Playing Commander over the internet is a solved problem. It has been solved four different ways, though, and the four solutions suit different pods. Most of the people who tried remote Commander once and gave up on it picked a tool from the wrong category, not a bad tool.
One disclosure before the list: I build one of the browser tabletops below (EDHMat), so read the browser-tabletop parts knowing that.
The four ways to do it
1. Webcams and your real cards. SpellTable and Convoke. You keep the physical game — real shuffling, real cards, real sleeves. The costs are bandwidth, lighting and patience: reading a card someone holds up to a camera takes practice, and a board with forty permanents on it is hard to follow through a lens.
2. A browser tabletop with digital cards. EDHMat, TableCommander, Kiku.gg, Playgroup Live, untap.in. Everyone sees the same board, rendered from card images, in a browser tab. No install, usually no cost, often no account. You move your own cards and track your own triggers; these tools do not know the rules of Magic.
3. A rules-enforcing client. XMage and Forge. The stack works, triggers trigger, illegal plays get refused. Both are downloads, both look dated, and both take a session or two to learn. If "wait, does that trigger?" is what ruins your remote games, this is your category, and nothing in category 2 will fix it.
4. A sandbox. Tabletop Simulator. Total freedom, physics, any card, any house rule. Also the most setup work of anything here, and every player has to buy it.
If category 2 sounds right and you want to skip the comparison shopping: Open a table in one click →
The fastest setup I know
If your pod wants to play tonight, this takes about a minute, and only the person creating the table does anything at all unusual.
- One person opens EDHMat and clicks "Create table". No sign-up, no email, no password. A name is suggested; type over it or don't.
- They paste the link into the pod's group chat. That link is the invite. There is nothing else to send.
- Everyone clicks it and picks a name. That's the whole registration.
- Everyone pastes a decklist. A Moxfield, Archidekt or Arena text export, an Archidekt deck URL, or a plain list of card names. Cards resolve against Scryfall, and you pick your commander from the legends in the list.
- Somebody hits start. Seven-card hands are dealt, libraries are shuffled, and you are playing.
Keep your voice call wherever you already have it — Discord for most pods. I wrote up how to run the call and the table together separately.
What a manual tabletop will and won't do
This is the part that surprises people coming from Arena, so it is worth saying plainly. A browser tabletop of the EDHMat / TableCommander / Kiku type is a shared piece of furniture, not an opponent. It will happily let you:
- attack with a creature that has summoning sickness,
- forget a trigger for three turns,
- cast a spell you cannot afford,
- and put a permanent in a row it does not belong in.
That is by design. Commander is full of weird interactions, house rules and table talk, and a rules engine that knows half of the format blocks plays you meant to make without being able to explain why. What a good manual tabletop gives you instead is bookkeeping. EDHMat writes every action — each draw, move, tap, token, life change — into an append-only log, so "when did that get there?" has an answer that doesn't depend on anyone's memory.
If you would rather have the enforcement, use XMage. It is free and it plays real Magic. I mean that without irony; it is the better tool for that kind of pod.
Which one fits your pod
| If your pod… | Use |
|---|---|
| owns the paper decks and wants to see them | SpellTable or Convoke |
| wants a shared board in seconds, no signups | EDHMat, TableCommander, Kiku.gg |
| wants game history and playgroup tooling | Playgroup Live |
| wants the rules enforced | XMage or Forge |
| wants total sandbox freedom, will pay for it | Tabletop Simulator |
| cares who hosts the server | EDHMat, self-hosted |
Common problems
"Someone always drops." Pick a tool where the game state lives on the server, not in the browser. In EDHMat a dropped player reloads the same link and is back in their seat with the full board, because the game is an event log the client replays.
"We lose track of the board." The number one killer of remote Commander, and it is worse with webcams than with digital cards. If your pod keeps arguing about board state, move to digital cards, and prefer a tool that logs actions.
"Setting up takes longer than the game." Usually a symptom of accounts, lobbies and configuration screens. The fix is a tool where the invite is a link.
"We want to play decks we don't own." Then you want digital cards; a webcam can only show cards that exist on your table. Every browser tabletop here imports a decklist, so the deck you brewed at 1am is playable at 8pm.
Where to go next
- The best SpellTable alternatives in 2026 — the full survey, including the rules-enforcing options.
- How to play Magic over Discord — the call and the table, together.
- Importing a decklist from Moxfield or Archidekt — the one step people get stuck on.
Frequently asked questions
Can I play Commander online for free?
Yes. EDHMat, TableCommander, Kiku.gg, XMage and Forge are all free, and SpellTable is free with a Wizards account. The only common option that costs money is Tabletop Simulator, which every player has to buy on Steam.
Do I need to own the cards to play Commander online?
Only if you use a webcam tool like SpellTable or Convoke, which point a camera at your real deck. Browser tabletops and rules-enforcing clients deal digital cards from a decklist, so you can play a deck you have never owned.
How many people can play Commander online at once?
A typical pod is four. Most browser tabletops support up to six seats, which covers a normal pod plus spares; a few go higher.
What is the fastest way to get a pod playing?
A tool with no account and no install. Create a table, paste the link into your group chat, and everyone clicks it — the whole setup is one link and a decklist paste.