See Challenge # 155.

I started looking at the set from the other side, what would the resistance look like? What greek themes could be explored. One big one was epic journeys, so I tried to capture that feel.

This mechanic has evolved a bit like experience counters, or luck counters, or GA Tesla mechanics like access the machine. Or a little bit like Alex's decadence. But it would need to iterate further.

The idea is that you get at most one new counter per turn. And an effect that (usually) slowly scales up with the number of counters. But counters are on you, not creatures, so having multiple creatures helps even if they're not on the board at the same time, because you get a bigger effect. But having multiple triggers at the same time is obviously even more great.

ETA: The trigger is currently combat damage on all creatures, but that does make for a reasonable variety, in that some can be good at triggering odyssey, where others can have more powerful effects, but less ability to trigger them repeatedly.

Possible alternatives:

Allow multiple creatures to accumulate multiple counters at once.

Currently, the trigger is always damage. You could have a different versions with a different trigger for gaining a counter.

Instead of an "each time" effect, it could be a "when you reach ten". Although right now I'm liking the flavour of "each time".

The effect could not trigger on gaining a counter, either being repeatable effect (tap or "at the beginning of..."), or only triggering of this creature.

It could trigger off attacking instead of combat damage.

And obviously the intention is to have a variety of creatures with the mechanic, simple designs, more complicated designs, etc.

I really Odyssey as it is, though having cards that cared about the number of odyssey counters as well would allow even further design space.

I think between attacking and dealing combat damage would be dependent on the power-level of the cards that cared about odyssey counters as well as the frequency of creatures with odyssey. Between triggering flavor pulls me towards triggering of "this creature," )i could be wrong. I've never been keen on the Greek myths, but they always felt focused on a central protagonist rather than a collective group) but that I feel the mechanic in its present state really wants synergy between creature, and seems more appealing, at least to me.

But what is Aerial Hero piloting? Wax wings?

Thank you!

Yeah, it's true, there's no reason not to have static or activated abilities as well as triggered-off-gain ones. In fact, that's mostly a balance issue, is it best with abilities which need an odyssey trigger to activate, or ones that can always activate but scale with counters, or some of each.

The flavour is supposed to be a Daedalus reference, which would be clear if there's art. But it's not really connected to the card, except that I expected many of the odyssey creatures to have a "band of heroes" theme.