How to play Magic over Discord

Your Commander (EDH) pod probably already lives on Discord: that's where you schedule games, argue about decklists and ask "anyone up for a game?". But Discord isn't a Magic client. There's no card game in it and no bot that can deal you a hand the other three players can't see.

So the useful question isn't how to play Magic in Discord, but what to use alongside it, and how to set things up so game night doesn't start with twenty minutes of troubleshooting. Below is the setup I'd recommend, and why screen sharing, the obvious alternative, doesn't work well.

The setup

Discord handles the people. A separate table handles the cards.

• A voice channel for the game. Use audio by default. Video is nice but optional, and it eats bandwidth when four people are also running a game.
• A pinned message in your pod's text channel with the table link. People don't have to scroll back to find it.
• A shared table open in a browser tab next to Discord.

The table is the part you have to choose, and the choice is the same one that runs through all of remote Commander:

Real cards and webcams: SpellTable or Convoke. You play your physical decks with a camera each, and Discord stays the voice channel. Don't try to use Discord video as the table. It's compressed for faces, not for reading small rules text.

Digital cards in a browser: EDHMat, TableCommander, Kiku.gg and others. Everyone has their own view of the same board, so each player can look at whatever they like, including their own hand, which stays hidden from the others. There's nothing to install and no camera involved.

Why screen sharing doesn't work well

The obvious approach is for one person to share their screen while everyone else watches. For Commander in particular, it falls apart quickly:

• Hidden cards aren't hidden. Whatever is on the sharer's screen is on everyone's screen, so either their hand is public or they never look at it.
• One person does all the clicking. The other three spend the evening asking "can you scroll up?" and "can you zoom in on the green one?".
• Compression blurs card text. Screen sharing is tuned for slides, not for a paragraph of rules text at a fifth of its size.
• Everything lags. The game, the encoding, the network and the decoding all add delay, and turns take longer than they should.

Screen sharing is fine for spectators, like someone who drops in halfway to watch, or for a two-player game where hidden hands matter less. For four people playing a long game, it's the wrong tool.

A game night checklist

Adapt this to your group. Once people are online, setup takes a few minutes.

1. Someone is the host. Take turns. It's not much work, but if nobody is assigned, four people end up waiting for each other.
2. The host creates the table and pins the link. With EDHMat that's one click and a paste. There's no account, no lobby settings and no invites to accept. The rest of the setup is on the Commander online page, which has the table on it too.
3. Everyone joins the voice channel and clicks the link. They type a name and they're seated.
4. Decks get pasted while people chat. Resolving a hundred cards takes a moment, so do it while you catch up. Decks you've used before are saved in your browser, which makes this faster from the second game on.
5. The host deals. Everyone gets seven cards and a shuffled library.
6. Agree on house rules out loud before turn one. Free mulligans? Which bracket? Thirty seconds now saves an argument on turn six.

Making the games good

Say what you're doing. At a real table people see your hands move. Over voice they can't, so announce attacks, triggers, and when you're done with your turn. A table that talks things through doesn't need a rules engine.

Use the log. On a browser table, the written record settles disagreements. EDHMat writes every draw, cast, move, tap and life change into a log that everyone sees in the same order, so "when did that enchantment come down?" gets answered by scrolling up.

Keep the numbers on the table, not in someone's head. Life totals, commander damage and counters belong on the board. Any decent table tracks them, and EDHMat also counts commander tax for you.

Put the windows side by side. Voice in the Discord app, table in the browser. Nobody should have to keep switching away from the game.

Turn off video if things get choppy. Four video streams plus four browser tabs is a lot for a home connection. Audio and a shared board are enough.

What Discord is good for

Not the table, but the pod. The hardest part of remote Commander is finding three other people who want to play at 9pm on a Tuesday, and Discord is what solves that. The big Commander LFG servers are busy, and a pod with its own channel plays much more often than one without.

EDHMat has a small Discord server of its own too. It's where I hear about bugs and feature requests, and you can ask there when you're looking for more players.

Next

• Commander online: your first gameYour first game on EDHMat, step by step, with a table you can open on the page.
• How to play Commander onlineThe four ways pods play, and how to set each one up.
• SpellTable alternativesWebcam tools, browser tables and rules clients, side by side.
• Importing a decklistWhich export to use, and what to do with cards that don't resolve.

Frequently asked questions

Can you play Magic directly in Discord?

Not really. Discord gives you voice, video and a place to organise, but there is no card game in it. You pair it with a separate table: a webcam tool for real cards, or a browser table for digital ones.

Do I need to screen share to play Magic on Discord?

Only if one person runs the game and the others watch. For Commander that works badly: the person sharing controls the view, nobody can look at their own hand privately, and the stream lags. A shared table where every player has their own window works much better.

What is the best way to run a Commander pod on Discord?

Voice in Discord, cards in a browser table, and the table link pinned in your channel. Keep video optional. Most pods find that audio plus a shared board is enough, and it uses far less bandwidth.