Fuck a Card Sleeve

This is a true story and the game was Battle for Souls.

Sequel: "I started pile shuffling them on an unfelted table."

OH GOD HANDS TOUCH BUTTS

"Three of the guys were eating Cheetos"

I recently purged most of my games of sleeves. Combat Commander and Mage Knight most prominently.

I do not regret unsleeping CC but I re sleeved Mage Knight. The card stock is just too shitty AND the expansion cards have a slightly different color and feel. Obviously they went to a different printer for the new cards. In any case the slight difference was too much so back into the card condoms they went.

My Fields of Fire deck is also sleeved because that gets shuffled a hundred times a game. But that's it.

jeb wrote: Sequel: "I started pile shuffling them on an unfelted table."

I was helping a guy setup Shadowrun: Crossfire and he handed me a deck and told me to pile shuffle them...So I shuffled them my normal way hoping that'd cause him to never ask me to shuffle a deck for him again.

This fetishism for component perfection is maddening. I have to caveat all my math trade entries with elaborate DBAD disclaimers because some folks have taken game fondling to a level way beyond game-playing. My games are in good playable condition. They don't smell and aren't ripped up or anything. If they were, I would throw them away instead of trading them away. Someone out there always seems to grief about a creased rulebook or something and I want to slap them around.

The funniest part about all the people with walls o' games with every card they own carefully sleeved is that there's no way in hell they play any single game enough that any card would ever get significantly marked or worn. Cards do not get beat to hell in three plays, people.

I'm not sure about the rules in tournament M:tG now, but back in the day you were allowed to shuffle your opponent's deck. A guy told me a story about an opponent who, when the time came to shuffle, just smeared the deck all over the tabletop and started mashing the cards into each other. That's possibly tearing up $2K worth of cards, even if they're sleeved. Harsh words were exchanged, judges got involved, etc.

Edit: T1 tournament. He might have had a good part of the Power 9 in there.

Card sleeving is waaay too predominant, but I did sleeve most of my games back when dating my ex since she was shuffling impaired and it vastly improved the game play experience for her so I didn't have to shuffle every deck in a game.

There are good, practical reasons to sleeve. 99% of people don't have one though.

That story will haunt bgg for years. I'm surprised you didn't get banned.

You would, if you threatened to do it to someone else's games.

I used to be a card sleever...mainly because I had THOUSANDS of them left over from my store (folks, the markup retailers put on these is borderline criminal- I bought them for less than a penny a piece- the GOOD ones). But one night I was sitting there sleeving something, don't even remember what it was, and I thought "WHAT THE FUCK AM I DOING?".

I've been sleeve-free now for years and I've never looked back. Like Colorcrayons said, there are legitimate reasons to sleeve a card. If the game is really expensive/fragile...sleeve it. If you have to write on the cards...sleeve it. If it's an Alpha Black Lotus...sleeve it. If it's just about every other game ever- WHAT THE FUCK ARE YOU DOING?

The fact that there is now a market for sleeves to go on those tiny little Eurogame cards blows my mind. Are people that fucking worried about "edge wear" or whatever? Good fucking grief, before card sleeves, a lot of Avalon Hill games had those punch-out cards that CAME with ragged-ass edges. AND NOBODY WAS ALL THAT BOTHERED BY IT.

Looking over at my shelf, I see a lot of ragged-ass games that have dirty cards. Some have bent or scuffed cards. But you know what? They got that way because they are copies of games that I've played the crap out of. I do not give a fricasseed shit (for you, Doug) if a card is marked, I don't play games with people that pay that much attention to such things.

What the hell is wrong with people and fussing over the condition of games...I got Amun-Re in a trade recently and it was pretty badly beat up...for about a minute I was all like "grr, this guy"...but then I realized that I did not care. The contents were fine, it looked like it had been played a bit and the bottom of the box was caved in. MY ENJOYMENT OF PLAYING AND OWNING THE GAME HAS NOT BEEN AFFECTED.

You know what I hate more than sleeves though? When someone sends me a game in the mail and it's packaged like they were sending a god damned Faberge egg through the post. I just got the kids a copy of Hey, That's My Fish and this tiny litte game was in this huge box in bubble wrap AND peanuts. I would not have given that selfsame fricasseed shit if they had thrown it in one of those Tyvek envelopes and tossed in the box. AND it wouldn't have wasted all of this packaging material to preserve a game my kids will likely destroy over time anyway. As long as it in good, playable condition...WHO GIVES A FUCK!? Games are meant to played, handled, and WORN OUT!

"Here they are, in the trash where they belong"- LOVE IT!

I sleeve everything. I'm OCD and if a card was bent or creased it would bother me every single time we played. A friend invited a fellow grad student to game with us in the past and she was notorious for bending cards she held in her hand. We played mostly social deduction games that night and my buddy's copy of Mascarade ended up with a King card with a bent corner. It pratically ruined the game. Not that sleeving prevents bending completely but it makes you have to shuffle by pushing two stacks together and adds rigidity to the cards.

Another example of my OCD is that I somehow lost one of the space markers for Cave Evil (the little tokens with letters that come in pairs). This eats away at me every time I think about the game. Maybe I should drink more or medicate.

I also sell a large number of games each year and want to keep them in as close to mint condition for that reason as well. A friend of mine's copy of Dominion has many cards with worn colors and he'd have a hell of a time if he ever tried to sell it.

I think it's funny that you intended that thread as a fuck you to sleevers, but the truth is I'd bet the minority on BGG actually sleeves. It's definitely not the majority as most people act like you're crazy over there if you sleeve games with hundreds of cards (like Dominion).

So yeah, I sleeve obsessively. Fuck you too for just throwing those away instead of shipping them to me.

I don't sleeve everything, but if its shitty quality cards, a rare/OOP game, or one I'll play a lot, I'll sleeve it.

One drawback is that when I do, I use decent ones, not the shitty ass penny sleeves. So they take up more space in the box.

Michael Barnes wrote:
You know what I hate more than sleeves though? When someone sends me a game in the mail and it's packaged like they were sending a god damned Faberge egg through the post. I just got the kids a copy of Hey, That's My Fish and this tiny litte game was in this huge box in bubble wrap AND peanuts. I would not have given that selfsame fricasseed shit if they had thrown it in one of those Tyvek envelopes and tossed in the box. AND it wouldn't have wasted all of this packaging material to preserve a game my kids will likely destroy over time anyway. As long as it in good, playable condition...WHO GIVES A FUCK!? Games are meant to played, handled, and WORN OUT!

I'd rather they err on the side of caution - and since once never knows how much of an OCD / potential whiner is on the other end of the package, as long as the packaging doesn't contribute excess postage, it doesn't bother me.

Games I have sleeved:

Type I MtG Deck
Type 1.5 MtG Deck
Twilight Struggle
War of the Ring
Citadels
Wizard's Quest (that is because it is the second copy, though, as we wore out the first copy)

I don't think any of my other games are sleeved -- shit, I would probably spend a grand or more sleeving all the cards in all my games.