Tired of using dice to track your Commander games or are you just looking for a better MTG life counter app? Below we have selected three MTG life counter apps, that top the bill in tracking Commander games. All apps listed are currently free with no in-app purchases.
Table of Contents
Playgroup.gg
Playgroup is a relatively new app and brings something completely new to the table in the realm of Commander life counter apps. This life counter will save all your game statistics in an online dashboard, so you can start building a really sweet record of all your playgroup’s games. It doesn’t just record wins and losses, but also other stats like damage numbers, healing, turn duration and it will calculate rankings within your playgroup.
The life counter will track which player deals damage to which, by declaring attacks. This is done pretty cleverly by swiping from one player to another, and included in this swiping motion is the option to choose for Commander damage. A second novelty is the ability to track turns by letting each player press a “pass turn” button. It also sets your Commander as your background automatically. Tracking other counters or status effects like floating mana or treasure tokens is currently not included in this app, so you will need to use traditional dice for that.
Apart from tracking your EDH games, you can track and (optionally) share how all your decks have performed in those games. This is my Krenko deck for instance: https://playgroup.gg/decks/2488-krenko-mob-boss.
If building an extensive stats history on your playgroup’s Commander games gets you excited, I would really encourage checking out this app. Full disclosure: I myself am involved in the development of this project.
Key Points
Playgroup is available for: IOS, Android, Windows or Linux.
- Records all your Commander game stats in an online dashboard.
- Tracks who deals damage to who and turn duration.
- Handles dealing Commander damage in a fresh new way.
Lifetap
Lifetap is often praised as a Commander life counter app for its simplistic layout an customizable backgrounds. You can tap the area at the bottom to manipulate Commander damage in a new widow, which works intuitively. The same goes for infect counters, treasure tokens or even stuff like Energy, Commander Tax and floating mana, so you don’t have to use traditional dice. Furthermore, it supports most basic things people look for in a life counter: up to 6 players, it will do a coin toss before the game starts and it has a separate dice roller included.
Lifetap does nothing revolutionary, but it does what one would expect from a MTG life counter app in an excellent way and for us EDH players, the Commander damage tracking has been thought trough and implemented neatly. For some, all those extra tracking options like counters or floating mana might be overkill, you don’t have to use it however and you won’t notice that it is there if you decide to skip it.
Available for: Android and IOS, tablets and mobile.
Key Points
- Tracks Commander damage in an intuitive way.
- Tracks any other counter/status like monarch, treasure tokens etc.
- Customize background with any Magic card.
EDH Life
Currently this Commander life counter app is only available for IOS, but worth looking into if you’re on an Apple device. Similarly to Lifetap, you can tap the Commander symbol to keep track of your Commander damage for each opponent. The difference here compared to Lifetap is that in order to manipulate life, you swipe left and right on the life total, where as with Lifetap it is just tapping. Now in order to find out what gesture feels better I would recommend trying them both out.
To sum up, EDH Life is a solid basic Commander life counter app. It feels similair to Lifetap, although Lifetap is superior in terms of customizability since you can set personal backgrounds. If this doesn’t matter to you and if you like the swipe gesture to manipulate life, than EDH Life is woth looking into.
Available for: IOS, tablet and mobile.
Key Points
- Unique way of manipulating life totals by swiping left and right instead of tapping.
- Tracks Commander damage in a similair way to Lifetap.
- Tracks any other counter/status like monarch, treasure tokens etc.
Final Thoughts
Depending on what your preferences are, you can’t really go wrong with any of these three Commander life counter apps. Although not discussed in this article, all these apps are in active development, so if you’re using one of them and have feature requests you can always reach out to the devs and the might just help you out!
