All the while during the mid game, we play reactively using day/night cycles to trade favorably, often making one trade at day then flipping the disk and making the second trade at night (or vice versa). Therefore we need to think a lot about how our turn works out. We often want to drop God of Gamers on an empty side of the board, and play our Vixen/Jin-Sook on the corner to be able to protect her with our tokens. We also want to play Perri around the middle of the board (lanes 3,4,5) as it allows putting heaven underneath it (if it is not answered) for next turn.
Late game:
This is the stage at which the deck shines. Even though there are very few big minions, the value we get from Shroud, Racer, and Heaven becomes too much to handle for most decks. After we set up Heaven, we try to keep a minion sitting on it at all times against purple decks. We preferably reanimate a 0 cost Racer that died on Heaven so that we are able to increase the energy for our Shroud, which would allow us to replay a lot of our threats again if we don't need to replay Racer. The middle lanes (3,4,5) are often the best for Heaven. Note: The lack of board clear aside from Armageddon Angel means that the deck struggles against wide boards. Therefore, this deck wants to always have some board presence. This deck aims to burn for: 1 green gem, 4 orange gems, 5 purple gems. However, it is completely fine to sit at 6-7 mana for a good portion of the game, but keeping in mind that you need to keep 2 purple gems available for Defy Death.
Match up discussion:
YG: Favored. Defy Death and the value we generate become too much to bear for YG. Be careful of having your Scion murmured however, as this deck doesn't have an easy way to deal with Scion (Scion is immune to damage from spirits and Racer is a spirit).
Reanimator: Favored. Our abundance of single target removal make it so that reanimator struggles a lot to get its threats online. RG: Favored. Save Mutton for Fated Firebird, and use Spirit Away on bigger stuff. Be careful of dropping Armageddon Angel as it gives RG the green light to play Seven Ring Ritual. YP: Even. If YP manages to cheat out big minions early, we can easily get blown out. On the other hand, if we manage to get to the late game, our deck can outvalue YP with Shroud/Racer/Heaven. Valks: Even. Racer allows us to deal with early game minions pretty nicely with slayer being specially useful for that. However, enchantments can give us some trouble. Overall, we don't want to keep any of their Valkyrie minions on board. Fires of Creation decks: Not Favored. Specially when yellow is played, Model of Duality+Ollama Ring provides a lot more consistent value than we can deal with. A possible tech option here is troikasect, which can deal with the problematic artifacts. YB: Not Favored. We struggle a lot with consistent wide boards and a lot of our minions die to Magnus. We need to be on the offensive from early on, and try to kill them before they set up. RO: Not Favored. Journey of Souls RO is quite hard to defeat, but ToS is more favored. Sometimes we can race RO specially if we have Defy Death in hand, but most of the time we have to try and minimize the damage we take. We have no easy way to deal with Heaven and Hades. However, our chances improve a lot if we tech Red Cliffs for this particular match up.
FAQ
1. A Disk of Circadia deck that is not Reanimator?
Disk of Circadia has been used a lot outside of reanimator strategies, Tunestar’s “I have the Power of Anime and God” is an aggro deck of that runs Disk, and a very old Peach Control by Oneiric also ran Disk. I think Disk is under utilized in general, as it can prove extremely powerful.
2. When should I flip the disk state?
In the early turns, we want to discard our items/Recruit/Born-Again, while playing the board. It depends on the match up, but we usually want to flip the disk on turn 2. In general, low attack minions want to stay on board at day, while low health minions want to stay on board at night. While we often flip disk for draw, don’t discount the tactical advantage offered by disk at day.
3. What is the best opening hand for this deck?
Anything with Born Again really is the dream opening hand, but it depends on the match up really.
4. What if I can’t find born again?
The deck has enough discard fodder to be able to discard a card once every 3-4 turns, but you rarely reach turn 5 or 6 without finding Born Again. If you are struggling with finding born again, then you need to utilize your divination effects, and be careful not to use multiple divination effects for the same turn.
5. Should I play items or keep them as discard fodder?
Think about next disk flip, will you have something to discard? But, of course, the present board state is also important. Remember that Racer at day does 3 combat damage, so unless you need 4 damage from racer consider playing a pike for example.
6. How to optimize draw-set ups with disk?
You can flip disk for draw which will give you divination 2 into a draw, then play Ifreet to select the draw for your next turn. Changing this order wastes resources, since using multiple divination effects before a draw gives diminishing returns.
7. Which lanes does this deck want to play in?
The deck wants to control the board using its minions, therefore the lanes this deck wants to play are 2,4,6.
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