Playtest Parlor

What a stack is

A stack is the canonical grouped form of tiles. deck is an alias, but the runtime term is stack.

How the system uses stacks

a stack owns ordered tile membership
a stack supports shuffle, draw, and deal behavior
stack behavior preserves hidden information and face rules
stacks collapse back toward simpler piece states when tile counts change
a stack holds at most 2,000 tiles. Anything that would put more into one (dropping a card on it, merging decks, gathering, adding an imported deck, restoring it from the trash) is refused with a message saying so; split the deck into two first

Breaking a stack apart and putting it back together

A stack is gone from the table once its last tile leaves it, but its tiles remember it. Pile any of those tiles back together (drop one on another, or gather them) and the same stack comes back: same name, same draw and return rules, same ghost settings, and every sequence step that pointed at it works again. Breaking a scripted deck apart to inspect it and re-stacking it by hand does not lose the script.

Gathering stacks puts each gathered stack on top of the first one, each keeping its own top tile on top, whichever way up the stacks lie -- the same as dragging one stack onto another.

A pile made from tiles whose stack is still on the table (or was already put back together from its other tiles) is a new stack named "Stack". It starts with the draw and return rules of the stack its tiles came from, so a discard pile built from a deck's cards behaves like that deck until you change it.

Typical examples

a full deck of standard playing cards
a face-down pile of scenario cards
a small draw pile created from imported tiles

Moving a stack

Dragging a stack's face draws its top tile. To move the whole stack, drag its spine -- the thin edge along its right and bottom sides -- or press and hold anywhere on the stack for half a second and then drag. The hold is there for a zoomed-out table, where the spine is only a couple of pixels wide. On a touch screen the hold still opens the stack's menu, as it always has.

Actions

Select a stack to reveal its actions in the Action Dock. The available actions depend on the current mode.

Interact actions

Draw -- takes the top tile (or a chosen number) off the stack and into your hand.
Reveal -- flips the stack's top tile face up so every player can see it.
Deal -- opens the Deal panel to distribute tiles from the stack to players' hands as loose tiles.
Deal Stacks -- opens the Deal Stacks panel to give every occupied seat its own stack, taken from this one. Each player receives a set number of tiles as a single stack held in their hand, not as loose tiles. This is the difference from Deal: Deal hands out cards, Deal Stacks hands out stacks. The Deal Stacks sequence step does the same thing from a sequence, so a format that opens a stack every round does not need anyone to press this.
Search -- browses the stack's full contents so you can find and take a specific tile.
Shuffle -- randomizes the order of every tile in the stack.
Sort -- puts the stack in alphanumeric order by tile name, A at the top. Numbers inside names count as numbers, so Card 2 lands above Card 10. A sequence's Sort Pieces step sorts the same way. For an order that is not alphabetical, set it once on the game's Import Pieces page instead: the order the tiles are listed in there is the order an imported stack is dealt in. Your saved table configurations take the new order, and so does every table you start from them; a game already in progress keeps its deck as it is. Renaming an imported piece there, or giving it new artwork, shows on your tables at once.
Flip Up / Flip Down -- flips the entire stack to show its tiles' faces or their backs.
Look -- opens a private, pinned view of the stack's contents that only you can see.
Peek -- briefly reveals the stack's hidden contents to just you.
Cycle -- moves the stack's top tile to the bottom without drawing it.
Open / Close -- makes a stack you are holding readable by every seat (Open), or makes it private to you again (Close). Only applies to a stack in your own hand. See Opening a stack to the table on the Player Hand page.
To Table -- puts a stack you are holding back on the table, on top of everything in the middle of your view. Only offered for a stack in your hand.

Draw, Deal, Deal Stacks, and Open / Close appear only when the table has Hands enabled, and Peek appears only when Peek mode is enabled.

Look and Peek are also on the right-click menu for a tile, for a tile in your hand, and for a stack, so you can open the private view without selecting the piece first.

A stack's right-click menu offers the same actions, with a few longer names (Flip Face Up, Deal to, Search Stack, Move to Table), plus Edit, Delete and Select All. Open / Close is on the menu only for a stack you are holding. On a stack another player is holding, the menu leaves out every action that reaches inside it, and pressing one of those actions' keyboard shortcuts over that stack tells you it is held instead of acting.

For a complete format built on Deal Stacks, see the booster draft worked example.

Edit actions

Edit -- opens the stack's settings.
Copy -- duplicates the stack and its tiles onto the table, beside the original and with the same name, in the same order. A sleeved card in the stack stays in its sleeve in the copy.
Rotate Left / Rotate Right -- rotates the stack on the table by the rotation increment. The stack turns as one piece. A tile drawn or taken out of it onto the table lies at the stack's angle; a tile drawn, dealt or taken into a hand is upright, like every card in a hand.
Hone -- toggles the Hone controls for nudging the stack's position and size precisely.
Lock / Unlock -- toggles position lock so the stack cannot be dragged. A locked stack resting on a larger piece still moves with that piece (see Pieces resting on other pieces). Drawing still works: press and drag the stack's face to draw the top tile. Over the spine the pointer stays as the table's own cursor rather than the grab hand, because pressing there pans the view instead of moving the locked stack.
Delete -- removes the stack from the table.

Flip New Top Card

Turn on Flip New Top Card in the Draw Rules of the stack's Auto tab, and whenever the top tile is taken off the stack (drawn, dragged off, dealt, taken in a search or trashed), the tile now on top turns face up. A search, gather or drag that takes a great many tiles at once turns up only the tile left on top when it is done, however many tiles it takes. It shows at once for you and for every other player, and it is part of the same action: one undo puts the tile back and turns the new top tile face down again. The tiles further down are left as they are, and so is a locked tile. A tile it turns face up counts as revealed, and a trigger for a piece being turned face up runs for it. Every stack starts with the setting off, and a stack formed from this stack's tiles keeps it.

Undo and stacks

Undo and redo put a stack back exactly as the action left it, in its order. A stack's order is kept as one list, so shuffling, cycling or sorting a stack of any size takes the same moment, and undoing one is as quick.

If a game update added a card to a stack after you drew from it, undoing the draw puts your card back and keeps the new one. If an update took a card out, undoing does not bring that card back.
If the stack a card came from is in the trash, undo will not put the card back into it: "The deck this card came from is in the trash. Restore the deck first, then undo." The same goes for a piece and its bag.
Stack actions taken before stacks began keeping their order this way (an update in October 2026) can no longer be undone or redone: "This action changed a deck before decks kept their order in one list, so it can no longer be undone." Other actions from before then still undo as usual.

Triggers

Stacks support reactive triggers that fire when their contents change:

Tile Added and Tile Removed -- fire when a tile enters or leaves the stack
Sleeve Added and Sleeve Removed -- fire when a sleeve enters or leaves the stack
Shuffled -- fires when the stack is shuffled

Stack triggers can filter by piece type and tags. See Triggers for full details.