Modding MTGO; Custom Game Mats

If you’re a big fan of MTGO like me, you’re probably pretty disappointed with the lack luster game mats they give you with your profile. While you can change the game mat in your personal settings, you can't upload a custom image. That said there is a way to overwrite the current background files yourself.

Most of the assets in the current version of MTGO are .PNG files. The game mat .PNG files are located in the directory where you installed MTGO like this;

..\Magic Online\Graphics\UI\backgrounds\gamemat\

You can then overwrite those image files with ones of your own. Sometimes the kicker overwrites these images with the defaults again so make sure you keep a backup ready just in case. I run MTGO without the kicker as it’s faster and Wizards publishes updates on Wednesdays.


Each image is 512 x 256 so you will have to use an image editor program like Photoshop or GIMP to manipulate it. I really like the free wallpapers that Wizards give us every week so I usually edit one of those and overwrite it into the folder, Because the dimensions are so wide, but not very tall, I suggest resizing the image to 512 width, but leave the aspect ratio of the current image the same. Then use the Crop tool to edit the height to 256 height.

Sometimes the game mat doesn’t show the edges very well so try to make your image centered as much as possible. I’ve attached a replacement for the default Green Felt_e.png using this weeks MTGO wallpaper, Rune-Scarred Demon for you to try out.