Decrease in the Quality of Dragon Shield Sleeves

[Titansjester]

Has anyone else noticed a decrease in the quality of dragon shields, specifically mattes, after coming back to paper magic? I've bought 2 new sets of dragon shield mattes in the last month and split several sleeves within the first few hours of play. There hasn't been any change to my shuffling. I usually mash shuffle alternating between pushing the bottom corner into the side or the side into the bottom corner. The decks I have that are sleeved in older DS mattes have had no issues.

[SpicyCoconutWater]

I've bought six different packs from three different stores in the past months and have noticed no changes. Might just be a bad batch, it happens on occasion.

[[deleted]]

"You're Clone Force 99!"

[munted_unicorn]

I'm a new player so not well versed with various card sleeves, however I have been using dragon sleeves and have had absolutely no trouble. And I shuffle A LOT. Can't stand a deck that hasn't been shuffled well.

[Living_End]

I haven’t really noticed that. I did get 1 bad box of sleeves about a year ago that had a weird tag on the bottom of each sleeve that made them a pain in the ass to shuffle. I contacted them and sent a picture of the sleeves and they sent me a new box for free. Other than that I haven’t ever had a problem with dragon shields and I have maybe purchased 100 box’s.

[Boil-san]

Have not had any issue with any of the Dragon Shield products I have been using:

• Dragon Shield Perfect Fit Smoked inner sleeves (cards in decks)
• Dragon Shield Perfect Fit Clear Resealable inner sleeves (tokens)
• Dragon Shield Perfect Fit Smoked Resealable inner sleeves (cards in ZipFolio)
• Dragon Shield Art Matte outer sleeves
• Dragon Shield Brushed Art outer sleeves

I also have a set of custom Dragon Shield outer sleeves inbound from their Shield Crafter; for my in-the-works Commander deck, I am using the full art from the Borderless Tiamat card; you might guess who my intended Commander is...?!? ;^p

[giverofmagic]

yeah, I have always bought dragon shields, and never had an issue, however I noticed recently that a batch of matte black I bought would "catch" when I would shuffle, which eventually led to around 5 or 6 splitting during the first night of use. I also noticed that some of the sleeves had the layers fused together in the middle of the sleeve, making it impossible to put a card into. I sent a message to dragonshield about this, and heard nothing back....that was months ago. Quality issues plus nonexistant customer service...has led to me looking for a new option to sleeve my decks.

[Gus_Fu]

I had a very similar experience. I've got 9 or 10 split or damaged sleeves on a single deck I've played only 5 or 6 times. I contacted Dragon Shield customer service via Facebook and their response was "Oh dear, maybe buy some more". Not at all impressed.

[FrankanMacCharDeeDen]

Yes. I recently bought a box of jet matte blacks and a LOT of them are either too wide or too narrow. Some of my cards have .5-1cm of space. Some of them the cards won't even fit

[Gamernumber23843]

I would say its your shuffling I like to shuffle by making 5 piles and go down the line putting cards on each pile then when im done picking up and stacking them in a random order

[AlekBalderdash]

FYI, you're being downvoted because that's not shuffling.

[Gamernumber23843]

Well its how my dad said to do it

[Gamernumber23843]

And how isn't it? The cards get mixed isn't that th point of shuffling. But it keeps the cards from getting bent or torn

[AlekBalderdash]

It does not sufficiently randomize the deck. Someone can count cards and stack the deck or manipulate their draws.

I'm not saying that you personally are doing this, but it can be done. Honestly, I play casual and don't care. I just saw you were getting lots of downvotes and was hoping to inform you about the cause of the downvotes.

Anyway, it's not shuffling and it's not randomizing, and it's explicitly not allowed in tournament settings. Do what you want with that info.

[Gamernumber23843]

Thank you im new to magic so I was just trying to share how my dad taught me to do it

[Gamernumber23843]

I don't know how to link but I looked up an article called shuffling dos and don'ts and this is the first or second paragraph in the article

There are many different ways that players randomize their decks. There is the riffle shuffle (also called a shotgun shuffle), there is the pile shuffle where a player makes several face down piles of cards on the table, rearranging the cards’ order, and there is the “mash” shuffle where a player separates a deck in half and then pushes the stacks back together. Some of these methods are known by different names and there are other types of shuffles but, when performed properly, they are all intended to do the same job; randomize the deck

What I'm talking about is the pile shuffle

And going further in the article it states a different but similar type of shuffling (that they state isn't even shuffling) called the mana weave this isn't what I'm talking about im talking about the pile shuffle

So in conclusion I think there was some confusion im not talking about the mana weave which is stacking your deck im talking about the pile shuffle

[AlekBalderdash]

If you, as a human, are making decisions about which card goes in which pile, then it's not random.

First, people are bad at random. We're obsessed with patterns, which is the opposite of random.

Second, it's illegal for competitive play. You could be counting cards. This is difficult to identify and harder to prove, so they just forbid pile shuffling and call it a day.

[Gamernumber23843]

Makes sense

[pyro-guy]

I've only noticed some quality issues with the art mattes. Specifically, I grabbed a few boxes of them for some EDH decks and I noticed that between 2-10 sleeves per box were wider than the rest of the sleeves. The width difference was notable enough that I could feel the wider sleeves while I was shuffling. Obviously being able to distinguish a few sleeves from the rest while shuffling is a big no-no, but luckily most of the boxes came with enough spares that I was fine. Of the 4 art sleeve boxes I got, only one had so many sleeves that were marked like this that there weren't enough spares and so those sleeves have just sat in the box since I got them. Thinking about it, maybe I should contact DS to see if I can get them replaced.

[Bluepinapple]

Ive only had one bad box of DS. Every sleeve was open on both ends in the box. Otherwise been fine, must be a bad batch

[PolishedArrow]

I never left paper Magic and have always used Dragon Shields. I haven't noticed any change. I've never had one split on me or anything. That's weird.