FAQ
General
Is this legal?
Certainly. Neither MTG Manager nor MTG Player contain any copyrighted material. All card images and details are downloaded from the Gatherer when the user performs searches or imports cards. There have been other programs that do similar things for quite some time.
Will it always be free?
My intention is to keep it free for non-commercial use forever.
If you want to use it for commercial purposes you must get my permission first.
Is it open source?
Yes.
Does it redownload cards each time it's needed?
No. Every card in the Magic Universe has a unique ID in the Gatherer called the MultiverseID. When a card is accessed for the first time the image, card text, expansion, etc. is downloaded and stored locally. When that card is needed again in the future, these details will be retrieved from the local database. This makes accessing cards much faster.
Why not just download all the cards at once?
To be polite. It's unlikely you'll need a local copy of all 17,000 cards immediately upon loading the program. You'll likely be accessing them at a much more leisurely pace. Why waste Wizard's bandwidth and computing resources unnecessarily?
I prefer using <Program X> to manage my cards a decks. Can I use decks created in <Program X> in the Player?
Eventually I plan to add support for using decks built in other popular card managers. Until then you'll need to export your deck from the other program, then import it into mine. The import format is a simple tab delimited text file, so it should be a fairly easy process.
MTG Player
Why can't anyone connect to my game?
This is generally a networking issue. You need to have the network port forwarded to the hosting machine. You may also need to reconfigure your firewall. You can Google how to do both of these.
Does it enforce the rules?
No.
Why Not?
For pretty well every rule in Magic, there is a card that breaks that rule. To enforce the rules properly would require a rule engine that knows about all 17,000+ cards. It will also need to be constantly updated for all new editions.
I'd rather focus my energy on creating a good UI and giving you the tools to handle all the rules yourself.
If someone else wants to build a rules engine, then I'd be open to working with them on integrating it with the player.
What is the Use Plane checkbox when hosting?
Tells the server to make this game use the Planechase game format.
Why does it take so long for the game table to load?
When the host starts a game it sends a listing of the MultiverseIDs of every card in all the decks to each player's client. The client then has to either load the card details from the local database or go to the Gatherer to download it.
Subsequent games with those decks will load much faster.
Where's the Out of Play zone?
There isn't one. I typically just drag the card off to the side of my play area to denote out of play.
How do I randomly discard a card?
Currently there's no built in game mechanic (working on it). One thing you can do is put them on the play field face down. Then let another user pick the one to discard.
Update: This is now supported with the Discard Randomly menu item.
How do I add a creature token?
The creature token button is between the end turn and dice on the control box. Click it to open the token desginer. Select an image and enter a description of the token. After you've created a token, there will be a new button at the bottom of the control box for each "type" of token you've created. You can create subsequent copies of that token using this button.
Why don't you use the actual Token Card Images?
I can't distribute copyrighted material. The only way I can add the real images is by downloading them from the Gatherer during the game. Unfortunately, I haven't been able to find them in the Gatherer. If anyone knows how to find them or their MultiverseID, please let me know. I'd love to use the real artwork.
How do I add a counter?
Drag the counter from the control box on to the Card, Player or Plane. You can also right click a card or player and use the Set Counters menu to create them directly.
How do I add a +2/-3 counter?
Add two Power Counters and Three -1 Toughness counters. Or set it via the Set Counters dialog.
How do I do ... ?
I've tried to implement all the major game mechanics. However, there are certainly things that I missed. If you do find something let me know. In the meantime you can often come up with a way to do it using the workspace, play table, die, counters, etc.
What is the Workspace?
A private area separate from your hand where you can view cards. It's mainly for scenarios such as "Draw 3 cards. Pick one to put in your hand and put the rest in the graveyard." You would draw the 3 to the workspace to keep them from getting mixed up with your hand.
How do I reveal a card?
Either right click on it and select show card, then pick the players. Or drag it to the play table face up and pick it back up when the other players have seen it.
Why don't cards show up where I dropped them when moving them in another player's Playspace?
They do, but your frame of reference is differant than the other play area's. The card will appear in the other play area rotated to match the play space. The card is rotated around the top left of the card. The easiest thing is to simply drop the card with the top left of the card at the location you want the card to appear.
Eventually I'll make the card be rotated according to the play space to make it a bit easier.
MTG Manager
What does the Search Gatherer Checkbox do?
When this is checked all searches are submitted to the Gatherer. This gets a listing of the MultiverseIDs that match the card result set. The application will then check each MultiverseID to see if it's been downloaded already. If so, it gets the card details from the local database. If not, it will download the card details from the Gatherer and store them locally.
When this is not checked, all queries are run against the local database only. For obvious reasons, this will only return results for cards you have previously retrieved by "Searching the Gatherere". A good place to use this is when searching by expansion. Suppose you know you've viewed all the cards in the Zendikar expansion. If you wish to view them again you can disable "Search Gatherer" to force a local search.
Why wouldn't I just always use "Search Gatherer"?
Speed and Connectivity. Doing a local search is far faster. It can also function when a connection to the gatherer is unavailable.
What is the Owned checkbox?
Limits searches to cards that you have flagged as being owned (quantity > 0). This is to aid in building your physical decks. This also forces the search to be a local search, after all if you've set the quantity you must also have downloaded the card previously.