Magic: The Gathering Drive to Work Podcast - #1349: All the Mood Swings Cards, Part 3

Episode Date: June 5, 2026

This episode is part three 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 away from the curb because I'd wrap my son off at school. We all know what that means. It's time for another drive to work. Okay, so we've been doing mood swings, all the cards. So when last we left off, we were up to fickleness in blue. So fickleness is an uncommon. It is worth zero. And what it says is, what does it say?

It says that you return all cards of the most common color or colors, other than fickleness, to their player's hands. So the idea is you have to figure out what color has the most, and it could be tied. It's tied two or more colors could have the most.

And then all of those cards, minus fickleness, fickleness can't return itself, return to the player's hands. And this card is, once again, pretty situational. Sometimes returning the most common color is not beneficial for you,

but sometimes it is very beneficial for you. So one of the cool things that I enjoy is having cards in your hand where you are aware of effects that you could do can change your behavior in ways that's very fun. Because sometimes what will happen is you might play something that's not the most optimal play, but it's going to play into your future play. For example, maybe I play a card that is not worth quite as much on this turn as I could, but next one I'm going to play fickleness, and it's helping me either avoid the most common color or maybe set up the most common color.

And there's a lot of fun interactions that happen. Sometimes you can play extra cards with let you play additional cards, specific so you can set up the color. But anyway, there is a parallel of this in black called Bitterness that does the same thing because it destroys the most common color. Yeah, one of the things that's really interesting is I made a bunch of pairs. A lot of times there's effects that are similar. And depending on the kind of effect, black blue pairs tend to,

to be black does it, but it puts it in the discard pile. Blue does it, but it puts it in your hand. So there's a bunch of parallel effects between black and blue. Okay, next is Gile. Gile is a mythic. So Gile is worth zero,

but you have to, you have to discard two cards from your hand. It's the only card in the game that makes you discard multiple cards, but it's really powerful ability. You get to steal a card permanently. So one other things that's interesting is it's a very powerful fact. I can take your most powerful card.

But it comes in a real cost, discarding two cards. Early on, I did a lot more discarding. I think it's in some of my early incarnations of the game. I used discarding card a little more. And what I realized was a little bit was good, but too much of it just you ran out of cards. And so I really scaled back. This is the only effect.

I used to have more cards you discarded multiple cards. and when I realized that I was overvaluing how valuable it was to discard a card and so I really pulled back on how much card discarding I did. But this was one of the really powerful effects. So I decided, I liked the idea there was one card

we had to discard two cards. Much like this one card, we have to sacrifice two cards, you put two cards to discard cards and there's one card we put two cards back in your hand. So I left one of each of those just to have a little bit of a flavor of sometimes for a bigger effect you're willing to do that. But anyway, gile is pretty strong.

There's a cycle of uncommonds that are the enemy cycle where you're sort of harming the enemy cards. And so this one, fickleness, is that you could put either a red or a green card into its player's hand, or you put all red cards and all green cards into it. And I realized that when I overlap them, and it was kind of nice because it really gives you some flexibility. Really like, oh, just pinpointing it on one card, will that wind it for me, or do I need to do a larger effect? It's also nicer for three and four players because the larger effects tend to be a little bit better in larger play with more cars than play. So anyway, that is hesitation.

Imagination. Imagination isn't uncommon with a value of three. unless you pick a color, and then all cards in play, all moods, are that color. This is another effect that goes far back. I had cards that cared about color from the very beginning, and so the idea that you could mess with color seemed pretty fun. I think at one point this card was common,

and then I realized its effect was niche enough that could be uncommon. I did toy with it being rare, but I decided that I actually liked... There's a lot of fun interactions with it, so I left it an uncommon. The one thing about imagination is there are a few cards. So in magic terminology, you have to worry about how effects affect one another. And so for a long time, imagination said if another imagination comes into play,

get rid of sacrifice this imagination. Like each imagination would destroy the other imaginations. Eventually I decided just let the later one. I mean, I had to make a rule where the later one takes effect. So if you play a second imagination, just overrides the first imagination. Now, in the normal game, there's no repeats, but there is creativity, can copy it. So if you have an imagination and somebody, you know, copies it with creativity, let's say, then they name a color and that overrides the current color.

So whoever the last named color is. The other thing that confuses some people, the card talks about this, is you're only changing moods, cards in play. You're not changing cards in hand. You're not changing cards in discard file. So those stay the color they are. So for cards that care, but when you play them what color they are, well, there's still the color they are in their hand. Next, indecisiveness, another uncommon.

So indecisiveness has a, I believe it's three, of value three. And what it says is you may choose any player that has two or more cards, and then you could put, randomly put one of those cards back in their hand. At one point, it wasn't random. and we decided that the random just made it. At one point, yeah, the card originally said Target player puts a card of their choice back in their hand. And early on, there was no restriction to two. So you would often, it was like a second term,

or it was the first term play where they didn't play card, you would just bounce their card. And a little of that's okay, panic exists, but I didn't want tons of it. So we changed it to say, two things. We changed it from them choosing to random, which is a little more possible. powerful than them choosing. And the second thing is that we didn't want you bunch of things in their only

car, so they didn't have a least two. Next is indifference. Indifference is the common of the vanilla. I spent, like I said, I was talking about complacency. I spent a lot of time trying to get the right names for the vanilla's, not too much to say other than they started at three and then I moved before. Okay, next. Insecurity is uncommon. So insecurity is worth two, value two. It says you may play an additional card to this term, but after scoring, return that card to your hand. So the idea essentially is that you get a bonus card,

but it's only temporary. One of the nice things about it, though, is there some effects that it's really good that you get, the fact that you get to bounce back to your hand is not a negative. For example, hate is a zero cost card that destroys a card. Well, its value is zero. So hate going back in your hand,

you're not losing anything on the board. but now you can play hate again. So there are combos that are really good with it. Okay, next up is neurosis. Neurosus is a common. It's worth five. And it says, in order to play this card,

you must return one or more cards, one or more moods to your hand. Originally, this was for Corey Bowen, my play designer. My balanced guy convinced me that I was being a little too harsh on it. So we moved it up to five. I did say one or more

because sometimes it's fun there's reasons to want to bounce more than one card. And I like leaving it open-ended. One of the things that trading card games do really well is just create moments where you do things that you don't expect you would do. And there's times in which you might want to

bounce more than one thing, so I let you do that. Obsession. Obsession is a common card. It is the three into six. It's one of the ally common cards. So it's worth three. If there are two white or black, Blue's allies, white or black cards on the battlefield, moods on the battlefield, then it becomes worth six.

And I talked about the cycle already. In previous podcasts, I like the idea that Blue is obsessed with his allies. Kind of ambivalent about his enemies, but he's obsessed with his allies. Next is panic. We talked about panic. So panic goes way back, although for a long time, panic was called anxiety. I actually swapped their names. Panic, for many, many, for a long time, was worth one, put a card back into its player's hand.

The reason it changed was when I decided we had an open house early on when we were doing the Secretare Development Design. And we had some people come and play Moonswings, who had played before, and I played some multiplayer games with them. And they were like, this is our favorite. Definitely, this is the most important way to play. and I realized that I really should spend more time and energy and making sure that three and four player played well. And Panic was a good example of a card causing problem. So when it was just worth one and bounced a card,

what happened was if you played it in a multiplayer game, in a three or four person game, you tended to knock the person in first place out of first place, but it did very little to help you. In a two-player game, the fact that it's worth one, you're affecting your opponents so making them go down, you don't need to go up much

maybe to take advantage of that. But in a game with three or four players, knocking the person in front down, often somebody else is using this turn to get ahead. And so it just wasn't very strategic to play in. So then we tried a version where everybody,

all opponents had a bunch of the card, and it ended up kind of punishing the person in the last place a little too much. So we ended up with this version that we have now, which says, you may choose up to two players, you can be one of the two players,

and then you put a card back into their hand. So the idea is in the three or four person game, you can actually bunch two different people's cards to help you sort of get ahead. Or in a two-player game, you can choose to vouch your own part, which actually is... Okay, next, rationalization.

So rationalization is an uncommon... Oh, yeah, uncommon. No, no, sorry, it's a rare. It's a rare worth two. It says you can choose to do one of the following, which is you could put two cards from your hand on the bottom of your library, bottom of the deck and draw two cards.

Or you can change hands with your opponent. Oh, I'm sorry. You can put any number of cards. Any number of cards? It's any number of cards. You can put any number of cards from your hand on the bottom of the library and drop that many. So you can change out your hand.

Or you can swap hands with somebody. So the idea is essentially you can do something with your hand. Either you can change cards or you can change cards by swapping with another player. Originally, rationalization just swapped cards to another player. It's all it did. But it was a very niche effect. And once we added a card drawing in, I realized that making this emotional card, giving you two options, I did this on a couple cards, where it had a cool effect that was pretty narrow and saying, well, I'll give you another function, so a lot of the time you can do that. But when you can do the narrow thing, it's really cool. Swapping hands is super cool,

but a lot of times it doesn't make sense to swap hands. But if you're drafting the set, by the way, if you can take the swapping hand rationalization, especially if you can take it without your opponent knowing that you took it. If you can take it first, like in quick draw, you can do a lot of setting up for it if your opponent is unaware it's coming.

There's a lot of fun stuff you can do. Now, once you do it in game one, they'll be aware of it, so they'll start playing differently once they know that you can do this. But anyway, it's very cool. Next up, regret. So I talked earlier about how Gile was the only card that made you discard two cards. Regret is the only card that makes you put two cards back in your hand.

So regret is a rare. It is worth four. You have to return two cards to your hand, but then you also get to put one of your opponent's cards in your hand, one of their moods. So the idea essentially is it costs a lot, although I made it worth four. So it's the value-wise. I was careful what I cost it at 4 because 4 is the vanilla rate.

This card is not always that easy to use. You have to have two or cards in play. It's not easy to have to have two other cards in play. Also, this tends to be more of a card. You don't tend to win the turn with this card, but you set off future turns really well with this card. Sometimes you can win with it, but it's tricky to win the turn you play it. But it is a very powerful card.

Okay. Next is sneakiness. Oh, this is another fun card. So sneakiness is worth five. It's mythic. What sneakiness says is this turn, choose another player, technically after scoring.

And then you swap what your point value with them, meaning they get your score and you get their score. So it allows you to sort of win out of, a place of weakness where you couldn't normally win. That's only for the turn, so it's not good. It's good at sort of getting your last win when you're behind. And it is definitely, once again, I put a lot of the situational cards at Mythic because I didn't want them showing up a lot, but it is a fun card and crazy things can happen.

Worry is the final blue card. It is an uncommon. It is part of my ally cycle. The way this one works is you get to do something. You can opt. There were three. You can opt in to do something. In this case, return a white or black card mood from play to your hand. And if you do that, then you're allowed to bounce up to two cards.

You'll put back into the player's hand up to two cards that have a value of three or less. So it can be pretty powerful. I mean, you have to return one of your things, but you've got to return two of their things usually. So that is that. Okay, let's move on to black. So the first black card is ambition. this is a common worth two. Ambition says you may discard a card.

If you do, you may play an additional card. So at Common, there's a cycle of common of cards that let you play an additional card in each color. And I was just trying to make each color do its thing a little bit differently than the other colors. So Block decided that it would be a discard. You want to get ahead. You want to have ambition.

You got to do what it takes. So I thought that was pretty cool. Angst is uncommon. Enx is uncommon. We're three. This is part of the ally cycle, like Warrior I just talked about. So what Aink says is you may put a black's ally, so a blue or red card into the discard pile. If you do, you may then play a card, additional card out of the discard pile.

And that additional card can be the blue or red card you just put into the discard file if you so desire. Now, the card is just worth three. So sometimes if you want to, you can just play, do three. if you need to. It's sort of up to you what you want to do in that regard. Okay. Next is betrayal or apathy.

Apathy is the vanilla, common vanilla worth four. Like I said, I spent a lot of time. I like apathy. Black, just like, I don't care. You know, it felt like very black to me. Okay, next is betrayal. Betrayal is Where's betrayal?

Betrayal is rare. Oh, no, yeah, betrayal is... No, sorry. Betrayal is... Uncommon. Betrayal's uncommon. It is worth six. And when you play it,

you must give one of your cards to your opponent for the turn. Then after scoring, you get it back. Originally, it was permanently, you permanently gave to them. It ended up being a bit too... It was a bit too... The card was too weak.

and because it's already at six, I couldn't go up any higher. I mean, to be honest, I could have made it worth something, and then if you traded a card worth more, I guess in retrospect. But anyway, Corey and I decided that it's made more sense for you temporarily to give it to them. You're betraying your own card. But it's kind of fun because, you know, you want to give them something of low value,

but then you do get it back. Okay, next is bitterness. So bitterness is an uncommon worth zero. it is like fickleness. You figure out what color in play is the most common, and there could be more than one color that are tied, and then all those cards, other than fickleness, other than bitterness, are put into the discard pile.

Both this and fickleness are really interesting in that they're very situational. Sometimes they're really good. Sometimes they're not remotely good. It's one of the things in general that I like about the game is that most cards are somewhat situational, the swing of the cards like this is a higher swinging card

meaning when it's good it can be really good when it's bad it can be really bad but I love the idea that cards like it depends a lot where you're at and one of many things about the game where the strategy comes in is understanding what cards you have and how you can play

to lean into future plays is a really important part of understanding the strategy of the game like having bitterness in your hand is very powerful especially if you understand oh I have bitterness I can start doing

things knowing that I can play a bitterness play. And you can do some things where you can lean in and a lot of the strategy of the game is sort of understanding how to maximize. Like, you don't need to win every turn. You need to win three turns. And so a lot of times you'll do stuff to set yourself up to be in a better position. Okay, next is condescension. Condescension is a common. It's worth three. You can choose to give them a card from the discard pile. If you do, it's worth six. This card is not great early just because there's usually aren't cards in the discard pile early. It's great later in the game because not only are their cards in discard pile, there's more, so you have more choice. The more cards of discreparal, the better with this card is because the more options you have what to give them.

And maybe you can give them something that's not that good for them, ideally. Next is contempt. Contempt is part of the uncommon cycle that punishes the enemy cards. So contempt says I can put either a green or white card mood into the discard pile, or, or I can put all green and white moods into the discrepality, including yours. So once again, the cards with flexibility are some of the strongest because you really have some option on what you want to do. And this also ended up playing really well, like I said, for multiplayer play.

Next is corruption. So corruption is a rare. Corruption is another one of those cards where it was very nichey originally. So corruption has two things. One thing is you put two cards from the discards. pile on the bottom of the library and draw two cards. So it allows you to sort of... It's one of the pure, what I'll call

card advantage cards, meaning the cards in the discard pile aren't my cards. I'm not losing them. I'm taking a resource that isn't really mine and netting positive cards. So that is very valuable. The other thing corruption does is, there's two options, it's modal,

is you can choose to have the person to win to this turn win two rounds rather than one round. This card used to be a mythic rare, and all it did is let you win the second turn, that you win two turns. It was really hard to use because it's only worth two. But I like the idea that it has this other functionality

that's pretty powerful. And then, okay, some of the time, like the idea of the corruption is most of the time you're going to trade and stuff in the discard pile to draw cards. That's the most valuable reason to play it. But when you find a situation where you can win two turns,

it feels so good. And that's one of the cards that I... I definitely have a few cards like this and like rationalization. where the kind of the funner version doesn't happen much, but when it happens, it's really fun, and I like the fact that I can make it modal. So there's a more usable thing you do most of the time,

but it's in your hand, so when that moment comes up, you get to do it. It's super fun. Cruelty. So cruelty is in uncommon. I talked about the blue mirror of this. Cruelty is worth three, and it says you may choose a player that has two or more cards in play, and then you put one of their cards into the discard pile, but randomly.

Like I said, it used to be. they chose. And when I moved over this card, what's the blue card? Blue card is indifference. So indifference and cruelty are mirrored. Next is cynicism. So cynicism is

an uncommon. Oh, sorry, sorry. I realized I mixed up. So before I've talked about condescension. Condescension is worth three. but you can choose to give a card from your hand of your opponent to be worth six.

Synicism is the one where you can give them a card. It's three. You can give a card from the graveyard, from the discard pile, and that it's worth six. This cards are similar. They're both three to six. The common one's the one that you can give your hand

and the uncommon one's ones you can give in the discard pile. The discard pile one's a little bit stronger, but more situational. That's why I put that at uncommon. Where the one in your hand, you know, it's more that you understand what you're doing when you do it. Okay.

is disgust. Disgust is... What is discussed? Disgust is... Oh, disgust is the common enemy card. So it's six. It's common.

And if your opponent has... It blocks enemies, which are white or green that there are two or more white or green cards in play, then it's worth three. It's part of that cycle.

Envy. Envy is a rare. I went back and forth on whether this was envy or jealousy, by the way. In the end, I decided it was envy. envy and jealousy are really similar you both are you you covet other people's things I decided in the end that I think envy is more about you believing you deserve it more than they do where jealousy is just you wanting the thing they have and I believe envy this was more about envy so I made it envy so this cares about the player with the moodiest

I like that template the moodyest player which means the player that's most moods in their hand and then this is worth two points for every card of that player and this is strong obviously in a game with more players because you have more people to sort of riff off of and if it changes who has the most, this just cares about the player with the most in a three or four person game. So it's not that you have to pick one

player, just whoever has the most, that's what the card is. Grief. So grief is a rare worth zero. It allows you to put up to to play up to two cards from the discard pile. Originally, unless you play up to three cards to

discard pile, that ended up to a little bit too strong, so we changed it to two. Black and green are the colors they get to play things out of the discard pile. And so, I like the idea of just a card. Green is harmony, that's two to let you play one. Well, this is zero but let you play two.

Okay, next up is hate. Oh, hate goes way back. Hate is... Hate, it was the name hate, hate, was one of the very first cards they ever made. Originally, it was red because there was no black cards, but it was always a zero that destroyed a card. When I decided... So it's where

destroyed tech card. Well, originally it was put a card in the discard pile. When I realized that I could do some card drawing, I realized there was a fun opportunity. So what hate does now is it puts the card on the bottom of library. And then whoever the card that is, whoever's mood that is, draws a card. Oh, no, no, no, you draw it no matter what, sorry. You put a card on the bottom and then no matter what, no matter whose card it is, you draw the card. So it's very powerful. It's one of those powerful common cards. And it helped offset in multiplayer. Often hate, it would get you, it would, it would

stop the person in first place but it would get you behind and now with the card drawing it helped set you up you wouldn't win that turn but it sets you up better for the next turn for a while hate was like panic

where you could pick two players but I liked switching this over just to give it a little different feel next intimidation this is intimidation is a rare I spent a lot of time in this card this was a tricky one

the way it works is target player gives you a card I believe it's at random it went through a bunch of different versions. One version you looked at their hand, but then I didn't want you to see it the whole hand. And then another time they gave you a card. I think it's now a random card.

Anyway, they reveal a random card from their hand. You get it. It goes into your hand. And you can choose to play that card of this turn if you want. It's me. What I was trying to do is play a card out of your opponent's hand,

which is a lot harder than things because I didn't want to force you to something that was bad for you. So the idea was you get something and then you can decide if you want to use it or not. If not, in your hand, you can use it on future times. Malice.

Malice is another card that goes way back. This is a mythic rare. And this is one of the more confusing. One of the reasons I made the Mythic Rare. In fact, this is one of the most confusing cards instead, although I like what it does. So what Malice does is it says, choose a player. That player has to put two cards.

They have, two moods, they have in play, into the discard pile. And then all cards that are the color of those moods get destroyed. So the interesting thing about this card is, I can choose a player and force them destroy two of their cards, but whoever you choose, they choose what cards get destroyed, and everything that gets destroyed, destroy stuff of that color.

So there's some interesting choices. Sometimes, in fact, you destroy your cards. You pick yourself, destroy two of your own cards because you control what colors get destroyed. Also, sometimes, like in team play, you can destroy your teammates because they'll agree with you and do what's good. But anyway, it's a very interesting card. It can be very, very powerful.

but also sometimes it's situational. Okay, melancholy. So melancholy is a rare card worth three. What it says is, while this card's in play, you may play cards from the discard pile as though they were in your hand. So this lets you just, whenever you're playing cards instead of playing your hand,

you can still play cards from your hand, you can play from the discard card. It's very, once again, very situationally powerful. One of the neatest things about it is when you have melancholy in play, discarding cards from your discards, your hand are no longer a cost because you can just play them from the discard pile.

So the fact you're losing from their hand really isn't costing anything. So there's some fun interplays there. Next up is misery. Misery isn't uncommon. It's worth two. But if there are two more cards of the same color in the discard pile, it's worth eight. Happiness and misery are the only two cards worth eight. I thought it was funny that is happiness in misery.

Infetuation, which is a red card, is nine, and then love is 12. Those are the high scoring cards, naturally. There's some cards that can get higher because they're counting the number of something in play. Or in the discard bow and such. But anyway, misery, one of the things I liked is that black and green were about the discard pile. I liked of having a card that cared about the quality of the discard pile. Turns out getting two cards and the same card, discard pile, is a lot harder than you think it would be.

That's why it goes two to eight. For a while, for a while I had this car at three. This had happiness for both at three. And I realized that it was a little bit more fun if there's a little more reach for it so that this card wasn't quite as good, but it got better. And so I liked having a little more variance so the cards that swapped weren't always the same. Like, I didn't want every three to turn six. I wanted some variety. So here's a two that turns into eight. Next is paranoia. So paranoia originally, so paranoia right now is two. Target player discards the card from their hand,

puts it on the bottom of the library. I keep saying library. Bottom of the deck. You can say it play magic. I'll put on the bottom of the deck. And then you'll put it on the bottom of the deck. you, the person who casts paranoia, draw the card. So hate and paranoia are the only two cards in the game where your opponent puts the card on the bottom and you draw it. In dual play, there's a variant of play where you don't play off the same deck, you play up different decks that you bring.

Those are the only two cards that can... Because in dual play, your card goes to the bottom of your... the player who's carded is goes to the bottom of their deck. And so this... Hate and paranoia are the only ones in dual play that can cause you to maybe not be able to draw a card, although usually you play with more than you need, so that doesn't tend to happen.

Anyway, Paranoia originally, the earliest version of Paranoia made the opponent, you looked at their hand and chose a card for them. My wife hated that card. And so then I turned it into, they show you three cards from their hand, you pick one.

That would then get made into a magic card called blackmail. And then eventually I decided I was more fun random rather than picking. I leaned into having some more random effects. And then it was a little bit on the weak side, And so when we come up with a card drawing, I realized, oh, I could put it on the bottom, let you draw a card.

So that offset, it made paranoia much stronger now. Next, pity. I'll give my last one. We're at 30 minutes. So we will end with pity. Pity is the ally color at common. It's a three. If you have blacks allies, black allies are blue and red, there are two or blue or red cars in play,

then it's worth six. So it's part of that. So anyway, guys, I'm zooming through. I hope you guys are enjoying this. It is fun talking about all the cards, but as I'm at work, we all know what that means. It means at the end of my drive to work,

but instead of talking mood swings, it's time for me to be making magic. I'll see you all next time. Bye-bye.