Illegal sleeving?
Asked by Jimmy_Chinchila 8 years ago
In playtesting I have been sleeving decks in DragonShields, but for my mythics and high-value cards I've been also using a Japanese PerfectFit sleeve; double sleeving. They look identical from the top and side (library side view they aren't visibly thicker). They do however have different thickness and weights. I'm no card shark but I could imagine someone who is could identify these cards in a shuffle and thus move them accordingly or at least know where they are. Do I have to double sleeve all or none of the cards or can I play with the differentialy sleeved deck? How about FNM vs legit tournaments, would that change the answer?
The process of double sleeving is rather tedious, as many cards start slipping out of the inner sleeve as they are pushed into the outer sleeve, thus crinkling the sleeve and wasting product. I do worry though, about only using the outer DragonShield as the top is open and the cards vulnerable to spills or debris. Thank you!
Jimmy_Chinchila says... #2
BlueScope cool, thanks. All very logical. I'm just being lazy lol
November 7, 2016 4:12 a.m.
Well, you could always just single-sleeve your cards. Not counting the danger of someone spilling drinks or you playing out in the rain, the cards will be fine other than getting more dust inside the sleeve. Double-sleeving is mostly done for tournament decks, where you have to change the outer sleeves every so often, or for expensive Commander decks or the like. If you're double-sleeving your entire deck for a single 10-bucks mythic, one could argue that you'll be spending more time and money to do so than you're actually protecting in value.
While my own Commander decks are comparatively low in value, I like to double-sleeve them because that makes them fit more snug in the deck boxes I use, and because they're easier to shuffle. I also never really had the crinkling problem you mentioned, though I use Ultra Pro Pro-Matte outer sleeves with previously Ultra Pro Perfect-Fit, now KMC perfect fit inner sleeves - maybe you'll be better off with these.
BlueScope says... Accepted answer #1
Disregarding the second paragraph entirely (as it's up to personal opinion), you have to sleeve all cards the very same way. In your example, you're correct in that you would need to double-sleeve either all or no cards in the deck.
Personally, I've never seen a combination of sleeves that doesn't create a visually discernable difference in height (and I know that KMC Perfect Sleeves plus Dragon Shield sleeves do, as a matter of fact, if those should be the ones you use), but even if there were no visual difference, as you correctly said, there's still a haptic one. That could lead to awkward situations where you lift the top card of your library, but don't look at it, don't put it in your hand, then announce you're going to do something in your upkeep; or simply in situations where you have to discard a random card - in both situations, having different sleeves would mean you'd possibly gain an advantage, which is why it shouldn't be allowed in the first place.
In addition, since you selectively sleeve certain cards (and those are likely going to be the more impactful ones), a judge may determine that you're intentionally cheating, independant of your apparent ability of actually determining whether a double-sleeved card is next or not.
All of the above only applies in tournament scenarios, as the core game rules don't care about sleeves or other parts of the game environment. Still, for casual games, players have the same reason for suspicion than they would in a tournament scenario, and playing with unmarked cards is something you might want to do for etiquette reasons if not for the reasons I gave.
November 7, 2016 3:28 a.m.