Magic: The Gathering’s 2026 roadmap is proving divisive (to say the least), while the additions of Ninja Turtles, Star Trek, and Marvel Heroes are stoking debate over the sanctity of the brand. There’s no doubt tie-ins bring more players through the proverbial door: I finally jumped on board the Magic train around the Lord of the Rings set in 2023 and have been hooked ever since, as have many of my friends. But between work and raising a family, it’s not always easy to get together to sling spells around the kitchen table.
While Magic Arena and Magic Online basically cover all your needs for one-vs-one games, Commander is a whole other story. Wizards of the Coast provides Spelltable, a webcam-based tool that is a solid way to catch up and play Commander with your friends. However, the app is far from spotless. You need your lighting to be spot on and your webcam to be clear enough. Even then, it can feel like a gamble whether it’ll work.
This led to the birth of a Commander community using Tabletop Simulator, the popular resource to, well, simulate tabletop games on your PC. To be absolutely clear, the use of Magic: The Gathering art in these mods is unofficial and, at a glance, copyright infringement. Still, that hasn’t slowed down the game’s popularity, nor has Wizards of the Coast taken any steps to bring these down. So testeing the Commander mods on Tabletop Simulator felt like a must as it grows in prominence as part of the scene. Trying it out revealed an experience that has its perks, but… you may still want to stick to Arena for the future.
Playtesting to the small hours
Tabletop Simulator‘s Commander mods come in four, six, and eight-player tables, complete with all the dice you could ever need. There’s a cannon to fire a colored dice to determine who goes first, and the initial tutorial does a great job of showing how intuitive it is. Grab your deck with your mouse and shake it to shuffle, and zoom and pan around the table at your leisure to avoid needing to get up to do the same thing.
Naturally, it wouldn’t be much of a card game without the cards, but thankfully, there’s a deck importing tool that works with the likes of Moxfield, Archidekt, et al. Paste the URL in, and you’re good to go. Cards have their full artwork, and while dropping counters on them can get a little fiddly (Lorwyn Eclipsed’s Blight Curse deck will test the table’s patience until you learn the ropes), holding Alt will let you zoom in on cards.
There are buttons to instantly mill, untap, mulligan, and draw, and it’s not difficult to start searching through your library or graveyard for a basic land or whatever else you need.
Don’t miss your triggers!
Naturally, this is all done without the game helping you remember your triggers. That means if you forget to tick up that counter in your end phase, forget to proliferate, or just miss something when an opponent attacks you, you’re on your own. My playgroup uses Discord for comms, and while they’re a relatively laid-back bunch, yours might turn their nose up at retracting a move to replay part of a turn. Don’t say I didn’t warn you!
The Craterhoof Behemoth in the room
Naturally, there’s the small matter of Magic: The Gathering Arena. To its credit, Wizards’ own client is very, very generous with its starter decks, which makes it an easy recommendation to anyone new to Magic, especially when paired with a solid tutorial. It’s also got flashier animations, sound effects, and boards to play on, if that’s your bag, and I definitely missed the heft of a big creature slamming into a foe’s defender.
The trouble is that Arena doesn’t cover Commander, which is Magic’s most popular format, and given the complexity of the interactions involved, there’s every chance it never will. That’s why so many people have turned to Tabletop Simulator, but copyright infringement remains an important issue, and Wizards could take down these mods at any time.
All of this is to say, there’s no chance I’m going to ditch my cardboard collection and go all-in with Tabletop Simulator and nothing else. Playing the game in person remains the best way to do it, but being able to swap out a couple of cards without digging through my collection and jump right back into another game is very handy indeed. If there were a legal way to play a fully digital Commander, I’m sure the majority of players would embrace it. For now, let’s just hope that Spelltable will become a little more reliable.
