How to play-test a Commander deck online

Start with what you are trying to do

The split that matters is whether you want the software to enforce the rules or to trust the table. An enforced client (XMage, Magic Online) resolves the stack, checks legality and stops you making an illegal play, at the cost of a download, a dated interface or a card economy, and the occasional card that is not implemented yet. A shared table (Untap.in and the other browser tables, Cockatrice, Tabletop Simulator) moves cards and tracks counters and lets your table resolve the game the way paper does, which is why every card works the day it is spoiled. Neither is wrong. Most people who play-test want the second; most people learning the rules want the first.

The four kinds of online Commander table

Browser tables

Nothing to install, a link to send, and the table trusts you. Untap.in is one account for 60 card games, with every one of Magic's 201,141 cards in the pool, deck import by URL from 32 sites, voice built into the table, and the four things in the section below that no other table here does: Rewind, replays, scripted cards and automatic resource tracking; a regular table opens with 4 seats and a Power Up opens the fifth and sixth. EDHplay is a Commander-only table with six seats, match history on a Patreon tier, and Discord for voice. Playgroup Live seats two to six in the browser with voice and a set of Commander helpers. TableCommander is a lighter browser table where you play every card by hand. If your pod only ever plays Commander, any of the four will do the job; if it plays anything else, or wants its games recorded, Untap.in is the one built for that.

Webcam over your paper deck

SpellTable, run by Wizards of the Coast, points a camera at your real cards and shows the other three players' tables beside yours, with card recognition so people can read what you cast. It is the closest thing to a paper game because it is one: you need the physical deck, a 720p webcam or a phone to use as one, and a tidy desk, and you shuffle for yourself. Pods are capped at four. Convoke does the same job and positions itself as the better-maintained alternative. Neither is any use for play-testing a list you have not bought yet.

Rules engines

XMage is the free, open-source Java client that enforces the rules: priority, triggers and state-based actions all happen automatically, and Commander seats three to ten. The trade-offs are a download, an interface from another decade, and the occasional card implemented wrong. Magic Online is Wizards' own enforced client with a multiplayer Commander queue, sanctioned events, and a card economy priced in one-dollar event tickets; it is Windows only, and the free deck-rental programs mean a Commander deck can cost very little to borrow. Forge is a free rules engine that is mostly a solo game against the AI; it can be hosted for friends, but there is no lobby, so it is a goldfishing tool more than a place to find a game. And no, MTG Arena does not have Commander: Brawl is its two-player, 25-life cousin, and there is no four-player anything.

Desktop tables and sandboxes

Cockatrice is the original free virtual tabletop for Magic: a desktop client, community servers you pick from, and a card database you keep updated yourself. It does what a browser table does without the browser, which means a download for everyone, no phone play, and voice through whatever you set up on the side. Tabletop Simulator is a 3D physics sandbox on Steam, about twenty dollars at full price, that becomes a Commander table through community mods; it looks great and it is the most "we're at a table" of the lot, at the cost of a purchase for everyone and flipping cards with a mouse in three dimensions.

Play-testing a list on Untap.in, start to finish

This is the part we can speak to directly. A play-test on Untap.in has three stages, and most people stop at whichever one answers their question.

1. Bring the list in. Make an account, open Decks, choose Import, and paste the URL of your Moxfield, Archidekt or EDHREC list, or the decklist itself. The commander goes to the command zone; the ninety-nine go to the library.
2. Goldfish it. Open a Solo game. Draw seven, mulligan, play it out against an empty seat. You are looking at how often you hit your land drops and a play by turn three, whether the commander comes down on curve, and which cards you keep wishing were something else. Rewind takes the table back if you misclick.
3. Test the change. With a Power Up, a Deck vs Deck game seats several of your own decks at one table, so you can play the old list against the new one and settle whether the change was an improvement rather than a feeling.
4. Take it to a pod. New Game, pick Magic, set the table to 3+ for four seats, name it, and choose a play style: Relaxed, Competitive, or beginners welcome. Send the link, or let the lobby fill it. Voice is in the table, spectators can watch without a seat, and the game is saved as a replay when it ends.

What a shared table can and cannot tell you

Be honest with yourself about this, because it decides which tool you want. A shared table will not stop you casting a sorcery at instant speed, will not count commander damage for you unless you put a counter on it, and will not tell you that your combo does not actually work. It assumes the people at the table know the rules, the same as a kitchen table does. What it gives you in exchange is speed and completeness: there is no list of unimplemented cards, a brand-new commander works the day it is spoiled, and a four-player game sets up in the time it takes to paste four URLs.

Counters track life, commander damage, poison and whatever else your pod cares about, and they stay in sync for every seat. If what you want is to be told when you are wrong, that is what XMage is for, and we would rather you used it for that than were disappointed here. What a trusted table can do instead is take the bookkeeping off your hands without taking the decisions — which is the next section.

What the table does for you: undo, replays, scripted cards, auto pay

None of the other options on this page has these, and together they are the difference between a table that moves cards and one that helps you play-test.

Rewind

Press the curved arrow on the game bar, or Ctrl+Z, and the table lists every action it has taken, newest first. Pick one and the whole table goes back to the moment before it: every seat, every zone, every counter, in sync for everybody. A misclicked draw, a card dragged to the wrong zone, a combat nobody meant to start — none of them cost the game. In a play-test it is better than that, because you can try a line, see where it leads, and rewind to try the other one.

Replays

Every game with two or more players is recorded and kept for thirty days. Open it from the Replays tab and watch it back turn by turn, from any seat's point of view, with a scrubber to jump to the turn you want to argue about. Watching is a Power Up perk; starring a replay keeps it past the thirty days. For a deck you are tuning, the replay of the game you lost is the most useful thing on the site.

Scripted cards

43,916 Magic cards carry a script. A scripted card shows a button for what its text asks for — draw two, make the 2/2 token, put a +1/+1 counter here, mill three — and pressing it does exactly that through your own ordinary actions, with a line in the log saying what it did. A card with a trigger asks before it fires rather than acting on its own, and nothing is ever decided for you: a script never chooses a target and never plays a card. The scripts are written in Untap Script, a small language anybody can write, and the same language powers Automatic resource tracking

Every card in your hand shows its mana cost over the corner, washed out when your lands cannot cover it. A card you can afford gets a Pay button beside the cost: press it and the table taps the lands that pay for it, writes one line in the log saying which, and floats anything left over for the next card. It only taps — playing the card is still your click — and Undo untaps what Pay tapped. Hybrid and Phyrexian mana are understood; anything it cannot pay, it says so and touches nothing. The same helper runs for Lorcana, One Piece, Dragon Ball and Star Wars: Unlimited.

You do not have to build one. The board menu's Board Helpers opens two tabs — yours, and the ones other people have published (26 for Magic at the time of writing) — where you can see what a helper puts on the board and read its script before you load it. Start a game with an empty board and the table offers the featured ones, the ones you have starred and your own; any of them can be set to load itself every time, for the game or for a named format, so your Commander table is always the Commander table. Up to three load side by side, and you can copy a published one and change it. Helpers are written in Untap Script, the same small language as the card scripts: a box is one line, a button is one line, and a handler that moves a card when it lands is five. You can keep three per game, or ten with a Power Up.

On a phone or tablet

Untap.in and EDHplay are the two options on this page that work in a phone browser. Untap.in installs as an app from the browser on iOS and Android and lays the table out for a phone held upright: the opponent at the top, your cards in play in the middle and your hand along the bottom. Everything else here needs a desktop, a webcam or a Steam install.

Finding three other people

Finding a fourth is the hard part of online Commander, and it is where a big site helps. The Untap.in lobby lists open tables with their play style on the row, so a "Relaxed, no infinites" table and a cEDH table are not confused for each other, and the Untap.in Discord, 185,000+ members, has looking-for-game channels for Commander and every other game on the site. There is no invite link: you join by signing in with Discord, which links it to your Untap.in account (or creates one) and seats you in the server in the same step, so the person you find in a channel is the same person at the table. 2,733,779 Magic decks have been built on the site, which is a lot of people who want a game.

So which one?

• Play-testing a list, alone or with a pod: Untap.in.
• A Commander-only pod that wants six seats at no cost: EDHplay or Playgroup Live.
• Your real paper deck: SpellTable, or Convoke.
• Rules enforced: XMage for free; Magic Online if you want sanctioned events and will pay for cards.
• Goldfishing with the rules enforced: Forge.
• A native desktop app with your existing group: Cockatrice.
• A 3D table with your board-game group: Tabletop Simulator.

Plenty of pods use two. Nothing here stops you.