The only game I’ve sleeved so far is Avalon because after a couple of plays it was obvious it wasn’t going to handle repeated plays. I even clear-coated the tokens as one player had been rubbing them against the table and starting to wear them out.
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I’m not deeply against sleeving. Of games I currently own, Trains, Helionox and Love Letter are sleeved. I’ve also sleeved games I owned such as Marvel Legendary. I think deck builders benefit from them hugely.
My complaint is specifically about the pressure to make things accomodate sleeves making them useless for the game as supplied. See this as an example.
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I’ve owned several games with fit for purpose publisher-provided inserts, including every release of the Pathfinder Adventure Card Game first edition that I own, Spirit Island, Tainted Grail, both Hexplore It releases to date, Too Many Bones, and (though this is more the publisher springing for a custom insert on their own recognizance) Dice Throne Season 2. The problem with most of them, though, is they’re only fit for that particular release and don’t have room for expansions. This is why I now own the Broken Token Spirit Island insert, which does accomodate all the current content and hopefully will still have room for whatever they do next. (Though, unfortunately, that’s still across two boxes.) Pathfinder was an exception, but I think mostly because each “adventure path” was basically a single product with six or so staggered post-release content drops rather than a more traditional expansion model.
I do, of course, also have a few custom all-the-game storage solutions from the game creators and so far these have all been even nicer than my wooden inserts (Sentinels of the Multiverse, Trickerion, and the creme de la creme, the Too Many Bones Trove Chest, with a couple coming for Level99 stuff.), but that’s not something I’ve seen offered very often yet, and they were certainly still quite expensive.
I had to sleeve Terraforming Mars because my wife and I played it so much the cards started getting gummy. The alternative to sleeving was buying a brand new copy of the game. But I didn’t need all the other bits–I just needed the cards. Publishers don’t sell the cards separately (uniless it’s an expansion which is just cards, like Agricola expansions, for example), but it wouldn’t make sense for them to and I don’t begrudge them for it.
What I don’t like about sleeves cards, especially in the case of Terraforming Mars and its large deck of cards, is that they make shuffling much more difficult and the cards don’t stack well without sliding.
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Have you thought about something like this? https://litko.net/collections/card-deck-trays
I’d be on your side about sleeving a game if you play that much. I just rail against those that just sleeve everything
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I probably should get a card tray, but a less expensive one made for multiple decks of normal playing cards.
The Fantasy Flight sleeves are pretty awful for stacking – one end is thicker than the other, and so the taller the stack gets, the more of an angle is formed until sliding is inevitable. I don’t think they’re all as bad as that, though.
The shuffling thing I can (I hope) help you with. Sleeved cards are actually fabulously easy to shuffle! The only difficulty is that the way to shuffle sleeved cards is a technique that you would never, ever use with un-sleeved cards (because it would damage them); and so instinctively shuffling the way you’ve always done (and feeling kinda annoyed at how awkward it now is) is all too easy.
Believe it or not, to shuffle a deck of sleeved cards, take half the deck in each hand and then just mash them together, long edge against long edge. The sleeves will slide between one another, easy as anything. It’s essentially the world’s easiest riffle shuffle.
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I don’t think it’s just the FF sleeves. The bottom of the sleeve has a seam that creates a thicker and/or stiffer side than the top where the opening is. This has less of an effect the thicker the sleeve is overall, especially if the side seams are as bad as the bottom seam.
That’s essentially what I end up doing, but with Terraforming Mars, there are so many cards that they don’t slide all that easily and you have to do it so many times…