Reviewing Magic: The Gathering #24 - Odyssey

So here we are with the first post-Phyrexian-mega-arc expansion, Odyssey. And... it's all right? The whole thing about Odyssey is that it's a bit of a more 'back-to-basics' sort of set, revolving on the continent of Otaria in Dominaria around 100 years after Apocalypse. And, sure, there isn't the heavy baggage of having to continue a multi-year-long story... but then Odyssey's whole deal ends up being the whole 'generic fantasy' vibe that all Magic: The Gathering sets have, sans Phyrexia. And that just kind of makes it sort of boring. Honestly, we're around a couple of blocks away from the new-plane-every-block format that survives to this day, and considering how underwhelming Odyssey was, flavour-wise, I can see why. 

It's not terrible, of course. We've got the Cabal trying to take over Dominaria, we got the Aven warriors of the Order, the underwater Cephalids and a bunch of other M:TG mainstays representing Red (dwarves, barbarians) and Green (centaurs, druids) but ultimately it just feels kinda repetitive of Fallen Empires or Mirage or something. The most important thing to come of this is that, I suppose, the fact that Kamahl, another major recurring planeswalker character, debuts here.

Ultimately, though, I really don't find a whole ton of this expansion particularly interesting, so forgive me if I do have a bit of a lower energy here. It's also partially the reason it took so long for me finish Odyssey. 

• Click here for the previous part, the expansions Planeshift and Apocalypse.
• Click here for the next part, the expansions Torment & Judgment.
• Click here for the index.

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Instantly what I'm going to open with -- and what I immediately gravitate towards -- are the Cephalids. Clearly something that's inspired by things like Lovecraft's Cthulhu or D&D's Mind Flayers, the Cephalids are a race of octopus people that live underwater, are pretty evil and xenophobic, and have vague psychic-psionic powers. One huge thing about the Cephalids? Moreso than any other octopus-people I've seen in fantasy, they really go to make an octopus person instead of just slapping an octopus as someone's face and calling it a day. The Cephalids thus have this very, very neat face of an octopus' large, bulbous head (which plays into the psychic powers well) and the beak! Octopi have beak, don't you know? And the rest of the body is just tentacles very loosely arranged in a humanoid shape. 

These two show off more basic Cephalid designs, with the legendary character Aboshan, Cephalid Emperor looking pretty neat with those crystals in his forehead, and the Cephalid Looter like gathering some treasure from a human shipwreck. I really do like that despite being creepy underwater deep-folk and being nominal villains in this story, the Cephalids aren't actually portrayed as always-chaotic-evil in the way that many Magic 'evil races' have been. 

Two more showcases of the Cephalids, because once we kind of get past the novelty of octopus people the designs are kinda samey (and the actually interesting Cephalids will show up in the second and third blocks). I really do like Cephalid Scout (who is also hang-gliding with what's basically a wingsuit) shows off how the Cephalid anatomy works kinda well. They wear clothes that cover most of their body, and it sort of 'molds' the body into a Ursula-esque body shape with what seems to be a 'torso' that splays out into octopus legs at the 'hip'. But is that what we want to see, because we're humans? It's just as likely that the Cephalids are just nothing but tentacles from the neck down, and they just arrange themselves to look humanoid to interact with people. 

The Cephalid Retainer is one that just looks fancy, and, hey, the flavour text for these guys are even informative, telling us that the Cephalids as a whole are a race that are paranoid, loves to backstab, have court intrigue and are xenophobic. Cephalids, like real octopi, can survive out of water for limited periods of time. 

Even the Cephalid-themed spells have very fun, thematic card art! Fervent Denial shows a Cephalid absolutely fucking up some poor human's mind, in a pretty terrifying showcase of what a 'Counterspell' might look like. I'm not entirely sure if the brain is actually brought out and exposed by the Fervent Denial spell. It could be symbolic, but it could also be literal. This is, after all, the world of Magic. The Odyssey block's gimmick is one of my favourites that have stuck around in some modern Magic cards, "Flashback", which allows you to replay the card from the graveyard for a cost. 

And then you have something mundane as the Immobilizing Ink. So that's where a Cephalid's ink sack is contained? in its equivalent of its sternum? Real cephalopods use ink as a way to baffle predators while they jet away, but the Cephalid seems to be using it to... strangle the human? Dude, the guy's already drowning. Shooting ink at it isn't going to really make him suffocate more. 

And then we have Extract, which is hoo boy what a great artwork, huh? The upper half of the dude's face is just cleanly bisected and split apart into two halves and the brain is exposed. A very cool yet somewhat harrowing image. I like it! And of course the flavour text is a funny one. 

We'll talk about the Aven a bit more in White, but they're basically associated with White and Blue. They're bird-people, as you can see from Aven Fisher here. They're dudes with bird wings and bird heads. I really thought that I would have something more to say here, but I don't. They're cool bird-folk, don't get me wrong, though. And I absolutely appreciate that finally they're moving away from White just revolving around 'priests, knights, angels, unicorns and griffons'. 

Normally Black and Green are my jam when we talk about Magic: The Gathering monsters, but for Odyssey, Blue is the colour that keeps giving in terms of creatures. In addition to Cephalids and half of the Avens, Blue also has a huge focus on 'Illusion', whose ambiguous nature means that it is basically the creative team's secret code to go absolutely amuck. Amugaba honestly doesn't feel quite as much of an 'illusion' and just a strange magical beast, honestly, but I still do really love it very much. It's like this giant monster moray eel or something with a nice colour palette of orange and glowing blue, flying across the sky, and feared by the Aven people because it 'feeds on thunder and rainbows'. A very cool description that doesn't necessarily make a whole ton of sense, but certainly one that feels like the description of some mythological beast. The fact that the Amugaba is an 'illusion' seems to imply that it's just, well, an illusion conjured by a mage, but man, whoever is making all these illusions are creative. 

While Amugaba resembles an animal, the Pulsating Illusion is... what is it? It's got this bizarre face that I can only describe as a stonefish fused with a beetle, and its back half trails off into a tail, that further trails off into an odd, serpentine kite-like organ that ends in... a propeller? Is that a propeller? I can totally believe that this thing is a gross, 'pulsating' creature, too. A bizarre buddy!

Hey, remember that cool creature, the Lhurgoyf, all the way back from Ice Age? That mysterious weird zombie-flesh creature that scared Hans and has a mouth made up of spiky finger-bones or whatever the hell? Turns out that it's a whole race of creatures that vary, and... and I'm honestly not sure what constitutes as a Lhurgoyf, but we get a whole cycle of them, and they all eat. The Cognivore, presumably, eats cognition, the minds of those people in the background whose heads are bursting into smoke. We don't get any flavour text here but my assumption is that the Cognivore is some sort of beast that feeds on thoughts and dreams like the Japanese Baku. The Cognivore's design is... not super-memorable, I feel, although I do like that very rodent-like face and the little organic tubes near his armpits. Are those spreading gas to knock out the Cognivore's prey, or is it absorbing their minds? Like the original Lhurgoyf, all of Odyssey's 'Vores have their stats be identical to the number of a certain kind of card in the graveyard -- for Cognivore's case, it grows from Instant spell cards. 

Speaking of eating minds, Blue's got a bunch of them here. Like the Thought Nibbler, classified as simply a 'beast'. Not a horror, not an illusion, not an elemental or what-have-you. Just... a beast. A good old natural beast. But... what is this? It's like a weird combination of insect, crustacean, piscine and general nasty-looking globby part. It's like the Facehugger, but instead of trying to commit to a single bony aesthetic the Thought Nibbler just looks utterly chaotic, like someone glued five different smaller animals together. And the visual image of it stabbing its claws and that one icky tentacle into the wizard's ear... nasty, and the flavour text informs us that the wizard dude is doing this voluntarily to forget. Dude, what the fuck, just go get a beer or something, man, instead of relying on... whatever this thing is. 


We have three "Thought [X]" creatures, and the Thought Nibbler up there is the smallest one, and all of these have the side effect of 'eating' the thought of their summoner and reducing their hand size, which, in Magic-speak, means they can't access as many spells as they normally can. So I guess that's the drawback of summoning these creatures? Thought Eater is the most boring one of the three thought-munchers, just a floating serpent creature that uses its tail to stab itself into its summoner's head. It's got a nasty-looking bony mouth, though. 

The biggest one is the Thought Devourer. And what the fuck is this thing even, it's just this floating jellyfish-polyp with a volcano on top, covered with purple jelly, with a whole bunch of tentacles and a s piky mouth underneath, wrapping up his prey and stabbing a nail-tipped tentacle into the dude's poor head. "Thinking is hard" indeed. A very cool looking polyp creature. 

At first I thought that these are supposed to be a life cycle... but you go from bizarre cancerous abomination parasite into a floating serpent-dragon into a giant jellyfish polyp? Yeeaaah, why not I guess. 

Now I did say that Blue wins, but it's not like Black is slouching either. I still got really exhausted sifting through all the Odyssey cards, but the winners actually do win. The very unimaginatively-named Braids, Cabal Minion is a 'Minion Legend'. She's the leader of the Cabal organization, presumably. Sure. A boring looking human person with goggles and, whudda thunk it, braided hair. Maybe I should really stop treating the legendary characters as 'notable' if they really don't bring anything new to the table. 

Childhood Horror has a very cool name, although its design is admittedly just a mundane specter with wings. What an artwork, though, with that glorious 'Grinch-meets-Sadako' vibe going on. I don't usually comment on the composition of artwork or whatever, but I really do love the fact that the Childhood Horror is all just dull grays, blues and lavender but then its mouth and beady eyes are bright red, really pulling you into the picture. This dude has Odyssey's other keyword, 'Threshold', transforming it when you have a bunch of cards in your graveyard. 

Two relatively more 'mundane' fantasy horror monsters. Stalking Bloodsucker is a vampire. We haven't seen one of those in a while, and this is a pretty cool glowing-eyed, pasty-skinned monster with massive bat wings. I just like it. Zombie Assassin, meanwhile, looks so much more epic than just a mere 'zombie', with those inhumanly gangly arms and those legs that contort and have too many joints... do the legs also end in arms grasping the sides of the ceiling? That's so nasty, and the artwork pointing out the shape of the pelvis and that completely unnecessary bellybutton hole (at least I hope it's a bellybutton) really makes this thing look pretty dang horrifying. Great flavour text, too. "Zombies don't kill. They recruit."

I'm not even sure what's going on with Black's Lhurgoyf, the Mortivore. Again, presumably, by its name, it noms on corpses (i.e.. dead creature cards). Its body is completely all twisted and skeletal and shit, though. It's partially in shadow so we don't get to really see what it looks like, but the glowing cow-skull eyes and the fact that its abdomen is basically just a twiggy spine makes it look pretty dang spooky. 

Mindslicer! A pretty typical cool-looking Phyrexian-style horror monster. Not to say that I don't like it, though. I really love the hip-thrust pose this dude is looking, and those gigantic barbed blade-arms look very, very awesome. Best of all, though, has to be the Mindslicer's eyeless face and huge square jaw, with the two curved horns really completing the look. Not the most elaborate or original design, but I think one of my favourite Horrors. The Mindslicer gets eclipsed by these four beauties, though: 

A great name! The Face of Fear is an interesting creature mostly because I have no real idea what's going on with this fucker's anatomy. The front half of the Face of Fear is kind of easy to decipher. it's got like this nasty bat-lizard face with a lower jaw that sort of trails off into Cthulhu tentacles, and it's got like two clawed limbs. But then I really have been staring at the back half of the Face of Horror and I'm not sure how the anatomy works. There's a spine? And... a gaster? Are those feet, or just random sinew? I guess it doesn't matter, the 'face' is what matters. 

Frightcrawler is a nasty looking monster that honestly looks like some sort of monsterous alien being. At first I thought that this thing is two smaller snake-creatures and a larger, quasi-humanoid bigger creature, but turns out that those two smaller snakes are the Frightcrawler's arms. This whole thing is just a single creature, and I absoluetly love the sideways jaw on the 'main' body and the fact that it's got yet another maw on its back, on the nape of its neck. A very bizarre-looking creature whose anatomy really doesn't make any sense, but that's what makes these two guys 'Horrors'!

"It's an... um... run away!" Yeah, that would be what comes out of my mouth if I ever look at the Cursed Monstrosity. Look at this thing. It's like just this giant, blind mole rat with flabby limbs and no eyes, and a single bat wing jutting out of it. And somehow it's being followed by a little swarm of black, spiky orbs? Is the Cursed Monstrosity creating those? Are those like parasites, like the Horror equivalent of ticks? What's going on here, and why is the Cursed Monstrosity so fragile that any single damage, even from like a stick insect, can cause it to spontaneously die? The artwork really communicates that this is a very wretched bugger. I like it. 

And Bloodcurdler is... it's a giant sad mastiff head. But it's just a head, and the edges of it trails off into wispy tendrils, some of which... manifests into thing, tapering stabby limbs and the ones closest to the Bloodcurdler's main head turns into faces. There's the obvious baby face, but there are also two like, pterodactyl faces or something. The card spends too much time talking about its weird effects; I really want to know what this thing is all about. 'Bloodcurdler' also seems like such a underwhelming name for this one; as much as I love the other cards' flavours, I would've swapped around the names with either the Cursed Monstrosity, the Childhood Horror or the Face of Fear. Very cool; I feel like with the creative team being a bit more free to return to using 'Horror' as a catch-all for psychedelic, abnormal spooky creatures instead of just being flesh-robo-abominations all the time they end up really showing off what they can come up with. 

Dual colours now! We're going to see a significant decrease of dual-colour cards because Magic, I think, originally intended them to be a thing to symbolize fighting the Phyrexian invasion... but you can't give your players a taste of something so cool and so customizable in making decks and shit and take them away. They would try, so Odyssey becomes one of the rather odd post-Phyrexia expansions to have very little dual-class cards. All of them are Atogs, because the Atogs are fun and the Lhurogyf aren't the only ones to make a return. The Red/Green Lithatog only gives us his mugshot, but what a glorious face that is, with purple gums and a very sassy-looking set of reptilian eyes. The White/Blue Phantatog, on the other hand, goes for a significantly more amphibian look, looking like just a regular cartoon frog-man with over-the-top googly eyes if not for that massive row of teeth. 

Neither Lithatog nor Phantatog are particularly good representations of their colours flavour-wise, but their effects are basically just generic ones that slap one of the 'colour effects' onto the card. 

Psychatog's face makes me really uncomfortable. I'm not sure if it's the very knobbly crocodile skin, or the massive, too-large mouth with fangs, or if it's those clearly nasty-looking eyes. Or maybe because the name sounds so much like 'psycho'. Sarcatog, meanwhile, looks more like an emancipated goblin, and probably the one that looks the least like the reptile-amphibian vibe that all Atogs sort-of-but-not-really follow. 


Thaumatog is the visually coolest of the five dual-colour Atogs, with knobbly, veiny purple skin and a head that looks like it comes straight out of a far grislier series of artwork than fucking Atogs. It's like some sort of tribal warrior, it's got a head chained to its waist, I think. 

And we get the 'king', the legendary card for the Atogs, and it's all four colours. It's the Atogatog, and while its subjects 'eat' other specific cards, the Atogatog, in the words of the flavour text, 'relishes old-fashioned family meals'. Which means it eats other Atogs, the monster! Atogatog himself is kind of a boring frog-man, but I like the flavour here. The very original Atog card from Antiquities show up here, the purple dude with red eyes and the sinister smile in the foreground. EDIT: Actually, all the other atogs here are Atogs from previous expansions! The worm-like dude with blank eyes is the Chronatog, the gangly grinning red dude next to vanilla Atog is Auratog, and the blue guy with yellow eyelashes is the Foratog. The only one we're missing from previous sets is the Necratog. Maybe the Atogatog ate him already? 

...unfortunately, I really have nothing much to say about the rest of the set. The Avens are cool, and I love the idea of a bird-people race. But for the most part, they just end up giving us some angel-like artwork. There's a bunch of Aven cards, though, and I like that they give us some pretty dynamic poses like Aven Archer here. One exception the somewhat samey-ness of the Avens is the Soulcatcher. Look at that motherfucker, he's a badass eagle mand that's using a giant metal cage to catch the souls of the dead! And the souls are just these groaning, moaning wisps with little bird wings! And the Soulcatcher is actually helping these tormented souls ascend to their ancestors. A very, very cool image. 
'

I'm not sure what a 'Cantivore' eats... enchantment cards? What's a 'canti' anyway? I also totally read that name in a wrong and offensive way. White-on-white does not make for a very good visual sight. Surprisingly, White's Lhurgoyf is hands-down the coolest of the five Lhurgoyfs in this set. And, sure, having a serpentine body with two sets of mantis claws helps -- I am a self-admitted insect lover. But the best part of it has to be the arms that don't emit electricity, they just... trail off into lightning in a very cool way. And how about that head, huh? A bony skull with massive horns and a whole ton of spiky, reed-like hair? Very cool!

Wayward Angel is... kind of an obvious and at this point somewhat cliched look. "Oh, look, the angel has one angel wing and one devil wing!" And it's a cliched look that's always awesome. Interestingly, Wayward Angel is still a pure-White creature, and not a White/Black monster. I really love the detail of her 'horror' side. It's not a demon look, and I do love that spiky, fleshy second arm growing out of the angel's shoulder, and what appears to be a backwards-pointing mantis arm growing out of her hip. It doesn't quite go over-the-top to communicate this, and goes for a more subtle way, but I really do like what they're going for here. 

The two legendary cards for White, because White just has to be extra cool. Lieutenant Kirtar has a pretty cool card art, he's got a nice, dynamic pose of slicing a bunch of spears with his spear-sickle thing. Pianna, Nomad Captain, is yet another boring human in a robe. He (she?) isn't even a cool looking human in a robe. Why can't the main White characters be the Soulcatcher or the Angel Horror?

I want to include Cease-Fire here for just what a haunting image this looks, with the smoke from the ceasefire raising into the sky and there are faces just manifesting and drifting away with it. A very cool card that still feels like it belongs wholeheartedly in White while also being very cool. 

BEARSCAPE! Spot all the bears, spot what the druid has done to nature itself. The mountain is a bear! The other mountain is a bear! The snow mountain is a bear! The clouds are bears! The entire grassy hills are a bunch of bears! Someone really likes bears! BEAR BEAR BEAR BEAR BEAR YOUR WHOLE WORLD IS A BEAR YOU ARE A BEAR


Now you'd think that I would be all over the Nantuko. They are a race of praying mantis people! And they're cool, but... but they're just kinda there, y'know? It's the same problem with the Aven. See one Aven and you've seen them all, and I'm just not sure why they don't appeal to me as the Cephalids do. I guess maybe it's because all the Nantuko are doing exactly the same druid-monk meditation/communion-with-nature thing? 

I do, for the most part, like the Nantuko. They have a fun centaur-esque body layout, and I do like how they are unmistakably mantis-people but also non-confrontational. The Nantuko Disciple shows off the sad faces of these bug-druids very well, while the Nantuko Elder shows off the fact that the mantis arms end with regular fingers (and also shows off the body structure well). I like them, but... I'm just kind of underwhelmed by them?

SQUIRREL MOB! IT'S NOT A REGULAR MOB BUT IT'S A SQUIRREL MOB! Ha, I needed that after sifting through the White cards. I do like that despite the simple hilarity of having, well, a mob of fucking squirrels charge in and picking fights with krakens or elementals or giant burrowing wurms or Phyrexian dreadnoughts or djinnis or the Face of Fear, the artwork actually tries its damnadest to make the squirrels look scary. 

I thought the Krosan Beast was going to be a Wurm, and it very nearly just got shunted into the second half of this article as 'cool plant moss texturing, but it's a wurm'... until I took a closer look at the tag. It's a SQUIRREL BEAST. Yes, the Kroasn Beast, despite looking like Godzilla's plant-covered cousin, is actually a fucking Squirrel. I absolutely love the idea that's being portrayed here and how it plays with the Threshold gimmick. Normally the Krosan Beast is a regular 1/1, but when this particular squirrel gets to hibernate and come out in spring, it's this giant 8/8 plant beast. That's like four bears!

ELEPHANT AMBUSH! Okay, between this, Squirrel Mob and Bearscape, Green has some really stupidly funny cards in this expansion. Look at Dumbo over there, sneakily peeking out of that huge tree and probably chuckling to himself. "Man, that dumb Frightcrawler won't see what's coming to get him!

Chloroplant is a neat-looking plant elemental, I guess, with a weird bat-face, a body that's like mass of plant matter that trails off into nothing, with two large knobbly hands. And I like it, but... there's a sense of me having seen much cooler plant elementals, y'know? It's still a neat one. 

That's more like it! Ivy Elemental is, technically not the first chunky-twig-vine-humanoid we've seen before. But the art and the pose is super dynamic, I'm i love with the chunky lower legs and the massive claws, and the fact that its head-torso segment is just exploding into a storm of vines is a very cool image. A pretty cool creature!

Green's Lhurgoyf is the Terravore, which doesn't even look like the vague reptile-esque vibe that the other Lhurgoyfs have, and instead look like some kind of giant earth elemental that takes the form of like a dinosaur or something. A very cool artwork, and the name 'Terravore' shows off what it eats pretty well. It eats lands! 

Okay, these two are cool, but considering that Odyssey is supposed to be a 'big' expansion, we don't really have a whole ton of cool Green weird nature-beasts, huh? These two are great, but usually I have to decide between around a half-dozen. The Metamorphic Wurm is a regular giant Wurm... until you look closer. That face looks terrifingly bizarre, with pickered sides and a bunch of tusks pointing inwards before you even have the regular Dune-esque death-worm fang mouth. The two little beady eyes that you could easily miss make it look creepier, and its belly somehow opens up sideways to show off a burning interior. It's a transforming Wurm, and I thought that from its name, it's pretending to be a tree with an open space (sort of like one of those turtles that opens its mouth to pretend to be a cavern for fishes) before swooping in to chomp down... then you realize the tag. Somehow, the Metamorphic Wurm... is an ELEPHANT Wurm. What? The what what?

Ooooh Twigwalker, what are you? You look painful as all hell. Clearly based on some sort of a twig insect, giving the Twigwalker that bent spine and some not-quite-instectoid arms and legs makes it look less like a giant mutant insect and more like some poor dude that's halfway being transformed by a curse into an insect. The abdomen's kinda creepy, too, sort of just attached to its rear end like a club. It kinda looks pretty wretched all around, which is what they were going for, I think? Gruesomely, the card effect represents the Twigwalker's allies snapping it into two and using it as wooden bug-clubs. Damn centaurs! 


He's a lot more interesting than White's legends, but Seton, Krosan Protector... he's just a centaur dude. I like that it's not an elf again, but I really don't have much to say here. 

Yyeaaah, Red doesn't really have much interesting cards either, it's just like, dwarves and stuff. Ember Beast is kind of a cool like, mutant Ceratopsian dinosaur with fangs and a bunch of extra tusks, I guess? S'allright. 

I really love the artwork of Burning Sands, as the sand completely cover and rip that poor Cephalid apart. Even without considering the fact that Cephalids are octopus-people that are very squishy and probably have a lot of water in their body, the artwork showing the sands swirling around and the glowing red heat... a very great artwork. 

Red's Lhurgoyf, the Magnivore, is kind of a generic four-armed beast-thing. Not a terrible thing, but easily the least interesting compared to its four cross-colour brethren. I do like the second itty-bitty head that sprouts out of the base of its neck, though. This one draws power from Sorcery cards for no real reason. I kinda wish the Lhurgoyfs had flavour text. Even if it's just them poking fun at 'Ach Hans Run' over and over again. 

Ashen Firebeast is this broad-headed dinosaur that's set on fire. Very cool artwork, very cool execution of a design, and I really like the Deathwing-esque lower jaw it's got going on. And then you realize just how stupidly huge this thing is, it's holding an elephant in its hands! Watch out, Ashen Firebeast, if the Metamorphic Wurm finds you, you'll have a fight on your hands! Otherwise... not much. Easily the coolest Red card in Odyssey, which is more of a slight on the rest of Red's offerings this expansion. 

Kamahl, Pit Fighter, is the boring-looking generic bald-badass-macho-warrior-man protagonist. Honestly? Yawn. Sorry, Kamahl, I bet if I read your novel you might be a good character or something, but Odyssey is so boring and it can't even have an interesting looking main character. And it's like... of course it's got to be a human, huh? It can't be the Aven dude or the Centaur dude or the Nantuko dude that's the main character? Nope, got to be a macho man. 

Mirari is the plot device everyone wants to fight for. It sure is a glowing, wish-granting crystal ball! I don't have much to say here. Millikin would've been a pretty neat-but-mundane artificial metal golem person but I really love the visual showcase of that arm just utterly unwinding into strands of metal. It's like JoJo's 'Sticky Fingers' power!

And that's about it. Click below for... hoo, the rest of this 300-card expansion set. 

If I seem a bit bored when I go through the set... I am! This set is kind of repetitive. 

 

A lot of the Avens and Cephalids are basically the same design in different poses. The thing that makes me like the two of those races over the rest? They all consistently have great artwork and great flavour text that's informative or just plain cool. Look at that outfit that Aven Windreader has, that's neat.

Wait, that's all of the Avens? Okay, then. We've got obligatory Griffin, and the Phantom Whelp, a snowy wolf that's part of a cycle of hounds. Which would be cool, but we've seen like, cooler wolves and shit in this franchise. 

Human wizard doing human wizard things. 

"Townsfolk" is a creature type? I'm sorry, what? Scrivener has a fun card art, he's meditating in a bubble underwater. There's also a cycle of Shapeshifters, I believe, but this one is kind of a boring doppelganger looking dude. 


CULTURAL EXCHANGE. This one very nearly made it into the main article, but I had too much blue and wanted to focus more on Green's funny cards. Blue has a particularly funny one, though, with the crocodiles and those... what are those furry buddies? Some sort of raccoon? Whatever they are, it's a cute image. 


We've got a cycle of 'Shrine' and 'Desire' cards that are themed towards the colour's main race. For Blue, it's the Cephalids. It's neat to show this off, but at the same time these sort of cycle cards always tend to be very samey. I appreciate what they bring to the table in terms of emphasizing the lore of the setting, though. 


I like the artwork of Aura Graft, Sneaky Magicfingers over there is so nonchalant in using her magic to rob Sleepy McSleepy there. 

Not much to say here. Dematerialize has a cool artwork, but that feels more like the birdperson is being teleported through a portal instead of being straight-up de-materialized. 


Bamboozle! That's a word I love to use, and it's another 'Cephalids fucking with brains' card, but the ones I featured above are just much cooler. 

Pedantic Learning has the best name. 

Cephalids doing psionic things. I really find the flavour text for Psionic Gift fascinating. And, again, I do like the bits of worldbuilding we get from cards like Think-Tank and Persuasion, even if it's admittedly a bit repetitive. 


Syncopate: syn·co·pate (verb) (1.) displace the beats or accents in (music or a rhythm) so that strong beats become weak and vice versa. (2.) to shorten (a word) by dropping sounds or letters in the middle, as in symbology for symbolology, or Gloster for Gloucester. And there's your card-game-teaches-you-obscure-vocabulary word of the expansion. 

Touch of Invisibility is pretty on-brand for an octopus race of beings. They're practically nature's best doppelgangers. 

Unifying Theory and Aether Burst both have flavour text I really like. 


Dirty Wererat is a pretty all right creature, actually, another one that uses the Threshold mechanic to showcase a creature that transforms under certain conditions. But... it's just not that interesting, and we've had more interesting rats and were-beasts before. 


En Sabah Nur, is that you working as an inquisitor for the Cabal? Yeah, the Cabal is just a bunch of random necromancer dudes. I guess they wanted something a bit down-to-earth after the whole Phyrexian stuff, which is fair, but it also makes the cards terribly uninteresting to talk about.


We have a couple of imps, but I tried and tried and really can't find much to say about them. Zombie Cannibal has a fun name and theme, and a neat flavour text. 


Here's the hound for Black, and he's just a rotting doggo. "Filthy Cur" is the perfect name for it, though. Gravedigger's got a neat theme, and Famished Ghoul has neat art. 


Obligatory Black-mana rat, and a bunch of random humanoid minions. 

Ehhhhhh. Rotting Giant has a very cool artwork. Is that Repentant Vampire phasing through that other zombie man?


Lots o' zombies. Cause this is thriller, thriller night. 

Oh hey, it's the Cabal's shrine. Eh. 


Zombie and corruption stuff. 


Diabolic Tutor! That's a reference to Demonic Tutor. I understand that reference! There's no demon or diablo in that picture, so I'm going to go for the logical thing to take here and say that it's the snake that's doing the tutoring for you. 


Gravestorm has a pretty metal name. So is Tombfire. 


"Hint of Insanity"? Man, that guy is basically Kletus Cassidy already. I'd say that you have a full-blown confirmed, established, pronounced, conspicuous, dyed-in-the-wool, clear-cut, apparent, palpable manifestation of insanity right there. 


Not much to say here, it's Black-mana stuff. 

That Cabal Patriarch dude from above keeps showing up, huh? Bit odd, you'd think that he's the prominent Black-mana character here instead of Braids-the-braids-girl. 

See, there he is again in Malevolent Awakening. That has a cool flavour text, by the way. 


Skull Fracture is a cool name for a Black-mana spell and hey, look at that badass McFarlane monster right there! 

Vampiric Dragon! It's a dragon, but it's also a vampire! It's a hybrid of the two!

Man, these multi-class cards are kinda boring. None of them -- even the Atogs -- really feel like they fit the flavour of being multi-coloured. 

...wait, we only have two more Avens? Wait, really? I genuinely remembered there was going to be more. What?

Angelic Wall's cool, at least. Otherwise, a bunch of holy dudes.

Another bunch of holy dudes. 

Oh look, an antelope!

A bunch of holy dudes. 

Another bunch of holy dudes, they have glowing wings. Wow, we've never seen that before in White. 

It's not like this expansion has a brand-new race with wings in White that they could've printed more cards and fleshed out or anything. 


Another bunch of holy nomads, that's completely different than regular holy dudes. 

Oh hey look it's a hound! And a Mindslicer! Very cool!

Can you tell that I am bored with White yet? Can you tell I am extremely done with White?

Oh hey, it's the Aven Shrine! And the Aven character man! Guess what could've made White much more interesting, it's the dang bird people you introduced but only had like, five cards of. 

We've seen this before we've seen this before we've seen this before


Oh look it's a holy kick and a holy blast and we've seen this before and the oh man White is so boring

Karmic Justice has a cool art. Second Thoughts also has a cool art. 

I am so, so sorry, but god damn, I'm like, I don't care about any of this. I keep saying that White has always consistently been the most boring colour but Odyssey reaches new heights in blandness in white. 


We have a whole set of Cycle cards. The artwork for these are cool, at least. Sphere of Duty has the most dynamic art. 


It's really speaking to White's utter lack of anything interesting that they can print five cards just to counter other colours and the whole colour still feels utterly bloated and bland, huh. 

We're done thank goodness finally oh man. Spiritualize is a cool artwork. And sure, Devilman over there is a cool demon creature, but the light-whips are actually undeniably neat. 

At least we get some cool looking and different looking monsters for Green. Like, a man-bear and a big gorilla aren't like, the most creative monsters, but at least they look different. That's an Anurid in the background of Nantuko Mentor, we'll see those in the next expansion. 

We do have a bunch of regular dudes and a 'Townsfolk', but at least they don't utterly saturate the entire colour. For every two or three human, we get a Stone-Tongue Basilisk. 


For every two or three elves, we get a Nimble Mongoose. And it's like... no, it's not like perfect or anything, I'd rather each card have a vibe of its own, but if they had to have human and elven druids in every set no matter what I'd appreciate some neat-looking monsters thrown here and there. 


Oh hey look, centaurs! I don't find centaurs as interesting as I should, and none of these really end up being neat enough or would give me much to talk about that I didn't already say with the legendary, but at least I feel like the centaurs are like, doing a world building instead of have another nomad have another nomad have another nomad have another nomad. 

Skyshooter, are you why all the Aven cards are missing from this set? Damn you, Skyshooter! Both Skyshooter and Spellbane Centaur have very cool names. Wild Mongrel has a great flavour text. 

Rabid Elephant! The elephants don't stop! Nut Collector, too, is hilarious. And has an unfortunate name. But other than the joke, there's not much to say about him. 


Vivify and Verdant Succession very nearly made it into the top, but I found that I don't have much to say about either of them.

An elephant support card and a squirrel support card. God they are really meme-ing hard with Green this expansion. See, White? Can't you do something like this, White? No you can't, cause you're a boring bore-snooze-fest of a colour. 

Deep Reconnaissance is very cool, it took me a while to realize that the tree is supposed to be moving. 


A bunch of boring Green stuff. At least it's not all pervasive. 

Good lord, calm down, Alex Louis Armstrong.

Piper's Melody has a very charming artwork. I like it. Roar of the Wurm has a VERY COOL art, holy shit. That is a big boy. 

Oh hey, even though the Nantuko receive like maybe three cards, at least they sort of show up here and there? The Nantuko has to share their slot in Green with the Centaurs, though, so there's that for an excuse. 

I have nothing much to say here. These are just there. 

Oh wait, shit, Sylvan Might has yet another squirrel. Ha! Anarchist is a Townsfolk creature, which is appropriate, I guess. 

I tried to pick one of the dwarf cards to say anything. Anything at all. But one thing about dwarves is... our dwarves are all the same. 


...which is to say, they're boring, and we've seen dwarves show up exactly like these all Gimli-esque over a dozen times over. 

Spark Mage is basically the only dwarf that's not holding an axe, mining, or standing around. And he's still boring. 

Chainflinger is a neat little gremlin monster with chain-whips. That's cool. Red's also very boring here, but at least you get obligatory ogre and obligatory minotaur here. 

I'm pretty sure we've had a 'barbarian' tribe come up a couple of times before, right? Eh. 


I considered putting Pardic Firecat and Savage Firecat up above... but they're cats on fire. Very cool, the artwork's nice, but comparing them to something like the Amugaba or Bloodcurdler and I really can't think of much to put in there. 

Oh hey look dwarves smash stuff and get drunk and smash their drink.

Ehhhh. These are a lot more dynamic and have more interesting artwork than White's cards, but still, again, we've seen these before. 

With Red, I feel like all the exploding ground and flames make the artwork never boring, so it's neat to look at, at least. 


Look at that poor elephant being burnt alive by Engulfing Flames! Shouldn't have tried to elephant-ambush the dwarves. 

Stop killing the god damn Aven people, we need them to make White not boring! 

Lava makes for cool art. 

So do flames. 


I actually like that the weird satyr-man in Reckless Charge is wearing some really out-of-place safety goggles. That makes him far more interesting than 80% of Red's cards. 


The very least they could do is to put in some badass, informative or funny flavour text here. It's like all of the creativity went into Black and Blue, they made Green the funny one with elephants and squirrels, and Red and White are just [/shrug].


Like, some of the more interesting ones like Steam Vines? I really want to know what this is all about. But nope, it's just mechanic text. Boring. 


Oh look, pretty flames. And a golem. 

Limestone Golem looks cute, it looks like a steampunk Iron Giant or something. Hee hee, Patchwork Gnomes look like garden gnomes. 

How the heck is a Sandstone Deadfall an artifact, I don't understand. But I am tired. 

Here we have the typical 'oh hey look at the same simple thing, but we draw them five times in different colours'. 


Thankfully, being dragon eggs, Mossfire Egg, Darkwater Egg and Shadowblood Egg actually go out of their way to look pretty dang cool. The other two are boring as shit, though, and I didn't even realize until typing this sentence out that those are the White-coloured eggs.


Lands! 


More lands! Crystal Quarry is pretty. 

Mossfire Valley is also pretty. 


Seafloor Debris has a nice art. 


Ehhhh.

....and we have the basic lands for completion's sake. Again, it's not that this is like a terrible set or anything, but I just find it just so... thematically repetitive, and the sheer hit-to-miss ratio on interesting-looking cards are just so lopsided. See you guys for the next two smaller sets in the Odyssey block!