Today I want to talk about sleeves. I want to tell you how to avoid penalties including game loses, match loses and even disqualifications, because you screwed up with your sleeves. Worn, folded or unusual sleeves all look different from other sleeves and, accidental or not, the result is marked cards. Marked cards are serious yang.
First, let’s talk about playing without sleeves. Many players, especially in drafts and Limited events, play sleeveless. I don’t. I like to play older lands – including some from sets that had slightly different colors on the backs (e.g. some sets are darker.) I could tell the old lands from the other cards by color, if they were unsleeved. Further, most TOs don’t have brand new lands to provide to drafters. The used lands are often worn, making them marked. More importantly, worn lands often are stickier and shuffle differently. They tend to clump – and mana screw is already enough of a problem without adding to it by using worn lands. Sleeves help solve that problem.
My advice is to buy new sleeves before each tournament. Sleeves wear, and scratches and dings develop over time. That’s unavoidable. The scratches and dings eventually become noticeable. Once opponents notice those scratches and dings, they may – heck, they should – wonder whether you have marked your deck. They can, should and do call judges.
Judges are going to look for a pattern in the markings on the sleeves. If there is no pattern, my typical response is "no pattern, no problem – but replace the sleeves after the match."
If there is a pattern to the markings – e.g. if all the cards with certain marks are the same type, or if the judge can, just by looking at the back of the cards, pull all of a certain card out of the deck, bad things are going to happen. At the very least, you can expect a penalty for marked cards, minor. If the pattern is significant, it will be marked card major – and that can be a match loss. That’s the best that can happen – those penalties apply if the judges decide the markings are accidental. If the judges decide that the markings are deliberate, the result should be a disqualification without prizes and an investigation by the DCI.
When you get new sleeves, take a quick look at them. Are they folded or creased in the box? If so, return them. If the first couple sleeves are creased, pitch those sleeves. Then, before you start sleeving, shuffle the empty sleeves, then shuffle your deck. By doing that, if there is an imperfection you missed in some of the sleeves, the sleeves will be random, the cards will be random, and the markings should be on random cards.
Years ago, Zvi Moshowitz opened a box of sleeves with crimps on the first four or five sleeves. He didn’t shuffle cards or sleeves. The first four cards he sleeved were Rishadan Ports – and the result was that all the Rishadan Ports were in sleeves with slight crimps on the corners. That meant that the Ports – a critical card in that format – were clearly identifiable. It was a marked cards major penalty and a match loss, but I’m sure the judges discussed disqualification. I would have.
Here’s another concern: sideboard cards. If you sleeve your sideboard, make sure that the wear pattern on those sleeves stays similar to your deck. New sleeves start pristine, but after ten or so rounds, they look a little battered. If, in round eleven, you face a certain matchup for the first time and bring in the appropriate sideboard cards, make sure you don’t leave those sideboard cards in their new, pristine cards. If you do, they are going to be marked. A better option is to desleeve cards you are siding out and use those sleeves for the sideboard cards. It takes longer, but the alternative is often a game loss for marked major.
I want to talk a bit about deck checks. Deck checks looks for three main things: marked cards, stacked decks and cards that don’t match the decklist.
The first thing I do during a deck check is to set the deck on the table and look at it for a moment. Are there bent cards? Are there gaps? Are there visible markings on the sides of the sleeves? Are some sleeves wider or longer than others? In short, does anything stand out?
At Minneapolis, a fellow judge had a deck with slight tears in three sleeves, two Shining Shoals and a random White creature. We spent a bit of time discussing that between ourselves, and the other judge spent some time discussing it with the player. The conclusion was that it was unintentional, and just marked cards minor. The penalty was a warning, and the player had to replace the sleeves. Two of four Shining Shoals marked, though, was right on the borderline of a match loss for marked major.
The next thing I do is fan through the cards looking at the backs of the sleeves for dings and markings. I do that quickly then flip the deck and look for a pattern in how the deck is arranged – in other words, if the deck is stacked. All of that has to be done quickly, deck checks cannot take much time.
The next step is to lay out the deck and make sure it matches to the decklist and the sideboard matches the sideboard list.
Once I’ve checked the cards against the decklist, I take another look at card backs, looking for patterns in the markings. If there are markings -especially if there seems to be a pattern – I shuffle the deck and try to separate out cards with like markings, looking only at the backs. If I pull sets of cards – for example, if I can pull all the Tooth and Nails from a deck just seeing the backs – then we are looking at Marked Cards Major or disqualification. If the dinged sleeves are a Forest, two Urza’s Mines, a Sakura-Tribe Elder and Reap and Sow, then the penalty is more likely to be a caution – and I will generally have the player replace the marked sleeves.
The difference between Marked Cards Minor and Major can be somewhat subjective. At U.S. Nationals, we had a player that twisted his sleeves when putting sideboard cards into played sleeves. As a result, the sleeves of the cards he sideboarded out became marked. Three of four Stone Rains, three of four Jinxed Chokers and other spells all carried definite marks. It was clear what had happened, and the judges could not identify particular cards (e.g. the Chokers) by the marks. I might have called this marked minor, since the marked cards were all different, but a far more experienced judge took the position that the marked cards were all the less valuable (at least in some matches) cards. I would be willing to argue that either way, knowing what I know of what cards are critical in mono-red’s matchups against other decks, but the fact remains that the experienced judges called it marked major, and assessed a match loss.
The moral – be careful how you sideboard.
Before each tournament, you should take your deck, set it on the table and do the things I just described. See anything that might concern a judge? If you do, you probably want to fix it. It might not cause any trouble – but there’s no sense taking the chance. Best case: worn sleeves will cause you no problems all day. Worst case: DQ. Why take a chance?
A few last comments on sleeves. First, Star City has a sale on holographic fronted sleeves. As the ad notes, these cards are generally not legal for tournament play. That’s true, and the reason is that your opponent has to be able to identify your cards by the picture – and to do that, he has to be able to see the pictures on your cards easily. You can play foreign cards, or older versions, but the opponent has to be able to identify the artwork. This is why the rules don’t allow heavily modified or obscured artwork in tournament play. (5Color – the home of some amazing card modifications – has more not-tournament legal cards than anywhere else, but that’s another issue.) Back to holographic sleeves: most head judges consider the holographic faces to be obscuring, and therefore ban them. If you have them, ask.
Next, most head judges also frown on card backs that are transparent or just tinted. These sleeves are cool, but you can see the cards inside. I remember one kid with tinted sleeves in an Extended tourney. His opponent – and shortly thereafter a judge – pulled out the four Birds of Paradise (worn) and eight dual lands (heavily worn) just by looking at the backs. That earned the player a marked cards major penalty. The moral: it’s not worth the risk, buy opaque sleeves.
Finally, I want to address the sleeves with pictures on the back. Some have dragons in flight, others have other artwork. Again, these are cool sleeves, but most head judges ban them. The reason for this is two-fold. First, the sleeves are not all uniformly cut. Some show more of the top, some less. You can buy three packs with slightly different cuts, then sleeve all your land in one pack, all your creatures in the second and all your spells in the third. That could allow you to tell them apart. Second, with complex artwork like that on a sleeve, people are tempted to try to hide identifying markings. Judges can find those marks – ask serious poker players if you need advice on how to spot such marks – and will spot the different cuts. However, that time and effort that takes would be better spent out on the floor, not studying sleeves, so most head judges ban them. If you have them, ask before the tournament whether they will be allowed. Better yet, save them for casual and multiplayer games. They work just fine there.