CounterSpell: MTG Life Counter for EDH
CounterSpell is an open source project that aims to give any Magic: The Gathering player the best possible life tracking app, with a special focus on EDH.
It features:
- Life, Commander Damage, Commander Casts, Poison Counters, Experience Counters, Storm Count, Total Man Tracker, City's Blessing, Monarch, and other counters to keep track of anything you could possibly need.
- Scroll Interaction: You can swipe over a player's name to increment or decrement their life or any other counter.
- Great battery life: the app activity is streamlined and consists in the bare minimum computational effort to make it work. It does just what you ask it to do, no background stuff (I'd be too lazy to code such things anyway!), so you can keep your phone on all night and play commander! (obviously, your screen being on is what drains your battery the most, so lower your brightness or use the dark theme if your battery is already running low).
- High Precision: You can see how much damage you're dealing while you swipe, along with the resulting life that the current amount of damage would produce and when you're sure about what you're doing, simply release the swipe for a moment to make CounterSpell confirm the edit.
- Multiple Players Damage: You can select any number of players before starting to scroll to modify their life totals, so your Pestilence friend won't drive you insane anymore.
- Commander Damage: You can easily keep track of the damage made by any player's commander to any other player (or even himself, if when needed). You can also set lifelink and infect for a specific commander to automatically handle implicit the results of commander damage.
- Complete, accurate and easy-to-read History: You can see precisely when any of the edits were made, what type of damage and how much damage was dealt.
- Ability to undo any mistake: If the undo and redo button are not enough, you can delete a single interaction made any time in the past without affecting any subsequent action.
- Playgroup management: CounterSpell saves the names of your friends, so you can quickly change playgroup at any time.
- Partner Commander Damage: You can easily split a player's commander in two partners and keep track of his two commanders damages and casts separately.
- Manual interaction: You can manually set a given number of life for a player, in that remote case you need to gain exactly 273 life and you don't want to scroll twenty times to achieve that.
Category : Tools
Reviews (24)
Amazingly thought through packed with so many features! Can be overwhelming at first, but it even provides tutorials. As a fellow developer I appreciate the change log quite a bit as well. Keep up the good work!
Love this app. Great design, very easy to use, and wonderful contextual donation options. I think the only thing that i can think of that it really makes me still want is being able to have a game shared p2p/over a network so that you could, for example, be playing paper magic over a webcam (especially right now) or have each person with their own app and have them all sync up and be reviewable by any player at any time. Alongside this would be something to be able to go into "single player" management mode where you only see yours face up, but still having it sync with everyone else's "game". Thanks a ton for this!
I absolutely love this app. Far and away my favorite life app. It accounts for every reasonable corner case (partners, getting hit by your own commander, etc.) Without getting too cumbersome. The ability to have your commander's art in the frame is fantastic. The only "complaint" is the sliding life takes a bit to get used to. But it's not worse for it and theres many advantages to it, for example the history tab getting to work cleanly. The owner clearly put a lot of effort in and it shows.
I love this app so much after the redesign. The commanders are so great to see in simplified mode and the player reordering has made things significantly better, as has the new way of displaying damage and casts. One thing I'd love to see is the "inverted life total" with the - selection for life link in simplified mode. Just discovered lifelink for commanders, but it's a shame it resets on restart. Commander damage from simplified mode might be a bit much, but maybe something to consider?
This is the most detailed app out there for edh. I LOVE that we can display our life totals all right side up cause my playgroup uses a tablet sitting at the side. The customizations are great. My only complaint about the app is that you can't turn off swipe gestures. No matter much I edit the sensitivity and extra settings, I would much rather prefer to just tap my life total.
Amazing app with a lot of potential, I have already seen a lot of improvement in recent updates and I really think that this could be the end all be all for life counters. I do think that it would be dope to be able to change the font of that names or at least the font size/ colors because people in my play group have complained that it's hard to read.
Smooth interaction, tons of features, very well designed. There is a slight learning curve as you learn when and where to slide or tap, but once you get the hang of it is very easy to teach the rest of your group. This app alone has easily shaved an average of 20 minutes out of my Commander games.
Best simple app after you learn the swipe over tapping philosophy. Does any counter you could want. Saves more taps and time than any other app. Since the rework recently the app is even better. Give this app some time with the learning curve and the features it has over other apps is leaps and bounds. I love that its open source but honestly I can't think of anything to add/contribute that isn't completely picky and my own opinion like making the checkbox for minus/add damage a toggle switch instead for mass area damage just to save me 2-3 seconds each initial mass damage scenario.
Has nearly everything you need: Poison, Storm, Commander Damage, Experience, Commander Casts, Energy, City's Blessing, etc. Allows for further customisation once you play for pro. (Any donation activates it, 0.99-21.99) The side scrolling interface takes a bit to get used to, but it's so much better than tapping "-5" 6+ times. You can save the names of members if you play with a specific playgroup, plus a few features I can't remember at the moment. 10/10, easily one of the best MTG companion.
2nd Edit: Developer delivered, new version is even better. Being able to easily manipulate the life totals on the bigger screen is a nice upgrade. Hands down it remains the best life tracker app I've used. (Snipped request for added feature) Definitely great for commander!
Honestly, this app is something I've been waiting for since I started playing Magic. At first it is a little difficult to figure out how to work Counterspell but once you get the hang of it it's really great and has so many ways to personalize everything, granted a good amount of the customization is located behind a "paywall" it is a donation to the app creator and you can donate however much you believe the developer deserves. All in all it's a great app 10/10
For a 4+ player game, a life app needs to have zero learning curve. Everyone at the table has to use it, so it should be instantly obvious how it works. Unfortunately, this isn't. It takes some getting used to, figuring out the timing and everything, which really gets in the way of the game when 5 people all have to learn it. I really like some of the features on this app, like the commander art backgrounds and stuff, but none of that really matters if the app doesn't work well. Simple is best.
I'd always been underwhelmed by MTG life counters, and dreamed of a better option. Counterspell puts even my idealistic hopes to shame. The app is so crazy streamlined and beautiful it's almost hard to believe. The developer is super responsive to community suggestions, and updates always bring great new features. Counterspell is already a nearly perfect MTG life tracker, and it just keeps getting better.
Absolutely the best and most in depth life counter app out on the market. Super intuitive and easy to use, as well as extremely customizable. Would give 10 stars if I could.
I much preferred the design before the 3.0 update. Now the interface is a lot more confusing and various features are in places I don't understand, making them too hard or too easy to trigger.
I've been following this app since it was just released and it has only been improving. Tons of great features, simple and intuitive controls, and a nice look.
simple and useful. i wont go into crazy detail about OCD and my infinite quest to find UI that is both good looking and meaningfully functional. this is simple and a wonderful. thank you.
Truly exceptional Commander app. For years I've searched for something like this but always fell back to dice after a few games. This has been rock solid and so simple to use for more than a year in our play group. Amazing app.
Great app, love the accessibility. Great customizable options in the settings. Commander image for your name plate is awesome and easy to use. My first review for a app ever and I think this one is well worth a donation to upgrade to pro. DO IT!
Easily the best magic life counter out there. Full of features, bit tricky to use initially but once you get the hang of it is pretty awesome
I think the app is very good so far but very confusing. All i know is how to change the life but i know this app can do much more. I think it would be a good idea to make an instructional video but you dont have to. Great app anyway!
Had it out of the proverbial "box" for 5 minutes before I made up my mind. This thing is slick! Love it, instant convert (uninstalled lifelinker shortly thereafter!). Bravo! (molto buona!)
This app raises the bar for all mtg counters. The interface seems confusing at first, but is very well thought out and allows to a lot!
It's got everything you'll ever need, and some for a game of EDH, BUT... It's a little hard to use; the sliding controls are nice but a little clunky at times, and the counters (energy, poison, etc.) Are very difficult to navigate quickly and efficiently during a game. Lastly, it's a little cumbersome to use in the middle of players, as the "Arena" mode lacks access to the aforementioned counters, so it's best used as a tracker for yourself, and not the table