Magic: The Gathering Drive to Work Podcast - #1346: All the Mood Swings Cards, Part 2

Episode Date: May 29, 2026

This episode is part two 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 on my driveway. We all know what that means. It's time for the drive to work. Okay. This is part two of a podcast series where I'm going to talk about every single mood swings card. When we left off last time,

so I'm going in order by collector number. So it goes white, blue, black, red, green, alphabetically. So we last time talked about honor. So this time we'll start with idealism. So idealism is a car. card, a mythic card. It's worth zero. It says you can play an extra card and then all, for any card that is two values, it's the higher value. Regardless of whatever else is going on, it just makes it the higher value. So this is similar to encouragement. Encouragement is an uncommon that

for three does that to one card while it's in play. Idealism does it to all your cards while it's in play. Remember, you don't get to choose which you want, it's just the higher. But anyway, one of the challenges

in making this card was, I think I made this card first. I made, and this card got made during the secret later development period. I had the dice.

I had the dual role of value for a while, but I wanted to make a card that cared about it. I came up with idealism. liked it. I liked it enough that I decided to make a one-shot version of it, which was encouragement. But I had this weird thing where I needed to price them correctly. An encouragement really wanted to be at three. It's situational, and so I didn't want it to be too low. So idealism couldn't be

at three, because then it's just strictly better than, it would just strictly better. So what I did instead was two wasn't right. So I did this thing where I said, oh, what if I make it zero, I let you play an extra card. I do that at some higher rarity cards. In fact, there's also some Reroyer cards. I do some zero drops playing an extra card that has another ability. As you get higher up in rarity, the other ability gets bigger. And the nice thing about that is, if you happen to have a card in your hand that has a dual

score, you can play that with his card. So that allows you to have a big play on the turn you play Idealism. I mean, it's a mythic rare, so he wants somebody to be pretty splashy. And the other thing I like about idealism is that it's a very situational card, It can make major swings at the right moment and the right time, which is what I like about Mythic Rares, is that they can be very grandiose and have huge, huge plays can happen. Also, if you're ever drafting this set,

idealism is an interesting card to draft early because then you know to prioritize getting other dual score things. Okay, next is kindness. So kindness is, I did friendliness last time. It's two, it's an uncommon. So kindness says you may play an odd card. You may play an additional card if it has an odd score in the upper right hand corner. And so kindness and friendliness are close to the same.

I at one point tried to figure out whether or not I could make everything, like whether or I can make the game such that odd and even were truly 50-50. I mean, it's 133. So very close to it. And the end of what I found was it didn't matter that much. It's roughly 50-50. I think there's a little bit more odd than even. So friendliness is slightly...

Kindness is slightly better than friendliness. The one thing I will say, a little strategic note when playing extra cards, especially conditional extra cards, is if you can't optimize the card you get to play extra, sometimes you want to hold off on playing kindness. A lot of people want to play the extra cards right away, but don't do that if you're not optimally.

Let's say, for example, the odd card you can play does something. It's impactful. It's a card that has a... you know, replies in some way. Well, you don't want to waste that. And so what I would say is, look, don't play it on the first turn and allow yourself to optimize it.

But when you get to play it, you get more points when you're playing that turn that's probably going to win the turn that you play it. So you don't always need to use. I mean, first turn, extra cards are very good on turn one, just because most the answers are one for one. So if you play two cards, it's hard for them to answer both of them. But anyway, okay, loyalty.

Loyalty is a common. It is part of the cycle. I talked about this last time. At Common, there's an ally cycle and an enemy cycle. All 10 of the cards care about whether or not two or more cards of two colors are on the battlefield. Sorry. Are all in play. You can see my magic rubbing off here.

So the idea is that loyalty is white. So loyalty is a three-cost card. if you have whites allies, which is green and blue. So there's two or more greener blue cards in play. It's worth six. The ally thing is meant that you have to build up to it. So normally they're not the greatest first term play, because usually the board's not built up yet.

But they're nice later in later turns because they're a six without really any drawbacks. A lot of the other six has come with big drawbacks. And this is not a particular drawback, just it's situational. But they're good late turn plays. And I talked about last time. The idea is I named the ally color something positive. What do you think of your friends?

You're loyal to your allies, right? And your enemies, you got to show your enemies discipline. You know, so there are words such that they show like how you get along and how you have issues with them. Okay, next is meekness. The meekness is a rare. It's worth one. What meekness says is when I enter, when I enter play, when I come into play, you take every card that is a value of five or more in play, every mood,

and then you suppress it. Remembering, suppressing means that the cards have a value of zero, as long as the thing suppressing them is suppressing them. So meekness suppresses for as long as it's in play. And so the idea is, it's a good comeback card, especially if your opponent has a bunch more bigger stuff than you. But if you get rid of meekness, then you get to get it back.

In fact, it's funny. for a while I had two different cards. One was a card that suppressed all five or greater, one that got rid of all five or greater. And I ended up not having space for both of them. I left meekness because I liked the play value of suppressed with white. And so it's a nice thing. Note that meekness, by the way,

only suppresses cards, moods that are five or more that are on in play when you play it. It does not suppress later things. Early versions of suppress did do that. This card did do that at one point. used to be, at the beginning of scoring, before scoring happened, you suppressed everything that was five or more. And that, it was making things a little more complicated than it needed to be.

So we simplified it. And now it just, it doesn't when it enters. Okay, after me, this is pacifism. So passivism is common. It's the very first suppressed card, influenced by the card, pacifism in magic. So pacifism, when I added white, I remember that originally there was red, green, and blue, when I turned it to the magic colors, and I had a white and black,

and I was trying to match the color pie. I liked the idea of white having an answer that was temporary, that you could, like an answer that you could answer. And so the very first card I made was pacifism. Originally, pacifism said, like, I think it removed it from play.

It was kind of like oblivion ring in magic, or you would take the card and you'd remove it from play, and when you got rid of it, it would come back. But the idea of having something in limbo, there was no really, like, magic has some things that we don't have in moods. swing. So the idea of the card going somewhere, but you don't know where it goes was confusing.

And then when I programmed it, my friend Graham Hopkins, who was in the first grade designer search, he programmed moose swings. I talked about this in my history. And I remember the way it was suppressed was causing a lot of issues when he was trying to program it, which is a sign that there's rules complications. And he was the one that recommended, what if it's just worth zero? whatever it just drops it to zero. At one point, by the way, the way suppress worked is that you didn't score it. Not that the value change, but you didn't score it. And that caused more confusion than it was worth.

And so we ended up just making it worth zero. And that actually interacts with some fun ways from other cards. Okay, next is patience. So patience is a common, it's five, a value of five, but it's one the turn you play it. So this card goes way, way back. I mean, it wasn't always white, obviously, but patience with the name patience goes back to one of the, maybe even the first incarnation. It's a really old card.

And then there's a, I had a parallel. So originally when I had 300 cards, I had a 5 that was worth one when you played it, and the 6 those were 0 when you played it. And then I had a 0 worth 6 when you played it and a 1 with 5 when you played it. The first two are in white, the second 2 would be in red. And then I realized that when I had to come down from 300 to 133, I didn't. need to do both of those. Originally, I think I did one in five and five and one, and then Corey made me realize that six and oh was better for a car called Glee and Red.

We'll get there. So these are kind of mirrored cards. Patience is one and five, Glees, six and O. So they're slightly different, but, or I should say five to one and zero and six. But anyway, patience is a nice card. I like the idea that I like having plays that are good long term but not short term. So the best time to play patience, by the way, is when you know you're going to lose. One of the key things of when you play moot swings is optimization of, okay, I know I'm not going to win this.

So how do I use my turn that I'm not going to win for value? And patience is a good example. So my opponent plays the card turn one. I can't beat it. Well, I might as well play patience. I'm going to lose anyway. But then I, you know, I used up my cost of the card is having a bad turn. But I was going to lose it anyway.

So I sort of absorb that. But anyway, I make this. I'm not making this. Patience is a pretty cool card. So pride is a rare value of one, and it says, you may keep playing cards until you have many cards as

whoever has the most cards in play, the most moods in play. So this was designed as a catch-up feature. White and green, as I said, are the two colors that do the most with extra plays. So they're the two colors that have the, you know, play a bunch of additional cards. Green more lets you play additional cards over many turns,

like stuff like Hope, that lets you play two cards to turn. Where White does Bursa plays, so both Pride and we'll get to validation later. Could let you play a lot of cards in the same turn. And the idea of this card is the more behind you are, the more somebody else is more moose and play than you, the better the card is. So it's really nice for catching up. One of the things you need is they want to make sure there's cards that,

because sometimes someone can get really far ahead, and they want to make sure there's answers to that. So pride was a good answer for that. Repentance. Repentance is an uncommon value of two. When it enters, it says choose a number, and then you repress all cards of that number. Suppress.

Suppress all cards of that number for this turn, but just for this turn. So suppress and, I'm sorry, repentance and scorn, which I'll get to in a moment, are the two suppressed cards that are temporary. All the rest are suppressed as long as the cards in play. But repentance has a bigger effect, but it's temporary. So the idea is that in fact that you can pick a number is really nice.

It gives you a lot of flexibility. It's better the more cards are in place. It's better in three and four person games and it is a two-person game. But it's very situational. And so it's the kind of card that helps you win the turn, but doesn't do a lot to advance you long term. So I like having some cards like that. And then Scorn is a rare worth two.

When you play Scorn, you suppress a card for a turn. And then whenever you play another card, whatever color that card is, you can then suppress a mood in play of that color. So after I play Scorn, if I then play a green card, okay, now I can suppress any green card in play. So Scorn took a lot.

Scorn and Mous are probably the two most complicated cards. They're both mythic rairs. So Scorn is, it's a really interesting card. Originally it didn't do the surprise. Carson carbon comes into play and I was having really trouble getting the right value for it because it was in a weird spot. And then I realized that, okay, what if I give you some optimization when I play it and then it doesn't need to be worth as much? So the idea that it's worth two, but I get to suppress something, you know, one thing. It was pretty useful.

And so one of the tricks I learned is one of the ways to do costing is you can add an effect on it. The most common effect I add is play another card and make it really cheap. But the nice thing about suppress a card was it was useful, you know, a temporary suppress card was useful and it's thematically fitting in the card. So anyway, that is corn. Shame. So shame is a rare. It says, in order to play this, discard a card.

You may discard. I think it's optional. But if you don't discard a card, you don't get the effects. It's just worth three. But if you discard a card, what it does is it suppresses all moods in play. of the color of the card you discard it. So if I, let's say I play shame and discard a blue card, now as long as shame's in play,

I suppress all blue cards in play, not later, but right then there, I suppress all blue cards, and they stay suppressed as long as shame is in play. When I just could name a color, the card was a little bit too strong, so I liked the idea of having to discard a card. And the idea that you have discarded card the right color makes it a little bit trickier to use

because if you just name a color, it was just way too powerful. For a while, by the way, this card and the card called Wonder and Green used to have what we call tucking. What tucking was is you would take a card instead of discarding it, you would put it underneath the

card. So it wasn't technically in play but it would dictate something about the card, in this case the color. Because originally the way that this card worked was you would discard a card and just remember at the beginning before scoring, you would suppress all cards of the color. So it kept suppressing things. It caused some

rules problems and there was memory issue remembering the color of the card. So having you do it right when you play that meant you just have to know it then and then you can forget what it was. You know, because other cards might take cards out of the discard pile. But anyway, that is shame. And then the final white card is

validation. That's a mythic card. It's worth one. It says you may play an additional card and then it has an ability that says while in play, whenever you play a card with a value of zero or one in the top right end corner,

if it had a zero or one when you play it, you can play an additional card. And so that is another validation and pride with the two that will let you burst out more cards. And you can do some fun chaining. This is another fun card to draft early because if you know you have it, you can do some fun things with it.

Okay, now we get to blue. Ambivalence. Ambivalence is the blue common enemy card. So it's worth six. but if the enemies aren't played, there's two or more red or green cards, then it's worth three. And the idea is

when Blue will obsess about its allies, but it's ambivalent about its enemies, so we put that there. Anxiety is worth two. Anxiety says when I play this, I can choose up to two players. One of them can be you. And then you may put,

for each player you choose, put a card with an odd value into their hand. Originally, this was one of the ones that just did it to one player. When I was cleaning things up from three and four player play, this is one of six cards

that I pick up to two players. This is a mirror. There's a black card called, what is it called? Contempt. Oh, no, spite, spite. There's a card called spite that does the same thing,

but it puts an even card into the discard card. So this bounces an odd card that puts an even card into the discard pile. Bounce for those that do not play magic, it's slang for put it back in your hand. anxiety by the way in panic

panic is the card that has a value of one and it bounces anything puts anything back where anxiety is two but it only bounces odd things those originally had their name swapped and then I decided that panic was the more universal thing the anxiety was a little more narrow

so I swapped them avoidance so avoidance is a rare card verse three when you play you pick a card and play which can be avoided and then you pick left or right and you move the card you've chosen each you and your opponent choose a card and then you move it either to left

or right whichever you chose. So there's a card in where is it uncommon called Confusion where you pass a a card from your hand. I made that first. And I liked the idea of sort of messing around with other cards plays.

One of the cool things about mood swings because you play out of a shared deck is a much more freeing to let you change things and move things and put things in other people's hands and stuff. So I thought this was, was a fun card. Originally, by the way, it cost two. And it let you pick up to two cards to move. You chose the number, whether it was one or two.

You could choose zero, one or two, I guess. But I decided to change it during editing. It was one of the last cards we changed. The template was a lot cleaner if you just got to pick one card rather than chose a number first. So we changed it. bashfulness. This is one of my favorite designs. So bashfulness is a card that costs six.

It's a common. And what it says is, it's worth six. After scoring, if you won this turn, if you won the turn, you played this card, played bashfulness. Bashfulness does not like that. It's bashful. It goes to the bottom of the deck

and you draw a new card. Originally, this card was a six that just bounced at the end of the turn no matter what. So the idea was you got no value. It was really good. It was worth six. you got no long-term value for it.

So it was a really good last play, but not a really good term for building up. Eventually, I decided that I wanted it, I wanted a little more utility for it. And so I said, oh, well, what if it stays in play? It only goes back if you have won the turn. Meaning if you're behind, if I play a card six and I'm not winning,

we'll get to stay. Bashwood doesn't like the little lime light. it's willing to be there if no one's paying attention to it. If you win, no one's paying attention to it. But if you win, like, oh, people are looking at it. And then eventually when I added in the draw, when I realized that if we put cards on the bottom of the deck, we could draw a card off the deck.

I liked the idea, rather than how you keep playing the same card, I like the idea that you turn this into a different card. Just because playing, you know, playing a bachelor's a couple times in a row was less fun than just giving you something new to do. Confusion! So I just mentioned this earlier. Confusion is an uncommon. It is worth four.

And the way confusion works is when you play confusion, you must pass a card. You choose left or right and you pass a card. The reason this is far as interesting. Four is the vanilla. All of the vanillas are worth four. In order to be worth four, you have to be neutral, meaning it's not an advantage, it's not a disadvantage. It's kind of in the middle. And I like the idea that passing a card sometimes might be good for you.

Sometimes it's not. You know, sometimes like, oh, I like the other cards in my hand. I don't want to pass any of them. And maybe my opponent will give me a card that's situationally bad right now. Or maybe I'm playing and I have a card that I don't think I'll play. Why not pass it? Maybe we'll get something better. So I like the fact that it's sort of unknown.

This was the first card why I had you change things. Because, you know, in magic, for example, you can't put other people's cards in your hands. I mean, outside of like Silver Border. But I like that in this game because it's shared deck. You know, they're going to shuffle the cards together at the end anyway that you could do that. And it's kind of fun to, you know, see what other people are playing. Having to choose and pass a card seem kind of cool, especially since it's getting replaced by another card.

Okay, creativity. So creativity was in the file for a long time. It's a rare with the value of zero, and when you play it, you get a copy another card on the bat, in another mood. And so this card existed for a long time. Actually, for a while it was called jealousy. But then I realized that if I wanted to call it jealousy,

I had to restrict you to just copying your opponent's things because it's weird that you'd be jealous of your thing. So I ended up changing the name to creativity from jealousy. This is, other than the vanilla creature, is the only card that does not have one of the three templates on it. But, assuming it's not copying a vanilla card, it is getting one of the templates. This is only the only card.

So a black dye signifies that the card can change value. An exclamation point signifies that the card does something while in play. Normally, cards that change your value don't also do something. I didn't overlap those. Maybe in the future I will, but I didn't. So this is the only card that has a black dye because the values can change and as an exclamation point because it's possibly you'll copy something

that you have to pay attention to. So anyway, that is a little tiny bit of trivia. Okay, next up, Curiosity. Another card I really like. So Curiosity started as a card that just said, look at the opponent's hand. And my wife, Laura,

who was my longtime play desk, hate it. She wouldn't play it. She literally had her hand. would not play it. She did not lie looking at my hand. And so then I changed the card to say, okay, well, the player picks three cards and then shows you those three cards. So you don't see the whole hand. You just see part of the hand. And then at the time I made that, I changed paranoia. Paranoia was look at their hand, pick a card out of it, make them discard it, and Lord didn't like that card either. So I changed it so they only throw you three cards,

then you picked one pad and discard. In magic, by the way, that card later became black male and magic. Black male was inspired by that, by the old version of paranoia. So mood swings affecting magic for those that like that kind of trivia. Anyway, so curiosity, I then at one point said, okay, you

just look at one card from their hand, but it didn't feel like it meant anything. I mean, you learned something about their hand, but it felt so narrow that I decided that I wanted the card you looked at to mean something. So I tried a version where, I think you named a color, and then if you hit the color,

you named, you got a bonus, it was worth more. But that seemed just random and not against random, there's random effects in the game. It just was like one out of five, just didn't happen enough. But then it dawned on me that what if the thing you were trying to match cared about

the cards in play and moods in play. And then I later come across the idea of, okay, I like the idea you're trying to match a color, but what if you're trying to pick a card from a hand and match a color on the board, in play? And I thought that was pretty cool. The neat thing about it is

that it was situational, meaning early on, it's kind of risky. And maybe if you're playing in the first turn, the chance of hitting... If it's the very first card you play, you've got to hit a blue card. That is 1 in 5. That's hard to do. But if it's later in the game and other cards have been played, maybe, you know, there's a point in the game,

there's enough cards that all the colors are in play. And then it's just worth six. So I like the fact that even though it got to look at the hand... I kind of just curiosity. I wanted to look at the hand. that it just had value that could change. I like the dynamicness of that. The other thing, which I'll teach you now, it says choose a player, look at their hand.

You are a player. You can look at your own hand. And my tip to you is, if your chance of hitting it is above 50% or 50% or above, probably pick your own hand. That's probably better than you're going to get from your opponent. Okay. Next is denial.

So denials are rare, worth one. What it says is choose two cards that are the same color or the same score and then put both of those cards back into their players' hands. Originally, by the way, I had two different cards, one that did color and one that did value. And then I was tight on space and I realized that both of those were a little bit narrow. There just was too many times where, oh, there aren't two cards that are the same score. or there are two cards in the same color, you know, and it was missing just enough.

I said, oh, well, I'll save some space and I'll combine the two, so I combined them. There's a black card that's sort of the parallel to this card called rejection, and that does the same thing, except instead of putting them into their player's hands and puts them in the discard pile. So black, you know, gets rid of things

and blue puts things back in hand. Okay, next up is disorientation. So disorientation is worth zero. You choose a number, and then all cards of that number, other than disorientation, are put back into their player's hands. I liked having some later cards that were situational, and I like the idea that the more cards in play, the better the card is. So it's a little bit better in three-and-four player play. And anyway, I think I had a version of this. There was both a blue and a black version.

I ended up cutting the black version for space. but I had space for the blue one so they were paralleled originally and then I didn't have space for the black one. Maybe if I make more, that one might come back. That's a card that... I have a couple cards that I wanted to put it and got cut for space that maybe I'll...

If I later make more cards, I probably will make those. Oh, the thing I like about disorientation, by the way, is I like having some customizable cards where you get to choose something and you get to think about it and based on the board. Anyway, I enjoy the thought process of thinking that through. Next is doubt.

So doubt is worth two. It's an uncommon. What doubt says is you can put, I think you put any number of cards from your hand on the bottom of the deck, and then you get to draw that many cards. And you reveal them when you do that. Whatever colors those cards are on the next round, not the current round, but the next round, nobody can play those colors. So for a while I was playing around because blue and magic does color.

counter spells. So I was playing around with counter spells. I had a little more originally. I had cards like, you'd play a card and no one could play red. And I ended up, this card originally was just you named a color and then nobody could play that color next round. And it wasn't quite, it wasn't quite playing the way I wanted. And then when I realized that I can make cards that put cards on the bottom, I said, oh, well, I really wanted a card that let you trade out as many cards as you needed. And then I realized I could sort of marry that to the counter spell, which was kind of cool. So this is a weird

card. It's the only card that sort of actually stops you from playing cards. And it does it not this round, but next round. The template was just so much better and it was so much cleaner what was going on. It's one of the few things that, especially if you play early, the effect of the card can take

a little while to actually happen. But it can be pretty impactful. And I've definitely had some fun games where I'm changing out most of my hand just to really limit what my opponent can play, which was kind of cool. Okay. Next up is duplicity. Oh, this might be my favorite card.

For those that follow me on my magic end of things, you know, I love doubling things. Doubling things is cool. So, duplicity got made during the final push of the secret layer development. So duplicity is a mythic card. It costs zero as a value of zero. you may play an additional card and then whenever you play a card if it has an after you play this card effect

it happens a second time this is a very powerful card so why is that mythic it's situation once again you need cards that do something but it can cause a lot of very explosive very big things to happen originally I just had it

as the static effect and I just wanted to it was mythic going to jazz it up a little bit so I added I made it zero that used to be two I think and they gave you the extra card I will say if you're drafting, I would always take this card, this card, especially if you can line it up and take other cards to go along with it, it can be very powerful. It's situational, but it would be very powerful.

Oh, also, it wasn't originally called duplicity. Deplicity was the name of another card. I think sneakyness was called duplicity originally. But once I realized out a card that doubled things, because duplicity also, anyway, the name was perfect. So I moved the name over. Okay, next, fear. Oh, this is another card that goes way, way back. I have had this card forever.

Although fear was called, it had another name. Oh, it was called apprehension for quite a while. And then I decided to get the base name for it because it was a common. So fear is worth zero. It does two things, and you can do either or both of these things. It returns a card from the battlefield to your hand. Card you control to that. So you puts one of your cards back.

And it lets you play an additional. card. So the idea is, at bare minimum, you could bounce one zero cards and replay it if you want to. Something like hate that destroys something and it has a cost of zero anyway, so you're not losing anything. It can allow you to bounce one thing but play a different thing. Like maybe I want to bounce my hate because it's worth zero, but then I want to play another card and not play hate right away. I can do that. Or the other very valuable thing is sometimes just use it to play another card. Sometimes having an extra card is valuable. You have superiority where you want more cards or you know, you have celebration,

you want more colors. There's a bunch of reasons playing an extra card, even if it's worth zero, has value to you. And it's another card that I highly recommend. It has a lot of utility to it.

It and nostalgia, which is common green, are the two zero drops that at common that give you, you get to play an extra card plus you get to do something at zero,

and they're pretty cool. Anyway, guys, that is wrapped up for today. We'll have to stop at fear. Next time we'll pick up at fickleness. But anyway, guys, I hope you're enjoying this walk-through

of all the Moons swings cards. It's fun for me to think back on them. But anyway, I'm here at work, so we all know that means. That means instead of talking Moonswings, it's time for me to be making magic. I'll see you all next time. Bye-bye.