How to Playtest Your Cards on the Playtest Table

The playtest table deals your real cards, with the quantities from your data, so you can see how a hand looks and how a turn flows before you print a single sheet. It's a solo table for trying things: no rules engine, no opponents to play against, nothing saved. It's free for everyone and works offline.

Step 1: Have a deck with cards

The table deals from a deck with rows in Data. Each row is dealt as many times as its quantity, the same number that would print. Rows with a quantity of 0 aren't dealt, which is a handy way to leave cards out of a test.

Step 2: Open the table

Choose Playtest in the project header, beside Export. On a phone, it's in the More menu.

Step 3: Deal a hand

Pick the Deck to play with, set the Hand size, and choose Deal a hand. The deck is shuffled and your hand is dealt along the bottom.

The opponent's hand across the top is just card backs, to give a sense of scale at the table.

Step 4: Play with your cards

• Draw: click the draw pile.
• Flip a card in your hand to see its back (if the deck has a back design).
• Discard a card to the discard pile.
• Return a card to the bottom of the deck.
• Take back the top card of the discard pile by clicking it.
• Shuffle into deck shuffles the discard pile back under the draw pile.

Deal a new hand at any time to start again.

What to look for

The table can't tell you whether your game is fun, but it's very good at catching problems you'd otherwise find at a real table:

• Opening hands. Deal ten hands in a row. How many can't do anything on turn one?
• The curve. Does a typical hand have something cheap to play, and something to build towards?
• Readability. Can you read every card at hand size? Are costs and names visible when the cards overlap?
• Quantities. Do you see the same card too often? Is a key card too rare?
• Turn flow. Play a few imaginary turns. Is there a decision each turn, or an obvious play?

It changes nothing

Nothing you do on the table is saved or changes your project. Shuffle, discard and deal as much as you like.

After the table: a real playtest

When the hands look right, print it and play it with people. The table checks how cards read; only players tell you how the game feels.

• Check your project for problems first: How to Validate Your Game.
• Then print it: How to Export Your Game.

Testing with people who aren't in the room? Export to Tabletop Simulator, or build deck sheets from any card images with the free tool:

Tabletop Simulator deck sheet maker

Turn your card images into Tabletop Simulator deck sheets: up to 69 cards a sheet with the hidden-card slot left free, a back, PNG or JPEG, and a saved object that loads the whole deck in one click. Free, in your browser, with no sign-up.