Fuck a Card Sleeve

I have a few sleeved games. I sleeve every GMT card based game. I can't stand that heavy paper stock card they do, I nearly bend them in two if I don't sleeve them. I sleeve victory point games too because the dang things stick together too easy. I sleeve bluffing games where a marked card could be a big problem (I play with some poker players, they can't turn it off), other than those, I have race for the galaxy and warhammer quest sleeved. Rftg because it's a favourite, whq because I have mint cards and all treasure packs, which are worth stupid amounts.

I don't mind sleeves, except on small cards. The damn things slide all over.

repoman wrote:

Sagrilarus wrote: It's one of those things that people do when they can't find an opponent. It makes you feel like you've gotten time in with your game.

S.

Uhm...bull to the shit. Don't get condescending because others have a different view than you. It's something people do to protect their game for resale, to mitigate poor quality card stock, and to make their game last as WELL as to play with the game when they aren't playing the game. But even if that were the primary reason, so what? I like to pimp out some of my games too. It's the reason I spent half my life painting the War of the Ring units.

Jesus dude, didn't mean it as a dig!

I can see sleeving cards to make them re-operable again. I got Battle Cry for my brother in law on a trade, marked as very-good condition, but the cards had been absolutely brutalized. The all-out offensive card was damn near ripped in half. I dropped them in sleeves before giving him the game. Needed to be done to make it playable.

My attitude has always been to sleeve as repair instead of sleeve as prevention, but even my games with cards that are showing wear are far from need. My closest is Shadows Over Camelot, whose cards are very pretty and have a nice finish but haven't held up as well as most.

S.

I will admit to sleeving absolutely any game now that has that fake-ass linen effect on cards.

You know, the effect every publisher uses nowadays because consumers think it is a sign of quality?

When in fact the cards wear faster because of the added friction caused by the linen effect impression.

I bought a second copy of Lord of Waterdeep and played it exactly twice before I bought the expansion. I mixed in the expansion cards and ...lo and behold.... two games was enough to really make a pronounced difference in how faded the base game cards were. As in, legibility was affected. And I pile shuffle. *shake head*

I said fuck it, bought a ton of FFG sleeves.

Fuck linen finish cards and the false sense of quality that consumers think they offer. Fuck making me sleeve my cards, and fuck how I have to shuffle shiney new sleeves a a couple dozen times before a game and wear them down a bit so that when I mix a new Wiz-War expansion into my game, nobody can tell when expansion cards are about to be drawn.

Space Ghost wrote: 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.

Citadels is the only game I've sleeved, primarily due to us playing it 1x10^90 times. Most games I would consider sleeving don't exist.

I'm not anti-sleeve or anything, and I get why people sleeve them, and I'm in no position to, nor any inclination to, tell people what to do with their shit. I'm just ADHD as fuck and the idea of sitting for an hour or two slapping sleeves on a game seems like an improbable scenario, unless there is some compelling reason (read: Heroquest) to do so. There are no games that I feel are irreplaceable, and my money is worth less to me than time and sanity, so if a game is so beat to shit that it is rendered unplayable, I'd rather simply not play it ever again, or buy a new set, than fuck around with having to sit in a place for several hours doing something tedious.

EDIT: Ah, there was one other. I reprinted, on beautiful linen paper, cut and perfectly trimmed a set of every Heroquest card, ever. Sadly, I didn't want to futz with adding big bleed areas to duplex print them, so I sleeved them so that I could have double sided cards.

You card sleevers better start unsleeving the day I become King of the World, because I will have you up against the wall with the lawyers and ad men (m/f).

I expect this to be around 5 pm today, so you might even get a sleeved game in before the sleevocaust

I really don't understand the vitriol card sleeving gets.

There's simply nothing wrong with protecting your games so they last longer, specially since they are expensive and penny sleeves aren't. Shuffling alone will mark cards after a couple plays, covering them in circular scratches and doubly so if you shuffle the cards in your hand (Which in most games you should do). It's inevitable that someone gets sweaty hands or that the corners get bent a bit, which always ends up with marked borders and the corners being bent a lot, you've seen it in Magic and it's not an exception.

It's just a couple dollars, probably less to protect a game. I don't share this romantic idea of a grubby, worn game being better than one that is kept in good condition and just like put back the CDs into their cases so they don't get damaged, I sleeve my games.

"Wow, that is a legitimately scary story. I can only imagine now the edge wear, stains, and scratches that will appear thanks to routine play. The difficult shuffling that is to follow will surely crease and bend the cards. I can only HOPE that they must have been Mayday sleeves and therefore inferior, not uniform in size, and will quickly be replaced by you, the card-based game's new owner. Do what's right. "

Also, I'll be dead in thirty years, so what does it matter?

I use to run a small anime convention (10k attendance) and ran boardgames in a dozen conventions because I had the games and the staff and the other cons wanted it in their lineup - it was an easy way for me to steal staff from other shows. Every game I took to a con was sleeved since you can never trust con goers - especially at anime cons. Through the decade I did that, I only had to replace my Memoir 44 and Warhammer Quest cards. Now that it is mostly my wife and I playing games, I see no reason to sleeve most games.

Erik Twice wrote: I really don't understand the vitriol card sleeving gets.

There's simply nothing wrong with protecting your games so they last longer, specially since they are expensive and penny sleeves aren't. Shuffling alone will mark cards after a couple plays, covering them in circular scratches and doubly so if you shuffle the cards in your hand (Which in most games you should do). It's inevitable that someone gets sweaty hands or that the corners get bent a bit, which always ends up with marked borders and the corners being bent a lot, you've seen it in Magic and it's not an exception.

It's just a couple dollars, probably less to protect a game. I don't share this romantic idea of a grubby, worn game being better than one that is kept in good condition and just like put back the CDs into their cases so they don't get damaged, I sleeve my games.

I have some issues against card sleeves, despite owning a lot of card sleeves and using them extensively for certain purposes:

1. they make it difficult to shuffle cards.
2. sleeves make the card decks significantly higher and therefore more prone to toppling.
3. glossy sleeves can make even a moderate deck prone to falling over.
4. they make the cards take up more than twice as much room, which can lead to a storage issue with some game boxes.