MTG’s Color Pie: Odysseus from Epic

So despite my reservations about Greek mythology and its oversaturation I felt hook, line and sink for Epic: The Musical. It is genuinely one of the best musicals I’ve experienced, and I could gush for hours about its themes, about how it is a sing-through and thus a homage to classical poetry, but we’re here for MTG related reasons.

Namely, Odysseus himself, of course.

In The Iliad and The Odyssey, Odysseus is a classical Blue-aligned character. He is well known for being clever, for being a strategist, for guessing puzzles and generally prioritizing the mind. Sure he has done acts of violence — the Romans don’t call him “cruel Ulysses” for nothing — but he is pretty restrained by Greek hero standards.

Epic still retains some of his clever moments, but rather downplays them in favor of his emotional turmoil. Make no mistake, Odyssey Odysseus is essentially a shell shocked veteran who just wants to reuinite with his family, but Epic Odysseus is emotionally tormented and really, REALLY wants to get back, no matter the cost. He is also more openly violent, killing the sirens and torturing Poseidon and taking glee in slaughtering the suitors.

All in all, he’s considerably more Red-aligned in this version, particularly given his love for his family is given a ton of poetic and heartwrentching songs. You can argue there’s a bit of Black given how he’s openly willing to sacrifice his crew and is pretty murder happy, but he’s not particularly ambitious and mono-Red bad dudes are always welcome.

Yet despiste these differences the character remains true to the source material, which really shows how a slight priority can fully change a character’s alignment.

Still, I’d class him as Blue/Red, still cunning but more passionate.

Edit: tomrash made this wonderful card: