Last year, I began a new series called "Design Files." In it, I show off cards as they were handed off at the end of design and share some commentary about them.

Here's the two I've done so far:

Design Files: Tempest (Part 1, Part 2, and Part 3)

Design Files: Urza's Destiny (Part 1, Part 2, and Part 3)

This time, I'm going to talk about the third Standard-legal set that I led the design for, Odyssey. The first section details the cards that went on to be printed in Odyssey. The second section will be about cards that didn't make it, although some did see print later.

Before I get to the cards, I have a quick comment on Magic design during this time. The Odyssey block was the second block in what I call the second stage of Magic design (for all the stages, see this article). This is when blocks start having mechanical themes. Right before the Odyssey block was the Invasion block, which was all about multicolor cards. Odyssey was all about the graveyard. This set was done during the era of design and development, before today's exploratory, vision, set, and play design structure.

Druid Lyrist Persuasion Second Thoughts

CG08_XR
<Druid Lyrist>
G
Creature — Druid
1/1
G, ocT, Sacrifice CARDNAME: Destroy target enchantment.

UU15_XR
<Persuasion>
3UU
Enchant Creature
You control enchanted creature.

CW20_XR
<Second Thoughts>
4W
Instant
Remove target attacking creature from the game.
Draw a card.

These are three cards from the design file with printed versions identical to those handed off. Not only is the rules text the same, but the mana costs are the same, Druid Lyrist has the same power and toughness, and the card names didn't change, which rarely happens outside of Universes Beyond sets. But there's a behind-the-scenes reason for it.

At the time of Odyssey, our Creative team was significantly smaller than it is now. Right before Odyssey design started, the last two people on the Creative team left Wizards. Bill Rose, who was then the head designer, asked me to lead the narrative and creative card elements (names and flavor text) for Odyssey. I had been very involved with creative text during the early days of the Weatherlight Saga and had run the creative and design for Unglued (where I was the only designer for the set). Since I led Odyssey's creative text development, the names were often set in advance during design.

Blessed Orator Charmed Pendant Deserted Temple Diabolic Tutor Gorilla Titan Ivy Elemental Life Burst

CW02_XR
<Safety Monks>
3W
Creature — Cleric
1/4
Other creatures you control get +0/+1.

RA12_XR
<Moon Ring>
4
Artifact
T, Put the top card of your library into your graveyard: For each color of mana in the casting cost of the card revealed in this way, put a mana of that color into your mana pool.

RL02_XR
<Architect's Lair>
Land
C
ocT: Add one colorless mana to your mana pool.
1, ocT: Untap target land.

RB12_XR
<Infernal Tutor>
2BB
Sorcery
Target player searches their library for any card and puts that card into their hand. That player then shuffles their library.

RG02_XR
<Carnisaur Herd>
3GG
Creature — Beast
4/4
Trample
CARDNAME gets +4/+4 as long as there are no cards in your graveyard.

UG03_XR
<Tree Elemental>
XG
Creature — Elemental
0/0
CARDNAME comes into play with X +1/+1 counters on it.

CW18_XR
<Happiness>
1W
Instant
Target player gains 4 life, then gains an additional 4 life for each CARDNAME card in any graveyard.

Mind Burst Mine Layer Necratog Nefarious Lich Nut Collector Piper's Melody Skeletal Scrying

CB18_XR
<Hymn to Yawgmoth>
1B
Sorcery
Target player reveals their hand and discards a nonland card from it, then discards an additional nonland card from their hand for each CARDNAME card in any graveyard.

RR04_XR
<Mine Installer>
3R
Creature — Dwarf
1/1
1R, ocT: Put a mine counter on target land.
Whenever a land with a mine counter on it becomes tapped, destroy that land.
When CARDNAME leaves play, remove all mine counters.

UB09_XR
<Necratog>
1BB
Creature — Atog
1/2
Remove a creature card in your graveyard from the game: CARDNAME gets +2/+2 until end of turn.

RB10_XR
<Death Lich>
BBBB
Enchantment
For each 1 life you would lose, instead remove a card in your graveyard from the game.
For each life you would gain, instead draw a card.
You lose the game if your graveyard is empty.
You lose the game if CARDNAME leaves play.

RG09_XR
<Squirrel Herder>
5G
Creature — Druid
1/1
At the beginning of your upkeep, put a 1/1 green Squirrel creature token into play.
Threshold — All squirrels get +2/+2 as long as you have ten or more cards in your graveyard.

UG14_XR
<Renewing Touch>
G
Sorcery
Choose any number of target creature cards in your graveyard and shuffle them into your library.

RB16_XR
<Skeletal Scrying>
XBB
Sorcery
Remove up to X cards in your graveyard from the game. Draw a card for each card removed in this way.

Spiritualize Still Life Sylvan Might Tainted Pact Treetop Rangers Verdant Succession Zombify

UW11_XR
<Spirit Bond>
2W
Instant
You gain life equal to the damage dealt by target creature this turn.
Draw a card.

UG11_XR
<Beast of Lore>
1GG
Enchantment
GG: CARDNAME becomes a 4/3 green creature until end of turn.

CG20_XR
<Sylvan Pride>
1G
Instant
Salvage 2GG (If this card is in your graveyard, you may play it as though it were in your hand. If you do, its mana cost is 2GG, and remove it from the game as part of the spell's effect.)
Target creature gets +2/+2 and gains trample until end of turn.

RB11_XR
<Infernal Pact>
1B
Instant
Reveal the top card of your library. You may put this card into your hand. If you don't, reveal the next card. Continue this process until you put a card in your hand or a card is repeated. If you put a card into your hand, put all the other cards revealed this way in your graveyard. If you reveal a repeated card, remove all cards revealed this way from the game.

CG02_XR
<Treetop Rangers>
2G
Creature — Ape
2/2
CARDNAME can be blocked only by creatures with flying.

RG11_XR
<Nature's Reply>
4G
Enchantment
Whenever a green creature is put into the graveyard from play, that creature's controller may search their library for a copy of the creature card and put it into play. That player then shuffles their library.

UB15_XR
<Dark Passage>
3B
Sorcery
Put target creature card from your graveyard into play.

These cards are pretty close to their printed versions. Some of their creative elements shifted (like names and creature types), and their templates were tweaked, but for the most part, the printed cards look like the designs we handed off. Remember, this is back in the old days where design ran for a full year, so this handoff was a bit further along than your typical vision design handoff from contemporary design. It's interesting to note how many of these cards are black and green. You can also see that flashback's name during design was "salvage."

Crashing Centaur Hallowed Healer Otarian Juggernaut Werebear

UG10_XR
<Bark Beast>
4GG
Creature — Beast
3/4
G, Discard a card: CARDNAME gains trample until end of turn.
Threshold — CARDNAME gets +2/+2 and can't be the target of spells or abilities as long as you have ten or more cards in your graveyard.

CW07_XR
<Blessed Healer>
2W
Creature — Cleric
1/1
ocT: Prevent the next 2 damage that would be dealt to target creature or player this turn. Threshold — Prevent the next 4 damage instead if you have ten or more cards in your graveyard.

UA03_XR
<Constructed Juggernaut>
4
Artifact Creature
2/3
CARDNAME can't be blocked by Walls.
Threshold — CARDNAME gets +3/+0 and attacks each turn as long as you have ten or more cards in your graveyard.

CG15_XR
<Elvish Werebears>
1G
Creature — Elf
1/1
ocT: Add G to your mana pool.
Threshold — CARDNAME gets +3/+3 as long as you have ten or more cards in your graveyard.

These are the four threshold card designs that match their printed cards, though with one big exception. At the time of this handoff, threshold cared about having ten cards in your graveyard, not seven. Funnily enough, I'm pretty sure that when Richard first pitched the threshold mechanic, it was at seven cards, but we must have fiddled with it in design. Obviously, Development would move it back to seven cards. There was a time when we had small threshold (four) and big threshold (seven) but found tracking two thresholds too difficult.

Now let's get to some cards that changed a bit more:

Aven Shrine Cabal Shrine Cephalid Shrine Dwarven Shrine Natuko Shrine

RW17_XR
<Bazaar of Giving>
1WW
Enchantment
Whenever a spell is played, each opponent of the spell's controller gains 5 life for each copy of the spell in a graveyard.

RB17_XR
<Bazaar of Dread>
1BB
Enchantment
Whenever a spell is played, its controller discards a card from their hand for each copy of the spell in any graveyard.

RG17_XR
<Bazaar of Fungus>
1GG
Enchantment
Whenever a spell is played, that spell's controller sacrifices a land for each copy of the spell in a graveyard.

RR17_XR
<Bazaar of Pain>
1RR
Enchantment
Whenever a spell is played, CARDNAME deals 3 damage to that spell's controller for each copy of the spell in a graveyard.

RU17_XR
<Bazaar of Aether>
1UU
Enchantment
Each spell costs an additional two mana of any color to play for each copy of that spell in any graveyard.

I'll begin with the Shrine cycle (originally known as the "Bazaar" cycle). The core ideas carried from design to print. They're enchantments that cost one generic mana and two mana of a given color. These cards have an ability that triggers whenever a player plays a spell that matches one or more cards in any graveyard. Note this triggers off any player casting a spell, not just the controller of the enchantment, and it looks at all graveyards, not just the graveyard of the player casting the spell. This is still early Magic where effects tended to affect everyone as the default.

The white Shrine still gives you life, but the printed version significantly lowered the amount of life you got from 5 life per card to 1. Playtesting showed that being able to occasionally get 15 life off casting a card was just too much. The blue Shrine also does a lesser version of the effect it had during design. It still makes spells more expensive for each copy of it in graveyards, but the spell only costs more per card instead of . The reason for this shift was that these cards were aimed at casual play.

The printed black Shrine changed the templating but is basically the same card. We reduced the red Shrine's effect from 3 damage to 2 damage. The green Shrine underwent the biggest change. I'm not even sure what we were thinking with land destruction. That was quite unfun. The printed version creates 1/1 green Squirrel tokens. Why Squirrels? Since I was in charge of the set's creature types, I thought it would be nice to try some different ones and leaned into some new creature types. So, instead of green creating Elves, its cards created Insects and Squirrels. For those curious, I did not know when I made that choice that the next set would have a strong typal theme. Obviously, that caused some problems.

Looking back, I see one big flaw with this design (and I was the one who originally designed the cycle). White and green reward you for playing many copies of the same card, while blue, black, and red punish you. The whole cycle should have pushed in the same direction. They all should have rewarded you or punished you. Having the cycle go in both directions sends an odd message about whether you were supposed to play multiple copies of cards. Punishing players for playing multiple copies of a card seems more like the right call, as I think the point of the cycle was to encourage people to diversify their decks a bit more.

Cantivore Cognivore Magnivore Mortivore Terravore

RW08_XR
<Aura Spirit>
2W
Creature — Spirit
*/*
Flying
Attacking doesn't cause CARDNAME to tap.
CARDNAME's power and toughness are each equal to the number of enchantment cards in your graveyard.

RU07_XR
<Fluttering Illusion>
3U
Creature — Illusion
*/*
Flying
CARDNAME's power and toughness are each equal to the number of instant cards in your graveyard.

RB04_XR
<Bone Elemental>
1BB
Creature — Elemental
*/*
CARDNAME's power and toughness are each equal to the number of creature cards in your opponents' graveyards.

RG04_XR
<Spirit of the Ancients>
3GG
Creature — Elemental
*/*
CARDNAME's power and toughness are each equal to the number of creature cards in all players' graveyards.
1G, Remove a creature in your graveyard from the game: CARDNAME gets +2/+2 until end of turn.

This may sound odd, but this didn't start as a cycle. Odyssey was a graveyard-centric set, so we designed individual cards that care about the graveyard in various ways. Note that the white and blue creatures only count your graveyard the black creature cares about your opponent's graveyard, and the green creature cares about all graveyards. The white and blue creatures have a keyword, the white creature has two keywords, and the black and green creatures don't have any. The green creature has an activated ability that none of the other creatures have. The white and blue creatures have one pip of a color in their mana costs, while the black and green creatures have two pips. This cycle was a bit of a mess.

Development realized this was a cycle and lined them all up. The creatures had various costs, but all of them now cost two mana of their color. Each card's power and toughness is equal to the number of cards of a specific type in all graveyards. The white creature kept vigilance (it wasn't keyworded at the time) but lost flying and still cared about enchantments. The blue creature stayed the same, keeping flying and caring about instants. The only change was that its mana cost shot up from to . It was a lot stronger than we realized.

The black creature continued to care about creatures and gained the ability to regenerate. Red finally got a creature (which has haste), and it cared about sorceries to mirror blue's card in the cycle. Green's creature changed from caring about creatures to caring about lands. It was that or artifacts, and green cares a lot more about land than artifacts. It got a bit cheaper and gained trample.

The final change was something that I'd been going back and forth on for a while. Randy Buehler, the set's lead developer, wanted these creatures to be Lhurgoyfs, as that was the inspiration from the cycle. I knew Lhurgoyf was a hard word for people to pronounce and wasn't sure it was something we should bring back. I decided it would be exciting enough for the enfranchised players that we should do it, so all the creatures in the cycle became Lhurgoyfs and I linked their names together with "-vore," the Latin suffix for "to devour" (for example, a carnivore eats meat).

Skycloud Expanse Darkwater Catacombs Shadowblood Ridge Mossfire Valley Sungrass Prairie

CL01_XR
<Compost Tundra>
Land
WU
o1, ocT: Add W or U to your mana pool.
Sacrifice CARDNAME: Add W or U to your mana pool. Draw a card.

CL02_XR
<Compost Underground Sea>
Land
UB
o1, ocT: Add U or B to your mana pool.
Sacrifice CARDNAME: Add U or B to your mana pool. Draw a card.

CL03_XR
<Compost Badlands>
Land
BR
o1, ocT: Add B or R to your mana pool.
Sacrifice CARDNAME: Add B or R to your mana pool. Draw a card.

CL04_XR
<Compost Taiga>
Land
RG
o1, ocT: Add R or G to your mana pool.
Sacrifice CARDNAME: Add R or G to your mana pool. Draw a card.

CL05_XR
<Compost Savannah>
Land
GW
o1, ocT: Add G or W to your mana pool.
Sacrifice CARDNAME: Add G or W to your mana pool. Draw a card.

Next is a land cycle. Design's version of this cycle is similar to what was printed with one key difference: these lands let you sacrifice the land to add one of the two colors of mana and draw a card. We included it to support threshold as much as we could. The design file had more sacrifice built into cards. In the end, the lands were too good with that ability and the set didn't need the extra sacrifice, so it was removed during development.

Nomad Stadium Cephalid Coliseum Cabal Pit Barbarian Ring Centaur Garden

UL01_XR
<White Oasis>
Land
W
ocT: Add W to your mana pool and CARDNAME deals 1 damage to you.
Threshold — CARDNAME has "2W, ocT, Sacrifice CARDNAME: Prevent the next 5 damage that would be dealt to target creature or player this turn" as long as you have ten or more cards in your graveyard.

UL02_XR
<Blue Oasis>
Land
U
ocT: Add U to your mana pool and CARDNAME deals 1 damage to you.
Threshold — CARDNAME has "2U, ocT, Sacrifice CARDNAME: Target playerdraws three cards then discards three cards from their hand" as long as you have ten or more cards in your graveyard.

UL03_XR
<Black Oasis>
Land
B
ocT: Add B to your mana pool and CARDNAME deals 1 damage to you.
Threshold — CARDNAME has "2B, ocT, Sacrifice CARDNAME: Remove target card in any graveyard from the game." as long as you have ten or more cards in your graveyard."

UL04_XR
<Red Oasis>
Land
R
ocT: Add R to your mana pool and CARDNAME deals 1 damage to you.
Threshold — CARDNAME has "2R, ocT, Sacrifice CARDNAME: CARDNAME deals 2 damage to target creature or player" as long as you have ten or more cards in your graveyard.

UL05_XR
<Green Oasis>
Land
G
ocT: Add G to your mana pool and CARDNAME deals 1 damage to you.
Threshold — CARDNAME has "2G, ocT, Sacrifice CARDNAME: Target creature gets +3/+3 until end of turn" as long as you have ten or more cards in your graveyard.

The basic concept of the "Oasis" cycle stayed. The lands could tap for mana of a color, but they damaged you. They also had a sacrifice ability that required mana of that color to activate. That sacrifice ability turned on when you reached threshold.

In the final version of the set, these lands played into the pit-fighting element of the story. Each land in this cycle represents a place those fights could happen. In earlier in design, we experimented with not having the lands damage you, but they were too good. We tried having them enter tapped, but it weakened them too much. So, we went with the version that damaged you.

Nomad Stadium started as a damage-prevention effect, but Development found that life gain functioned similarly while being more universally useful, so we changed it to a life-gain effect. Cephalid Coliseum kept its ability from design, but we dropped the activation cost from to . These lands already had a lot of hoops to jump through, so Development wanted to power them up. These were aimed at competitive play.

Cabal Pit changed from exiling a card from a graveyard to a -2/-2 effect. The graveyard-exile effect ended up being too situational during Development's playtesting, so we changed it to something that would help with creature removal. Barbarian Ring and Centaur Garden, much like Cephalid Coliseum, stayed the same, but dropped its activation cost from and to and , respectively. And as I said above, threshold would change from ten cards to seven.

UW02_XR
<Persuasive Preacher>
3W
Creature — Cleric
1/1
Protection from creatures
When CARDNAME comes into play, you may put two cards from your graveyard on the bottom of your library.

Protection was introduced in Limited Edition (Alpha) but, during the early years of Magic, was only used against specific colors. I designed a creature, Yavimaya Scion, with protection from artifacts from Urza's Legacy. Even that was mostly trying to give protection to something not covered by normal protection from colors since, in the early days, all artifacts were colorless. Invasion introduced protection from certain creature types on Shoreline Raider, which had protection from Kavu. Odyssey's Beloved Chaplain, which had protection from creatures, was the third different use of protection outside of color.

Beloved Chaplain's second ability was something we had nicknamed "restock" in design. Since the set was about the graveyard, we wanted different ways to interact with it. Green and white had the ability to put specific cards from your graveyard on the bottom of your deck. This would allow you to tutor for them or possibly draw them if you had some means to shuffle. There were twenty-one restock effects in the design handoff file (eight in white, eleven in green, one on an artifact, and one on a land), but we removed all of them in development. The file I'd handed over was a bit overstuffed, so some things needed to go. Restock was one of them.

RW15_XR
<Spiritual Cleansing>
3WW
Sorcery
Destroy all creatures. They can't be regenerated.
Threshold — Put a 2/2 flying NAME creature token into play if you have ten or more cards in your graveyard.

The core idea never changed. It's a rare white creature-destruction spell that gives you some board presence if you've reached threshold. There were two changes. First, instead of creating a 2/2 flier, it now creates two 1/1 fliers. Second, we added one mana to the mana cost. Why the change to the token? My first guess was that Development did it to line up with other tokens in the set. During later stages of design, we do a pass on all the cards that create tokens to see if we can consolidate them so players need fewer individual tokens. But white didn't have any other cards using tokens.

Sometimes we change tokens just to lessen overlap, but it turns out that Odyssey has no other white token. The only 2/2 token in the set is a Zombie, and that doesn't fly. My best guess is that it was done for flavor reasons. At the time, there had been a number of cards that created a 1/1 Spirit creature token with flying when a creature card went to a graveyard (Afterlife, Field of Souls, and March of Souls), so I think we were trying to line up Kirtar's Wrath with that.

CU20_XR
<Careful Study>
2U
Instant
Target player draws two cards then discards two cards from their hand.
Draw a card.

This was a small but interesting change. The original card was essentially the printed card except done as a cantrip. A "cantrip" is what we call a spell that, in addition to its base effect, has card draw as a rider. Normally when we turn a card into a cantrip, we add two mana to its cost. This card was added to the file as we were trying to give players tools to fill up their graveyard to help reach threshold, and blue filtering seemed like a cool tool.

My best guess is that this card was originally a cantrip because there was a concern that the original effect might be a bit weak. Development played with the card and realized that it was fine without the cantrip. In fact, dropping it to one mana helped speed up filling your graveyard. The card would go on to see a lot of tournament play.

Digging Up the Graveyard Set

That's all the time I have for today. I hope you enjoyed this look back at Odyssey and return next week for part two. As always, I'm eager for any feedback, be it about today's article, Odyssey, or any of the individual cards I talked about today. You can email me or contact me through social media (Bluesky, Tumblr, Instagram, TikTok, and Twitter).

Join me next week for the second part of Design Files: Odyssey.

Until then, may you enjoy harnessing the power of the graveyard.