Beginner’s Guide: How to Get Started with MTG Forge

Last updated on February 20, 2025

Battlefield Forge | Illustration by Thomas Stoop

There are lots of ways to play MTG on your computer, with MTGO / MTG Arena being the main ways supported by Wizards of the Coast (WotC). But those are official products, and you’ll have to pay to use and build your collection and the comparison of Online vs. Arena is a whole other discussion. Sometimes you want to play or test MTG for free, and there’s free software available that’s created and maintained by the community.

MTG Forge is one of them, and it’s one of the best ways to play MTG against an AI. If you want to test decks or simply practice MTG without the anxiety of playing against better players, MTG Forge is the way to go. Today I’ll cover how you can install and play MTG Forge right from the start and I’ll give you some tips on how to get good at Forge. We’ll also go through deck building and how a match plays, and I’ll offer some tips based on my Forge experience.

Stay tuned and let’s see what this software has to offer!

What Is MTG Forge?

Forge, Neverwinter Charlatan | Illustration by Liangliang Zhang

MTG Forge is a free software that allows you to play MTG mainly against an AI, and you can also connect to real players, though it's not a very well-supported mode. Forge has been around since 2008, and it supports a wide variety of MTG formats and ways to play, like Standard, Modern, Commander, Draft, and Sealed.

MTG Forge is also what we call Rules Engine software, or a software that runs MTG and applies the game rules. It’s akin to an MTG simulator, if you will. In Forge, you can build and upload decks, build Limited decks to play against AI-built decks, even draft a Cube, be it your own or another person’s.

Why Use MTG Forge?

MTG Forge is recommended if you want to practice all aspects of MTG by yourself, against a functional AI, and without paying anything. You can playtest a deck to see if it’s working as intended, learn the ins and outs of a specific combo deck, goldfish a deck, and much more. You can access all the cards, so you’re not limited to what’s in your collection at a given moment. If you have an idea for a new EDH deck, you can test it virtually before it hits the table. Practicing for Sealed is also an interesting option, and Forge will generate a pool of a given format like Duskmourn: House of Horror or Bloomburrow, and you’ll play your deck against AI-generated Sealed decks.

Another nice feature of Forge is that you can play Limited against the AI. With Forge you can practice an 8-player Draft and play your drafted deck against the decks drafted by the AI in the same pod, so maybe you’ll want to hate-draft a certain bomb, unlike what happens in MTGO leagues or MTG Arena.

How to Download and Install MTG Forge

To download and install MTG Forge, you’ll have to go through a few steps.

Installing Java Runtime Environment 8

Forge runs on Java, so you’ll have to install Java onto your machine if you don’t already have it. One easy way to see if you already have Java installed is to open the Control Panel and go to “Add/Remove Programs.” If you don’t have Java, this link will allow you to get Java Runtime Environment 8. Just click on “Download Java” and execute JavaSetup8u371.exe.

Installing MTG Forge

Click here to download the “forge-installer-2.0.02-SNAPSHOT-02.06.tar.bz2” file. Unzip it to your folder of preference. To run Forge, click the forge.exe file as shown above. You should see this screen next, followed by Forge’s main screen.

Here you can see the formats we want to play and how many players there are going to be in a match. On the right side, you can see decks I’ve uploaded to the software.

How to Get Card Images

The easiest way to enable card images is to click on Game Settings, then roll down until you get to Graphic Options and click on Automatically Download Missing Card Art.

You can also download the cards by going to the Game Settings: Content Downloaders and then getting either low-quality or high-quality card pictures.

How to Build a Deck with MTG Forge

Building a Standard Deck on MTG Forge

To play Standard on Forge, let’s import two powerful decks people are probably tired of playing against: Mono-Red Aggro () and Dimir Midrange ().

Here, I’ll just click in deck editor and then Import, which will open this screen for us to paste our decklist. It’s also possible to add card by card if we want to, or to alter cards manually.

Here’s the imported deck, after I’ve inserted the cardnames.

Next, I’ll import the Dimir Midrange deck for my opponent to play using the same process.

This image shows the two loaded decks ready to face off against one another. Note that one player is me (human), and the other player is selected as AI. You can control both players, if you want.

Building a Commander Deck on Forge

Next, let’s import a Lathril, Blade of the Elves Commander deck, according to EDHREC’s average Lathril list. But first a little detour. Go to preferences – reset editor layout.

Once we copy that, we get into Forge’s Deck Editor, click on Commander and import. It’s important to click on Commander so that Forge knows the deck’s format because that’s essential to effectively put our commander in the software’s command zone.

On this screen, paste the imported decklist. After that, click “create a new deck” and “new deck.” Note that all cards are green so Forge has them on the list. As I write this, Aetherdrift isn’t supported, so cards from that set won’t work – at least for now. Also, note that Forge tells me that I have two potential commanders, so I’ll have to adjust that manually.

I want to highligh two things here. In the middle of the image above, the red rectangle is where you go to change between main deck, sideboard, and command zone. Clicking there lets you define your commander. You’ll have to take out other legends you’re playing and add them manually. On the left side, the indications in yellow shows you that to add Abomination of Llanowar to this deck, you need to click on card catalog, insert the name on the search box and click “add card.” Once the deck is finally ready, save it and take it for a spin in some EDH games!

How to Play on MTG Forge

Single Player vs. AI

Here’s a match between me playing Dimir midrange vs the AI playing mono-red. This is a bad hand, so let’s mulligan.

This is a more playable hand. As you can see, Mockingbird is selected to go to the bottom of the deck.

During the first few turns, my opponent attacked me with creatures, and now I’ve landed Preacher of the Schism. To cast the card, I’ve just double clicked on my card, but I could tap each land individually, MTGO style.

It’s time to attack my opponent. Here, I just click on the creature, or alpha strike to hit with everything.

On their turn, they’ve cast a spell triggering prowess. I’ll just Tishana's Tidebinder them. Clicking “Auto” pays the mana needed.

Here I’m showing the stack by clicking on “Log.” I’ve cast Faebloom Trick, making two Faerie tokens, and targeting their Monastery Swiftspear.

What would a Dimir midrange deck be without a bunch of evasive creatures and an Enduring Curiosity. It’s time to draw a bunch of cards.

As you can see, the interface is pretty self-explanatory, and you’ll master it after playing just a couple matches.

Online Multiplayer

Here’s where things get tricky. Forge doesn’t have an active server that provides common multiplayer functions like lobby and matchmaking. Other alternatives to Forge like Cockatrice and Xmage have dedicated servers, so it’s easier to play online against real players. To play against a friend or friends online, one player will be the host of the match and the other players will be the clients.

Here’s what happens when you go to Forge’s Online Multiplayer section.

This is the information I’ll need to pass to a friend so that they can connect to my game. Additionally, here’s the Forge developer’s official statements:

“While multiplayer over a network does currently work, and complete games have been played, it is still very much a “work in progress”. This means – You will find bugs. When they appear;

• They will likely be mid-game.
• They will likely make it impossible to complete the current game/match.
• You will need to restart both the client's and host's games.”

So yeah, Forge’s multiplayer game isn’t looking that exciting. I’d stick to the AI play.

Forge Community and Discord

You can access MTG Forge’s Discord. It’s one of the best sources to get Forge news directly from Forge’s developers. They’re actively there listening to feedback from the players, publishing notes, and answering the FAQs. There you can have access to troubleshooting for installation problems and more. You can also check the Forum at Slightlymagic for all things related to Collectible Card Games.

Other Tips

• If you’re playing a match, keep most of your phases unselected (red). This makes the matches faster, especially if you’re playing against AI. Or else you’ll have to pass priority the whole time. If you need to respond to a certain trigger, you’ll be able to anyway.
• Sometimes the card or card image won’t be available, especially in newer sets that were updated recently. New mechanics are also prone to bugs, which Forge developers solve in due time.
• It’s not that interesting to play Constructed matches against the AI because they usually don’t know how to use their deck properly. Unless it’s something like a burn deck that casts a spell on you every turn. I find it more interesting to play Limited against the AI because Limited decks are less complex.
• Sometimes the AI goes into a loop. Example: cast Man-o'-War without having any creatures, which will make the AI player return Man-o'-War to its hand and cast it again.
• Forge will sometimes crash. It’s not a perfect software. If you play games with lots of interactions triggers, and lots of stuff is happening at once, you’ll probably have to close Forge and open it again.
• It’s hard to play a game against several AI players. It’s best to play a 1v1 game or a 3-player EDH deck. With four players or more in a long EDH game, Forge runs really slowly, and it will probably crash before the game is over.

Wrap Up

Forge Armor | Illustration by Tony Szczudlo

It can be rough to start to play on MTG Forge, but I hope that after reading this you'll have a smoother start. Forge is a nice piece of software that you should try, especially if you’re a beginner or intermediate MTG player looking to learn and refine your skills or to test and brew new decks. On MTGO you'll have to pay to really start your collection. In MTG Arena there is a way to play against a bot (Sparky), but it doesn’t hold a candle to MTG Forge. At least in Forge you can play against good decks and select which deck you’re playing against. And you can also play different game modes with any card you want: Limited, Constructed Commander, even odd ones like Archenemy.

Do you have any prior experience with MTG Forge? Are you going to download it right away and play? Let me know in the comments section below, or let’s discuss Forge in the Draftsim Discord.

Thanks for reading and stay safe.