Design Files: Odyssey, Part 2

Last week, I started a new iteration of “Design Files,” the series where I look back at the cards from a set I led (in this case, Odyssey) as they were handed off at the end of design. The first section, which continues today, is about cards handed off that made it to print, albeit with some changes.

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ABOSHAN, CEPHALID EMPEROR

Aboshan is one of the villains of the story. He’s the leader of an underwater kingdom. He was originally planned to be subtype Merfolk, but as I was trying to use underutilized creature types, he was changed from a Merfolk to a Cephalid (a species of octopus-like creatures we had created). Because he manipulated people, we liked the idea that he could tap various things. The version handed off from Design could basically tap any non-enchantment permanent.

One of Odyssey‘s themes involved high-rarity typal cards that focused on the creature types I’d included in the set. Three of them allowed you to tap an untapped creature of a specific creature type for an effect. Master Apothecary lets you tap Clerics to prevent damage. Patron Wizard lets you tap Wizards to counter spells. Seton, Krosan Protector allows you to tap Druids to produce . Development made Aboshan into one of these cards, allowing you to tap Cephalids to tap permanents. His activated ability was shifted to be something a little larger in scope, tapping all creatures without flying, as the flying creatures were outside the water.

TRAUMATIZE

At handoff, Odyssey had a large focus on mill. You’ll see more of that focus when we get to the section of cards that didn’t make it to print. This spell was designed to be a massive mill spell, but it ended up being a bit lackluster. This design was inspired by the card Braingeyser from Limited Edition (Alpha). I enjoyed how Braingeyser could be used as a win condition by forcing an opponent to draw more cards than they had in their deck, making them lose. I designed this card with the idea that it was just the mill part of Braingeyser.

Development came to me and said the spell was underwhelming, so I was tasked with designing a more exciting version. I started with a spell that made your opponent mill their entire library. It felt like an “I win” effect and not like a giant mill spell. What if it milled half your opponent’s library? That sounded pretty epic. My worry was that it would be too good, but since the spell’s effect becomes less potent as your opponent’s library loses cards, we were able to print it as is. The card has gone on to be a popular mill card.

CABAL PATRIARCH

The Cabal Patriarch is another major villain from the story. Development liked the shape of the design but felt we could make him a bit more threatening as a card. He then became a 5/5. His activated abilities were also buffed, giving creatures -2/-2 instead of -1/-1. These changes required us to increase his mana cost from to and his activated ability cost from to . The new design was successful, and Cabal Patriarch went on to see a lot of play.

HAUNTING ECHOES

One of the themes of this set involved punishing players for playing four copies of all their cards. The idea behind this design was that if a player was playing four copies of a particular card, odds are, later in the game, there would be copies of it in both their graveyard and their library, so this card just made you compare the two and remove any duplicates. However, that’s a lot harder to do than you might think. For example, if you look at a player’s graveyard, you don’t inherently know what’s in their library, so you’re forced to remember what was in both.

Because this card was a rare, it just didn’t show up in that many playtests. Additionally, Limited decks don’t tend to run multiple copies of a card, so this card was seldom played during Limited playtesting. Development played with this card in some Constructed playtests and saw how hard it was to use. Their solution was to start by exiling the player’s graveyard, then check their library for cards that were exiled. This also had the side effect of being useful even if you didn’t exile many cards from your opponent’s library. You still exiled their graveyard, which could be meaningful, especially in a world where players are trying to reach threshold. Development also lowered the cost, as this card wasn’t as strong as we’d thought.

PARDIC FIRECAT
DILIGENT FARMHAND

During Tempest design, I was interested in making a direct-damage spell that acted like Plague Rats. I wanted the spell, like Plague Rats, to get more powerful the more copies you had in your deck. The idea I finally ended up with was a spell that dealt more damage for each copy of the spell already in a graveyard. The spell was called Kindle.

Kindle was a popular card, so when I was working on Odyssey, a graveyard-themed set, I decided to reprint it. But why stop there? Why not make an entire cycle of Kindle-like spells? So, I did.

Life Burst
Aether Burst
Mind Burst
Flame Burst

Those cards became the Burst cycle. I thought about whether there was a way to expand on the idea of Kindle-like cards. After the set was handed off to Development, I wondered if there was a way to make cards that added to your “Kindle count” without actually being a copy of Kindle. So, we took the two cards above and added an effect saying they counted as a copy of the Kindle-like card of their color. I think we just did it in red and green because that’s where we could find space to do it.

DWARVEN RECRUITER

Visions introduced the card Goblin Recruiter. It was exactly like the card above except it was for Goblins instead of Dwarves. Odyssey tried to change up the creature types, so instead of focusing red on Goblins, I changed the main red creature type to Dwarves. Development liked the card, but they tweaked some creatures to balance out the mana curve and needed to change a two-drop red creature to a three-drop creature. They figured Dwarven Recruiter didn’t have to be identical to Goblin Recruiter, so they changed it from a 1/1 for into a 2/2 for .

FRENETIC OGRE

Because we were supporting threshold, Odyssey had a lot of activated abilities that had you discard cards. Development wanted all of red’s discard to be random, as they felt it would capture the chaotic nature of red. To compensate, Frenetic Ogre‘s cost was reduced from to and its ability gave it +3/+0.

But random discard was so much worse than normal discard, so no one played any of the red cards, Frenetic Ogre included. This, along with some other design choices, helped us learn that we needed to find other ways to capture red’s sense of chaos without resorting to randomness.

KAMAHL, PIT FIGHTER

Kamahl is the protagonist of the Odyssey block story. We wanted him to have an exciting card that captured the sense of pit fighting. In the story, he is a famous pit fighter. In the version that was handed off, he had a third named keyword: frenzy. Creatures with frenzy got a power boost if they weren’t blocked.

FRENZY SLIVER

Many of you might recognize this keyword from a futureshifted card in Future Sight: Frenzy Sliver. I liked frenzy and hoped to find a home for it one day.

The set ended up having too much frenzy, so the mechanic was one of the elements we removed. In this handoff version, Kamahl deals 3 damage to any creature that blocks him, which worked well because he got +4/+0 if you didn’t block him. Once frenzy was removed, Development decided to give Kamahl the damage-dealing effect as a tap ability. To show his aggressive side, they made him 6/1 with haste.

I have tried numerous times to put frenzy into sets. However, Play Design is not a fan of the mechanic, so I don’t think it will see a big return, though maybe it can show up as a cameo on a card or two.

MOLTEN INFLUENCE

This experiment with chaotic red effects went a little better than random discard. This is what we refer to as a punisher card. For red punisher cards, the opponents gets two choices. One effect can be just about anything, even something out of color pie. The other effect is direct damage. The opponent choses the first effect, or they get hit in the face. The other two cards with this effect (the common Blazing Salvo and the uncommon Lava Blister) did things red can normally do, but the rare did something red doesn’t normally get to do: countering a spell. Design’s version cost to match the cost of Counterspell. Development found the cost to be restrictive, so they changed it to and dropped the damage from 5 to 4.

CALL OF THE HERD
CHATTER OF THE SQUIRREL

Flashback was one of the new named mechanics in the set, but it only went on instants and sorceries. However, green was the creature-centric color (though it would later share this designation with white), so we wanted to make flashback spells that create creature tokens. So, we carved out a bunch of tokens for green: a 1/1 Squirrel, a 3/3 Elephant, a 4/4 Beast, and a 6/6 Wurm. Call of the Herd originally made a 3/3 creature token. However, we wanted to lower the mana cost of our flashback spells, so Call of the Herd was changed to make 1/1 creatures. Development would reverse this so that the card made 3/3 creatures. But they liked this card, so they printed it as Chatter of the Squirrel.

STONE-TONGUE BASILISK

When I began playing Magic, the first deck I built was a mono-green deck, because my very first starter deck had Craw Wurm, and how could you not play Craw Wurm? When Limited Edition (Beta) released, I bought a bunch of boxes and let myself open one pack a day. I remember the day I opened Thicket Basilisk. I couldn’t believe that this creature could kill anything (well, except Walls). One day, I opened Lure (an Aura that makes everything have to block enchanted creature), and my eyes went wide. I saw the combo right away.

Years later, I was designing Odyssey. I made a Basilisk with a threshold ability. If you had threshold, the Basilisk would have the Lure ability. This design led to a lot of arguments. It was “too easy” others said, so they changed it from a 2/5 to a 5/5 and dropped the Lure ability. That’s what was handed off to Development.

But I had not given up the fight. I argued that having the Lure ability on the Basilisk just made the players more excited to try and get to threshold. It was fun, and I thought players would enjoy it. I’m not sure if I convinced the Development team or just wore them down, but the Basilisk regained the threshold ability. In the end, I was correct; the card was a big hit.

STEAMCLAW

The printed card is close to the version I handed off, but that’s not the story I wanted to tell. As I talked about above, I was responsible for names and flavor text for Odyssey, but I wasn’t responsible for the art. So, this card was concepted as a shovel and named “Cemetery Shovel,” so imagine my surprise when we got the art back and I got some excavator machine. Here is my conversation with our art director (with some dramatic license):

BURIED ALIVE

This is why, years later, I made this card in Innistrad:

GRAVEYARD SHOVEL

So, if anyone ever asks you who in the Multiverse cares the most about shovels, now you know. The answer is me.

MIRARI

During the era that Odyssey was designed, I felt that every set had to have what I called a “marquee card.” A marquee card was a colorless card and could go into any deck (meaning, at the time, it had to be an artifact or a land). The card should do something original and splashy. Mirari was my marquee card for Odyssey. It did my favorite thing: copying spells. In this case, it copied instants and sorceries. I think my earliest design name was “Magical Fork.” During development, we decided it was too good. So we added a mana cost to the ability. You had to pay to copy your spell. That allowed us to drop Mirari’s mana cost to . Mirari went on to be very popular. In fact, the Mirari even became a major element of the story.

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Looking at the Past

This ends my section of cards that made it to print. Next week, I’ll start looking at cards handed off that didn’t make it into Odyssey (although some would eventually find their way to print in later sets). As always, I’m eager for any feedback you have about today’s article, the Odyssey set, or any of the individual cards I talked about. You can email me or contact me through social media (Bluesky, Tumblr, Instagram, TikTok, and X).

Join me next week for part three.

Until then, may you enjoy looking back into your own past.