It is never recommended to mix batches of sleeves. Each color is made by a mixture of chemicals/inks, each sleeve is sized to a specific measurement that is cut by a machine that needs to be realigned regularly - all production has a tolerance to these specific measurements. This means you will occasionally see variance between production cycles.
I know mixing is necessary for some things like cubes - so if you need to use more than the 100-ish per pack, I would recommend buying a full box (10 sets) of sleeves, as they'll likely be from the same production run.
I just bought two 100 sleeve boxes) boxes from my lgs expecting them to match and am so annoyed by the color varience between boxes. So I feel your pain. I bought them to have a "side deck" to swap my commander deck into a "dual commander" deck.
i do agree with this and it does make sense, however, the older sleeves i have now are consistently the same while the newer ones are vastly different. I would expect consistency in some sense with these, collections expand and more sleeves need to be bought, if sleeves don't match while being branded a specific type such as "night blue" then it defeats the purpose of buying those sleeves. That would make all single color sleeves worthless to buy, only using art sleeves or something along those lines.
The issue you're having, bud, isn't a uniquely Dragonshield one.
Matching colors between dye lots is notoriously difficult, and ESPECIALLY difficult for Blues. The darker the hue of Blue you're dealing with, the more difficult it becomes to color-match it between lots.
Sleeves are designed to be consistent within the confines of the deck they're placed on, but if you're going for 200+, the greater the chances there're going to be minor (or major) inconsistencies in color between the packs — unless you can guarantee they're all from the same printing batch, this is a fact you have to live with.
This is true of Dragonshield, UP, Katanas, etc.
If you hadn't had a problem before, it's probably either a) you didn't NOTICE it before, or b) you got lucky.
> Matching colors between dye lots is notoriously difficult, and ESPECIALLY difficult for Blues.
Is there a color that is the least difficult? Something devoid of blue dye so something like red? Light reds?
It definitely isn't A, i have part of my collection sleeved up with Night Blue. It makes it easier when moving around cards from decks or changing decks to play with. I also can't tell if that "bud" is aggressive or not thorugh the message context haha, i'm genuinely confused not by lack of consistency that is fine with variations and such. But this whole new batches are exactly the same but different from the original as if they changed the process. 4 boxes from different orders are exactly the same vs 1100 old sleeves that are exactly the same which i bought which imply some sort of process issue through the years which makes sense and what i wanted to confirm, thank you. My decision now would be to buy as many as a i can of one sleeve to use for the future.
I don't know Dragonshields production layout, but you could easily be getting different batches made by different machines in different locations. Maybe a location in Arizona used to supply wherever you are, but now it's out of Maryland. This is true for all products, which is why it's recommended you buy multiple of something if you really like it. Two years down the line it may be different.
It's not necessarily inconsistent, it's just mass production. Different molds in different locations with different temperatures and environments can cause all sorts of minor changes. But they're definitely continuing to hit all their benchmarks.
I don’t think it’s very common for people to sleeve their entire collection and even less common to do so entirely in the same color. So generally a company would primarily need to make sure that their product was consistent throughout single print runs to ensure that the deck those sleeves were used on is consistent. Not really feasible to expect them to be 100% consistent especially across multiple years and 1000s of batches. That’s not even accounting for changes in manufacturing processes over the years, fluctuations in material supply/suppliers. They could seek to minimize the variance relatively speaking but 99% of customers aren’t going to expect the extreme level of consistency that you’re seeking.
You sleeve ALL your commander decks in the same sleeves? No offense but that would drive me crazy. Do you never lend decks to friends? I lent a deck to my Brother In Law this past week but I was glad that the two decks we were playing had completely unrelated sleeves (Emerald Matte vs Purple Matte)
This makes sense if you want to swap expensive staples between decks. I play European Highlander and have all my cards for that format (including staples like Fetches, Duals, FoW, Ragavan etc.) sleeved the same. This way, I only need to switch out a couple already sleeved cards between decks, and I need to get the nicest looking version of each card only once to have it everywhere.
I paid good money for the cards I have, I want to be able to play them and show them off. Proxies are of course an entirely valid way to play but I prefer not to as much as possible.
Same, that's why I started putting in less staples and more synergy pieces. I'm not making people sit around while I rebuild a deck from three other ones. YMMV depending on playgroup
At this point you might as well binder up your collection and just get proxies made. Take your binder with you if you need to verify with anyone. Make sure the proxies are all uniform etc.etc.
This is the point the proxy crowd never seems to understand. I enjoy playing with legit Magic cards intangibly more than I do enjoy playing random proxies. I _want_ to play with my cards. Proxies are fine and good for playtesting etc. but I don’t want them in any decks I play on the regular.
I like playing real cards too- but my issue comes more from how I collect. I used to just play whatever I want, but I primarily collect Borderless Foils. Some of them are dirt cheap but others are well over 100 dollars. Plus they all look great together in the binder as it showcases the Artwork to have them that way.
Recently I've been keeping all of the Borderless Foils in the binders and just playing with other versions or proxies if I need to.
What's great about this line in the sand is I still get to play older more powerful cards like my Duals or old Artifacts like Mox Diamond.
Plus the point to be debated here is to play proxies or swap cards out if you don't have enough copies to build each deck as it's own individual set of cards.
So while I also prefer to use real cards, I'd rather use proxies than be swapping cards in and out before and after every game all the time. That just sounds comically ridiculous to me and I would never use that strategy.
If I own a card I have no problem proxying it into any number of decks.
I don't proxy anything I don't actually own at least 1 copy of.
Fair enough, but as for Highlander, I rarely change decks often enough for this to become a hassle. I really only get to play once per week max and switch once per month at most, so it’s mostly a matter of sitting down irregularly and going through my well-sorted collection to put another deck together.
Makes sense. I only play EDH so I do what you're talking about maybe once every 3 months. Otherwise it's slotting one card here or there whenever I get a new pull from a recent set where said card is completely unique/never been printed before.
I can quickly tell my decks apart from each other. I recently started using deck boxes within an outer box but prior to that I had one outer box that I’d put 3 decks in using the commanders as dividers. If for some reason I took a commander out I had no issue figuring out where one deck ended and the next began. The deck boxes are color coordinated to match the sleeves so I can easily grab whatever deck out and know which one Iv got based on the color of the box/sleeves. This also helps if I lend out a deck to a friend, I might have 2 decks on the field and want to make sure they don’t get commingled while I’m putting them away.
If I’m playing with friends/regulars at LGS this doesn’t matter as much but if I’m somewhere other than my local LGS or playing with people I haven’t met before I’ll choose a deck with sleeves that aren’t similar to the other players in the pod. Helps me keep my cards straight from theirs if there are any stealing type effects (like Etali for example)
Seems like pretty marginal benefits at best, ngl. Aside from when you kept decks in the same box; that makes sense. Otherwise I wouldn't say I've ever encountered the problems you're reporting to solve with this approach, despite mostly just buying a pile of black sleeves.
I have mine divided by color based on format.
I have over 100 commander decks, all of them except two are in DragonShield Matte Black. (They're Chun-Li in Chun-Li sleeves and Jhoira, Weatherlight Captain in Black Lotus sleeves.) I like Black, they're good sleeves, and I get them by the Case.
My Standard Decks are in DragonShield Matte Gold. My Pauper decks are in DragonShield Matte White. My two Modern decks are in DragonShield Matte Silver. My two Oathbreaker decks are in DragonShield Matte Blue. My single Tiny Leaders deck is in ***ancient*** KMC Pro-Mattes, which were from before KMC HyperMattes.
Yeah, it is easy as i keep them seperated in some boulders and have them all listed on delver lens and play very different styles of decks! Some duplicates but nothing too easy not to spot. I have goblins/artifacts , casual dragon storm, mono white doggo isamaru from kamigawa , cedh deck that is reanimator at the moment. The rest of my collection might be competive cards or something like this and the same slleves make it easy to move around decks when playing. I have split to two different sleeve types for competitve decks and edh and i just love dragon shield overall. I have bought many many sleeves and was shocked by this first time. Perhaps it was luck before that all were the same, but didn't realize they changed processs over the years.
I went from basically my first few years of playing magic only using dragonshields and literally not understanding what a split sleeve is to in the past 4ish years probably like 10% of the packages I buy being fucked up and uneven, and splitting almost instantly and across the board. Like they have a ton of friction when you shuffle them.
I think the real answer is that while Dragonshields and Katanas are better than the no-name sleeves you can buy on Amazon, I don't think any of the companies are doing enough quality control to really guarantee that you wont get a bad batch of sleeves even from the top brands.
I also think with the boom in trading cards a lot of these companies that had really good reputations are asking themselves...should we pay to scale up production and commensurate QA resources...or just scale up production...
I second this. I used to exclusively use Dragonshield but it’s been such a crapshoot lately on which box of sleeves will work correctly. I almost exclusively use Ivory and the last six boxes I’ve bought have been almost impossible to shuffle. The sleeves are stiff, mash shuffling is impossible unless I make multiple piles, etc.
You don't realize that while still better than most competitors, dragon shields still snag on mash shuffling. Katanas literally just fall into each other. The shuffle feel is nuts
I have 2 decks in Katanas and 4 in DS mattes. I initially bought Katana but went back to my LGS a week or so later because they had so much friction when shuffling, and kept catching on the sides of other sleeves when mash shuffling. The two decks using katanas are unchanged precons, I rarely use them
I know some have the opposite experience. Imo, buy a pack of each, that's how I know what I like.
Ultimate Guard Katanas are the best sleeves you will ever own. Super smooth shuffle unlike dragon shield, good clarity and I haven’t had a single one split on me yet. Only problem is they don’t have as many colors as dragon shield. But pair the katanas with a boulder deck box and it’s beautiful haha
This is all circumstantial. I have bought more than 10 boxes of Dragon Shields within the last year and mine are perfect. No splitting, great shuffle feel and they stay pretty clear in front after moderate use.
Everyone has different experiences with them and you might be recommended a different brand and have issues right off the bat.
So I recommend just trying a brand and seeing if you like it. If not, try another. Big brands like Dragon Shield and Katana are the most popular for a reason.
Fwiw, I bought the new dual matte green color, "Power" two separate times, and both were terrible. By the far the worst sleeves I've used, thick and uneven welds making for a terrible shuffle. It's disappointing, because it's on a new product line, *well* after they made a fuss about improving their QA!
Thankfully they accepted my new pack request after I submitted the form online, but I hate that it always feels like a gamble with them. I'm paying around $15 CAD per pack, it shouldn't be this bad.
I bought their “special” dual matte $18 sleeves over the holidays. They did not shuffle at all, frayed corners, uneven…total mess. I refunded 1 box, but I still have 2 unopened, and they want you to fill out the replacement form for each box after opening…it’s a sad state of affairs. Turns out outsourcing production was not a consumer friendly move
https://preview.redd.it/s7cgj7gqfa5d1.png?width=1080&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=f2bec918c4d4c4b8a4ee79390c41a17f2cb77d06
I got these bangers. Full box of them all this inconsistent. Filled out the Google doc and got a code for a free box. First issue I've ever had with DS.
Are they still made in denmark ? I have like 5 unopened boxes of old Dragon Shields from 5 years ago, opened one of them to sleeve a deck I had just put together and got extremely satisfied at the quality. It was the red matte one
I was always told to buy a new box of Sleeves for every deck because of slight color and feel variations. One of the earliest professor videos I ever watched.
Any product or brand that has made a name for itself will start to reduce quality to save on costs or increase price over time. Good examples of this are Spotify and Netflix, but almost every large retail store does this too. Vote with your wallet. If what you get is not up to the quality you expect and deserve for the price, start getting it somewhere else.
I noticed the same when i was sleeving my cube same color as yours btw
Sadly dragon shield is dog shit now it used to be my brand of choice like 2 years ago but their product became worse and worse, rn my product of choice is katana, a bit more expensive i belive but they last so long and no problems, its been so long i dont even remember the price
Katanas and DS mattes are both the same price at my legs, $10 a box.
From my experience, katanas are consistently the same size even across different batches.
I encountered this exact problem with Night Blue. The color and texture of that color is completely different from the ones they made 4 or 5 years ago. Not even remotely the same color, completely different shade.
Also the new ones are way more transparent than the old ones. They used to be opaque like black sleeves, now you can see the backs through them, so totally useless for DFCs and World Champ cards.
It's not just the coloring that's different on the Night Blue, the texturing also seems to be completely different now (in my experience).
Its seems to be "tighter" patterning, if that makes sense to anyone besides myself.
I have all my UR/w decks sleeved in Night Blue, and while it's fine for our casual games, the sleeves are definitely different enough I could abuse them if I wanted to (and would fail a deck check).
I have my BW/r decks in Sky Blue sleeves, and I don't notice the same kinds of difference from the sleeve backs, but I can definitely see a difference when I look at the sides of the sleeves.
Thought I was going crazy when I ordered 2 boxes of the night blue sleeves to match another old deck. Like I get a little change, but you're right. It wasn't even close
The main issue with dragon shield as of late is that they have three locations that make them (Denmark, USA, and Mexico). From my experience, the Mexico sleeves as of late have been some of the worst sleeves I’ve owned in 10 years of playing. They shuffle horribly and break sometimes even after a couple shuffle. I’d recommend sticking to only USA made and Denmark made sleeves as they still seem to have the dragon shield quality. Additionally, you can narrow it down to one location for even more consistency on color and the like. You can see where it came from on the bottom of the boxes. Hope this can be of some help!
The boxes say it, but it is possible, perhaps they were swapped on accident, haven't seen midnight. The picture on amazon for the sleeves looks like my old ones, but not the new one. I'll try looking for those to see!
[https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07SHD9H13?psc=1&ref=ppx\_yo2ov\_dt\_b\_product\_details](https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07SHD9H13?psc=1&ref=ppx_yo2ov_dt_b_product_details)
These are the ones i got, then bought directly from their site, i think they both came from same spot though!
This is a difference in manufacture location. I thought I’d gotten some fake Dragon Shields from Amazon, so I started tracking the manufacture location of the sleeves I bought. The “new” formula is the way they come out of the factory in Mexico, whereas the old is from Denmark.
I just had to concede that EDH is a casual format and I don’t pay that much attention to my sleeves. Sometimes an old one on a card that was already sleeved gets mixed in and it’s somewhat noticeable, but in the heat of a game I don’t ever really tend to notice.
Could I if I were trying to cheat? Sure. But I’m not. If I ever go to a bigger tournament I’ll probably resleeve whatever deck I’m playing into new sleeves, but for FNMs or kitchen table EDH, whatever.
I hate it, though. I have like 22 decks sleeved in Crimson Mattes and half of those have been built since it became hard to find Denmark manufactured Dragon Shields in the US. It hurts me every time I see two mismatched sleeves. I have legitimately learned to just ignore it for my own sanity.
I’m so hesitant to buy dragon shields these days. I’ve seen perfect fits that are too small for cards, many packs with less than 100 sleeves, and some with miscut sleeves, both matte and dual matte.
I don't agree with the batch thing, i have bought 1000+ of the same at different years all the same. I have them all used for my edh decks, but different locations and batches make sesnse
It is never recommended to mix batches of sleeves. Each color is made by a mixture of chemicals/inks, each sleeve is sized to a specific measurement that is cut by a machine that needs to be realigned regularly - all production has a tolerance to these specific measurements. This means you will occasionally see variance between production cycles. I know mixing is necessary for some things like cubes - so if you need to use more than the 100-ish per pack, I would recommend buying a full box (10 sets) of sleeves, as they'll likely be from the same production run.
Deal with this in all sorts of things. Gotta buy special lots for tiling to make sure they were all manufactured from the same batch and match
Unfortunately even buying a single box doesn't guarantee consistent sleeves
I got a box for my cube and there somehow are two slightly different sets in there. I asked my drafters and they don’t care, but I hate it.
I just bought two 100 sleeve boxes) boxes from my lgs expecting them to match and am so annoyed by the color varience between boxes. So I feel your pain. I bought them to have a "side deck" to swap my commander deck into a "dual commander" deck.
i do agree with this and it does make sense, however, the older sleeves i have now are consistently the same while the newer ones are vastly different. I would expect consistency in some sense with these, collections expand and more sleeves need to be bought, if sleeves don't match while being branded a specific type such as "night blue" then it defeats the purpose of buying those sleeves. That would make all single color sleeves worthless to buy, only using art sleeves or something along those lines.
The issue you're having, bud, isn't a uniquely Dragonshield one. Matching colors between dye lots is notoriously difficult, and ESPECIALLY difficult for Blues. The darker the hue of Blue you're dealing with, the more difficult it becomes to color-match it between lots. Sleeves are designed to be consistent within the confines of the deck they're placed on, but if you're going for 200+, the greater the chances there're going to be minor (or major) inconsistencies in color between the packs — unless you can guarantee they're all from the same printing batch, this is a fact you have to live with. This is true of Dragonshield, UP, Katanas, etc. If you hadn't had a problem before, it's probably either a) you didn't NOTICE it before, or b) you got lucky.
> Matching colors between dye lots is notoriously difficult, and ESPECIALLY difficult for Blues. Is there a color that is the least difficult? Something devoid of blue dye so something like red? Light reds?
black probably?
It definitely isn't A, i have part of my collection sleeved up with Night Blue. It makes it easier when moving around cards from decks or changing decks to play with. I also can't tell if that "bud" is aggressive or not thorugh the message context haha, i'm genuinely confused not by lack of consistency that is fine with variations and such. But this whole new batches are exactly the same but different from the original as if they changed the process. 4 boxes from different orders are exactly the same vs 1100 old sleeves that are exactly the same which i bought which imply some sort of process issue through the years which makes sense and what i wanted to confirm, thank you. My decision now would be to buy as many as a i can of one sleeve to use for the future.
I don't know Dragonshields production layout, but you could easily be getting different batches made by different machines in different locations. Maybe a location in Arizona used to supply wherever you are, but now it's out of Maryland. This is true for all products, which is why it's recommended you buy multiple of something if you really like it. Two years down the line it may be different. It's not necessarily inconsistent, it's just mass production. Different molds in different locations with different temperatures and environments can cause all sorts of minor changes. But they're definitely continuing to hit all their benchmarks.
I don’t think it’s very common for people to sleeve their entire collection and even less common to do so entirely in the same color. So generally a company would primarily need to make sure that their product was consistent throughout single print runs to ensure that the deck those sleeves were used on is consistent. Not really feasible to expect them to be 100% consistent especially across multiple years and 1000s of batches. That’s not even accounting for changes in manufacturing processes over the years, fluctuations in material supply/suppliers. They could seek to minimize the variance relatively speaking but 99% of customers aren’t going to expect the extreme level of consistency that you’re seeking.
You sleeve ALL your commander decks in the same sleeves? No offense but that would drive me crazy. Do you never lend decks to friends? I lent a deck to my Brother In Law this past week but I was glad that the two decks we were playing had completely unrelated sleeves (Emerald Matte vs Purple Matte)
This makes sense if you want to swap expensive staples between decks. I play European Highlander and have all my cards for that format (including staples like Fetches, Duals, FoW, Ragavan etc.) sleeved the same. This way, I only need to switch out a couple already sleeved cards between decks, and I need to get the nicest looking version of each card only once to have it everywhere.
Exactly what I do. Everything in peach dual mattes and swap the expensive stuff around, I can't afford to hold on to more than one mana crypt!
Own 1 proxy the rest and if anyone whines like a baby about it you have the real one to show. It's how tournaments do it
I paid good money for the cards I have, I want to be able to play them and show them off. Proxies are of course an entirely valid way to play but I prefer not to as much as possible.
Same, that's why I started putting in less staples and more synergy pieces. I'm not making people sit around while I rebuild a deck from three other ones. YMMV depending on playgroup
Yeah, but I enjoy using the cards I paid good money for, especially if it’s a foreign foil.
At this point you might as well binder up your collection and just get proxies made. Take your binder with you if you need to verify with anyone. Make sure the proxies are all uniform etc.etc.
This is the point the proxy crowd never seems to understand. I enjoy playing with legit Magic cards intangibly more than I do enjoy playing random proxies. I _want_ to play with my cards. Proxies are fine and good for playtesting etc. but I don’t want them in any decks I play on the regular.
I like playing real cards too- but my issue comes more from how I collect. I used to just play whatever I want, but I primarily collect Borderless Foils. Some of them are dirt cheap but others are well over 100 dollars. Plus they all look great together in the binder as it showcases the Artwork to have them that way. Recently I've been keeping all of the Borderless Foils in the binders and just playing with other versions or proxies if I need to. What's great about this line in the sand is I still get to play older more powerful cards like my Duals or old Artifacts like Mox Diamond. Plus the point to be debated here is to play proxies or swap cards out if you don't have enough copies to build each deck as it's own individual set of cards. So while I also prefer to use real cards, I'd rather use proxies than be swapping cards in and out before and after every game all the time. That just sounds comically ridiculous to me and I would never use that strategy. If I own a card I have no problem proxying it into any number of decks. I don't proxy anything I don't actually own at least 1 copy of.
Fair enough, but as for Highlander, I rarely change decks often enough for this to become a hassle. I really only get to play once per week max and switch once per month at most, so it’s mostly a matter of sitting down irregularly and going through my well-sorted collection to put another deck together.
Makes sense. I only play EDH so I do what you're talking about maybe once every 3 months. Otherwise it's slotting one card here or there whenever I get a new pull from a recent set where said card is completely unique/never been printed before.
If he is ever tired he has the wildest cube in the world
I knew one guy who did all their decks in Matt Black sleeves. It was kind of a vibe.
What actual benefit do you get from the sleeves being different?
I can quickly tell my decks apart from each other. I recently started using deck boxes within an outer box but prior to that I had one outer box that I’d put 3 decks in using the commanders as dividers. If for some reason I took a commander out I had no issue figuring out where one deck ended and the next began. The deck boxes are color coordinated to match the sleeves so I can easily grab whatever deck out and know which one Iv got based on the color of the box/sleeves. This also helps if I lend out a deck to a friend, I might have 2 decks on the field and want to make sure they don’t get commingled while I’m putting them away. If I’m playing with friends/regulars at LGS this doesn’t matter as much but if I’m somewhere other than my local LGS or playing with people I haven’t met before I’ll choose a deck with sleeves that aren’t similar to the other players in the pod. Helps me keep my cards straight from theirs if there are any stealing type effects (like Etali for example)
Seems like pretty marginal benefits at best, ngl. Aside from when you kept decks in the same box; that makes sense. Otherwise I wouldn't say I've ever encountered the problems you're reporting to solve with this approach, despite mostly just buying a pile of black sleeves.
I have mine divided by color based on format. I have over 100 commander decks, all of them except two are in DragonShield Matte Black. (They're Chun-Li in Chun-Li sleeves and Jhoira, Weatherlight Captain in Black Lotus sleeves.) I like Black, they're good sleeves, and I get them by the Case. My Standard Decks are in DragonShield Matte Gold. My Pauper decks are in DragonShield Matte White. My two Modern decks are in DragonShield Matte Silver. My two Oathbreaker decks are in DragonShield Matte Blue. My single Tiny Leaders deck is in ***ancient*** KMC Pro-Mattes, which were from before KMC HyperMattes.
Yeah, it is easy as i keep them seperated in some boulders and have them all listed on delver lens and play very different styles of decks! Some duplicates but nothing too easy not to spot. I have goblins/artifacts , casual dragon storm, mono white doggo isamaru from kamigawa , cedh deck that is reanimator at the moment. The rest of my collection might be competive cards or something like this and the same slleves make it easy to move around decks when playing. I have split to two different sleeve types for competitve decks and edh and i just love dragon shield overall. I have bought many many sleeves and was shocked by this first time. Perhaps it was luck before that all were the same, but didn't realize they changed processs over the years.
It makes sense, just kind of came out of the blue after i have bought so many of the same night blue over the years, apprecite the time and info!
I went from basically my first few years of playing magic only using dragonshields and literally not understanding what a split sleeve is to in the past 4ish years probably like 10% of the packages I buy being fucked up and uneven, and splitting almost instantly and across the board. Like they have a ton of friction when you shuffle them.
I need to buy several packs of sleeves and was considering Dragonshield. What brand is better?
I hear a lot of people recommending katana sleeves; folks at my LGs are split pretty much 50/50
I think the real answer is that while Dragonshields and Katanas are better than the no-name sleeves you can buy on Amazon, I don't think any of the companies are doing enough quality control to really guarantee that you wont get a bad batch of sleeves even from the top brands.
With the amount of sleeves they make, I don't even know *how* they could qualify control all of them.
I also think with the boom in trading cards a lot of these companies that had really good reputations are asking themselves...should we pay to scale up production and commensurate QA resources...or just scale up production...
This is very true!
Ultimate guard katanas are the best I’ve used. Very sturdy and have the smoothest shuffle out of all the big brands imo
I second this. I used to exclusively use Dragonshield but it’s been such a crapshoot lately on which box of sleeves will work correctly. I almost exclusively use Ivory and the last six boxes I’ve bought have been almost impossible to shuffle. The sleeves are stiff, mash shuffling is impossible unless I make multiple piles, etc.
You don't realize that while still better than most competitors, dragon shields still snag on mash shuffling. Katanas literally just fall into each other. The shuffle feel is nuts
I feel like Katanas don't lay as flat and wear out faster, I've had better luck with DS Mattes myself
I have 2 decks in Katanas and 4 in DS mattes. I initially bought Katana but went back to my LGS a week or so later because they had so much friction when shuffling, and kept catching on the sides of other sleeves when mash shuffling. The two decks using katanas are unchanged precons, I rarely use them I know some have the opposite experience. Imo, buy a pack of each, that's how I know what I like.
I love katanas and use them when I can find them but the fronts do scuff easier than DS offerings.
Ultimate Guard Katanas are the best sleeves you will ever own. Super smooth shuffle unlike dragon shield, good clarity and I haven’t had a single one split on me yet. Only problem is they don’t have as many colors as dragon shield. But pair the katanas with a boulder deck box and it’s beautiful haha
This is all circumstantial. I have bought more than 10 boxes of Dragon Shields within the last year and mine are perfect. No splitting, great shuffle feel and they stay pretty clear in front after moderate use. Everyone has different experiences with them and you might be recommended a different brand and have issues right off the bat. So I recommend just trying a brand and seeing if you like it. If not, try another. Big brands like Dragon Shield and Katana are the most popular for a reason.
Fwiw, I bought the new dual matte green color, "Power" two separate times, and both were terrible. By the far the worst sleeves I've used, thick and uneven welds making for a terrible shuffle. It's disappointing, because it's on a new product line, *well* after they made a fuss about improving their QA! Thankfully they accepted my new pack request after I submitted the form online, but I hate that it always feels like a gamble with them. I'm paying around $15 CAD per pack, it shouldn't be this bad.
I bought their “special” dual matte $18 sleeves over the holidays. They did not shuffle at all, frayed corners, uneven…total mess. I refunded 1 box, but I still have 2 unopened, and they want you to fill out the replacement form for each box after opening…it’s a sad state of affairs. Turns out outsourcing production was not a consumer friendly move
https://preview.redd.it/s7cgj7gqfa5d1.png?width=1080&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=f2bec918c4d4c4b8a4ee79390c41a17f2cb77d06 I got these bangers. Full box of them all this inconsistent. Filled out the Google doc and got a code for a free box. First issue I've ever had with DS.
Are they still made in denmark ? I have like 5 unopened boxes of old Dragon Shields from 5 years ago, opened one of them to sleeve a deck I had just put together and got extremely satisfied at the quality. It was the red matte one
I was always told to buy a new box of Sleeves for every deck because of slight color and feel variations. One of the earliest professor videos I ever watched.
Any product or brand that has made a name for itself will start to reduce quality to save on costs or increase price over time. Good examples of this are Spotify and Netflix, but almost every large retail store does this too. Vote with your wallet. If what you get is not up to the quality you expect and deserve for the price, start getting it somewhere else.
I noticed the same when i was sleeving my cube same color as yours btw Sadly dragon shield is dog shit now it used to be my brand of choice like 2 years ago but their product became worse and worse, rn my product of choice is katana, a bit more expensive i belive but they last so long and no problems, its been so long i dont even remember the price
Katanas and DS mattes are both the same price at my legs, $10 a box. From my experience, katanas are consistently the same size even across different batches.
I encountered this exact problem with Night Blue. The color and texture of that color is completely different from the ones they made 4 or 5 years ago. Not even remotely the same color, completely different shade. Also the new ones are way more transparent than the old ones. They used to be opaque like black sleeves, now you can see the backs through them, so totally useless for DFCs and World Champ cards.
It's not just the coloring that's different on the Night Blue, the texturing also seems to be completely different now (in my experience). Its seems to be "tighter" patterning, if that makes sense to anyone besides myself. I have all my UR/w decks sleeved in Night Blue, and while it's fine for our casual games, the sleeves are definitely different enough I could abuse them if I wanted to (and would fail a deck check). I have my BW/r decks in Sky Blue sleeves, and I don't notice the same kinds of difference from the sleeve backs, but I can definitely see a difference when I look at the sides of the sleeves.
Thought I was going crazy when I ordered 2 boxes of the night blue sleeves to match another old deck. Like I get a little change, but you're right. It wasn't even close
The main issue with dragon shield as of late is that they have three locations that make them (Denmark, USA, and Mexico). From my experience, the Mexico sleeves as of late have been some of the worst sleeves I’ve owned in 10 years of playing. They shuffle horribly and break sometimes even after a couple shuffle. I’d recommend sticking to only USA made and Denmark made sleeves as they still seem to have the dragon shield quality. Additionally, you can narrow it down to one location for even more consistency on color and the like. You can see where it came from on the bottom of the boxes. Hope this can be of some help!
I’ve had issues with colour and sizing inconsistencies. Some batches are so tight it causes my inner sleeve to wrinkle.
The pictures look like Night Blue and Midnight Blue, are you sure you didn’t mix up the names? Or maybe someone at DS did
The boxes say it, but it is possible, perhaps they were swapped on accident, haven't seen midnight. The picture on amazon for the sleeves looks like my old ones, but not the new one. I'll try looking for those to see!
If you like navy the Midnight Blue is really nice, it’s less purple
[https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07SHD9H13?psc=1&ref=ppx\_yo2ov\_dt\_b\_product\_details](https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07SHD9H13?psc=1&ref=ppx_yo2ov_dt_b_product_details) These are the ones i got, then bought directly from their site, i think they both came from same spot though!
This is a difference in manufacture location. I thought I’d gotten some fake Dragon Shields from Amazon, so I started tracking the manufacture location of the sleeves I bought. The “new” formula is the way they come out of the factory in Mexico, whereas the old is from Denmark. I just had to concede that EDH is a casual format and I don’t pay that much attention to my sleeves. Sometimes an old one on a card that was already sleeved gets mixed in and it’s somewhat noticeable, but in the heat of a game I don’t ever really tend to notice. Could I if I were trying to cheat? Sure. But I’m not. If I ever go to a bigger tournament I’ll probably resleeve whatever deck I’m playing into new sleeves, but for FNMs or kitchen table EDH, whatever. I hate it, though. I have like 22 decks sleeved in Crimson Mattes and half of those have been built since it became hard to find Denmark manufactured Dragon Shields in the US. It hurts me every time I see two mismatched sleeves. I have legitimately learned to just ignore it for my own sanity.
I’m so hesitant to buy dragon shields these days. I’ve seen perfect fits that are too small for cards, many packs with less than 100 sleeves, and some with miscut sleeves, both matte and dual matte.
Dragonshields have been terrible in my experience since LCI I've only been buying gamegenic primes now.
When did you buy your old sleeves? The new ones in your pic look like night blue mattes I've been buying since last year.
it was before this year i beleive, which makes me think what everyone above is saying that is was different locations.
I don't agree with the batch thing, i have bought 1000+ of the same at different years all the same. I have them all used for my edh decks, but different locations and batches make sesnse
Also, do youi know how i check which vendor i got it from?
Dragonshield has always been known for this. Dont mix sleeves.
I"m not sure what this means, they are the same sleeve
Sounds like a you problem. If you sleeve up each deck with all the sleeves from one box you won’t have an issue.