If you've seen the box for Demigod, you've met the Rook. He's gotten the most press. He's sort of the face of Demigod. The big, slow, lumbering, powerful face. The face with a magnificent hammer. The face with feet that make the most of your subwoofer. The face who is to Demigod what Mario is to Nintendo. Mario started out in Donkey Kong as a carpenter. He had a hammer. Over time, he became a plumber. So it is with the Rook. He's got a hammer, but he's really a plumber. Yeah, I know, it sounds ridiculous, right?

After the jump, I'll explain.

Demigod is about fluid dynamics. A "wave" of reinforcements spawns at one end of the map and moves to the other. Along the way, it meets obstacles. Usually, this is another wave of reinforcements. Sometimes the obstacle is a defense tower. Sometimes it's an enemy demigod. The force of the wave is applied to the obstacle. One or the other prevails. You job as a player is to remove the obstacles so your waves can flow unabated to the other end of the map. You are a plumber!

At least that's half of the equation. While trying to enable your waves to flow across the map, you're also trying to interrupt the enemy waves. The Rook is a wonderful demigod on both counts. As a plumber, he can work through enemy reinforcements with his Hammer Slam, a massive area-of-effect attack. He shoulders can build up automated weapons that pick off surrounding mobs. He can use Structural Transfer to suck the hit points from a defense tower, tearing it down while healing himself in the process.

But he's also capable of making himself a massive clot. He's the only unit who can build defensive towers on the map, which is part of what gives him his strength. It's bad enough fighting a big lumbering Rook with a hammer that can become the single most powerful weapon in the game. It's quite another thing to fight him while he's dropping towers at his feet, basically summoning fixed defenses wherever he wants to put them. Also, note that he can use Structural Transfer on his own towers, essentially dropping and using health packs. With this sort of self-sustaining power, who cares if he's slow? He doesn't need to go anywhere.

By the way, one of the most gratifying moments I've had in Demigod was a skirmish game as the Rook, with an Unclean Beast on the other team repeatedly harrying me. The Rook is so big and therefore easy to click on, and he's so slow and therefore easy to catch up with, that he's usually a prominent target for god-killers. So this Unclean Beast kept darting up to savage me with his claws and then run away. Which wasn't very fair. The Unclean Beast is the fastest demigod. The Rook is the slowest. Since the game was going so well in my team's favor, I blew a bunch of money equipping my Rook with Boots of Speed and the Journeymen Treads, both of which make him go faster. I only wish I could see the look on the other player's face when my Rook proceeded to run down and killing his Unclean Beast.

Up next: Is Oak just a stuffed cuirass?
(Click here for yesterday's game diary.)