Design Files: Odyssey, Part 3

For the last two weeks (Part 1 and Part 2), I've been talking about a bunch of cards from the Odyssey design handoff that made it into the final set. Today, I'll start covering the cards that were handed off but didn't make it. Some were printed in later sets and some were never printed (at least, not yet). Let's take a look at some of the cards we designed that didn't make the cut.

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I'm starting with this cycle first for two reasons. One, it's a whole cycle, and two, while we didn't print this exact cycle, it did influence a cycle that made it into the Odyssey block. I adore alternate win conditions, which inspired me to make this cycle. Early in my career, I played a lot of mill decks (and we'll return to that theme in a second) because I liked winning in ways other than reducing my opponent's life total to zero.

Once I got to Wizards, I started submitting designs for cards that support alternate win conditions. I got Coalition Victory into Invasion and put The Cheese Stands Alone in Unglued. Odyssey was my set, so I decided to do something we'd never done before: make an entire cycle of cards with alternate win conditions. The "Revelations" all entered with three prophecy counters, and you removed a counter on each of your upkeep steps. Each card had a win condition if a player had five more of a specific thing than each of their opponents. Each of the things tied into something that was a strength of that card's color (life for white, cards in hand for blue, creatures in your graveyard for black, lands on the battlefield for red, and creatures on the battlefield for green). The reason for the counters was to give your opponent or opponents some time to deal with the enchantment and/or the quality of the win condition before it took effect.

Development had three big issues with the "Revelations." One, five alternate win conditions in one set was too many. Two, the tight structure of the cycle would make it hard to balance all the cards. And three, the counters were super fiddly. Here's how we addressed each issue.

First, we decided to spread out the cycle across the block. Odyssey ended up having two, Torment had one, and Judgment had two. Because Torment and Judgment were specifically tied to certain colors (Torment had more black cards than the other colors, and Judgment had more green and white cards), we included the win condition of the set's associated color(s) in that set.

Second, we majorly loosened up on how tight the cycle was. They all changed to "At the beginning of your upkeep, if [certain condition], you win the game." Additionally, the requirements for the win conditions changed to whatever was the coolest to build a deck around. They didn't have to be similar to one another. The alternate win condition was more than enough to tie them together. I also gave them related names and concepts. (I was in charge of card names for Odyssey.) Each card was about a fight between two people.

Third, Development felt that giving your opponent one turn to respond was all that was needed. That's why these enchantments all trigger at the beginning of your upkeep. So, here's the cycle that appeared in the Odyssey block:

The white, black, and green cards care about the same qualities as their "Revelations," but instead of having more of that quality than your opponent, we just picked numbers that we felt were balanced. Blue continued to care about cards, but we shifted to caring about cards in the library rather than your hand. We loved the idea that the card encouraged you to play a giant deck. The red one completely changed to caring about randomness through coin flipping. All of these cards have seen some play, but Battle of Wits was the all-star card of the cycle and saw high-level tournament play.

For Urza's Legacy, I designed a card called Mother of Runes. It saw a lot of play. "Grandmother of Runes" was a riff on it. Instead of protecting your creatures from specific colors, it protects them from certain card types, specifically instants and sorceries. The fact that we put a cost on the activation tells me that we felt Mother of Runes was a bit too strong. I think this card was cut because it didn't tie into any of the themes of the set, mechanically or creatively. Interestingly, while we've done other Mother of Runes variants, we've yet to make one that grants protection from specific card types.

Because we wanted cards that filled up the graveyard to support threshold, the set had more sacrifice effects than a normal set, so we made a card to stop that directly. I think this card had two problems that led to its removal from the set. Generally, it's a pretty narrow effect, so it's the kind of card that has trouble justifying its inclusion in a set as we're looking to add new cards. But more importantly, it's not an effect that's easy to template and make work in the rules.

What does "require a sacrifice" mean exactly? Does that mean it has an additional cost that involves sacrificing a permanent of some kind? Is that mandatory? Does it affect cards that allow you to opt into sacrificing something? Is it referring only to mana costs, or does it also affect cards with activated abilities that require you to sacrifice? What about effects that have you sacrifice something outside of a cost? This is the kind of card that asks a lot of questions that don't have clean, easy answers. We don't tend to print those kinds of cards.

Above, I talked about how much I love milling. We were making a graveyard set. That seemed like a perfect place to make a bunch of mill cards, so my design team and I made a bunch. Actually, more than a bunch. We made a lot. I don't know why I handed off the set with so many. The printed set only had one card that was aimed at milling your opponent: Traumatize. So what happened?

It turned out that milling your opponent caused too much tension with threshold. If I milled my opponent a little, that mostly helped them, so it was only worthwhile if I could mill out their library. That didn't happen enough to be worth it. Still, we made a whole bunch of milling cards, so I thought I'd show some of them off.

This card played around with milling through damage. Because it only had a power of 1, most players treated it as if it were unblockable (assuming the defending player didn't want cards in their graveyard). I assume this card got killed because it discouraged player interaction.

This is a milling saboteur creature. Because it is so hard to get a 1/1 through, we decided "Zen Wizard" should mill four cards. As you'll see with all the cards I'm showing today, we were all over the board on how many cards an individual card should mill.

This was back in the day where blue cards got to do direct damage. They could only deal 1 as a tap effect on a 1/1 creature. It's interesting this is just Prodigal Sorcerer with a free Millstone effect, and at common no less. The play pattern of this card wasn't particularly interesting. I would leave "Prodigal Mage" untapped as a threat. At the end of my opponent's turn, if I didn't need to ping with it and I felt I was closer to milling them out than winning with damage, I would mill my opponent for two.

How about a Millstone that can also block and doesn't require any mana to mill? This is the kind of card that discourages fast games.

This card combines the set's sacrifice theme with a milling output. Back in the day, it was harder to make a lot of creature tokens. With 20/20 hindsight, I don't understand why this doesn't have a mana cost for the sacrifice ability. As written, it just means most creatures that are about to die mill your opponent for three cards.

I'm not quite sure what this design was up to. You could sacrifice lands to mill, which isn't a great use of your lands. Eventually, it turned this into a flying Wall that made you not want to mill your opponent. I'm kind of embarrassed that I kept this card in the file.

This card has an interesting ceiling. It goes after the opponent's graveyard (fighting against threshold), and if it's successful, it starts to go aggressively after the opponent's library. The big problem with this design is that we just don't make it that hard to exile your opponent's whole graveyard. Tormod's Crypt, for example, which exiles your opponent's entire graveyard for , had been available for eight years when this card was designed.

Like sacrifice, this set had more discard costs to help you get to threshold. It's interesting that the discard ties the effect to the discarded card's mana value (which we called "converted mana cost" at the time). I do like that it encourages you to discard high-mana value cards, something that most discard effects discourage.

This is a variation of "Hypnomage" that mills your opponent based on the mana value of the spells they cast. Spending is an awful lot for an effect that doesn't even counter the spell.

Here, I was trying to create a milling effect with more variance. I do like the unpredictability of it. I liked it so much, in fact, that I would use this effect on an artifact in Tempest called Grindstone, although Grindstone only mills two cards at a time.

This is another interesting mill variant. It's an Aura that mills based on the enchanted creature's power. I'm kind of surprised we haven't made anything in this shape yet. Hmmm …

This is another mill effect that turns damage to a creature into mill. I'm not a fan of this kind of design. I'm not sure why I included multiple instances of these in the handoff.

This is a better mill saboteur. It has built-in evasion. I don't know if the mill effect needed a mana cost. Dark Ascension's Shriekgeist is the closest we've come to a printed version of this card.

I'll get back to blue in a second, but here's a Millstone variant in artifact. This card's ability didn't need to cost .

These next two cards play around with milling as a cost. Obviously, with threshold in the set, the idea was that it could be upside at times.

This uses milling on a repeatable tap ability. As the effect basically damages the opponent, it greatly lessens any danger that the mill will come back to haunt you, as ideally you'll win with damage before you mill yourself out.

I like how this card gives you a range and a limit to how many cards you can mill.

In the final set, we included a small amount of self-milling as a cost. Charmed Pendant and Milikin both provided mana, with Charmed Pendant caring about the quality of the card milled. Bloodcurdler forced you to mill cards as a drawback, which helped you get to threshold. But eventually, Bloodcurdler became a threat to you if the game went long.

This card was printed with this exact name, exact mana cost, and near-identical rules text (this version has targeted draw) in Nemesis. It obviously started as part of the Kindle theme in the set, but I'm not sure why it got pushed back. My best guess is we were concerned about the power level. Accumulated Knowledge would go on to be a top-tier tournament card.

This was flavorful, but very unfun. Hidden information is a big part of what creates drama in a game of Magic, so removing it is problematic. I would later use the name on a simple draw spell in Magic 2010.

One of the most fun parts of doing these articles is getting to look back and see things that I didn't remember. Apparently, we made a version of surveil years before making it. In fact, we did it before the scry mechanic was made. Of course, we made it repeatable, which is probably why this card didn't make it to print. We were so close.

Here's Pithing Needle years before the actual Pithing Needle was printed. I should note this is a significantly worse version of the effect. It only affects one thing, that thing has to already be on the battlefield, and it has all the problems that come with Auras. But I honestly didn't remember us making this before we made Pithing Needle.

I've always had a soft spot for Time Walk effects. So yes, I handed off a flashback Time Walk. This might have been one of the first things removed from the file in development. I believe the quote was "There's no [CENSORED] way that we're making a Time Walk you can cast more than once." I tried.

This card is too cheap, but I like how clean it is.

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Grave Concerns

That's our time for today. We only got through blue, so I'm going to extend this series for one more article. As always, I'm eager for any feedback on today's article, any of the cards I showed off, or on Odyssey. You can email me or contact me through social media (Bluesky, Tumblr, Instagram, TikTok, and Twitter).

Join me next week for the fourth and final installment of "Design Files: Odyssey."

Until then, may you enjoy the cards that never came to be.