Card shuffling! Quite an important part of card and board games. When you shuffle the infection deck discard pile in Pandemic (after the infection phase initiated by an epidemic card) and that same infection phase card ends up on top of the infection deck: people will (in)directly blame you for the outbreak! You shuffled the cards, so you must have done something wrong! Shuffling cards is a big responsibility in some games. 😉
I’m not particularly good at shuffling cards and one day Heinze had been looking around on youtube for some card shuffling techniques and came across the Riffle Shuffle! It looked amazing! I tried it with a cheap set of playing cards we had laying around and I can tell you that the cards are not very pleased. And whenever I try it, the cards also tend to fly around the room. For now I’ll just stick to shuffling by making several face down piles of cards on the table and combining them again to one stack.
Shuffling sleeved cards is even more interesting and extremely hard when your card sleeves are brand new and very slippery!
Gertjan
Riffling then cutting 3 ways, riffling again, cutting 3 ways again, 1 or 2 ‘normal’ shuffling ending with a final cut. (but in fairness this is done with ‘normal’ quantities of cards like 32 in the picket deck or 52 with a normal deck of playing cards. I can imagine it would be overkill with a game like Star Realms or Dominion 🙂 )
(Practicing) riffling with cheap (flimsy) cards is way harder then with normal quality cards by the way 🙂
Try it with plastic (poker)cards, a world of difference.
JJ Sandee
The riffle shuffle and bridge riffle shuffle as more pleasing looking and sounding ways of shuffling. In my experience sleeved cards can simply be cut and then shoved into each other without much trouble. This cutting and shoving can be repeated multiple times for added effect.
If I feel cards to too clumped up, I’ll start with a pile shuffle (so dividing the cards into separate stacks) and then doing the above process. Since pile shuffling doesn’t actually randomize the order of cards.
I know riffle shuffling is popular in Magic tournaments for the specific purpose of wrecking the other guy’s sleeves.
Philip
When I have the time and space, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PbqPkStUUS4 this is the best way to get it really random, but I usually try 7 riffles and go.
Here’s an interesting look at why 7… https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AxJubaijQbI
Altaica27
One of the two most annoying things when playing with people.
1. Cardbenders
2. Foodstains!
Keep up the comics, enjoying them ever since I discovered your comic.
db0
Just an interesting tidbit: laying cards in piles is not a very good shuffling method. It’s very slow and not particularly random. If you’re using sleeves, try instead to simply cut the deck in half and slide one half inside the other. It’s fast and only rough on the protectors 😉
Check this out for more details.
Aviv
For cards in sleeves, a mash shuffle, done gently 7 times leads to a reasonable level of randomness with minimal damage to the sleeves.
Lord_Reynardine
Spot all the Netrunner players, with the good shuffling advice!! ?
Aviv
Bwaha. Good to see you!
Nerdfatha
Now if only there was a good way to shuffle the Hecatomb cards I just got….
Philip
Wow! Hecatomb! Now that’s a callback. Chupacabras for everyone!
Nerdfatha
Lol! Yeah, I have a bad habit of discovering and getting obsessed with games only after they are well and truly dead.
Dawn_mage
If cards realy need a shuffel ill put them in diftent stacks (card 1 in stack 1, 2 in 2 3 in 3 but for in stack 1 and repete.) obe of the best ways to suffek new decks. After tiS ill give them the normal shuffel.
The bending/pharao shuffel is a pain ts see or hear for a gamer who is proud of his collection.
Lynkfox
you can learn to rifle/bridge shuffle from the side (so the cards are vertical in your hands) – less wear on the cards and possible to do with sleeves on without the cards getting caught inside each other.
That’s my preferred method, or if I know the person whose game it is has a deep sense of care for their cards, Mash shuffle.
But generally, it really doesn’t hurt the cards very much at all once you are very practiced. With sleeves from the side its even less.
xero
What i call yugioh style wich is easyer to show then exsplain but is based on the way they shuffled in the original anime it mixes the cards but prevents bending
Mark
This is called the Hindu shuffle, and mathematically you’d need about a million of them to get a full randomization.
Mark
Actually, around 2,500, not 1,000,000.
Of course, that is opposed to the seven recommended in a riffle or mash.
Atramagus
Riffle shuffling is actually not hard on the cards – once you’ve learned how to do it properly. And that’s the key.
Someone new to riffle shuffling generally leaves the cards in horrible shape. This is probably why most gamers as a whole hate riffle shuffling, and have the same level of horror as seen in the fourth panel of the comic.
I’ve been riffle shuffling since I was in elementary school, which, coupled with stage magic lessons, means that I don’t beat the heck out of my cards. My first set of Netrunner was played solely with riffle shuffles for quite a long time before I got serious, and they’re still in perfect shape. Of course, I always shuffled for my wife (my primary partner), so didn’t have to worry how other people would handle them.
Now that I’m getting more heavily into the game, though, and actually going out to places, I’ve sleeved my cards and have joined the mash-shuffle crowd. Guess I’ll have to leave trick shuffling to other games 😀