Secret Lair Mood Swings TCG Set Details
A genuinely new trading card game doesn’t come along very often, and one built from the ground up by the head designer of Magic: The Gathering is rarer still.
That’s exactly what we’re getting with Mood Swings, Mark Rosewater’s brand-new game that lands on Secret Lair June 1, 2026.
Rosewater calls it his “love letter” to the hobby, and he isn’t being dramatic. This is an idea he first dreamed up back in 1998 and has spent 28 years quietly refining.
For a designer synonymous with the depth and complexity of Magic, Mood Swings is something refreshingly different. It’s a stripped-down, pick-up-and-play experience designed to get everyone to the table.
Mood Swings Set Details
A Game You Can Play Right Out of the Box
Crack open a box and you won’t find booster wrappers or a rulebook thicker than a paperback novel.
You get 45 cards and a game you can teach in about a minute. There’s no mana, no life total, and no deckbuilding required.
Each card represents an emotion, and the goal is simply to play moods, stack up points, and outscore your opponents.
Each round, everyone plays a card, the scores of all the cards in play get tallied, and the highest total takes the round. Win three rounds and you win the game.
A two-player game wraps up in five to 10 minutes, which makes this the kind of set you can pull out at the kitchen table, at your local game store, or in the back of a tournament hall while you wait for the next pairing.
Sketch Art with a Secret Link to Magic
Here’s where Mood Swings gets clever for longtime collectors. Every card uses the familiar five-color pie that Magic players know by heart, but the artwork is something special. Each card features a sketch version of art from a previously published Magic card.
Hostility, for instance, borrows the early sketch from Ancient Grudge. For anyone who’s been collecting for years, flipping through these cards is a nostalgia trip, you’ll catch the skeletal outlines of iconic creatures and spells reimagined as raw human emotion.
The game isn’t tied to the Magic multiverse at all, but those sketches give it a deep, secret handshake with the franchise’s history.
How Mood Swings Plays
The gameplay rewards the kind of synergy-chasing that makes TCGs so addictive.
Take Bliss, a green mythic rare that has you discard a card to score your matching-color moods two extra times, a lovely little engine if you build toward it.
Or Idealism, a white mythic rare that lets you play an additional mood and squeeze the highest possible value out of your dice-based cards. Yes, dice, several cards carry variable values tracked with a die, so a card’s worth can swing as the game develops.
And in three and four player games, whoever’s sitting in last place picks up the Hurt Feelings card, which grants an extra mood on their next turn.
It’s not a consolation prize; it’s a genuine comeback mechanic that keeps everyone in the fight to the final round.
The Chase Card
Now for the part collectors really care about. Card #134, a foil version of Love, and the only foil card in the entire set, featuring art drawn and signed by Mark Rosewater himself.
Wizards is making just 500 copies, each one hand-signed rather than serial-numbered, which makes it a prime candidate for professional grading and an immediate white whale for completionists.
Beyond that headliner, the 15 mythic rares scattered across the pool will be the cards trade binders get built around. You don’t need a price guide to see which cards this set is going to be remembered for.
What to Expect
Mood Swings is sold as a single, complete boxed game rather than in traditional packs, booster boxes, or cases. There are no preconstructed decks to break down here, the box is the product, and it’s ready to play the moment you open it.
This first edition is a Secret Lair exclusive.
- 45 randomized cards per box (23 Commons, 14 Uncommons, 6 Rares, and 2 Mythic Rares)
- Also in the box: a Hurt Feelings card for multiplayer games, a double-sided rules card, a die for the variable-value cards, and a thank-you note from Mark Rosewater
- $25 per box, available exclusively through Secret Lair
Rarities Legend
- Common (C): 48
- Uncommon (UC): 40
- Rare (R): 30
- Mythic Rare (MR): 15
- Headliner Foil: Love #134 (500 copies)
Total cards in set: 134
Release date: June 1, 2026 (via Secret Lair)
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