Magic: The Gathering Drive to Work Podcast - #1358: Mood Swings Strategy

Episode Date: June 26, 2026

Here, I talk about the basic strategy when playing Mood Swings. To make sure everyone gets their full allotment of Magic design episodes, this episode is bonus content.

I'm pulling out of my driveway. We all know what that means. It's time to the drive to work. Okay, so today's topic is mood swing strategy. So I've been playing mood swings for a long time, 28 years. And I've learned a few things about the general strategy. One of the things that I appreciate about the game is even though it is pretty simple to learn, there are actually a decent amount of strategy in it.

And so today, I'm just going to walk through some primer. of some basic things to learn when you are playing mood swings. Okay, so let's begin. I'm going to begin with sort of how I look at the game from a structural standpoint when I'm thinking of strategy. So there are two different categories of cards, what I call point cards and what I call control cards. Point cards pretty much are worth four or more,

and what they do is they get you points. they're worth points. They're the cards that help you win the game because the goal of the game is to have more points than your opponent. So point cards mostly just, they rise you up. They get you a higher point total. Then we have what I call control cards.

And control cards come in two groups. One is cards that sort of help you deal with your opponent's stuff. They either put it in the discard pile under the deck in their hand. they get rid of, they get it out of play. Or, you know, they could suppress it. Like, they deal with that.

I mean, suppressing doesn't take it out of play, but it makes it not worth anything or score of zero. The other kind of control cards are cards that grant you the player special abilities. Kind of the classic one is hope. Hope is worth zero, and it says you can play two cards every turn while hope is in play, including the turn you play hope. So hope is worth zero.

zero points, but it is allowing you a special ability, which is you can play extra cards. Melancholy, for example, is a black card that for three lets you play cards out of the discard pile as though they were in your hand. And so the idea essentially is control cards give you extra ability. That extra ability could be playing extra cards, which we'll get to in a second, which is pretty powerful. It could just give you access to cards from other zones. or, like I said, or it's interacting with the opponent in some way.

When I talk about interacting with the opponent, it's not always cards in play. It could also be dealing with cards in their hand. Cards could be dealing with cards in the discard pile. There's a lot of driven ways to interact. Okay, so the important thing to think about is, when you're looking at your hand, when you just look at your hand, I like to look at what my point cards are

and what my control cards are. As a general rule of thumb, there are exceptions here, you do not win control cards, if they're going to win you the turn, they win by being reactive, usually going second. They can win you going first, especially later in the game, when more of the board is set up.

But a lot of what you want to do is when you play first, you more want to play point cards. And when you play second, If you can't win the turn, that's when you want to play control cards. So let me talk a little bit about opportunity cost. So the way cards are costed is a neutral card, a vanilla card is four, and four means this isn't positive or negative. There are some fours beyond vanilla.

When I say vanilla, I mean a card that is nothing written on it. There's five of them. Conspiracy in white, indifference in blue, apathy in black, boredom in red, and laziness and green. Those cards do not do anything. They are worth four. There are a few other cards, like Confucian, the blue card, where everybody has to pass a card in their hand.

Is that good? Is that bad? It's kind of neutral. You're losing a card, you're gaining a card. Sometimes that'll be advantageous for you. Sometimes it actually won't. So I cost of those things at four. They're sort of hard to tell whether it's positive or negative. If a card costs more than four, the idea there is it's a point card, and there's usually some cost of playing it.

And there's a lot of different ways that we can call. that. Sometimes it's something you're doing right away. Sometimes it's something that'll impact you later on. But usually if a card is worth more than four, there is some additional element that's going to get you to play the card. Now, we do have some cards that are optional. A very classic one, is there are six common cards that are discard cards, meaning there were three, but if you discard the appropriate card and what the appropriate card varies from card to card, then the card can be worth five. So the idea there is it has the flexibility that if you're unable to discard a card or don't want to discard a card, you can play it for three and sometimes three is enough.

But if you want to get sort of the added points of it, it's requiring additional costs. In this case, discarding a card. There are a lot of different kinds of costs. Some of the most common ones is you can put a card in play, a mood in play into the discard pile. You can return it to your hand. You put it on the bottom of of the deck. You can discard a card from your hand. Yeah, so the idea is you're giving up some resource somewhere, usually, if you're paying those costs. The other way that they can sometimes be is sometimes the costs are, and this is we're getting to opportunity costs.

Sometimes the cost says, well, I'm good, but not right away. Like one of the big things about the game is you, and I should stress, I'm talking about the two, the basic two-player game in most of my strategy today. Normally when you play, you're playing five turns, best of five. First person to win, three wins. The thing I can't stress enough is the key to getting good at mood swings

is not worrying about winning as fast as you can. There's no great advantage. Winning 3-0 is the same as winning 3-2. And then a lot of the good strategy of mood swings is getting yourselves in positive situations where you're going to win when you're ready to win. One of the things I can't stress enough is going second is a lot more valuable than going first. It's why when you lose, you get to go second because it's advantageous.

It's a catch-up feature. The reason that, let me walk through that real quick, is when I go first, I don't know what my opponent is going to do. I'm making an educated guess. And maybe there's things that are going on. It's not that I'm playing blind, but I don't know what they're going to do. I don't know what's in their hand. I don't know what they're going to do. When I go second, I know exactly what they're going to do

because they already did it. So going second means you have a lot more information. And it means that whatever you're going to do, there's going to be no response before scoring. Yeah, your opponent can do something on the next turn, but not this turn. And so the ability to play something where you're not getting messed with is very valuable.

And one of the reasons you will occasionally give up turns is, so let's, here's a classic example. You're up to one and you have a card in your hand that's a big point card, something that situationally can be worth a lot. Could be love because all the colors aren't playing. It's worth 12. It could be euphoria because there's lots of cards in play. Could be sadness because lots of cards in the discard pile. You're in some situation where this card is going to be the thing that wins the game for me. A big mistake is I'm up to and I have that card and I play it on turn four. The reason is I'm giving my opponent the ability to react to it. So if I play it on turn four and then my opponent has an answer to it, I'm not

going to win turn four. And then I'm set up for a not good turn five because my best card I just played and lost. But if I play something that's setting up turn five and not playing my best card, letting my opponent win to go two-two, and then on the fifth turn, let them go first, and then you play, they won't have the opportunity to answer your big card. And that's one of the things, you know, talking about sort of opportunity costs and talking about, like, you want to take advantage of where you are and when you're playing. Another big thing about opportunity cost. So let me give an example is there's a card at Common called Patience.

Patience is worth five, but it's worth one the turn you play it. And there's another card called Joy. Joy is a green common. It's worth three. But it says the next time you play, you get to play two cards. Both Joy and Patience are designed that you often don't win with them on the turn you play, especially patience. One point usually is not going to win it for you. The advantage of that card, though,

is that I get five points. Five points, that's more than four. That's above average. I have to pay some cost to get a card worth five. Well, the cost for patience is you get a turn where it's lower than normal. So I get five for all of the turns, but I get one for the first turn that I play it. Okay, so what that means is when you are playing, so one of the advantages of going second is you know what's going on.

So let's say I'm going to go second. and I look at my hand and I can't win. I can't win the turn. Well, what I want to do on turns like that is I want to take advantage of the fact that I'm going to lose anyway. So that's when opportunity cost comes in. If I play patience on a losing turn,

for all intents of purposes, I played a five-point card. I just didn't win the turn. I played it, which I wasn't going to anyway. But it allows me, like, I've already essentially paid the cost on a losing turn. already going to lose the turn. So playing patience there doesn't, you know,

playing patience there is like playing a five drop, even though, because the thing I'm paying, I'm already paying. I'm not paying it a second time. I'm already losing the turn. Here's another, one of my absolute favorite plays at Common. So, let's talk a little bit about opening turns. So a lot of time when I think of strategy,

I tend to think of what we call as fan. magic terminology thing is how likely, how often does something show up in your opening hand? In this case, I'm using asphanto opening hand. And the idea is you're most more likely to get commons. In a deck of moot swings, there's 23 commons, 14 uncomons, six rairs and two mythics. And so when I'm talking strategy, yeah, the rairs and mythics will come up, they happen. When I say things that will or won't happen, there's almost an answer to anything. Moot Swings is designed like that.

There's literally... I don't know if there's a situation I could think of... Maybe you could build one, but it is not easy to build a situation where... It's not easy to build a situation where there's not an answer somewhere, especially with rarers and mythics. Okay, so let's talk a little bit of an opening turn,

and I'm going to talk about my favorite opening play going second when I don't win. So we'll talk about that a second. Okay. So, normally, somebody gets to decide whether to go first or second. They're allowed to look at their hand before they decide. As a general rule, as I said earlier, going second is better than going first. If you are unsure whether to go first or second, I would choose to go second.

But let's talk about opening hand. Let's say I'm looking at my opening hand. I have the option whether to go first or second. Normally, by the way, you randomize for the first gamer. You can look at the bottom to randomize. You can look at the bottom of motion. felt that last. Or you can flip a coin, whatever.

Normally what we play is if you lost the last game, we let the person who lost choose whether to go first or second on the next game. So the way you choose whether to go first or second is look at your hand. And mostly what I want you to do is look for your point cards and your control cards and say, if I went first, what would I do? If I went second, what would I do? A good first play, probably the best first play in my mind

is you can play an additional card and the second card you're playing gets you up to six or more. So for example, if I could play charity, which is a white card worth one at common, let's play an extra card. And the extra card, I play

one of the discard cards where I can get five. That's six points. If I can play two, cards that are six or more points, there is nothing that common that is going to beat you. There's uncommon has a card called Conviction, which you can put a card on the bottom and then it's a controller draws a card. If you play a 1-5 play, conviction can beat that. And at Fascinations at Uncommon, which is a green card, that's three, but if you give your

opponent a blue or black card, it's worth seven, and then sloth is at rare, which is worth on the first turn. It's three plus a number of cards your hand, which traditionally is four. Fascination and sloth, only two cards that go were seven, neither are common. And you also could learn whether your deck has fascination or sloth. But pretty much, if you can get six points in the first turn, you're going to win that turn with two cards. If you play only one card, the challenge is your opponent could have in answer like panic or pacifism. They could have hate, but hate won't win them that turn because it's worth zero. Although they could like charity into hate or something to be able to win.

So pretty much if you can play two cards and get six or more points, I would always play first. If you go to two or more cards and play five points and you don't have a good second turn play. Okay, so you look at your open hand. I like to say if I'm going first, what am I doing? If I'm going second, what am I doing? The best second term plays are if I have an answer, like pacifism and, you know, panic are both really good. They're both worth one, and they answer

any one card. Now, again, your opponent could play two cards, so I mean, there's counteractions to this, but if I have panic or pacifism or I have like charity, I have an extra card into hate, I will often go second because that's a really good second turn win.

If I... On turn one, if I can play six points, I'm encouraged to go first. Two cards into six points I always go first. If I don't have a good reactive hand, there's a bunch of cards that come and that are worth sixth the turn you play at them. There's five color cards that care about the enemy color. Let's see. In white, it is loyalty. In blue, it is obsession. In black, it is pity. In red, it is excitement. And in green, it is enjoyment. Oh, I'm sorry, sorry. I gave the

opposite ones. The six points, I gave you the ally ones. The enemy one, sorry. In white, it is discipline. In blue, it is ambivalence. In black, it is disgust. In red, it is frustration. And in green, it's disregard. If you have any of those, those are worth six to turn. You play them. Also, there's a card called generosity worth six to turn you play it. But your point against to play two cards. So a generosity is not a good first turn play. If you have the other six turns and that's your best playing, you don't have a good response play on second turn, I would go first and play the six. So essentially, if If you have play two get six on turn one, I often will play that.

If you have a good response play, I will play the response play. If I have a panic or a pacifism. So I think my order is I will first play a two player play that gets me to six points. I then will play a second play that has a one card answer. I then will play, I then will do six points going first. But I don't have a good second play, playing six on the first turn is pretty good. It requires two cards to answer, unless they have a single answer card like pacifism or panic, which, you know, they're going to beat you, but whatever, you're making them use up their cards.

It's not, by the way, it's not horrible to play a card on your first turn, and your opponent then plays passive or panic on their second, on their response on the second, going second on the first turn. Yes, you'll lose the turn, but you're not that far behind, you've made them use up a pretty valuable card. Okay, anyway, a lot of times it's trying to gauge of where you are versus your opponent. Going first

you win ties. So five and six is pretty decent going first. I mean, obviously there are five common plays that are worth six usually. So, if I will not play a turn one, six, unless I don't have

a good second, you know, a good response. to play going second. Okay, so let's say you are going second. You know, if you don't have a play to win going first or second, meaning I don't have a six or maybe even I don't have a five, I then will choose to go second. And what I will do is I will set up myself

and I will play a control card that helps me set up for future wins. A classic example of that might be something like joy. Joy's worth three, let's play two cards of the next turn. Or, like I said, playing patience. Meaning, I set up something so that I can respond. Now, my favorite play,

if my opponent plays a six-point turn-one play, and I don't have the answer to it. I don't have panic or pacifism. My favorite play, so I'll give you a really good play here, is bashfulness. So bashfulness is worth six. And what Bachelfulness says is when you play me, after playing this mood,

if I win this turn after scoring, put me on the bottom of the library and draw a card. So if you win with Bachelfulness, and Bachelors sometimes can you win you turn one. The danger of it is, while it wins you turn one,

it does nothing for setting you up for future turns. But if you play Bachelfulness in response to your opponent having a 6th, what it does is you are tied six-six, they're going to win because of the ties, but you now have a six-in-play. You're now tied with them. And odds are, if they played turn-one-six,

they played one of the five enemy-collar cards, which is going to go down with time, whereas your bachelor's will not go down with time. And so bachelor'sness has a second play when you're going to lose, when they play six is actually, I think, a really good play. Winning turn one with bachelor'sness is not, bad, but it does nothing to set you up.

And so that leads me to my next topic. The goal of the game is to win three turns. And so a lot of what you're trying to do is make sure that you're enhancing your board state. And that doesn't always mean winning turn one. The nice thing about winning turn one is you have a little bit more options. It's a little bit easier to give up turns when you need to. When you're behind, like if your opponent goes two-oh out of the gate, Okay, now you've got to win every turn.

You don't have the ability to take turns off. And like I said, there's some fun things you can do and take turns off where you can set yourself up. I will say that there's a lot of advantage of control cards. Like, one of the most powerful cards in the game is Hope. Hope is the zero cost unless you play an extra card. I would play Hope as soon as you can play it. And the reason for that is the turn you play Hope,

you only get to play one extra card. Now, that's the card you would normally play if you didn't play hope. So there's no really negative to playing Hope. One of the reasons Hope is hope is so powerful is it's kind of a free play. Because you get to play Hope, then you can play the card you would normally play anyway. But it's every turn after Hope that Hope's advantage comes into play. I mean, yeah, on the turn you play, you have two cards. And sometimes that can be advantageous for you against, like, there's a card called Celebration,

where you're, or not Celebration, Superiority is a black card, where it's worth three, but it's worth seven if they have more cards than you. And so something like Hope, Like, Hope Indus superiority is a really nice first turn play. It can often get you seven points, for example. The reason you want to play hope is on the next turn, the advantage of Hope is getting to play two cards a turn. You don't get that advantage on the turn.

You play Hope. You get that on future turns. So you want to get Hope out early. Also, if you're going to lose the first turn, that's another, like, and a lot of these are situational. So, for example, there's a card called Melancholy, which is a black uncommon for three. It lets you play cards out of the discard pile

as though they were in your hand. Melancholy is a very situational card. Melancholy on a normal game where there's nothing in the discard pile is just three points. It doesn't do anything for you. But let's say, for example, you have a bunch of discard cards in your hand. Remember I said early on the cards that are three, but if you discard a card, they're worth five. Well, with melancholy in play, those cards, for all intents of purposes, you're not discarding a card. Because you can play the card out of the discard pile, you know, if I discard a card

card, I can play it next turn. Now, given your opponent could have nostalgia or, um, or, um, harm any things that play things out of the graveyard or grief, but, um, but still, it just makes your cards more valuable because you have extra value of things in the discard file. So, you know, if your opponent goes first, it's going to win turn one, you can't win turn one. And you have a hand set up for that, you know, melancholy, for example, can be a good first term play. But once again, that's another thing I should trust. Cards are situational. There's no such thing as a great card in a vacuum. Duplicity, for example, is a very powerful mythic rare.

Basically, what it lets you do is it's worth zero. You can play an extra card, so it does that, like hope. But whenever you play a card that has an after-playing-this-card effect, it lets you play it do the effect a second time. Now, if I don't have cards in my hand that have extra effects that have after-playing effects, it doesn't really mean much of anything other than it gets me an extra card for things like superiority or celebration.

you want more colors. But with the right hand, it can be very powerful. Okay, that's another big thing. The value of cards. So we're talking a lot about discarding cards. There are also cards that make the opponent discard cards.

So there's two straight discard cards, or three, I guess, technically. There is suspicion, which is common black, makes your opponent, or all your opponents in multiplayer, but in a two-player, makes your opponent discard a card. It does allow you, by the way to discard a card, for some reason you want to.

There are a few weird cases. Like if you have misery or something, there's a few cases where it's valuable. Misery is a card that's worth two, but eight, if you have two or more cards. If two or more cards in the discard file, share a color. There are also a card called Paranoia, which is a black uncommon, where a player takes a random card from their hand and puts them

on the bottom of the deck, and then you draw a card, the person who played Paranoia. And then there is compulsion, red common. It makes your opponent. to give you a card. So those are the three cards to make your opponent lose a card, of your choice to make them lose a card. There also is confusion where we pass a card.

No one's going down a card on that one. Well, sorry, if you have an empty hand that you cast confusion, it can make them discard a card without you giving them a card. So confusion situation can be discard. Discard is pretty powerful. And the reason for that is the game is designed. So you normally play one card a turn. although you can't play additional cards.

And when you lose, you play a card. So the way to think of it is, let's assume it's a five-turn game. You will draw seven cards as your opponent. You will play five cards because there's five turns. That means you only have two cards to spare. Now, there are ways to get additional cards. There are ways to play things out of the Discard Bile.

There are ways to get extra cards, essentially. But normally, you only have seven cards. And so you need to be careful. It's not like you want to use those extra cards. It's not as if I'd never suggest discarding cards for advantage and stuff. And a lot of it also has to do with, you know, I'm talking about getting to five turns. Sometimes you don't get to five turns because you win in three turns. And so sometimes you're willing to take some advantage early on.

But once again, you only draw the extra card when you lose. So I guess no matter what, there's still only a bonus of two cards. because every time you lose you'll get a card. Discard is very powerful. Choosing to discard is very impactful. I'm not saying you shouldn't do it, but you need to be careful how often you do it. One of the things that can happen

is you run out of cards. And remember, if you're unable to play a card, you don't have to play a card. Also, strategically, you're not required to play a card. If you have a card that is not going to help you win and it's giving away information that's not necessary to be giving away, or let's say I have a reactive card.

Let's say, for example, I win, and it's my turn to go first, but the card I have is reactive. Often, that is better to let them win that turn and then be reactive on the next turn. Because once again, when you go second, they don't know what you're doing. They don't plan for it. And so if you sort of do something where I'm using my card but not to win the turn just to kind of get ahead a little bit, bit, it doesn't help you to win the future turn. The other thing to keep in mind, and this is pretty important, is when you lose, you draw a card. And so one of the other reasons sometimes to throw it is if I don't, if I'm going to win but be in a bad situation where I can't win

future turns, it's often better for me to lose the turn, set myself up, get more information, get more cards and then have a better understanding of what I'm going to do. And like I said, it's just stress. You never have to play a card. If you don't have a card, obviously you can't play a card. But if you do have a card, you're not forced to play that card. The other thing, let me talk a little bit about additional card cards. Additional card cards are very powerful.

One of the big reasons that are so powerful is that at common, all the removal is one for one. And what I mean for that is one card gets rid of one card. or deals with one card. When you start getting to uncommon, you start getting cards that can deal with more than one card. Although here's my big strategy tip. The way that Moose Swings is built is that most cards that remove more than one card,

those cards have something in common. They share a color, they share value, maybe they're like three or less or five or more. You know, they're grouped together in a grouping. And what that means is that if you're conscious about playing, so I'll give you a really good example, let's say turn one, I'm going to play, I don't have a good reactive play, so I am playing first. Okay. And so I have charity, which is worth one, and I have either complacency, which is vanilla four, or I have apathy, which is vanilla black. Okay.

What is better to play? I want to play charity into complacency or charity into apathy. There are situations where you want to play charity into complacency. Mostly that has to do with you caring about color. Let's say, for example, your opponent on the board has a card that goes down if there's two or more white or something cards. For example, white's enemies are black. So black has disgust. and red has frustration, both of which go down if you have two or more white or with black, it's green and with red is blue, but if you have two or more cards of that color.

And so, hold on a second, did I? When you play, sometimes you want to play the same colors because it'll help you deal with those things. But, barring those situations, if you're going to play charity into a second card, it's much more advantageous play charity into the black card, into apathy. The reason is there is no card other than there are some rarers like wrath and disillusionment that can get rid of all the cards. But the cards that get rid of a subset of cards, especially including the ones that uncommon, can't get it. A white one and a black four, there is no card, at common or uncommon, that gets rid of exactly those two. And even at rare, Rath gets rid of everything.

Disillusionment, you pick color, so in theory it could get rid of those. The one thing that can happen, I guess, at Uncommon, is there's a card called fickleness in blue and a card called bitterness in black that bounce or destroy the most common color. So at Uncommon, in the right situation, I guess there's things that can do.

with it. But that's a very different situation. So as a general rule, diversifying what you're doing when you're playing it makes it harder for your opponent have answers when they are playing against you. So like charity, turn one, charity into, charity into apathy is a very good play. Now, that's worth five. They could play a six and turn one. If they happen to have conviction, which is uncommon, they can conviction your apathy, which make them two one. I'm not not saying they're not answers, but as a general rule, that is a good thing. I think that's most of the stuff we need to talk about today. The other thing I will say, my final bit of strategy is I find that one of the things

that's really fun about mood swings is a good chunk of the time there is an answer. Mood swings in a lot of ways, I like to think of it. I used to do a thing called Magic the Puzzling when I first started working on magic where I made, they were games of magic where you had to solve it within the game. And I started making puzzles for moot swings because so many turns are puzzles.

That one of the things that's really valuable, and this is a fine, if you want to play solitaire, a fine way to play solitaire is play both hands, but just see if there's any possible way to win on each of your hands. Like, really explore the board.

That when I'm teaching people how to play, one of the most common things I say to them is, oh, you have a win. Like, you can win. I can see your win. And a lot of people, when they first start playing, are just missing wins where they can win. And one of the things that's really good to practice

is assume there's a win and see if you can find it. There's not always a win, obviously. But you'd be surprised how often when you don't think a win, there in fact is a win. There's a lot of, especially the more you have, more play, especially you start playing cards on the discard pile and stuff like that. There's a lot there. So anyway, guys, I hope this was fun for you.

Like I said, one of the things I really enjoy about mood swings is even though it's a very simple game to learn, there's actually a lot of strategic depth. I'm very proud of that. And so I hope today's lesson was helpful. And so I hope when you play your future Moose Swings games, that you take some of this to heart. But anyway, I'm at work, so we all know what that means. It means the end of my drive to work.

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