Odyssey

Odyssey

 

Trivia

 

Theme decks

 

Odyssey
Set Information
Set symbol
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
Art direction	Dana Knutson & Ron Spears
Release date	October 1, 2001
Plane	Dominaria (Otaria)
Themes and mechanics	Filter lands, "Graveyard matters", Token creatures, Unusual tribes
Keywords/​ability words	Flashback, Threshold
Set size	350 cards (110 commons, 110 uncommons, 110 rares, 20 basic lands)
Expansion code	ODY (formerly OD)
Development codename	Argon
Odyssey block
Odyssey Torment Judgment
Magic: The Gathering Chronology
Apocalypse Odyssey Deckmasters 2001

For other uses, see Odyssey (disambiguation).

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

Advertisement for Odyssey.

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

Title	Author	Publishing date	Setting (plane)	Featuring
Odyssey	Vance Moore	September 2001	Dominaria	Kamahl, Chainer, Seton, Kirtar, Turg, Laquatus, Virot Maglan, Pianna, Aboshan, Llawan, Fulla

Misprints

Cephalid Looter misprinted as a Wizard.

• Several Cephalid Looter cards were misprinted with the creature subtype Wizard in addition to Cephalid instead of merely Cephalid.
  • During the Grand Creature Type Update, the card gained the class subtype of Rogue; making Cephalid Looter's subtypes officially Cephalid Rogue.
  • In 2024, as part of the Modern Horizons 3 release, the Cephalid creature type was made obsolete and replaced with Octopus; making Cephalid Looter's subtypes officially Octopus Rogue.
• Bash to Bits was originally named "Demolish" but was changed in development and a new card was given the name Demolish. Due to this change and both cards being in Odyssey, Bash to Bits illustration was miss-credited to Gary Ruddell, the artist for Demolish, instead of Matt Cavotta.

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:

• 2/2 Zombie creature for Zombie Infestation.
• 1/1 Squirrel creature for Squirrel Nest, Chatter of the Squirrel, Nut Collector, Nantuko Shrine and Druid's Call.
• 2/2 Bear creature for Bearscape.
• 3/3 Elephant creature for Call of the Herd and Elephant Ambush.
• 4/4 Beast creature for Beast Attack.
• 6/6 Wurm creature for Roar of the Wurm.

The 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 (), 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.

Cycle name
Bursts	Life Burst	Aether Burst	Mind Burst	Flame Burst	Muscle Burst
	Each of these common instant or sorcery spells has an effect that linearly scales up by the number of similarly named cards in all graveyards. Two of these spells, namely Flame Burst and Muscle Burst, also scaled with the number of cards named Pardic Firecat and Diligent Farmhand, respectively, in all graveyards. These five spells were inspired by Kindle (Tempest) and Accumulated Knowledge (Nemesis).
Desires	Kirtar's Desire	Aboshan's Desire	Patriarch's Desire	Kamahl's Desire	Seton's Desire
	Each of these common Auras has a static ability, a static threshold ability, and a name alluding to a notable Odyssey block storyline character associated with the respective color; depicted holding the Mirrari.
Hounds	Patrol Hound	Phantom Whelp	Filthy Cur	Mad Dog	Wild Mongrel
	Each of these five common 2/2 Hounds cost M and have an activated or triggered ability.
Land Auras	Animal Boneyard	Chamber of Manipulation	Caustic Tar	Steam Vines	Squirrel Nest
	Each of these five uncommon Auras enchant lands. Four of them confer a beneficial activated ability, while one (Steam Vines) has a detrimental triggered ability.
Lhurgoyfs	Cantivore	Cognivore	Mortivore	Magnivore	Terravore
	Each of these five rare Lhurgoyfs with power and toughness is determined by the number of cards of a particular type in all graveyards. These creatures also had an in-color ability.
Retrievers	Auramancer	Scrivener	Gravedigger	Anarchist	Cartographer
	Each of these five common 2/2 creatures, which, when they enter the battlefield, allows their controller to return a card of a particular type from their graveyard to their hand. All of these cards, except Auramancer, which replaced Treasure Hunter, were reprinted from Tempest block.
Rites	Sacred Rites	Rites of Refusal	Last Rites	Rites of Initiation	Rites of Spring
	Each of these five common instants whose effect is determined and proportional to the number of cards discarded at the resolution of the spell.
Shrines	Aven Shrine	Cephalid Shrine	Cabal Shrine	Dwarven Shrine	Nantuko Shrine
	Each of these five rare enchantments costing MM and with a triggered ability, triggering whenever a player casts a spell and having an effect depending on the number of cards in all graveyards with the same name as that spell.
Spheres	Sphere of Truth	Sphere of Reason	Sphere of Grace	Sphere of Law	Sphere of Duty
	Each of these five white enchantments with an ability that reduces 2 damage damage that would be dealt to its controller by a source of a specific color.
Sac lands	Abandoned Outpost	Seafloor Debris	Bog Wreckage	Ravaged Highlands	Timberland Ruins
	Each of these five common lands comes into play tapped and has two mana abilities, one of which is the ability to tap for one mana of a specific color and the other is the ability to tap for one mana of any color but also requiring the land's sacrifice.
Threshold lands	Nomad Stadium	Cephalid Coliseum	Cabal Pit	Barbarian Ring	Centaur Garden
	Each of these five uncommon lands with an ability to tap for mana of a specific color, albeit at the cost of 1 point of damage, and an ability that may only be activated if a player has threshold. These lands represent the pit arenas used by Otaria's different cultures and tribes within the Cabal's gladiatorial games and pit fights.
Cycle name
Atogs	Phantatog	Psychatog	Sarcatog	Lithatog	Thaumatog
	Each of these uncommon allied-color gold creatures with a CMC of 3 and two activated "eating" abilities, or abilities that cost a resource associated with that color to increase their power/toughness by +1/+1 per activation, that is an homage to the those of the Atog mega cycle Originally, these Atogs were conceived as "hybrids" of the original Atogs. Of these Atogs, Psychatog was the only one to have made a significant impact on competitive Magic; the abilities of the others, as well as their colors, were not overwhelmingly conducive to competitive Magic, and there was a lack of synergy between the abilities of the other Atogs. In addition to this cycle of Atogs, Odyssey featured Atogatog, a legendary Atog "Lord" who ate Atogs to increase its power and toughness.
Gold spells (rare)	Iridescent Angel	Shadowmage Infiltrator	Vampiric Dragon	Decimate	Mystic Enforcer
Eggs	Skycloud Egg	Darkwater Egg	Shadowblood Egg	Mossfire Egg	Sungrass Egg
	Each of these five uncommon artifacts with ", , Sacrifice this card: Add two mana, one mana each of the colors of an allied-colored combination. Draw a card.".
Filter lands	Skycloud Expanse	Darkwater Catacombs	Shadowblood Ridge	Mossfire Valley	Sungrass Prairie
	Each of these five rare lands with ", : Add two mana, one mana each of the colors of an allied-colored combination.".

Vertical cycles

Cycle name
Flashback creature token producers	Chatter of the Squirrel	Roar of the Wurm	Call of the Herd
	Each of these green sorcery spells with flashback creates a green token creature.
Punisher spells	Blazing Salvo	Lava Blister	Molten Influence
	Each of these red instant spells provides the targeted opponent with the choice of two generally unfavorable effects, one of which is direct damage.
Thought Beasts	Thought Nibbler	Thought Eater	Thought Devourer
	Each of these aggressively costed blue Beast creatures with flying reduces your maximum hand size.

Pairs

Repentant Vampire and Gallantry feature combined art

Odyssey has two matched pairs.

Matched Pairs		Description
Pilgrim of Justice ()	Pilgrim of Virtue ()	Clerics with protection from an enemy color of White and an activated ability, costing and the sacrifice of itself, to prevent the damage from a source of the enemy color in question.
Aven Smokeweaver ()	Treetop Sentinel ()	2/3 Bird Soldiers with flying and protection from an enemy of Blue.

Reprinted cards

• Anarchist, first printed in Exodus
• Angelic Wall, first printed in Portal Second Age
• Buried Alive, first printed in Weatherlight
• Cartographer, first printed in Exodus
• Gallantry, first printed in Tempest
• Gravedigger, first printed in Portal, last seen in 7th Edition
• Overrun, first printed in Tempest
• Patchwork Gnomes, first printed in Tempest
• Scrivener, first printed in Exodus

Functional reprints

• Aven Cloudchaser, functional reprint of Cloudchaser Eagle (Tempest) with additional creature type
• Aven Fisher, functional reprint of Kingfisher (Urza's Destiny) with additional creature type
• Battle Strain, functional reprint of Heat of Battle (Stronghold)
• Druid Lyrist, functional reprint of Elvish Lyrist (Urza's Saga) except for creature type
• Dusk Imp, functional reprint of Feral Shadow (Starter 1999) and Moaning Spirit (Portal Second Age) except for creature type
• Dwarven Grunt, functional reprint of Goblin Mountaineer (Starter 1999), Mountain Goat (Ice Age), and Zodiac Goat (Portal Three Kingdoms) except for creature type
• Leaf Dancer, functional reprint of Cat Warriors (Legends) except for creature type
• Piper's Melody, functional reprint of Renewing Touch (Portal Second Age)
• Psionic Gift, functional reprint of Hermetic Study (Urza's Saga)
• Woodland Druid, functional reprint of Norwood Ranger (Starter 1999) and Trained Jackal (Portal Three Kingdoms) except for creature type

Card comparisons

Strictly better

• Wild Mongrel, upgrade from Balduvian Bears (Ice Age), Barbary Apes (Legends), Bear Cub (Portal Second Age), Forest Bear (Portal Three Kingdoms), and Grizzly Bears (Alpha)

Strictly worse

• Diabolic Tutor, downgrade from Demonic Tutor (Alpha)

Preconstructed decks

Odyssey has four two-colored theme decks.

Theme deck name	Colors Included
Liftoff	W	U
Pressure Cooker			B	R
One-Two Punch				R	G
Trounce-O-Matic		U			G

External links

• Mark Rosewater (March 14, 2023). "Lesson Learned, Part 1". magicthegathering.com. Wizards of the Coast.