Wizards of the Coast is publishing a new trading card game that's been in the works for nearly three decades. Mark Rosewater's Mood Swings is a new kind of card game for the Magic makers, but seems both easy to learn and easy to share with others.

Mood Swings is billed as a trading card game you won't have to "build," playable entirely out of the box. It's a light strategy experience for two-to-four players, and the idea is that you buy a deck of Mood Swings and it will be playable right out of the box, even if the cards you get are pulled from a pool of commons, uncommons, rares, and mythics.

Rosewater, who's also head designer for Magic: The Gathering, draws a comparison to a cube, a format in Magic where players curate a collection of cards that they can draft or play special modes within.…