Official Magic: The Gathering Alternative From Its Head Designer Out Now

Since 2003, Magic: The Gathering has had the same head designer: Mark Rosewater. Rosewater has been designing for the game since 1996, giving him 30 years of experience designing one of the world's most successful trading card games. However, for 28 of those 30 years, Mark Rosewater was also working on his own card game, which is now being made available to the public for the first time.

Mood Swings is a card game designed for two-to-four players and is ready to play right out of the box. Instead of constructing their own decks, players share one communal deck, and create powerful combinations based on the random cards they draw from it. The game is a more accessible alternative to Magic: The Gathering, with a simpler rule set and lower barrier to entry. This makes it a great alternative for players that want to experience Rosewater's highly-polished game design chops without having to jump into a game with a lot more mechanics and a higher cost.

As the name suggests, Mood Swings is a game that is based on emotions. Each card is named after an emotion, which ranges from simple emotion cards like Anger to more complex ones like Self-Loathing. Card abilities tie in thematically with the emotions they're named after. For example, Melancholy allows you to play cards from the discard pile, as melancholy is often a reflective type of sadness that dredges up emotions from your past. For a full rules breakdown, you can check out this article from Magic's website.

The game also has some funny mechanics reminiscent of the more humorous Magic: The Gathering cards. For example, in a three or more player game, there is a Hurt Feelings card that is given to the player who scored the lowest in each round. Aside from the strong theming of the cards, this first edition also utilizes sketch versions of Magic: The Gathering card art that matches nicely with the given emotion. As Wizards of the Coast works with a stable of talented artists, this also means Mood Swings cards are nice to look at.

The first edition of Mood Swings is a set of 134 cards, number 134 being a special headliner card with art from Rosewater himself. However, each box of Mood Swings comes with a random assortment of only 45 cards from the set. This means that each box will play slightly differently, and have different strategies contained within. This is a cool mechanic for players who enjoy variety and would like to play a friends' copy or buy more than one. However, I could see this being frustrating for collectors who want a copy of every card.

Wizards of the Coast are calling the first edition of Mood Swings a prototype, and are selling it through their Secret Lair site. It will be interesting to see how it does, and if future sets get released, potentially with original artwork. I've played enough Magic: The Gathering to trust Rosewater's design and am very excited to see how his skills translate to a different card game. Card game fans should at least check out the game's mechanics and consider whether it's right for them.