One life counter app for every card game on your shelf
Dice fall, paper tears and every game ships its own clunky tracker. A good life counter app replaces all of them: custom starting totals, big tap counters, support for 3–4 players and offline play cover MTG, Star Realms, Hero Realms, Cthulhu Realms, Ascension and most of your shelf.
Here is what each game actually needs from a counter — and one app that does it all.
What each game demands
- Magic: The Gathering: 20 life (40 in Commander), frequent small changes, up to 4 players in Commander pods.
- Star Realms / Hero Realms: 50 authority or health, big swings of 10+, mid-turn healing.
- Cthulhu Realms: sanity from 50 down — same mechanics, different flavour.
- Ascension and friends: honor/points counting upward instead of down.
The common denominator: an adjustable starting number, fast +/−, and more than two seats.
Dice and paper: the honest comparison
A spindown die is elegant until it gets knocked. Paper survives bumps but slows every change to a scribble. Both lose history: when totals disagree, there is nothing to check. An app with visible counters in the middle of the table is the only option where the current state is always public and undisputed.
One app for the whole shelf
The Star & Hero Realms Counter was designed for Realms games but is, at heart, a flexible life counter: set any starting total, add up to 4 players on one device, tap to adjust, and play offline. The stats screen tracks wins per player across sessions — your group’s all-time leaderboard, for free.
When you still want dice
Tournaments with device restrictions, or pure nostalgia. For everything else, the phone already on the table is the better scoreboard.
Retire the dice and the napkin math
Custom totals, 4 players, offline, free — one counter for every game night.
