Formats & limitations
ManaBrew is pre-release software built around an in-progress Rust port of the Forge rules engine. This page is the honest version of “what works”.
Formats
Section titled “Formats”The engine and client recognize: Commander, Standard, Pioneer, Modern, Legacy, Vintage, Pauper, Brawl, Oathbreaker, Draft, Sealed, and Any (no restrictions). The format drives deck rules, starting life, and the editor’s legality badges.
For limited play, Booster Draft, Sealed, Winston Draft, and Cube are available, with boosters generated from real set and edition data.
Card coverage
Section titled “Card coverage”The card database parses Forge’s full library of 32,000+ card scripts, but the Rust engine does not implement every mechanic those scripts use yet. What that means in practice:
- The deck editor checks every card against the engine and flags ones it can’t run with an unsupported badge — check your deck before a game, not during one.
- Coverage grows parity-first: each fix is verified against Java Forge’s behavior with identical seeds and choices, and locked in by a regression suite.
- The engine is swappable: rooms hosted on the original Java Forge engine via a self-hosted node are fully supported and give you Forge’s complete card coverage today.
Web vs desktop
Section titled “Web vs desktop”| Web (play.manabrew.app) | Desktop (Tauri) | |
|---|---|---|
| Rules engine | Rust engine compiled to WASM | Same Rust engine, native |
| Java Forge games | Join rooms hosted by a self-hosted node | Same |
| Offline play | No | Engine runs locally, but card images still need internet |
| Install | None | .dmg / .exe from releases |
The web client additionally requires a cross-origin-isolated host (see hosting the web client) — this is handled for you on play.manabrew.app.
Reporting a gap
Section titled “Reporting a gap”If a card behaves differently than it would in paper, that’s exactly the bug report this project runs on — see the FAQ for what to include.