Arcane Tinman Dragon Shield Matte: Wei (100 Stuck) Cards

I really love the color of these, that copper metallic feel is absolutely sick and does feel reminiscent of what I imagine a copper or bronze dragons scale color to be. Lost my first 3 games with the deck I played but won’t take away a star for that. They shuffle well, work with my KMC perfect fit sleeves to create a very good seal. They feel good and in my experience they last a while. 100 pack lets me make 2x40 card decks which is nice since I have to buy less sleeves. Keeps the cards from bending after being unboxed as well. These fit into my storage box, have not shown signs of wear. Between these and my katana sleeves, I prefer the feel of the Katanas and the look of these. If I were to buy another set of either, honestly the price would be the decider (I play games that have low shuffle, but if I was to play a shuffle heavy game I would use the katanas they shuffle better in my opinion.

I have always loved Dragon Shield card sleeves, the sleeves are an appropriate thickness to not be too thin like cheaper sleeves, but not too thick so they can't fit in most deck boxes. The material is a nice study material to withstand repeated shuffling without splitting, the cards are a little slick at first, but the more you use them they will start to stick to the deck a little better and not want to slide all over the place, this is good for new sleeves.

Recently bought these sleeves for double sleeving my modern mtg deck but had heard a few things about dragon shields being frustrating and difficult to sleeve doubley (is that a word?), and I wanted to address some of those complaints given my experience with these, because I've found a few work-arounds and noticed some things that I wish I knew going into the sleeving process that make it super do-able and can help you enjoy the best sleeves on the market as well as the added security of double sleeving. Here are some hacks that I worked out in my sleeving process.... (using KMC Perfect Size for the inner sleeves) 1. Use a hard surface to press the sleeved card into the second sleeve - so the most common issue I had was when pushing the sleeved card into the second sleeve, my pressing would force the card to slide out of the inner sleeve and into the bottom part of the second sleeve without being covered anymore. So at the top of the final double sleeved card now there would be a floppy, empty inner sleeve that you couldn't force into the Dragon Shield sleeve because it wasn't holding a solid card anymore. On way to fix this was to flip the card over when it was half way through the second sleeve and use a table or something to push it evenly through the second sleeve. This is way harder to describe in type than it is to show, but if you figure this out it will make life a little easier for sleeving. 2. KMC inner sleeves are NOT that consistent - This was a massive revelation for me, if you have a particular card that is being super stubborn and keeps sliding out of the inner sleeve as you push it through the Dragon Shield, try using a different KMC inner sleeve. It's crazy how often this was the problem. In my testing the inconsistency was never once on the Dragon Shield side, but always always on KMC. I would say just buy extra inner sleeves so you can cull out all the janky oversized ones you find and maybe save those for cards you need to ship or decide to sleeve with more generous outer sleeves. I saved mine for Ultra Pro Eclipse, which are way easier to double sleeve but I don't like as much as Dragons. 3. You can stretch the sleeves a little... kinda - I'm sure this isn't recommended by Dragon Shield or by super fastidious players who probably want an absolutely ideal seal on their sleeved cards, but I found that if you have an inner sleeve that absolutely WILL NOT go into an outer sleeve (to repeat I am positive the issue here is the KMC being randomly a little bigger than average and not Dragon Shield being smaller) I found that putting 2 or 3 unsleeved cards into the sleeve and pushing them all the way to the bottom, then taking them out, sufficiently stretches the Dragon Shield enough to slide a sleeved single card in later. I would work out a system where I would stuff 5 Dragon Shields with 3 basic lands and set them aside while I put inner sleeves on a few cards, then after a minute or two I took out the lands and then my sleeved cards would slide in much easier. Not so easy that I felt like I completely deformed the Dragon Shield sleeve, but about on par with an inner/outer sleeve pairing that happened to be randomly smooth and easy, because along the way you'll run into a lot of those as well. 4. Sleeve as best you can, get air out, then sleeve again later - if you have a card/inner/outer sleeve combo that's just being super difficult and don't want to stuff the sleeve to stretch it, another way to stretch is to just double sleeve as best as you can, even if there is a little wind sock of inner sleeve still poking out of the top, and then smoosh the cards under a stack of books to force out the air for a few hours, then unsleeve and resleeve them again. Pushing the air out I find not only flattens the sleeved cards, but also makes the inner/outer sleeves a little more agreeable with one another. I put books on my fiished sleeves anyway to get that extra air out anyway, it makes the deck way smaller, flatter and less likely to tip over when stacked as a library. As a product review, I prefer Dragon Shield because they come in sets of 100 and have a really high quality relative to other brands I've used. It doesn't hurt that they also come in more interesting colors than other brands, and these new purple ones are pretty striking. They have an almost metallic sheen to them on the back, but still textured and nice. I really like them with a black deck personally. But again, hearing about the double sleeving issue was almost a deal-breaker for me because my preference is to always double up to protect from potential water damage, and if these sleeves were incompatible with that they would be useless to me.

I play the Pokémon TCG casually, so up until this purchase I never felt the need to buy anything more then what came in the ETB's. I so wish I would have bought Dragon Shield a lot sooner. Shuffling my deck feels so easy and not as difficult as the other ones. They glide in my hands when shuffling and I don't have the issue of cards being stuck together when trying to shuffle. I can't go back to the other brands, will definitely be buying more and even getting some for my friend who doesn't have sleeves for her deck. I highly recommend anyone get this if shuffling is a struggle, it made my least favorite part about the game be alot more enjoyable!

What can I say? They're the gold-standard for a reason. They sleeve well, they stack well, they look and feel amazing, and their price is competitive. I love that they're super thin, which makes them less slippery than others I have tried. The sleeves look exactly as advertised. I love the color selection; I'd always appreciate more options, since I have several decks, and I like to really dial in the vibe, including with the color of my sleeves; but that said, Dragon Shield does already have a large selection of colors to choose from. I'd recommend these to any Magic player, whether you're brand new, or not.

Dragon shields are the best! Perfect shuffle feel and high quality

Great quality & color is perfect!

Don't get me wrong great sleeves. However one is rather bent. I can't figure out how to flatten it out. I bought these for my commander deck so I'm glad I only play casually. Still unfortunate