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CART·01
The engine is the referee
A clean-room rules engine arbitrates the whole game — priority, the stack, combat math, replacement effects. Nothing resolves wrong, nothing gets missed.
Rules-enforced tabletop card battles
Four players.
Four devices.
One table.
A real rules engine referees your multiplayer card nights — every trigger seen, every response offered, every rule applied. No bookkeeping. No arguments. It always asks.
> booting table_
Play against bots or host an internet room. Add it to your home screen for the full-screen app experience.
Trigger
THE TABLE ASKS
Seat 3's aura taxes the whole table.
Pay the 2?
PAY
DON'T
● Rules engine in development
10,679 cards · 30.6%
// What it is
// Arguing about combat right now?
Let the referee settle it
Rebuild the board in seconds — two sides, power and toughness, keywords like trample and deathtouch — and the real rules engine walks through the answer step by step, citing the rule that decides each one. No account, no install, works on a phone at the table. The answer is a link you can send to the friend who’s wrong.
// How it compares
Forge and XMage are long-running community simulators with enormous card libraries — we use them as behavioral references and they deserve their reputations. Pay the 2 makes a different trade: a smaller library where every card that’s in is verified exact, on a table your whole pod can join from a browser.
| Pay the 2 | Forge | XMage | Sandbox tables* | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Play in a browser — nothing to install | ✓ | ✗ | ✗ | ✓ |
| Whole pod on their own phones/tablets, hands private | two seats today | ✗ | client per PC | ✓ |
| Built for four-player free-for-all first | ✓ vs bots | one mode | one mode | any format |
| Full rules enforcement (priority, stack, layers) | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✗ honor system |
| A card is verified exact before it counts† | ✓ | bug-report model | bug-report model | n/a — nothing enforced |
| Card library size today | WIP — 10,679 exact, growing weekly | ✓ | ✓ | all — as inert images |
| Practice against bots | ✓ | ✓ | limited | ✗ |
| Deterministic replays & spectating | ✓ | ✗ | limited | ✗ |
| No account, no tracking | ✓ | ✓ | server accounts | varies |
| Getting a table running | share a room code | install per PC | server + clients | varies |
| Point a camera at your paper table (planned) | in the works | ✗ | ✗ | ✗ |
| Online rooms beyond your LAN | ✓ | limited | ✓ | varies |
* Browser sandbox tables — shared virtual card tables with no referee. Every card “works” because none are enforced: the table trusts the players to know the rules and do the bookkeeping. Great for a pod that already knows what it’s doing; a different job than a rules engine. † Coverage is counted differently across projects: Pay the 2 counts a card only when every clause of its text is fully modeled and behavior-verified; most simulators count a card once it’s implemented or recognized, and track rules bugs separately. Bigger number ≠ same guarantee.
// Boot sequence
How a game starts
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01 Step 01
Host a table
One player opens the game in a browser and hosts. The table gets a room code.
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02 Step 02
Friends join
Friends open the invite or enter the code in their own browser, wherever they are.
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03 Step 03
Play
The engine deals, tracks, prompts, and referees. You just play cards.
// Help menu
FAQ
What is Pay the 2?
A free EDH simulator for the four-player pod that runs in your browser. Not a sandbox where you move cards and argue — a rules engine that actually enforces the game: priority, the stack, triggers, state-based actions, all of it. Import a deck list, sit four seats at one table (bots today, your friends over Wi-Fi or the internet), and play with the table kept honest for you.
Why “Pay the 2”?
It’s the question you ask the table when your card taxes the opponents — and the trigger everyone forgets by turn six. This table never forgets. The name is the promise: every trigger seen, every payment asked.
Is this affiliated with any card game publisher?
No. Pay the 2 is an unofficial fan project. The rules engine is a clean-room implementation, and card data and imagery are served via Scryfall under their guidelines.
What formats does it support?
EDH — the 100-card singleton, four-player free-for-all the kitchen table actually plays. Bring your own deck list, keep a commander in the zone, and the engine enforces the format: singleton counts, color identity, the 100. Today you can play a four-player pod against bots right in your browser, or head-to-head online with a friend. The four-human online pod is what’s being built next.
What does it run on?
Any modern browser on a tablet, phone, or desktop. Practice against bots or host an internet room at play.paythe2.com; add it to your home screen for a full-screen app experience.
Is it free? Will it be open source?
Free. Open-sourcing the networking relay — the small server that carries internet rooms — is planned, so you'd be able to run your own instead of using ours.
Do I need an account?
No account needed to play. Tables use private room codes.
// About
About
Pay the 2 is a small independent project — built so game night needs four devices and zero rulebook debates.