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Odyssey

Facts
Placement
Plane
Dominaria ( Otaria )
Other
Symbol description
The Mirari
Design
Mark Rosewater (lead), ; Mike Donais , ; Richard Garfield , ; William Jockusch , ; Henry Stern
Development
Randy Buehler (lead), ; Michael Donais, ; Mike Elliott , ; William Jockusch, ; Henry Stern
Themes and mechanics
Filter lands , " Graveyard matters", Token creatures, Unusual tribes
Keywords/​ability words
Flashback , Threshold
Odyssey
Odyssey Torment Judgment
Apocalypse
Apocalypse Odyssey Deckmasters 2001

Odyssey is the first set in the Odyssey block. It is the 24th Magic expansion and was released on October 1, 2001. The prerelease was on September 22–23, 2001.

Set details

Odyssey contains 350 black-bordered cards (110 rare, 110 uncommon, 110 common, and 20 basic lands). Odyssey's expansion symbol is a representation of the mirari. Alongside Torment and Judgment, the second and third expansions of the Odyssey block, Odyssey was a graveyard-focused ("graveyard matters") expansion. All the colors interact with the graveyard and use it as a resource, though green and black are the strongest graveyard colors. Previously, the graveyard rarely affected gameplay, but Odyssey 's cards forced players to constantly keep track of both graveyards at all times. For Odyssey, a new story began in a new setting with a new cast of characters.

Design and Development

Odyssey's design was inspired by Invasion and its focus on a mechanical theme. While Invasion had focused on multicolored cards, lead designer Mark Rosewater decided to focus Odyssey on the graveyard, as it had only been a small theme in two past sets: The Dark and Weatherlight.

Rosewater brought the flashback mechanic to the set. It was inspired by a mental game he used to play when covering featured matches. When one player would start heavily winning a match, Rosewater would imagine what kind of mechanic or ability would help the losing player get back into the game. In one match, he imagined the losing player being able to cast spells out of their graveyard.

Threshold was created by Richard Garfield as a way of allowing a card to change as the game progressed. In the initial design of the mechanic, the number of cards to reach threshold varied from card to card. However, this was found to be “mind-melting”, and it was reduced to “little threshold” (4 cards) and “big threshold” (7 cards), before being locked to 7 cards.

The team also looked back over the history of Magic for cards that referenced the graveyard for inspiration. For example, Lhurgoyf and Kindle each inspired a cycle of cards in Odyssey.

In addition to being a set designer, Rosewater acted as the main creative lead and oversaw all card names and flavor text due to turnover in the creative team. This led to some infamously silly pieces of flavor text, such as that found on Gorilla Titan.

Marketing

Odyssey was sold in 75-card tournament decks, 15-card boosters, four preconstructed theme decks and a fat pack. The booster packs featured artwork from Seton, Krosan Protector, Mirari, and Aboshan, Cephalid Emperor. The prerelease featured باسلْ ليسك - الحجر واللسان (Stone-Tongue Basilisk printed in Arabic text) as the prerelease card. The set was accompanied by the novel of the same name.

Flavor and storyline

Odyssey is set on the continent of Otaria on the devastated plane of Dominaria, approximately a century after the events of the preceding set, Apocalypse of the Invasion block.

The Odyssey block storyline features desert nomads and bird (aven) warriors of the Order; the highly advanced underwater Mer Empire of the cephalids; barbarians and dwarves of the Pardic Mountains; and the centaurs, druids, and other creatures of the Krosan Forest. Each of these civilizations struggles to survive day by day, a fact of which the Cabal, an occult and sinister organization, led by the Cabal Patriarch and includes members such as Braids and Chainer, that controls most of the land and its wealth, benefits, as it operates pit fights for entertainment of the masses and, for the one lucky pit warrior who survives, fame and fortune.

The Order, structured like an army, counts among its leaders the militaristic Kirtar, Pianna, Teroh, and Eesha, and strives to break the Cabal's iron fist over the populace. Meanwhile, the Mer Empire, led by Aboshan and his wife Llawan, and advised by Laquatus, ambassador to the Cabal, scheme for absolute control of the continent by flooding the continent and killing the "inferior air-breathers". The Krosan Forest, having survived the plague of Phyrexians, grows more self-sufficient and hostile to outsiders; but, it also has a peaceful side to its existence, with figures such as Thriss and Seton being comparably more receptive of outsiders, one of whom will be Kamahl, the protagonist of the storyline cycle and, during the events of the Odyssey novel, is a young Pardic barbarian and warrior proficient with weapons and fire magic who seeks glory within the pits of the Cabal.

In leaving behind the Pardic Mountains, where age-old territorial skirmishes between the barbarians and dwarves continue to rage on, Kamahl leaves his sister Jeska; and, in an attempt to make a name for himself, Kamahl will forge new alliances, make new friends, lose friends, and irrevocably change his fate and fortune as well as that of the continent, in no small part due to the alluring and mysterious Mirari, a magical orb that calls out to all who gaze upon it and fills their heads with delusions of grandeur and dreams of conquest.

Storyline sources

Misprints

Critical reception and tournament impact

While by no means comparable to the power level of the Urza block expansion sets but also incomparable to the dearth of power in Masques block, Odyssey and its subsequent expansion sets were moderately powerful. However, it nevertheless received a mixed reception from players, who thought it was weak and were irritated that they were "forced" to play Magic with the graveyard in mind.

In an article defending the design of newer sets like Odyssey, Magic writer Abe Sargent of StarCityGames.com wrote that of 350 cards, of which 20 are basic lands, players griped about the power level of only four — Wild Mongrel, Psychatog, Upheaval, and Roar of the Wurm — compared to the numbers in previous sets like Urza's Saga. He noted that the expansion was influential in establishing the graveyard as a relevant zone of the game, unlike the previous graveyard sets like Weatherlight. D. Gran, also of StarCityGames.com, however, listed Braids, Cabal Minion and Entomb as tournament-worthy cards from the set.

Magic readers and forum-goers noted that Odyssey was a welcome departure from non-interactive and unfun Magic; however, it was also noted that the Odyssey and Onslaught blocks were, to an extent, dominated by blue decks or decks containing blue.

Reflecting years later on lessons learned from Odyssey's design, Mark Rosewater would say that he had fallen into the trap of designing the set more for himself rather than the player base at large. He noted that the set did not have enough cards for more casual “Timmy” players and these players were turned off by the theme of discarding cards.

Tokens

Several tokens for Odyssey cards were offered as Magic Player Rewards:

The {W} 1/1 Spirit creature token with flying for Kirtar's Wrath was not part of the Magic Player Reward series and only appeared in Magic Online.

Themes and mechanics

Odyssey introduced the graveyard-related keywords Flashback, which allowed players to replay instants and sorceries with the ability one more time for their flashback cost, and Threshold, which conferred some sort of bonus if and when the permanent or spell's controller had seven or more cards in their graveyard. Odyssey was the first set in which protection from all colors (Iridescent Angel), creatures (Beloved Chaplain), enchantments (Tattoo Ward), and instant and sorcery spells (Devoted Caretaker) were printed.

Cards with flashback featured a tombstone icon ({Tombstone}), an indicator, in the upper-left-hand corner of the cards. to facilitate playing with cards with the graveyard-active ability. Flashback would be revisited in Innistrad block, but the tombstone icon was not featured on cards after Odyssey, except the reprinted Call of the Herd and Judgment's Valor, from Time Spiral. This was, in part, due to the change in card frames between the Scourge and Mirrodin expansions.

In addition to the "graveyard matters" theme, Odyssey had a minor token subtheme, as reflected in the number of token-generating cards, and a significant number of cards with activated abilities involving discarding cards from one's hand or sacrificing permanents.

Odyssey block is said to be the spiritual predecessor of Innistrad block due to the thematic similarities, namely, the emphasis on the graveyard. Both blocks share the mechanic Flashback.

Creature types

To establish a distinct setting from the Weatherlight Saga, a majority of common creature types from the Weatherlight Saga, such as elves and goblins, were removed and replaced with completely novel or unusual tribes, including, but not limited to, barbarians, birds (avens), centaurs, cephalids, druids, dwarves, and Nantuko insects.

The creature types Antelope, Cephalid, and Squirrel were introduced in Odyssey. The creature types Guardian and Townsfolk were used in this expansion at the time of printing but were later removed.

Cycles

Odyssey features 15 cycles, many of which are allied-colored cycles.

Vertical cycles

Mega cycles

Pairs

Odyssey has two matched pairs.

Reprinted cards

Functional reprints

Card comparisons

Strictly better

Strictly worse

Trivia

Preconstructed decks

Odyssey has four two-colored theme decks.

References