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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 in browser Beta
GitHub Soon
Browser beta — 1v1 vs the bot + deck building for now. LAN multiplayer is coming.
Trigger
THE TABLE ASKS
Seat 3's aura taxes the whole table.
Pay the 2?
PAY
DON'T
● Rules engine in development
9,437 cards · 27.6%
// What it is
// 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 | Others* | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Play in a browser — nothing to install | ✓ | ✗ | ✗ | varies |
| Whole pod on their own phones/tablets, hands private | ✓ | ✗ | client per PC | varies |
| Built for four-player Commander first | ✓ | one mode | one mode | varies |
| Full rules enforcement (priority, stack, layers) | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | varies |
| A card is verified exact before it counts† | ✓ | bug-report model | bug-report model | varies |
| Card library size today | WIP — 9k+, growing weekly | ✓ | ✓ | varies† |
| Practice against bots | ✓ | ✓ | limited | varies |
| Deterministic replays & spectating | ✓ | ✗ | limited | varies |
| 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 (planned) | in the works | limited | ✓ | varies |
* Other community engines (phase.rs and friends) — capable projects with different trade-offs. † 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 app and hosts. The table gets a room code.
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02 Step 02
Friends join
Everyone on the same network joins from their own device with the code.
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03 Step 03
Play
The engine deals, tracks, prompts, and referees. You just play cards.
// Help menu
FAQ
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?
Four-player free-for-all battles first — the kitchen-table pod it was built for. Two-player modes are on the roadmap.
What does it run on?
Tablets first (iPad and Android), phones, and desktop — and a browser beta you can play right now — practice against bots, or host an internet room and play with friends over a room code, no install, at play.paythe2.com.
Is it free? Will it be open source?
Free. Open-sourcing starts with the networking relay — the small server that carries internet rooms — so you'll be able to run your own instead of using ours. The GitHub button in the hero goes live when the relay repo does.
Do I need an account?
No account needed to play. Tables use private room codes.
// About
About
Pay the 2 is a solo-developer project by the maker of raggedydoc.com — built so game night needs four devices and zero rulebook debates.