Wizards of the Coast is publishing a new trading card game that’s been in the works for nearly three decades. Mark Rosewater’s Mood Swings is a new kind of card game for the Magic makers, but seems both easy to learn and easy to share with others.
Mood Swings is billed as a trading card game you won’t have to “build,” playable entirely out of the box. It’s a light strategy experience for two-to-four players, and the idea is that you buy a deck of Mood Swings and it will be playable right out of the box, even if the cards you get are pulled from a pool of commons, uncommons, rares, and mythics.
Rosewater, who’s also head designer for Magic: The Gathering, draws a comparison to a cube, a format in Magic where players curate a collection of cards that they can draft or play special modes within. Mood Swings will be packaged in 45-card decks, and they can be playable right away, or tradeable with friends to curate your own version of this game.
Mood Swings, in a two-player game, sees both players drawing from the same deck and holding five cards. Each player plays one card (though there are ways to play more than one) and then their point totals are scored, with the highest number taking the round. Three rounds won takes the game.
Simple, right? But seasoned Magic players will likely start to see some of the ways in which Mood Swings allows players to take those rules and bend them. Cards that allow you to discard from your hand to play an additional card, ceding future resources for immediate benefit. Or maybe you opt to be patient, slowly building up your points, as the cards (moods) laid down stay in play from round to round. As you may also notice, each card uses sketch versions of popular Magic: The Gathering cards too, as a little bonus for long-time fans.
The back-and-forth scoring is fairly straightforward; there are no resources to meter your play, for example. And while you don’t automatically refill your hand, the loser of each round does get to draw a card, allowing for some effective comeback mechanics.
Mood Swings seems like it could be a hit for card game players who have been trying to get their card-averse friends and family into the hobby. It’s got a lot of the hallmarks of interesting, back-and-forth card slinging and synergy maximizing, while paring back on the mental checklist required for other games.
Mood Swings will be a Secret Lair product, on sale on June 1 for $24.99. There are 133 total cards, with 45 cards in each deck you purchase, seeded from the pool of cards available. And yes, the idea is you could trade cards with friends or construct your own personal Mood Swings deck to play with, unique to their own playstyle or aims.
Magic: The Gathering will be hosting its own panels and events this weekend at Magic-Con Las Vegas, so stay tune for more in that realm soon.
