Mood Swings Explained | A New Game From Mark Rosewater
Transcript
At MagicCon Atlanta, 2025, I received an intriguing message from Mark Rosewater. He invited me to a secret playtest of a new game. A new game not Magic from Mark Rosewater. Off the main convention floor, I met him at a clandestine location and was shown a prototype of a prototype. That was my first exposure to Mood Swings. Okay, well, not my first exposure to Mood Swings. That was being an emo teenager, and then I really rocked them out during my first pregnancy. But, this was my first exposure to Mood Swings, the game. Mark and I were essentially playing with hand-drawn note cards with some stickers with pictures of dice on them. Clearly well thought out, cleverly designed, but definitely a brainchild still waiting for formal production. And now, a year later, I have a copy of Mood Swings, a prototype from Wizards of the Coast, in my hands and coming to Secret Lair June 1st. Mood Swings is a take on a TCG devised by Mark Rosewater 28 years ago, and iterated on for nearly three decades of his time as a designer at Magic the Gathering. It must have taken such discipline.
In a video released by Secret Lair, he describes Mood Swings as his love letter to TCGs, and also as a game he designed for his mother to play, since Magic is a little too intricate for her taste. I was given one of Wizards' own rare advanced copies at MagicCon Vegas this year after shipping problems kept the cards from appearing at scheduled Mood Swings events. Really stroking my vanity, and I felt a compulsion to give you a breakdown of what this game actually is. Mood Swings is sold as a box of 45 cards. The cards use the same color and rarity markers as Magic. You've got white, blue, black, red, green, and common, uncommon, rare, and mythic. But, each box is different. The 45 cards in each box contain two mythic rares, six rares, 14 uncommons, 23 commons, and and drawn from a full set of 133 cards. It's almost like a mini pre-built cube.
[snorts]
The experience of playing your deck will differ from the experience of playing your friends. One might have more interaction, one might have super swinging mythic bombs. The deck I received is pretty tame. The interaction is limited leading to longer games going to maximum turns. So, how do you play? Well, the game supports play from two to four players and the rules are pretty similar across any game size. Each player draws a hand of five cards from the same deck and shares a discard pile. You play one card per turn and resolve its abilities. Each player gets one turn per round. Then when the round is done, you add up the total value of moods in your tableau. Once a card is in play, it is a mood, no longer a card, and the player with the high score wins. Ties are won by whoever played first cuz unlike magic, going later is actually more advantageous. And for the next round, the winner goes first and the loser or losers draw an extra card.
[snorts]
In three or four player games, the player with the lowest score gets hurt feelings, which allows them to play an additional mood on their next turn. Each player then takes another turn adding more cards to their tableau and scoring again. And the first to win three rounds wins the whole game. There's also a handful of variant styles you can play. Duel, in which each player brings a constructed deck of a minimum 45 cards to draw from and maintain their own discard pile. Draft, in which players draft a minimum 12 card deck to play against each other. Winston Draft, a draft variant involving pile drafting rather than hand drafting. And team play, which adds two unique team options to the game. You can view the full breakdown of these in the description below and you can see a four player free-for-all game in action right here.
Overall, Mood Swings is a great introduction to TCG play styles just as Mark intended for his mother. It will absolutely be easier to pick up the magic for younger or less intense gamers and could very well be a good gateway game to get someone into magic or a newer magic player into drafting. However, having played this particular deck which feels low power by the random pull of the cards and having played the play test with Mark last year which was much more interactive, I do hope that there are future releases with more traditional booster packs or generally a way to more easily get access to a full set of the cards. Curating a deck for either shared or dual play feels like a great way to engage with this game and guaranteed a more exciting and interactive play. Overall though, mood swings feels like a wonderful way to introduce TCG logic to a board gamer's mind or introduce family and friends to your card game obsession that might feel intimidating to them. The flavor of the abilities paired to the moods they represent is spot on and creates really fun little mini game of embodying the emotions as you play the cards. Also, the art for all of these cards are sketches for existing magic cards or earlier versions of them. So, it's a really cool look into the artistic process for designing magic art. Mood swings goes on sale June 1st at secretlair.wizards.com and let's be real gamers, we all could use some practice managing our emotions and this game is literally about that. I mean, look, I can choose between enjoyment or bitterness. Look at this card.
Oh dang, bitterness is pretty sweet though. Is there a salty card in here? Salty card.