How to play card games online.

Where to play Commander online depends on what you are trying to do: goldfish a new list, play your pod across three cities, play your paper deck over webcam, or have the rules enforced. Every option, honestly compared.

Goldfishing tells you whether a list works on its own; a real opponent tells you whether it works. How to do both online, what the deck-site playtesters can and cannot do, and how to test a change instead of guessing.

Arena's Brawl is two players at 25 life, and there is no four-player mode. Export the deck from Arena, paste it into Untap.in, and sit at a four-seat Commander table in the browser with the list you already built.

Booster draft, cube and sealed in the browser: bots fill the empty seats, you draft from any set in the database or a CubeCobra list, and the deck you build is played at the same table. Compared honestly with the pick-trainers.

Paste a deck URL from Moxfield, Archidekt, EDHREC, MTGGoldfish and dozens of other sites, or a plain-text list, and play-test it online in the browser. Every printing kept, sideboard included, nothing retyped.

Cockatrice is a free desktop tabletop for Magic with no rules engine. Untap.in is the same idea with no download, voice at the table, rewind, replays and 50-odd other card games. When to switch, and when not to.

XMage enforces every rule and runs as a Java download. Untap.in trusts the table and runs in the browser. Which one you want depends on whether you are learning the rules or play-testing a deck — this page says which is which.

Tabletop Simulator is a paid 3D sandbox that becomes a card table through mods. Untap.in is a flat table built for card games, free for everyone at it, with the card database kept for you. For Magic and 50-odd other games.

Designing a card game, or custom cards for one? Upload the cards with their art and text, build decks from them, goldfish alone or sit on both sides, then play-test against real people in the browser. No rules engine to code against.

Play-test a Pokémon TCG Pocket deck online with cards you have not pulled yet, against a friend, in the browser. Twenty-card decks, Limitless import, points on a counter, no rules engine. What the app does that a table cannot, and the other way round.

TCG Live runs Standard, a trimmed Expanded, and Gym Leader Challenge only in rotating windows. A shared table runs whatever your group agrees to: full Expanded, GLC any day, a 2003 deck against a 2005 deck. How, and what to expect.

Bandai has no online client for Union Arena, and TCG+ builds decks but does not play. Untap.in has the card pool and a two-seat table in the browser: import or type a fifty-card deck, send a link, and play the game the way you would across a mat.

A browser table for Final Fantasy TCG with every printing synced from Square Enix's official card list, deck import from FFDecks and Materia Hunter, and a real opponent. For when the Tabletop Simulator mod is four sets behind.