The Guide to Card Sleeves

If you're looking for a nice way to prepare for a regional, here's a nice guide to just one of the things that you should get before you begin round 1. It's called brand new card sleeves! If you plan to play with old sleeves in an event, expect a game loss, and a request to buy and change sleeves. I'll just give you the guidelines on what NOT to buy.

1. Clear sleeves. Complete waste of money, and any marked cards will be noticeable. A solid color is suggested.

2. Standard Sized Sleeves. Oversized sleeves for short, they can stack since the cards can move around. Don't try double-sleeving either. You'll get game losses for marked cards.

3. Dragon Shields. They break easily. Simply don't buy them.

4. Anything less than a 60 count. Or you'll have to spend more money to buy another pack. I'm trying to save you money for a soda here! 50 count Ultra-Pro's suck due to every pack having a different size in some way.

Typically, you'd just buy a pack of card sleeves, sleeve them up, then play with them for a while. Unfortunately, there's more to it than just that! You gotta find the sleeves that are perfect for you. We'll go into what brands there are and the feel of each sleeve.

Player's Choice: Only good colors for this brand are White and Pink. White ones are considered the best sleeves for any player, but depending on sleeve personality, they may only last throughout that entire tournament. Pink is alright. Nice color though. These sleeves come in 60 count, and cost around $6. KMC's are the japanese version of these sleeves.

Ultra Pro's: Has a kinda rough, yet, smooth feel to shuffling. Although you may experience sleeve-breaking if shuffled aggressively, they are really nice for gameplay. Each color is equally as good as the other, although people normally use white just to make themselves look pro. 60 counts cost around $4. Cheaper than PC's.

Dragon Shields: As mentioned before, bad. 100 count for $4, but they break so easily. I'd rather buy a pack of cigarettes than a pack of these, and i don't even smoke!

MAX Protection: Typically nice artwork on each sleeve. After a while, the edges wear out, and you'll notice the plastic start rolling. Not recommended.

Deck Prot: I guess nice fun sleeves. Don't get these. Some sleeves have a wrinkle or something in the backs. Can I say marked cards?

So what's your best bet? For me, I'd go Ultra Pro's. They shuffle so well, even lasts longer, and even if a sleeve breaks, you got more to work with. You should try PC's sometime though if you haven't yet. For myself, I had to get new PC's every other week since they got sticky easily due to how my hands are. You should ignore every other brand of sleeves other than PC's, KMC's, or Ultra Pro's. Enough said.