Once you know what a playtest card is and what a table will accept, which Playtest cards online explains, the next thing to sort is the camera. A card can meet every part of the community’s standard and still be hard to read at the other end of a webcam. At an online table, a card nobody can read has to be read out to them. Luckily, most of the fixes are in your sleeves and your lighting!
What the software can and can’t do with a playtest card
On SpellTable, when a player clicks a card in your feed, it opens in a side drawer. According to SpellTable’s FAQ, each click captures a 300×300 section of a 720p stream, so you’ll want the card large and sharp in your frame. The same FAQ lists what defeats recognition: glare, blur, an angled camera and a card partly covered by another. It also says proxies, custom tokens and alters are “not in our database”.
So treat recognition of a playtest card as a bonus. Test your own cards before you play by opening a game on your own, putting a playtest card where it’ll sit in play, and clicking it. Whatever the software makes of it, the table can always fall back on reading the card by eye in your feed, and that’s the part you control.
Convoke only describes its recognition as AI card recognition, and doesn’t publish anything specific about playtest cards, so run the same test there too.
Make the card readable on camera
Glare comes first in SpellTable’s list of reasons a card can’t be read, and it’s also the one you can do the most about. Start with sleeves. SpellTable’s FAQ is plain about it: “We don’t recommend using glossy-sleeves.” Matte sleeves help, as they scatter the reflection that turns a card’s text box into a white patch. You’ll want the whole deck sleeved the same way.
Lighting is the other half of glare. Convoke’s advice is to “keep lamps off the cards themselves”, with a small light from the side. The Mox Masters rules suggest turning away from direct light, drawing the curtains against sunlight, and using your monitor as diffuse light that “doesn’t cause glare”.
They also ask for a webcam and lighting good enough that “Spelltable generally picks up your cards when clicked on”. Check your lighting with a sleeved card in play rather than the empty mat. A lamp that looks fine on the mat can still bounce straight off a sleeve and into the lens.
If a card is blurry, Mox Masters suggests lifting it towards the camera until it’s in focus. Then lower it slowly back to the table, so the camera’s autofocus follows it down. Height matters too. SpellTable’s FAQ says a camera zoomed too far in or too far out will both cause trouble, and that the camera should be directly above the cards.
Last comes the printing itself. The cEDH European Championship asks that resolution be “easily readable for players and judges”. You’ll want to print at the size of a real card, from a clear image of an official printing. If a card has several printings, a standard frame with a plain text box is usually easier to read on a webcam than a borderless or heavily stylised one. A washed-out or hand-labelled card is the one that gets asked about every time it moves.
Tell the pod before you start
Before a game, a cEDH pod settles commanders and life tracking, and if your deck has playtest cards in it, add one sentence and say so. It takes ten seconds, and it saves anyone finding out halfway through a game!
Mention anything the camera handles badly, too. That means cards whose meaning is on the back face, and tokens made from something other than a token card. It also means anything you’ve printed in a way the others might not recognise.
The Proxy Friendly online qualifiers, for example, don’t allow placeholder cards for modal double-faced cards, so check before you rely on one. Then keep to the habit the first pod guide asks for anyway, and name every spell as you cast it. Once you’ve announced a playtest card, it’s rarely a problem.
In a server’s own event, the server’s rules channel decides. In a tournament, it’s the event page, so read it before you register.
What event policies say
Below are the proxy rules of four cEDH events and series, as their rules pages stood in September 2026. They show the range well, however your event’s own page is the one that applies to you.
| Event | Where | How many proxies | What they must be |
|---|---|---|---|
| cEDH European Championship, season 2026 | In person, finals in Birmingham, 20–21 March 2027 | All Reserved List cards plus ten others | In colour, original Wizards of the Coast art, readable, on card stock that can’t be told apart from your real cards |
| Mox Masters | Online, SpellTable | No stated limit, and proxies are “absolutely encouraged” | In colour, recognisable art. Official art needs no approval. No difference in sleeved thickness |
| Proxy Friendly Online Qualifier 1 | Online, Convoke | No stated limit | In colour, recognisable art. No alters except commanders. No placeholder cards for modal double-faced cards |
| VG+ SpellTable cEDH Tournament, 19 February 2025 | Online, SpellTable | No stated limit | In colour, English, same size and thickness as a real card. No paper slips in front of another card. No black-and-white, hand-written or custom-art proxies unless staff approve |
All four have two things in common. They all require colour and rule out art people wouldn’t recognise, as a judge or an opponent has to know the card on sight. Every policy that mentions card stock or thickness also wants your playtest card to feel the same as the rest of your deck.
The European Championship puts the counterfeit line most plainly. It prohibits counterfeits, and counts as counterfeit any proxy that “could be mistaken for legitimate cards without thorough inspection”. That’s the whole idea of a playtest card: everyone can see which card it stands for, and that it’s a stand-in.
Some online series check your setup as well as your cards. Mox Masters asks that at least a little of your lap be visible on camera, or that a second camera show your hands and lap. It also wants a screenshot of your play space as it appears on SpellTable, sent by midnight EST the night before the event. A setup that’s been approved before doesn’t need sending again.
Take it seriously, because a player whose setup falls below its standard can be given a game loss. That’s one more reason to test on camera before you register.
Where to go next
For stands and positioning, the camera and audio guide has you covered. Webcam platforms compared goes into how SpellTable and Convoke each read your cards, and Playtest cards online has what the community accepts and why.