We Tried the Artificer MTG Card Maker App — How Good is It?

Last updated on May 19, 2025

Servo Schematic | Illustration by Titus Lunter

You don’t have to have a degree in game design to want to make Magic cards. Sure, your custom creations aren’t making it into the next big Magic release, but it can be fun just to put your thoughts on paper and see what you come up with.

There are plenty of apps and programs out there designed for you to create custom Magic cards, and I’ll review one of those today. Thanks to Artificer for sponsoring this article; let’s see what they have to offer to an aspiring Magic card developer.

Why Use Artificer?

Nimblewright Schematic | Illustration by Jakub Kasper

Artificer is a convenient mobile app that allows you to create custom Magic cards from the convenience of your phone. I like to think of it like a handy notebook for spontaneous card ideas.

Artificer’s been around for a while; I used to use this on flights a few years back just to pass the time on the plane, but it’s recently received an update that expands the available features on the app. I’ll say up front that this isn’t the most expansive card creation app out there, but it’s free, it’s fairly easy to use, and it has enough customization options to satisfy that card design itch.

Artificer: How Does it Work?

Downloading the App

Finding the app on iOS is as easy as opening the App Store and typing in “Artificer.” It’s also available on Android, for those who partake. Notably, Artificer‘s card creation is not compatible with desktop use, though you can log in at https://artificer.app/ to manually access your gallery and the site's social features. If you'd rather download images from a computer than your phone, you can do so on the main website. The User's Gallery is also a bit easier to navigate on desktop.

Once downloaded, you need to create a quick account with just an e-mail address and password. You won’t use it for much, but it helps you connect to some of the social features if you’re looking to share your creations easily.

Available Features

Artificer defaults to the Create tab, which lists a few card type categories. These are the different thumbnails you’ll be using to design your cards. You can make tokens, planeswalkers, sagas, and adventures, on top of basic card types like lands, artifacts, and enchantments. There is a limitation to what you can make here; for example, I didn’t see any way to make a battle, double-faced card, or a traditional split card. In other words, you’ll be able to make 90% of the designs you have in mind here, but some of your fancier, more outlandish card designs probably don’t have a compatible card frame. That’s mostly true of anything that tampers with the typical vertical card design.

Next up is My Gallery, which shows your card creations, and even has a tab where you can order custom proxied versions of your cards (through MTG Proxy). That’s neat, though I had trouble actually getting the cards I created to show in the Gallery. Of the four or five creations I made, only one originally appeared in my gallery, and it was even missing the art I assigned to it. The others were just kind of lost, since there’s no way to recover them outside of the Gallery. After a couple recreations, I was able to get them to save, though it left me a little skeptical of the Gallery’s consistency.

The finnicky nature of the Gallery definitely detracts from the overall experience, since I have no idea if my creations will be saved until after I exit away from them (in which case they’re gone for good if they didn’t save). That said, you can also access your Gallery from your desktop, so successfully saved cards can be downloaded from there as well.

Next up is the AI Image generator. I’m not a fan of AI in general, but I gave it a go for the sake of this review. I prompted the image creator to construct an image of a gingerbread man bursting from a pie (for my go-to “Yeast Within” creation). And the AI generator half-delivered with a gingerbread man leisurely standing upon said pie. Valiant attempt though, I’ll use it.

Note that free users get exactly one AI generated image per day, whereas premium users get up to 20. Of course, you can also use art you’ve already got saved to your phone, or existing Magic art (always credit the artist!).

The last main tab is for a Public Gallery, which displays creations by other users. You can emote on their cards or even buy them if you’re so inclined, but it’s mostly just a quick snapshot of cards that other people have created.

Creating Custom Cards

Now to the good part, and the bulk of what we’ll look at today. Card creation starts by picking a card type to design. This is mostly used to determine the card frame that your card appears in. Clicking “Planeswalker,” for example, sets up a default planeswalker frame with slots for three loyalty abilities.

These frames tend to be serviceable, but rigid. For example, the planeswalker frame defaults to three loyalty abilities and no room for a typical static ability, and you can’t adjust that as far as I can tell. Similarly, sagas always have three chapters, and adventures always have a power/toughness bar, even if you design a non-creature adventure. These are minor annoyances if your whole goal is just to get text on paper, but if you’re looking to print out a mock-up of a card and get it as close as possible to the “real thing,” these minor issues are going to be problematic.

Otherwise, if you’re not trying to get too fancy with your card designs, everything’s fairly straightforward. You can customize the card name, mana cost, card type, rules text and flavor text, power/toughness, rarity and set symbol (with limitations), and artist credit. You actually must include art of some kind to save your work, and the pic you plan to use must be in your photos already (you can’t exit, use the AI art generator, and come back, for example).

There are plenty of preloaded mana symbols and formatting tools you can click on to add various costs and text to a card, so you don’t have to mess with any sort of syntax. I did notice that whenever I had to type a card name or card type, my cursor kept jumping to the front of the text line. It was very annoying, but I didn’t encounter this issue while typing rules text, where it would’ve been a deal-breaker.

Overall, it’s pretty easy to jot down a basic outline of what you want a card to look like, even if some of the bells and whistles you’d wish were there aren’t present. You’ll miss out on things like certain hybrid mana symbols or formatting for a specific card type, but the card creator’s highly functional and simple to use.

My main issue was saving my images. When you click off a design you’re done with, you have the option to download the image directly to your phone, which I highly recommend doing to ensure it saves somewhere. But as I’ve already mentioned, some of my saves just never appeared in the gallery for some reason, so they were ostensibly lost to time and space. I also got some sort of content flag on a crab-related card that was apparently too spicy for the app. I’m not even sure which part of the card would be flagged for inappropriate content.

What Is Artificer Premium?

Artificer Premium is Artificer’s upgraded service, which unlocks some extra tools and expands the offerings on the app. It costs $9.99 a month, or $99.99 a year. Here’s a breakdown of everything that Premium offers:

• Manual Frame Access – Allows you to use tons of existing card frames, like the Bloomburrow Woodland Showcase frames, or the New Capenna skyscraper frames. You'll unlock over 1,000 frames with Premium.
• AI Image Generator – Bumps your AI image generation count from once per day to 20 uses per day.
• Expanded Gallery Storage – Upgrades Gallery storage from 100 cards to 1,500 cards.
• Purge Protection – Apparently keeps your gallery safe from monthly purges? I didn’t find anything on the website explaining what a purge is, so that’s definitely an ominous thing to include here. My assumption is that cards from inactive users are wiped over time, but I couldn’t find confirmation of this.
• Weekly Featured Showcase – Premium users can highlight one card creation per week, which will be showcased on the public gallery for others to see.

Premium won't be all that useful for most users, though I will say this might be an option for anyone trying to design a custom set. The free Gallery caps at 100 cards, so if you were creating, say, a 250-card custom Limited set, expanding that option could be useful.

Additionally, you might consider Premium if you really want access to the many card frames offered on the app. The example above uses the Vault frame from The Big Score. They do add a nice bit of flair to different card images, and there are tons of options to choose from.

The Verdict: Is Artificer Worth It?

This is a rock-solid app considering it's completely free.

I can nitpick about certain features I’d like to have, and some of the rigidness can be a tad bit disappointing, but it’s extremely user-friendly and has enough options to do what it sets out to do. Artificer won’t help you to create some grandiose new card design that requires card frame manipulation or anything like that, but it’s a totally functional and easy way to put rules text on a card and slap some of the key Magic elements on it.

However, I don’t really endorse Artificer Premium unless the AI image generation and gallery upgrades appeal to you.

Can You Download/Share Your Custom Card Images?

Yes, you can download card images, though as I’ve mentioned the Gallery seemed a little buggy, so I recommend downloading the images when first prompted to do so (the app asks if you want to download images before it attempts to add them to the gallery).

There are also features to share card images through social media and Artificer‘s the Public Gallery. Alternatively, you could just download a card image and manually share it.

Is Artificer Available on iOS? Android? Desktop?

Yes, yes, and no. Artificer is available on iOS 11.0 and above, as well as Android Nougat and above (not an Android user, I’m going to trust them on that one). There is no desktop equivalent of the app, though.

Wrap Up

Mishra's Bauble | Illustration by Zack Stella

Artificer is a neat, low-complexity app that does a totally fine job of letting you turn a Magic: The Gathering card idea into something visual. Where you go with it from there is up to you, but it’s a great way to create a proof-of-concept card for a friend or actually create custom cards to proxy and play with.

Artificer’s not infinitely customizable, and it’s missing some offerings that people will surely want to see (double-faced cards and battles, for example), but I’m hoping with its latest big update that it’ll continue developing and expanding what’s available on the app. For now, it’s fun and flexible enough, and it’s totally free, so it gets my approval. I’ll leave you with a few extra creations I mocked up while reviewing this app:

Have you used Artificer at all? Care to share any of your personal custom card designs? Shout them out in the comments below or over in the Draftsim Discord.

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This post is sponsored by Artificer. We will never work with a brand we don't love and trust, and by supporting them you also support Draftsim.