Hello and welcome to a late Magic Super Cube!

This is the blog where I go over the history of Magic sets that were released for the Standard format or would have been legal in the Standard format had it existed and choose cards from those sets to make an enormous Cube from those choices.

I do apologize for being late, life does what it does, but we are here now taking a look at the first set of a new block in Odyssey, which is a large set of over 300 cards and a lot of those cards play with the graveyard in a variety of ways.

Despite it being a large set, which have historically been troublesome to make picks from, this was actually one of the easier sets to choose cards from.

Let’s get started!

White

Starting things off with white, I had quite some interesting picks that I almost chose all creatures for the set before I realized it.

The creatures in white were pretty good in this set to be fair, with plenty of interesting options to choose from. I chose a creature that helps in a particular strategy for helping recur a particular card type and the other is an interesting creature that can be powerful in some cases, but also has an interesting downside to play around with.

The noncreature spells were also pretty interesting, and while I almost picked another creature as one of my choices, I did end up picking a spell that works well as a control piece and can prevent some creature heavy ramp strategies while also being a cantrip.

My picks for white are Auramancer, Cease-Fire, and Wayward Angel.

Blue

Blue was probably the hardest of the five colors to pick from, but like I say for a lot of easy to pick from sets, that really isn’t saying a lot.

The noncreature spells are pretty interesting in blue, and there were quite a few to pick from that I had to go back and forth to choose from. I decided that a way to get some cards from a library into the graveyard or hand was a pretty good deal, especially in a graveyard set, and a card that has an effect in blue that is really cheap to cast for how good it is.

The creature spell was also a bit difficult to decide from as there were a good number if interesting design choices to pick from, though in the end my pick for the blue creature is an interesting way to cheat a creature out for a turn, which could play into a number of strategies as the Cube goes on.

My picks for blue are Bamboozle, Extract, and Shifty Doppelganger.

Black

On the flipside, black was the easiest of the five colors to pick cards from, and that’s mostly because there were some pretty solid and iconic cards to choose from.

The creature spell is an interesting creature because originally it was seen as too oppressive in a particular format, though that has since changed, and while it can definitely be a pretty good creature, it’s role as a control piece and a sacrifice outlet is very strong.

The noncreature spells were the easiest picks of the color, with one being an iconic card to get whatever you want into your graveyard and the other being an expensive to cast tutor, but still a tutor nonetheless.

My picks for black are Braids, Cabal Minion, Diabolic Tutor, and Entomb.

Red

Red was an interesting series of cards to pick from, because they mostly play on some interesting play styles for red.

For the creature spell this shows in the fact that it is a pretty strong creature to play because of its stats and it’s keyword ability, but one aspect that makes it very interesting is that it has an activated ability that you may consider using rather than attacking, and I think that creates interesting play patterns.

The noncreature spells also play into some interesting aspects of red because one relies on the randomness of another mechanic to potentially win the game and the other is a card that can potentially deal with decks that play more on the control side of things, making it so that your opponents either need to remove that card or play into it, hoping that they can make up for a potential tempo loss.

My picks for red are Chance Encounter, Kamahl, Pit Fighter, and Price of Glory.

Green

Green had a couple of difficulties, but that was more so trying to narrow down what I thought would be interesting to include in the Cube.

The creature spell is one where I had some difficulties because while I could have added an additional typal strategy to the Cube, I instead chose a creature that functions well generally, especially in graveyard strategies as a big threat in the mid to late game for those sort of decks.

The noncreature spells were also pretty interesting because of the many options, I decided to pick a card that allows you to use your graveyard as a way to get some creature tokens in play, and the other is a discard outlet in green that allows you to get some basic lands into your hand in exchange.

My picks for green are Bearscape, Krosan Beast, and Rites of Spring.

Artifacts and Lands

The artifact choices were pretty slim for the most part, and there was actually some decision making that had to come in for the lands side of things.

While I could have gone for a particular cycle for the artifact choices, I decided against it because that would come into play for a later series of choices. I ended up picking a card that made cards of a certain ability cheaper for you and more expensive for your opponent, a way to mill and generate mana at the same time, and a card that let’s you copy instant and sorcery spells for an additional cost.

A lot of sets would normally have one cycle of lands to choose from with a couple of random outliers, but this set actually had three cycles of lands to choose from and some interesting outliers as well. I heavily debated on which ones to use. Wanting a way to make sure that multicolor strategies were more viable, I went with the safer route and chose lands that would make that more possible.

My picks for artifacts are Catalyst Stone, Millikin, and Mirari. My picks for lands are Skycloud Expanse, Darkwater Catacombs, Shadowblood Ridge, Mossfire Valley, Sungrass Prairie, and Crystal Quarry.

Multicolor

This was actually one of the hardest choices I had to make for the Cube, and that was because I was at an impasse in what I wanted for the Cube.

The overall rules of the Cube are cards that I think would be interesting to pick from and also cards I think would be fun. There were only two options for the ally pairs in this set, and those are all solid options to pick from.

However, this set contains one of my favorite creature types, and while I restrained myself from adding them previous iterations of these creatures from previous sets, this set has some of the most interesting ones, including a five color option that gains a benefit from playing this creature type. Not only that, but it also has a massive benefit from Changeling creatures when we eventually get to them. Plus one of these creatures was a menace for competitive play at the time, so it was coming into the set regardless.

My picks for multicolor are Phantatog, Psychatog, Sarcatog, Lithatog, Thaumatog, and Atogatog.

In Conclusion

Despite my initial reservations on this being a large set and being difficult to choose cards from, this turned out to be one of the easier sets to choose cards from.

When we next return to the Magic Super Cube we will be continuing with Odyssey block by taking a look at Torment, which is a small set of 143 cards, but had an interesting theme of having more black cards in the set then white or green cards, which will make for an interesting series of picks.

As usual, here is the Moxfield link to keep up with all the cards in the Cube!

See you next time!

Peace,

From, J.M. Casual

Socials

Bluesky: @jmcasualnerd.bsky.social

Ko-Fi: ko-fi.com/jmcasual

YouTube: youtube.com/@jmcasualguy

Twitch: twitch.tv/jmcasual