Introducing ManaTap Play: Your Magic Table, Online
We’re really excited to finally say this properly.
ManaTap Play is now live in Public Beta.
It’s a new way to play Magic with friends, or practise on your own, straight from your browser.
No download.
No webcam setup.
No rules engine trying to take over the game.
ManaTap manages the table. You play the game.
🔵 What Play actually is
The easiest way to describe it is this:
ManaTap Play is a digital kitchen table.
You can create a private table, invite your friends, load up your decks, and just play. If you want to test something by yourself, you can jump into Practice Solo and goldfish there too.
It supports:
- Commander
- Standard
- Modern
- Pioneer
- Pauper
- Legacy
- Vintage
Private tables support up to 10 players, and if someone just wants to join your game, they don’t need to make an account first.
🎨 Make the table feel like yours
One of the big things we cared about was making Play feel less flat and generic.
We wanted your side of the board to actually feel like your space.
So Play includes loads of customisation, including:
- 50+ playmats
- illustrated card backs
- hero artwork
- hero frames
- different ping styles
If you’re on Pro, there are more cosmetic options and more AI usage too. But the core table is still free, which was important to us.
🟣 Help when you want it
This is another area we think makes Play feel different.
There’s optional AI help, yes, but there’s also a lot of non-AI assistance built in for newer players or for those moments where you just want a little support.
Things like:
- mana costs shown clearly above cards
- turn and phase reminders
- phase-based highlighting for relevant cards
- draw reminders
- keyword explanations
- easy card previews
Then if you want more help, ManaTap AI can step in too. You can ask it about a card, a rules question, your opening hand, or what’s going on at the table.
The important bit is that it’s all optional.
We didn’t want Play to feel like the app was playing Magic for you.
🟠 It’s meant to feel social too
A lot of online Magic tools can do the basics, but they don’t always feel very alive.
We wanted Play to feel more like hanging out around a real table, so we added the little bits that make games more interactive:
- ping the battlefield
- draw on the table
- use the soundboard
- create custom drawn tokens
- roll dice and flip coins
- use attack, block, and target arrows
- chat with the table
There’s also Planechase and Arcane Events if your group wants to make things a bit more chaotic.
We’ve deliberately left voice out of it. Most people already use Discord, and that felt like the right place for it.
🔴 We handle the table stuff
Play is there to manage the messy table bits so your group can focus on the actual game.
That includes things like:
- life
- poison
- commander damage
- mana
- counters
- tokens
- libraries
- graveyards
- exile
- dice results
- turn order
- game log
It also handles hidden information properly. Opponent hands and libraries stay hidden, not just visually hidden.
That part mattered a lot to us.
🟢 Built for friends, not matchmaking
ManaTap Play is not trying to be a ladder or a ranked queue.
It’s for private games.
You make a table, send a room code or invite link, and play with the people you actually want to play with.
If someone just wants to watch, you can also share an observe link.
That private, friend-first setup is a big part of what we wanted Play to be.
🟡 A quick note on Beta
This is a Public Beta, and for now it’s desktop only.
We’ve put a lot into the first release already, but we know the best feedback comes from real people actually using it.
So if you try it and think “this is great, but I wish it did this” or “this bit feels clunky”, tell us. That kind of feedback is genuinely useful and helps shape what Play becomes next.
Ready to try it?
If you’ve got a regular Commander night, want an easier way to test decks, or just fancy messing around with a digital table that feels a bit more personal, give it a go.
Thanks to everyone who’s been testing it and giving feedback so far. It’s helped a lot.
ManaTap manages the table. Players manage the rules.
