When is your game ready to playtest?

The honest answer is: sooner than you think, and probably right now. A game is ready to playtest the moment you can sit down and take a turn, even if half the rules are missing and you have to invent the other half at the table. The purpose of an early playtest is not to show off a finished game. It is to find out whether the core idea produces interesting decisions.

New designers often set a bar like "once the cards are balanced" or "once I finish the rulebook." Both of those are things playtesting is supposed to fix, not prerequisites for it. You cannot balance cards you have never seen played, and you cannot write clear rules for a game whose rough edges you have not discovered. Waiting for polish means doing that polish twice.

The real minimum is small. You need a way to start the game, a repeating turn structure, and some way for the game to end, even if the end condition is "we stop after five rounds and see who has more points." Components can be index cards with handwriting. Missing rules can be decided on the spot and written down as you go. Many designers run their very first playtests solo, playing all seats themselves, to catch the obvious breakage before wasting anyone else's time.

One useful mindset shift: your first playtest is a test of the idea, not of you. Games are supposed to be broken at this stage. The designers who improve fastest are the ones who get their fragile, embarrassing first version to the table within days of having the idea, not months.