From registration to the standings: how to play a club night with ManaLadder on your own phone. Buttons are in bold, as they appear in the app.
Create an account on Create an account with e-mail and password, or sign in with Google, Facebook or Discord. With e-mail you must press the link in the confirmation mail before the account is active. If you later sign in with another provider on the same e-mail, you land on the same account — and under Settings you can connect several methods to one profile.
Without an account you can still follow everything: tournaments, pairings, standings and the round board. The account is needed to register, report your own results and have a rating.
If a club has sent you a pop-up link, you log in and are signed up with one tap. You become a guest of the club: you see that tournament, not the club's other nights — and you can apply for membership from the club's page.
Your name is your one name in the tournaments — the one the organizer and your opponents see. If an organizer entered you for a night before you had an account, you exist as a player without an account. Ask for your code at the table and type it on Your code, or scan the organizer's QR — then the code is filled in. Press That's me, and your rating and history move over to the account. If you were entered as a guest, the registration moves to your own player the same way.
The front page shows public events, which anyone can find and register for — even without being a club member. The clubs' own nights are seen only by their members, so join: go to Find a club, open the club, and press Ask to join and Send application. An administrator in the club replies, and your application is listed under Clubs on your profile until it is handled.
Past events keeps the finished nights with standings and rounds — including the ones you played yourself.
Open the tournament and press Register me. If the field is full, the button says Put me on the waitlist, and you move in if someone withdraws — your place in the queue is shown on the tournament. If you change your mind, press Withdraw.
Under Player list your own line has a pencil. There you can set a nickname for the night (it appears on pairings, in the standings and on the board instead of your name), upload a photo of your deck, and paste your deck list — more about that in section 6.
Your upcoming registrations are under My events on My profile, with Submit deck next to each.
Once the organizer has opened check-in, you must check in — otherwise you drop out of the field when the tournament starts. If an Arrival QR hangs at the door, scan it: you get the night's player list, press Find your name, then That's me. If you are signed in on the tournament, just press I'm here. If you are on the waitlist, the button says Check in — then you get a seat if someone doesn't show.
When the round is paired, your opponent and table number are at the top under Current round — and on the Round board on the big screen along with the round clock. If you have turned on notifications, you also get a message on your phone.
When the match is played, press Open match room and tap the score — 2–0, 2–1 and so on. If it ended in a draw, choose Orb flip for whoever won the flip, or Intentional draw if the tournament allows it. In the top cut a match must have a winner.
If the tournament requires confirmation, your opponent sees your result with the question Is that right? and presses Confirm — or That's not right, and then the organizer decides the match. Without confirmation the first report counts right away. If you sit out a round, you get 3 points automatically.
If the night is played as a group stage, you are drawn into a group, and all your matches in the group are laid out at once under Current round. There are no table numbers and no clock: agree with your opponents when to play, find a table, and report the result in the match room afterwards. Under Standings is the group's table — on equal points your head-to-head decides — and the line shows who advances to the playoffs. If it does not add up, the playoffs are filled with the best of the next across the groups. In the playoffs you meet someone from another group.
Every round in a group stage has a deadline, shown on the round board and under Group stage. Agree on your matches before then — also in the knockout, where the match room works as in the group stage. If you stream, the stream button lights up as Live when your agreed time arrives, and anyone can tap it and watch.
If you play online, you agree on the time in the match room: suggest a time under When are you playing?, and when your opponent presses Suits me, the match is scheduled — you both get a message, and the time is on the match card. Under Are you streaming the match? you can set your stream's address, and under Messages you can write to each other; only the two of you and the organizer can read them.
How the group table is calculated and how the playoffs are paired is described in Group stage and playoffs.
Tell the organizer — or press Drop next to your own name in the standings and Confirm drop. The rest of the night is then paired without you, and the matches you played still count.
Standings shows points and placing after each round. On equal points, tiebreakers decide the order: opponents' match-win percentage, your own game-win percentage and opponents' game-win percentage. While the night is on, an arrow shows whether you moved up or down since the last round, and if there is a top cut, the cut line is drawn in the standings.
History is your path through the night: opponents and outcomes round by round, and a curve of your placing after each round. Signed in, you land on your own — and a tap on an opponent switches to theirs.
How the rounds are paired and how the tiebreakers are calculated is described in the Swiss rules.
Round board is made for the big screen but works on the phone too: pairings, table numbers and the round clock, which the organizer controls — every screen shows the same time. Between rounds the board can show a countdown to the next round and a message from the organizer.
You can attach your deck to your registration in two ways. A photo of the deck you take with the phone; the organizer must approve it before the others can see it. A deck list you paste as text — one line per card with the count first, as Arena, MTGO and Moxfield export it. The cards are looked up on Scryfall, and the deck is shown as a picture with real cards that anyone in the tournament can open. The list needs no approval.
On the deck page you choose the layout yourself — Stacks, Grid, List or Poster, grouped by type, mana value or colour — and press Save as default view. That is the layout others see first; they can try others but not save them. A tap on a card shows it full size, and double-faced cards can be flipped.
The list can be edited until the tournament is completed — then it is the deck you played. If the organizer has chosen to hold decks back until the cut, only you and the organizer can see your deck until the top cut is under way. Afterwards the deck is listed by the tournament on your profile.
Everyone starts in the same place, and every decided match against an opponent moves the rating up or down — more for a win over a stronger player, less over a weaker one. Byes don't count. Under 10 matches the rating is marked provisional, because it is still settling. The rating is calculated when the organizer completes the tournament, and the curve is on your profile. Only public Swiss events count — club nights and group stages appear in your history but do not move the rating.
You have one rating per format: Old School, X-Point and Premodern don't share a pool, and your profile shows them separately.
Under Notifications on My profile, press Turn on for this device and you get a message on your phone when you are paired — even when the app is closed. On iPhone and iPad it only works when ManaLadder is on the home screen: press Share in Safari and choose Add to Home Screen.
The app speaks Danish, English, German, Swedish, Norwegian, Dutch, French and Italian. Switch language with the flags at the bottom of the menu — the choice is remembered on the device.