Magic: The Gathering Drive to Work Podcast - #1343: All the Mood Swings Cards, Part 1

Episode Date: May 22, 2026

This episode is part one of a five-part series. In it, I go through every single Mood Swings card, in collectible number order, and talk about how they were designed, including many of the changes they went through and some strategic tips on how to play them. Note: This is a bonus episode for this week.

I'm pulling my driveway. We all know what that means. It's time for their drive to work. Okay. So today I'm going to start a multi-part series where I'm going to talk through every Moose Swings card and talk about how it got designed. So there are 133 cards.

So I'm not quite sure how many podcasts this will take. And I'm going to go to collector number order. So I'm going to start from the beginning of one, which is a card alphabetically first in white, and move all the way through until we get the card last alphabetically last in green. So we're going to start with altruism. So altruism is a rare white card.

It is worth three, but if there's at least one card in the graveyard, it is worth six. And if you do that, then you, starting to the person to your left, give them a random card from the discard pile, and then if you have any cards left over, they'd go to the bottom of the deck. So this card, I designed this card pretty late in the process.

This was during the final push, you know, the push for the, we were actually making the secret layer set. I think what I wanted was I was trying to interact with more ways to get people cards, and I wanted to have an answer to people that were making use of the discard pile. So my creative solution was, well, what if I give people cards out of the discard pile? And then if there's leftovers, I get rid of them. So the idea is I'm getting rid of the discard pile.

But I'm getting rid of it and then I'm giving people cards. Like I spent some time, there's a bunch of cards I made where you drew a card off the deck. But this was one in which because you're getting cards on the discard pile, I don't need a – there are already cards that are accounted for, so I don't need to worry about – like, when you draw off a library – I had – sorry. If I occasionally use magic terms, I apologize. If you draw off the deck, you have to put a card on the bottom first as our rule so that you don't increase the number of cards in any one game.

But when you're getting stuff out of the graveyard, that's a counter for. The cards already existed. Somebody already drew them. And then what I did was I wanted it to be optional, meaning I really wanted you to get cards on the graveyard, but I like to have functionality if you can't do that so the card's still playable. So the idea is it's worth six if you do this because you're giving other people cards. Now the cool thing is if there's enough cards in the graveyard, you too get a card. So often in two-player play you'll get a card.

And in three-and-four player, you can get a card. It's harder. This is the only card, I believe, in the game that truly empties the discard pile. Like if your opponent has been like sadness or something that's getting a lot of points of the discard pile, this is the one kind of big answer to that, that it gets rid of it. I thought about doing more cars that got rid of it. In the end, I realized I didn't need a lot. And I didn't need, I just thought it was nice that it existed as a concept.

And the other thing is, early on, I contemplated whether or not you should choose what card to give them. And then I decided that was just too much decision-making. It made someone have to sit and think for a while. And I thought that just wasn't worth it. So I made it random. just because in general, if you can make the game go faster, like you want to be careful not to do things that slow people down too much. And I felt like there wasn't enough, the value to the card

if you chose what it was, just wasn't worth it. Okay, next, benevolence. Benevolence is uncommon. Benevolence says you may play, it's worth two. You may play an extra card as long as it doesn't match a color you all already have on the battlefield. So benevolence is a mirror to a card called eagerness in green, which also costs two. And eagerness does the opposite. You can only play cards that match a card you have in play.

I knew that I wanted white and green to be this mirror because white and green are the two colors that are most about playing extra cards. Every color has a little bit. It's important to the game. So every color has a little bit, but white and green have the most access. And so this seemed like a cool thing. and the idea was, who cares about what it already has been, who wants something different? And I spent some time really thinking about this, which should be white and which should be green.

In the end, I decided that green is more about familiarity and things you know, and so that made sense that it wants things you already have. And that white was seeking out opportunities and, you know, trying to have a breadth of opportunity and a breath of expression. So I decided that white would be different than green. I think I ended up I think these cards this cycle well eagerness was at common for a little bit

and then I realized that I wanted more of the extra cards that uncommon I ended up making a cycle at common I'll get to get some other ones but a lot of the extra

I wanted for the right mix of as fan benevolence is interesting in that benevolence you want to play early whereas eagerness you want to play late and benevolence is

interesting in that you'll never play another white card with it, because obviously it's white. So once you play it, you then can't play a white card. But it's actually a pretty good first turn play, because assuming you have cards other than white, I can play benevolence, and then whatever card I want to play

and whatever non-white I want to play. So, one of the things that I like to do is I like to have some cards that encourage early. For example, it is strategically more often the right decision to play second than first. So if you get to, if you are allowed to pick who goes first or second,

normally you're more likely to pick second than first. So I wanted to make some cards that encourage you to want to go first. Benevolence is a perfect example. If I wait to go second with benevolence, then my opponent's going to play a card first. Maybe that ruins my plans. Maybe the color that are playing is the color of my second card. So if I play first, the nice thing about playing first is if you play two cards, most things that get rid of a cart only get rid of one card and they're not worth a lot.

and benevolence is worth two. So benevolence into another card is hard for your opponent to take out. I mean, there's cards that can address it, but it's not easy. Okay, next is charity. So charity goes way back. Charity is...

So charity is... Sorry, is a common card cost one, lest you play an extra card. I think the very first card I ever made that lets you play an extra card was charity. I'm pretty sure. And I liked it so much. Then I started extrapolating.

on it. But Charity goes way back. Charity is in the very, very early days of the game. I'm not sure it was always called Charity. Well, actually, no way it was called Charity. Originally, the game was red, green, and blue were the colors. So once I realized that I was going to five color when I made that switch, that's when I realized. I think green was always the play extra color, even back in the early three-color days. But when I went to five colors, I decided that I wanted green and white to be extra colors. And I had a nostalgia, which I'll get to. Green had a card that I liked for its common extra play card.

So I decided that just the clean version of it would go in white. Every color at common has one plain extra card card because they're so important. But white has the simplest one, meaning white has the one that's no restriction. So the idea of one play any card, like I said, goes way back. I did like the name Charity once I was sort of in white space. What I did is when I moved over to five color, and I kind of did this when I was in three-color, is I listed all the emotions I could come up with.

And then I divvied them by color. So I said, oh, well, this is a green, this is green, this is red. In the early days when I was doing only three colors, the division was a little bit different. And then when I was doing, once I went to five color, I started adopting the magic color pie, and then I was matching to the color pie. Okay, next. Chivalry.

So, chivalry is another pair. It's a pair with red. Chivalry and Triumph. So chivalry is three, but on any turn that I didn't play first, it's worth five. And then triumph is worth three. In any turn, I didn't play versus it's worth five. So they're mirrors of each other. I like the idea that white was the one that is at its best when it's on the back foot,

not on the front foot, that it's most comfortable going second. And it also, there's a card called Honor will get to, and Honor will let you play second, so they comboed well together. I like that. Honor and Chivalry played well together was, anyway, next to me. So, yeah, Shiver wasn't always called Shiverry. I remember its previous name. What happened was when I moved the cards over from my file,

when I officially got the Greenlight to do the Secret League, I just pulled all the cards. I went into my file of like 300 cards and just nab the cards that I wanted mechanically. And then I just kept the names on them that they had. And then at some point I'm like, okay, let me clean up the names. Like, I don't know if I'm ever going to make any more mood swing.

So let's try to use a lot of the simpler names. And I think somebody, one of my playtesters made a reference that this could be chivalry. And I like that a lot. No, no, you go first. The other thing about chivalry, which versus triumph is, as they started making the game early on I was balancing for two player

as they started balancing for three and four player chivalry is just stronger in that than triumph and the reason is that you're more likely to go not first in a three or four person game which is more people that can go first so it's funny that card got a little bit stronger in three and four player play

complacency so complacency is what I will call my vanilla card for those I mean, you're listening to my podcast. You know magic terminology. So I knew early on that I wanted to have a blank card. The blank cards in the original version were three. And I later realized, because whatever the blanks are, that's kind of my default.

My rule was that if in order to be that value, you had to be neutral. If you were above that, then you had had some there's an additional cost to playing you. If you were below that, then you got some ability. You got to do something. But if you were at four, that's kind of the neutral state. I originally had it at three,

and then I realized that there were more, I needed more nuanced and costing for things that did something because there were more cards that did something, so I moved it up to four. Interestingly, the names, I mean, obviously I had to come up with five versions when I got to five color. And one of the things I spent, I spent way more time than I showed up, is figuring on the five vanilla cards, which should be which color. And I did have, I figured out the names pretty early. And I think complacency, I don't think most of these change.

I think I came up with names for them when I changed to five color. and then with one exception, I didn't change the names. Although I spent a lot of time, I remember I went to the members of the console colors, and I said, here are five names, divvied them up by color. And mostly, they agreed that the way I divvied up was the right way to divvy it up. Oh, also, when I originally moved the files over, when I had 300 cards, and at first I had to cut down to it 120, and I couldn't fit all five vanillaes in originally.

Well, I just had so many cards I wanted to do that originally I had three vanillas, and as soon as I went from one, 20, after 133, I'm like, okay, I really need all the vanillas and I pulled them in. I think complacency, I think complacency was in before then. Okay, next, conviction. Conviction is an uncommon.

It is worth two, and it says you may put any card in play, any mood, on the bottom of the, of the discard, or not just card, on the deck. You may put any mood on the bottom of the deck, and then whoever's mood it was, they get to draw a card. So the idea here is, if I get rid of your card, you get to draw the replacement for it.

So what that means is sometimes, if you really need an extra card, let's say you play an early card like hate or something that's not worth it. It's worth zero. You are a lot of conviction just to trade it in to get another card. To be honest, you do that so small percentage of the time. but it's possible. Most of the time, you're going to use to get rid

of your opponent's threatening card. Conviction's one of the few when you're playing second. I designed it so a lot of the cards that help you deal with your opponent's card

in turn one don't often win you on turn one. There are a few that do. But like, for example, hate is worth zero. So if you destroy their card, if they play a card

and you destroy it, well, then you both have zero and they win. Conviction, though, if they only play one card, no matter what the card is, you can win turn one with conviction. Now, given you're only getting two points, you're putting them up a card, it's not, conviction isn't quite as strong as one might assume, but it has a lot of versatility, and

it's a pretty good first turn play when you're going second. Oh, conviction came about real quickly. I did not add in the card drawing cards. There's like 10 cards that draw cards from top of the deck. All of them put something on the bottom of the deck before they draw. that it equalizes how many cards are in the game. So conviction got made during that, and that was late in the process. So conviction is a pretty late card.

In fact, I had a pull a card I liked to make room for it. Just to that point, it was pretty tight. I mean, I like conviction better than the card I pulled, but that happened very late. Next, courage. So courage is a common. It has a value of one. And it says, destroy a card worth five or more. No, not destroy, but put a card with five or more.

to the discard pile. So it has a mirror in shock. Shock puts any card with a value of three or less. So shock is three or less, white is five or more. Once again, when I was trying to, when I started mapping to magic color pie, I liked the idea that different, like black it is to destroy anything,

but white tended to get rid of bigger things. Red got rid of smaller things. So sort of mirroring how it works in magic. And, yeah, courage also goes way back. Courage is, courage might have been, like, the version I took, but the very first version that I took to Finland that I played, first time I ever played with anybody outside of my wife, I believe courage, called courage, I think was there.

Courage is one of those cards, it goes way, way back. Okay, next, dignity. So, dignity is, what is dignity, a common. it is a three, but if you discard a card worth four, five, or six, with a four or five or six in that right corner, it's worth five rather than three.

So you have to discard a larger card. There's a lot of white-red mirrors. It mirrors with embarrassment. Embarrassment has you discard a card worth three or less, and this card is four or more. Originally, this card only had you... You just had to discard a card. It's worth five.

In order to play it, you have to discard a card. had to discard a card. And I found early in, once the Secret Layer playtesting started, that I just got enough stuff that was getting stuck in people's hands that I needed to have ways to prevent that. And one of the ways I did is I took the cards that have discarded them. There used to be more, we're now down to, I think there's six three, five discard cards. There's a few cards that discard as an additional cost. But there's six cards where it's worth three, but you can upgrade it to five. And those, those are. all got changed when I made that change.

But I do like, I like having a little bit of discard. I like the idea that there's some choice of what to do. And there really isn't a lot of costs you can pay in this game. There's no man-a-system or anything. So the idea of giving up another one of your cards. I didn't want to do too much discard because what I realize is discard is hard.

It is definitely for someone, for a non-sort of gamer. It's a pretty hard choice. Sorry, sorry. It's a hard choice for anybody. I think somebody who's better figuring out quickly the value of cards that would be easier for. But anyway, I did want to leave some of it. There's definitely some fun things.

It also interacts with the discard pile in fun ways. There's fun combos where you discard something, knowing that you'll get it back next turn and stuff like that with Parmen or something. Okay. Next up is discipline. So discipline is common white. It's worth six, but it is worth three if your opponent or if you're a person, Sorry, if anybody in play, if in play, there are two black or red cards, black and or red cards.

So this is part of a cycle. So, in fact, at common, I have two cycles. I have what I call the ally cycle and the enemy cycle. The ally cycle are cards that are worth three, but if in play are two or more of the two allies of the color, it's worth six. And the enemy cards are, on the card is worth six, but if there are two more enemy cards in play, it's worth three.

So this is White's enemy card. Obviously, it is red and black, because red and black are the enemy of white. For those people listening, there might not know magic. Magic color pie goes white, blue, black, red, green. And so the colors are allies with the two color next of it.

So white is allies with blue and green, but it's enemies with black and red. And so this cycle, these two cycles, are showing up a little bit the allied enemyness of the colors. That you want your allies that makes you stronger. You don't want your enemies. It makes you weaker, is the idea. I did spend some time on the names for these cards. I wanted the positive thing to be a more positive emotion.

So the allies should be a more positive emotion and the enemies should be more negative emotion. So how does white treat its... So, white, what is white? White is loyalty. So it's loyal to its friends, but it disciplines its enemies. That was the parallel there. And I later realized that three of the five enemy cards start with D-I-S, I think. There's like disregard and, but anyway, I try to think if I could come up with five of them, I couldn't.

So I left them beat. Next, disillusionment. is a rare. This is worth two. When it enters, starting with the person to your left, each player names a color, may name a color, they don't have to. And then

after everybody's named a color, you destroy all cards other than disillusionment of the named colors. So this was meant to be a board sweep, but the idea I liked a lot was that in two-player play, it allowed each of you to sort of deal with your

opponent's worst thing, or you know, or you get to pick whatever does the best for you, but in two-player play, it's not destroying most the board. In three- and four-player, it starts destroying a lot more. Although, interestingly, even in a four-player, it doesn't destroy all the cards, or, I mean, you could have a color not

there, but assuming all the colors in play, something survives, and disillusionment always survives. The general rule, by the way, is cards don't destroy themselves. You know, wrath destroys all cards, but not itself. So that is a general rule. If you have a copy of the card, it can destroy the copy, but it won't destroy

itself. That's the sort of general rule of how things that get rid of cards work. And I liked the idea. I wanted white to have sweepers. White and red are the colors that tend to have sweepers, although there are other colors, black as a little bit. But anyway, I just was something that I thought was fun for white. And I liked the idea of using color as a means to differentiate and subdivide things. Sometimes I subdivide by color, sometimes I subdivide by cost, you know, even odd or high-low.

And it could be even odd in play. There's only so many ways I can sort of differentiate things. Okay, but that is disillusionment. Encouragement. So encouragement is uncommon. It's worth three. When it enters, you get to pick a card, and it doesn't have to your card,

that has a die value, and you make it the higher die value. So the idea is once I realized that I had the modal, and this happened in the final push, I was realizing that I was trying to make some new cards, and I'm like, oh, I like the fact that there are cards that have two statuses to them. What if we made cards to care?

I actually made idealism, which we'll get to in a second, first. Idealism, one that just does it for all cards. But then I realized I liked how idealism played, and I said, oh, what if I just did one that did one card? And so that is kind of fun. That allows you to sort of take a card that normally you can't get to, but then you can increase it and make it the higher value. But it turns out that that's not, it can situationally be pretty strong,

but often it's not. You don't always have one of those in place. That's why I made it worth three. Okay. Next is faith. Oh, faith is part of a different cycle. at Uncommon, I have an ally cycle where I'm using ally cards in some way as an additional cost that allows me to do something. And the idea is all of them are worth, I think, they're all worth two or three.

Faith is worth three. Maybe they're all worth three. Maybe the whole cycle is worth three. But the idea is you need to do something. So for Faith, I have to discard a card. And once again, it's the ally cycle. So I have to discard a green card or a blue card. which is White's allies.

And if I do that, then I get to do a white thing. And the white thing is I get to suppress a card for the turn. Oh, no, sorry, do I suppress a card? I suppress a card as long as Faith stays in play. I think Faith originally just suppressed it for the turn. And Corey made me realize that that was too weak. And so we changed it. So as long as Faith stays in play, suppresses a card.

The neat thing about that is that you don't always have the cost to pay for it. That's why it has three biote. I mean, you don't have to do it. And oftentimes, you know, getting Cardware 3 is usually good enough. But I like the idea that, oh, and the other thing that I did, you'll see with a lot of the suppression, white has a lot of things where it's making values about other people. And I use a lot of that for my suppress card, that it's sort of like, I'm white and I believe this is true. And if you don't follow what I think, then, you know, I can suppress things.

And so suppress only shows up, by the way. I should talk about suppress. Suppress only shows up in white. Early versions of suppress actually, I had a version that was kind of like the Magic Card Oblivion Ring where you kind of got rid of it for a while. Like you could tuck it under the card.

Although then I had a thing called tucking, but when I get to there, I'll talk about that. But anyway, you could get rid of the card. And then I said, oh, that's too messy. Okay, what if I just, while it's in play, you shut off the card. And so for a while, nothing worked. It didn't have any effects.

That ended up having a lot of rules, ratifications that I didn't want. So in the end, we decided it's just worth zero. So it's still in play. It still has an effect. It still has the effect. It's still its color. You can count it for things. But it just is worth zero.

And I always, even from the very early beginning of this card, I always had you turn it sideways. The early versions didn't tell you to turn sideways. Eventually, when we were templating it. Michael, like, when we were playing with Michael, I always turn sideways. Michael's like, we should just tell them that, like in the card. So now the card, when it suppresses, tells you to turn aside ways to market. And it's a nice clean way of showing you don't have to count them, so I like that. Okay, next, friendliness.

So like I said earlier, white and green are the two colors that do the most extra card drawing. I liked the idea of having sort of a pair. I have a bunch of odd even pairs in the set. It's just a nice way to even divide in half, roughly half. And so the idea was, what if I just had two white cards, one said play an even card and one said play an odd card. I put them at uncommon. Oh, a little tiny trick.

So after friendliness, I will get to kindness in a second. One of my little tricks I did is whenever I did pairings, in which the pairings are odd even, I made the alphabetical first one even and the second one odd. So if you want to remember between friendliness and kindness, which one's even and which one's odd,

friendliness is even because it's alphabetically first. Anyway, a little tiny trick mnemonic for me to remember which is which. But also, by the way, I turned out that extra cards are very powerful. I mean, this doesn't let you play all the extra cards, but let you play half the extra cards. And so oftentimes you can do something.

I do like how friendliness and kindness get you in a weird situation somewhere where, well, this is the card I can play. Do I want to play it? And like sometimes, for example, with Charity, you often want to play Charity on turn one because why not? It's just an extra point. But the thing about friendliness and kindness is oftentimes it dictates what you're going to play.

And you shouldn't play the card. Like, you shouldn't play the first turn just to get the second card out if you can't maximize the second card. It is better to not play it and then surprise someone at the time you're going to play the second card. Just because it's going to be optimization is worth more than the two points. Just a little strategy tip. There are exceptions, obviously. It depends on the board state.

But as a general rule, making yourself play faith early but not optimizing the card you're playing with faith usually is a mistake. Okay, guilt. So guilt is my enemy uncommon cycle. The way the uncommon enemy cycle works is I'm doing something negative to enemy colors. Now, the cycle doesn't quite work all the same. There are three cards,

white, blue, and black where you get to choose to do it to one card of that color or all cards of that color. So I can express one black or red card. Oh, so, sorry. Guilt is worth two. It says, when you play it, you can either suppress a black or red card

or suppress all black or red cards. And the idea is that you can pinpoint and do it or you can affect everything. And so there's an interesting choice based on the game state for you. It had a lot to do with, I think early on, this just did everything. That was the early version of this card. It just said, okay, suppress all black or red cards.

But what happened was you got stuck in your hand a lot. You're like, oh, well, this is better for, This hurts me if I play it. So I changed it over so it had more flexibility. This also ended up making it play a lot better in multiplayer play, which I was happy with. Meaning, in two-player play, you tend to pinpoint a little bit more, but in multiplayer play, you tend to use the mass effects a little bit more just because they're more often can do big effects when you need them to, which you need in multiplayer

and three and four player. But anyway, so it is part of a cycle. the white blue and the white blue black ones do one or do the whole team the red and green ones I end up having to do this a little bit different I just didn't have red and green didn't quite have the same destruction in the same way or answers in the same way so it works a little bit differently there

but there is an ally theme and an enemy theme where the ally theme you're using your allies to help you and the enemy theme you're doing something to your enemy usually green is the rare exception there but we'll get there. Okay. Next is honor. Oh, honor goes way back. Honor is, honor is one of the cards that's been in the game forever. It wasn't always white because white didn't exist. But, um, so honor is a card, uh, oh, here's another thing. So honor right now is it rare. It's worth four. Um, and it says, or no, it's worth three. It's worth three. And it says, um, choose a player. That player plays

first as long as honors in play. Originally, the way honor worked, was it said, you play last. You always play last. And then when I was working on it in the last push, I realized that I could just make it a little bit more flexible. And it helps it in multiplayer play if I could dictate who went first. And so we just changed it from you go last to you pick who goes first, which is you can go last if you so decide.

So the card got more strong than weak. It just allowed you to dictate things that you wanted to dictate. Didn't really change it much in two-player play. it really significantly, I think, improved it in multiplayer play. And then the other interesting thing was it used to be a common. And then when I moved it down, when I first started making the Secret Layer version of it, I moved it to Uncommon. And then after a lot of play testing, we moved it to Rare.

So that's one of the cards that's been in most of the rarities, which is not something a lot of cards have done. Well, anyway, guys, so I've gotten to work. So I'm partly through wait. I had no idea how long this would take. but I thought that it would be fun to do, just go through all the cards. There is no set I've ever made where I mostly made every card in it, and I know exactly how every card got changed, so this has been fun.

But anyway, we will continue. But I am at work, so we all know the means. It means instead of talking mood swings, it's time for me to be making magic. I'll see you all next time. Bye-bye.