I guess most of us board and card game players know this feeling. You can only protect your game up to a certain point, but at least sleeves do help a lot. Playmats are excellent for protecting those pretty art sleeves. 😉
Personally, I’m not a fanatic card sleever, actually I only sleeve the cards with which we play outside of our own house like Netrunner and Star Realms. My biggest problem with sleeving cards of board games, like Pandemic for instance, is that the game doesn’t fit in its box anymore!
I used Magic as an example in this comic because we have thousands of Magic cards laying around in the house (a relic from Heinze’s past!) and the condition of the cards vary from mint to … well, really bad. I’ve played played Magic for a short period and when I bought my first deck, I was basically forced to sleeves for it by a friend of mine. That’s when my younger self discovered that sleeving is serious business.
Magic The Gathering is one of the most popular trading card games in the world. In this game wizards known as planewalkers battle each other for glory, knowledge, and conquest using spells, artifacts and creatures!
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JJ Sandee
If possible I use pennysleeves on boardgames. Just to protect against the usual shuffling and wear. With some games that have weird sizes I sort of have to make a choice based on card quality. Masquerade for instance has horrible card quality, but also super weird cardsizes on top of that. Games like Magic and Netrunner tend to get better quality sleeves as they require move shuffling.
Frank
Yes, sleeving is serious business. Which reminds me, gotta buy some for next week 🙂
mark
i have a few games that dont fit inside te box annymore when sleeved.
there ar a few options: buy a standard dekbox (the kind you can usaly find for magic)
or you could make your own case like i somtimes do.
troy
Sleeves are an obvious choice for Magic and other CCGs because of all the shuffling, and the value of the cards. I also like to sleeve my deckbuilders like Dominion and Star Realms because of all the shuffling, and if some cards get damaged they’re essentially marked cards which would seriously impact gameplay. For cards like the resources in Catan, and the monster upgrades in King of Tokyo/New York, these issues aren’t really relevant so I don’t feel like sleeving is worth the cost/effort.
Rachel
Agreed! With Star Realms I actually think card sleeves are quite a necessity. Star Realm’s cards are not the best and most sturdy ones around.
SandraaK
I don’t mind a little wear and tear of the cards in my regular games, not even Star Realms, because I’m not planning on buying SR expansions. I do sleeve my Netrunner cards: I would hate to be able to tell the difference between old and new cards.