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Simon Tan
Philippines
Quezon City
Metro Manila
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After long weeks of work and get-togethers with friends and relatives, I figured it is high time to write one more to cap the year. With plans submitted and blue-printed, I should have more time to go back to the regular writing schedule, and hopefully be able to write D is for Dark Ascension.
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As suggested by Kingmanzoo and Renaissance Man, today's topic is sleeves. Usually, when I talk about PVC and plastic, it is in the context of sanitary piping and sealants, which would make sleeves an awkward subject for me. However, true to what some have said, they are very integral to any player who is more than casual.
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Personally, the number one reason to use sleeves is very much related to this card...
The card is perhaps an official acknowledgement of an important aspect in any card battle game. We didn't really worry about proper shuffling then, and would even mana weave (the practice of alternating spell-spell-land in the deck as a shuffle) as part of avoiding mana screw. However, as games got more serious, so did the demand for true randomness as a means of fair play. There was the original official "all-land or no-land mulligan", which was a one shot deal so if you had the same problem again you're screwed. Likewise, if your opening seven included a Maze of Ith or other no-mana land, you're screwed.
It was fixed into the Paris mulligan (aka mulligan with one card less), which created an interesting quirk when you watch the videos of any PT top 8 match: shuffling downtime. For regular players, this translated into more shuffling before the game even begins, which turned sleeves from card protection into shuffling aid. For pros, it means that they can advertise their respective teams with their card sleeves.
With the impressive finish of team channelfireball.com in this year's Worlds, that would be a lot of time seeing that screaming logo.
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There are at least a dozen brands of sleeves, so instead of brand I'll focus on type...
The beloved penny sleeves were the earliest card sleeves I've used, mostly because I'm so cheap and so are the sleeves, but also because they avoid the issue of sleeve count per package. The most common complaint is the need to purchase two packs of fifty just to sleeve a constructed deck of sixty... Thankfully, 80 seems to be the de facto count for made-for-Magic sleeves these days...
The first sleeves I've used after that are the metallic Japanese sleeves by KMC. I liked these sleeves, but my complaint with these is that the corners would fray over time, especially if you tend to weave the deck a lot as part of shuffling.
Before Ultra-Pro started to join the art sleeve bandwagon, MAX printed many fantasy-themed (and a few sort-of NSFW) art sleeves. These came in packs of 50, so the Ultra-Pro 80s are a slightly better deal. However, the art is much more... unique. I've bought a total of four packs of these for two sets of 100, and they are fine for casual play, but I find them kinda messy and easy to stick dirt on.
The full art sleeves are prohibited by judges during higher REL tournaments as it is easy to conceal any marks on sleeves. While there is no ban against any specific brand or product, you can check the judge article here as a guide...
Then there's the kind that tries to take advantage of the raging hormones of opposing players. If you expect to play against any female players, it's probably better to pick something less... *ahem*... but still cute. For male players, there are some that border on the NSFW.
Then there's the thick, rigid, card protectors for those who obsess about the mint condition of cards and yet want to play with them. With practice, it is possible to shuffle, and I have seen a friend play with a Rock deck packed with fetchlands to prove this. They are admittedly heavy and difficult to move around; when you move on to the true baseball-card protectors, then you are talking about a deck that better be worth its weight in gold.
I did not cover reflective or holographic sleeves here because they are technically banned for tournament use. See this article here for more details...
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The recent release of Innistrad, and the subset of these cards in particular, have raised the question of sleeve quality...
Even within a certain brand and product line, some colors were more "see-through" than others. I have not seen a single card group generate so much talk about people being too lazy to desleeve, certain sleeves being worth ****, or talk of what makes a legal/illegal proxy or what not.
With that said, people started becoming more conscious about their sleeve choices. Come pre-release time, most werewolves didn't flip and unflip madly, and the issue became just one of nitpicking...
I do remember some people who nitpick about people not playing with sleeves, though. I had a friend who decided to give Magic a try again, and he played with really old (not expensive, though) cards without sleeves. The sight of him tapping his cards on a concrete floor were enough to make others cringe, so I gave him a pack of penny sleeves to keep his friends from getting heart attacks.
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RANDOM CARD THAT (sort of) FITS THE TOPIC
Sensei's Divining Top
If there is anything that torture-tests a deck's sleeves, it is shuffling. Anyone who has played with fetchlands, Rampant Growth, Ponder, and the like can attest to the necessity of being able to shuffle efficiently and quickly. However, efficient shuffling (especially at higher-level tournaments) have been a necessary yet time consuming exercise, and the one card that encouraged it the most was banned as a result.
My first days of being on the forums here included a heated discussion on how much shuffling is necessary, but to keep it simple, the answer is "enough to not be called out by a judge."
As for me, the practice in shuffling has been enough to turn me off games like Dominion, but has been good practice for when I play Chinese Poker.
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OUT OF CURIOSITY
What kind of sleeves do you use? How many have you used up?
Do you sleeve just the cards you play with, or do you sleeve everything?
I already have an idea on what to write for the letter "T", so it'll probably just be a matter of time, I guess.
And in case I don't write again this year, I'm wishing everyone a prosperous and fruitful New Year.
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