Блок расширений Magic: The Gathering «Одиссея» и его сюжеты.

Block of expansion sets in Magic: The Gathering

The Odyssey is a Magic: The Gathering expert level block. It consists of a trio of expansion sets: Odyssey (September, 2001), Torment (February, 2002) and Judgment (May, 2002).

The storyline of Odyssey leaps forward 100 years after the events in the set Apocalypse on the remote continent Otaria. Odysseys protagonist is Kamahl, a formidable fighter mage skilled in both throwing fireballs and melee combat. Kamahl has a close friend Chainer, a cabalist, and a cool headed sister Jeska. The antagonist is Laquatus, a sly merfolk who uses trickery and mind control to bend others to his will. Other characters include the cephalid emperor Aboshan, Kamahl's centaur friend Seton, Kamahl and Jeska's dwarven trainer Balthor, the militaristic Kirtar, the mellow but dangerous Cabal Patriarch (The First), and the unpredictable sociopath Braids. Almost everyone in the story is after the Mirari, a legendary artifact of immense power with the ability to make its wielder's innermost wishes come true. The Mirari is relatively small, resembling a metallic ball mounted on a wiry helix. The Mirari notoriously drives its wielder insane, often causing death and massive destruction, wherein it awaits a new master. The Magic: The Gathering Creative Team began a new approach to Magic's storyline starting with Odyssey. Changes include:
The 13 previous sets' storyline, beginning in Weatherlight and climaxing in Apocalypse, that depicted the adventures of Urza Planeswalker, Gerrard Capashen and the Weatherlight crew's crusade against the Phyrexians, is no longer being chronicled. For Odyssey, a new story begins in a new setting with a new cast of characters. Kamahl is a red protagonist (Red is the color of chaos, destruction, and impulse). Laquatus is a blue antagonist (Blue is the color of knowledge, trickery, and now, even deceit). Odyssey portrays black themes that include the entertainment and glory of the pit fights mixed with capitalism. These themes offer a new variation of evil to black's themes in previous storylines, which included genocide, soul harvesting, and finding the most agonizing torture for captive victims. New storylines can be as short as three sets, and each storyline can be revisited or cross paths (for an example, see Mirrodin's storyline).

Torment tells the story of Chainer, a Dementia Summoner of the Cabal, who first discovers the Mirari and rises through the ranks of the Cabal, eventually becoming rival to the himself.

Having mortally wounded his sister, Jeska, with his own sword, Kamahl leaves her to the care of his centaur friend, Seton, and sets out on a quest to find a way to heal her. Her wound festers from the might of the Mirari, currently fixed to the pommel of Kamahl's sword. Meanwhile, Laquatus schemes as much as ever to persuade Empress Llawan to aid him in finding the Mirari. Along with his bodyguard Burke (Laquatus' Champion), the ever demented Braids, and Commander Eesha of the Aven, each plays a part in the war over the Mirari. Kamahl trains with the Nantuko Thriss in Krosa in Druidic magic and ultimately confronts Laquatus in a showdown. Upon victory, Kamahl slams his sword into the ground, granting his wish and bringing life and growth to the surrounding environment (Mirari's Wake), though he unfortunately cannot cure his dying sister's wound.

Odyssey was a poorly received set. Mark Rosewater, the lead designer for Odyssey, claimed that the set was the one from which he learnt the most as a designer, as it was the set in which he made his biggest mistakes. He explains that this was because there used to be little interaction between the development team and the creative team. printed at the "uncommon" level of rarity in the Odyssey expansion set in 2001. Its abilities, which allow the player to strengthen it by discarding cards or removing cards in the graveyard (discard pile) from the game, resulted in Psychatog being labeled "broken" (overpowered) by players; in an online poll conducted in 2002 at Magicthegathering. com, 35.9% of respondents said they believed that printing Psychatog had been a mistake. Six of the top eight players at the 2002 World Championship used Psychatog based decks, including the winner, Carlos Romão. It is one of a cycle of multicolored Atogs. The multi colored atogs in Odyssey were intended as hybrids of the earlier, single color atogs. Psychatog is a hybrid of the black (from Weatherlight) and the blue (from Visions), and this is reflected in the card's art. Psychatog has a modified version of Necratog's ability to "eat" cards in the graveyard, but it was felt that Chronatog's ability, which involves skipping turns, should not be continued in Psychatog. It was initially replaced with an ability that required removing 7 cards from the player's library (deck); running out of cards means losing the game, placing a limit on how many times this ability could be used. After developer William Jockusch showed that this could be circumvented simply by using a large enough deck, the number of cards removed was increased to 10, but even this was felt to be too powerful — , a card that wins the game for players with more than 200 cards in their library, was being planned for the same set, giving players more incentive to use unusually large decks. Eventually the "library eating" ability was replaced with its current discard ability.

With the focus on black within the set all the theme decks for the Torment set featured black paired with another color. Grave Danger is a blue and black deck that focuses on using the graveyard with cards such as and The two rares in this deck are and Insanity is a green and black beatdown deck. The two rares in this deck are and Sacrilege is a white and black graveyard based utility deck, featuring cards that placed creatures into the graveyard and others that returned them from the graveyard. The two rares in this deck are and Waking Nightmares is a red and black control deck featuring many of the 'Nightmare' creature cards from the set. The two rares in the deck are and .