Playing ManaBrew

Building a deck

The deck editor accepts decks three ways:

• Paste a list — plain text, one card per line (4 Lightning Bolt), with sideboard and commander sections recognized.
• Import from a URL — Archidekt and Moxfield deck links.
• Start from a preset — the client ships a set of ready-to-play decks.

Decks can be exported back out as Arena-style text. While you edit, the list is checked live:

• Legality badges mark cards that are banned or restricted in the deck’s format.
• An unsupported badge marks cards the Rust engine can’t run yet — the deck still saves, but those cards won’t behave correctly in a game.
• For Commander decks, the editor shows detected combos (via Commander Spellbook), Game Changers, and an estimated bracket: brackets 2–4 are assessed automatically from Game Changer count, mass land denial, and early infinite combos; brackets 1 and 5 are yours to declare.

Decks are stored locally in your browser (or the desktop app’s local storage) — nothing is uploaded. Export lists you care about.

Single-player

Pick Play, choose a format, then pick your deck and an opponent deck for the AI (or let it pick at random) and start the game. The AI plays the same engine you do.

Multiplayer

Create a room from the lobby — name it, optionally set a password, choose the player count (2–8) and a reconnection timeout (30, 60, or 90 seconds). Other players join from the public room list; the host starts the game once seats fill.

If you disconnect mid-game (tab closed, network blip), you have the room’s reconnection window to come back: reopen the app and it resumes your seat, replaying the current game state. If the host closes their tab, the game cannot continue — the room returns to the lobby.

Drafts and limited

Limited play supports Booster Draft, Sealed, Winston Draft, and Cube, with boosters built from real set data. Draft against AI opponents and take the deck into a gauntlet of games, or draft a multiplayer pod and play the games online in the same room.

Companion: paper-play life tracker

Playing with physical cards? The Companion view (in the sidebar) is a tabletop life tracker for 2–6 players: preset starting totals (20/40/60), poison, energy, and custom counters, commander damage, per-player layouts you can drag, rotate and scale, a dice roller, and a game log. It’s designed to sit flat on the table between players.