Playtest Mode

Playtest Mode is ArcaneMetriX’s interactive tabletop for goldfishing a deck. It gives you a full battlefield, game zones, turn and resource tracking, undo/redo, and a live performance read without changing the saved decklist.

Start a Playtest

Open a deck in Builder, choose the Test subtab, then select Playtest deck.

Every new game begins with an opening-hand flow:

1. Choose a mulligan ruleset. You can use the format default, a matching rule from your Pod, a named preset, or custom draw, bottom, scry, and free-mulligan values.
2. Deal the opening hand and choose Keep this hand or Mulligan. The button tells you when a mulligan is free.
3. If the rules require bottoming or scrying, mark the required cards and confirm the choice before the battlefield opens.

Mulligans are a pre-game decision, so there is no mulligan button on the table. Use New game in the bottom action bar whenever you want to shuffle up and run the opening-hand flow again.

The Table

The battlefield fills the play area so cards have room to spread out. Command Zone, Sideboard, and Library sit on the left rail; Graveyard and Exile sit on the right. The hand fans across the bottom, with Life, Mana, Dice, and the action bar floating above it.

Use the zoom control at the top of the battlefield when you need more room or larger cards. The Actions button in the header collapses or restores the bottom action bar.

The action bar is grouped by purpose:

• Hand draws a card.
• Tokens opens token search.
• Game advances the turn, provides undo and redo, opens Deck Performance, and starts a new game.
• Board switches between Free placement and Snap placement. Free leaves a card exactly where you drop it; Snap aligns cards and stacks to the table grid.

On supported touch devices, the Board group also offers Default and Landscape orientation. Landscape expands Playtest and asks the device to stay sideways. If the browser cannot lock orientation, rotate the device manually when prompted.

Playing Cards and Using Zones

Drag cards between the hand, battlefield, graveyard, exile, command zone, and library just as you would move physical cards. Clicking a permanent taps or untaps it. Dragging from the Search panel onto the battlefield adds a test copy without adding that card to the saved deck.

Right-click a card for its context menu. Depending on the card and zone, you can open card details, attack, flip the card, clone it, add counters, deal damage, or move it to another zone. On a phone or tablet, press and hold instead.

Right-click a zone for zone-wide actions. The Library menu can draw or mill a chosen number, look at the top cards, search or shuffle the library, manifest the top card, or resolve Manifest Dread. Clicking the Library pile opens library search directly. Newly milled cards are briefly highlighted in the Graveyard so you can see what moved.

Double-faced cards show a flip control on the card image. Cards printed to be read in another orientation, such as Kamigawa flip cards or aftermath halves, show a rotate control. Battles, split cards, and Rooms are displayed in their readable orientation automatically.

Selecting, Moving, and Stacking Groups

Hold Shift and drag across the battlefield to box-select several cards. You can also hold Ctrl/Cmd or Shift while clicking cards to add or remove them from the selection.

Actions applied to one selected card apply to the selected group. You can move the group together, tap or attack with it, add counters to every card, duplicate the selection, send it to the Graveyard, or use Stack Group from the context menu. Press S to stack the current selection quickly.

Life, Mana, Dice, and Counters

The bottom drawers keep common table bookkeeping close to the hand:

• Life tracks your life, the goldfish’s life, poison, energy, experience, rad counters, and commander damage.
• Mana tracks each color in the current mana pool. Click a mana symbol to add one and right-click it to remove one.
• Dice rolls common die sizes in any quantity.

Counter badges sit directly on cards. Left-click a badge to add another counter of that type; right-click it to remove one.

Deck Performance and the Action Log

Choose Insights in the Playtest header, or the Deck Performance button in the Game group, for a live read on how the current test is going.

Deck Performance reports cards seen, land drops, curve usage, stranded cards, average hand cost, board power, spells cast, storm count, damage, cards drawn, mana efficiency, action velocity, commander casts, the odds for the next card type, and the tags still represented in the library. These are observations about the current game, not a claim that the deck is correctly built.

Select View full action log at the bottom of Deck Performance to review or export the turn-by-turn history.

Closing, Resuming, and Resetting

Playtest state is saved locally per deck, including unsaved drafts. Closing the modal or browser by accident does not reset the game; reopening Playtest restores the battlefield, zones, totals, and current turn. Undo and redo history also survives closing and reopening Playtest during the app session.

Use New game when you intentionally want to clear the table, reshuffle, and choose a new opening hand.

Important

Playtest never changes the saved decklist. Test copies, tokens, zone changes, and game actions stay inside the Playtest session.

Keyboard Shortcuts

Shortcuts are ignored while you are typing in a text or number field.