A question for collectors case owners.

I was wondering, what card sleeves do you recommend?  I own every set for SotM from EE to Obliveaon and all the mini expansions in between currently stored in the Collectors Case unsleeved and would like some recommendations.  I already know I will need roughly 4000 sleeves (I own The Cauldron and keep it in the EE box) so price will be a slight issue since I'm starting from scratch.  Also if anyone has recommendations for protecting the oversized villain cards I would appreciate it.

With so many cards between this and other games I had to be frugal. I use UltraPro penny sleeves 2 5/8 X 3 5/8. They fit in the case with no problems. You can get them in a variety of amounts from many sources.

I recommend no sleeves =)

You sir are a renegade, or your friends have very non-sticky hands

My cards aren't sleeved either...

For me the thing is this: the further back the expansion, the worse-off my cards are. I could sleeve everything, but that would be like folding dirty clothes and then saving them in a dry-cleaning bag next to your formal wear.

If they ever do the art re-vamp of the core game then I'll invest in sleeves, but until then it's kinda pointless to sleeve the older cards.

I'm with feniab, I use Ultra Pro penny sleeves for most of my collection.  (The character cards and OblivAeon-related decks are sleeved in Standard sleeves, but that's because the (1) penny sleeves don't fit nicely in the mini binders I use to store my character cards, and (2) OblivAeon is special.)

For the oversized cards, Ultra Pro sells 4" x 6" Soft Sleeves that work quite well.

What are the mini binders you use?

I use two Ultro Pro 4-Pocket PRO Binders.  Each page holds/displays 4 cards, with pages being double-sided.

I have all the foil character cards in a blue/black binder and the non-foil character cards in a black one.  The binders are great for choosing a hero... just flip through, look at the different versions, grab the one you want.  There are also definitely times where I just flip through the binders and admire the artwork.

The one downside is that the binders don't fit in the collectors case, so you should be aware of that.

I used KMC Perfect Size since I was already fond of them from my Magic: the Gathering collecting days.

For the oversized villain cards, I agree with dprcooke, Ultra Pro Soft Sleeves turned out to work nicely.

And re: sleeve versus not-sleeve, I share a mindset with a Sentinels fan I once saw say (on Reddit maybe it was?) that sleeving is as much for ease of shuffling as it is for protection. A large part of why I started picking up sleeves for my Magic cards is because my initial games of trying to shuffle them unsleeved was so incredibly awkward/annoying.

Interesting, I find shuffling sleeved cards to be super annoying. I much prefer to shuffle unsleeved cards because you can do a proper riffle. To each their own =)

Riffle shuffling is good for stuff like playing cards you can easily replace when they inevitably get bent/curved (as happened to many a deck of cards mom and I have owned over the years), but the "mash shuffle" is generally the one favored in Magic and similar games where you want to keep your cards in reasonable shape. And it's much faster and easier to do that with sleeved cards as I found out the hard way in my first few games.

Also once you get the hang of it, mash shuffling is really fast, which is handy in any game where you have to shuffle frequently... as I also found out in my first few Magic games. XP

I use nicer sleeves than penny, but wouldn't recommend the particular brand/size, as they are too tall (and not always a consistent height). I continued to use them once I'd started using them, but probably shouldn't have.

I do not use sleeves in this game. (I do use them for any CCG/LCG I play, but they are usually required for tournaments, and I want to a) break the sleeves in so they stay stacked - ie, rough them up through play as many varieties are very slippery when first put together and b) get used to how the cards feel sleeved while playing)

For recomendations, (in order to stay mostly on topic) I am a huge fan of Dragon Shields and KMC Hyper Matte. However, both of those are rather expensive and not worthwhile in the pursuit of several thousand cards worth of sleeves required for Sentinels. Penny seems best. (Dragon are usually 10-15 per 100, and KMC are usually 10-15 per 80)

My philosophy on board game sleeving is two fold.

a) If I play it enough that I might consider sleeves a worthwhile investment (as with Sentinels) then I am not against just buying another copy if the game becomes so destroyed it needs it

b) If I don't play it enough, then I'm not going to spend money on it.

This philosophy may change when my 10 month old daughter is old enough to start playing games with me.  Even then...

As for shuffling... I do a side riffle with sleeves (because otherwise you'll end up getting some cards caught in the open end) - a technique I picked up in the original L5R CCG days. (So instead of the two halfs of the decks against each other ends (short sides together), they are side by side along the long side of the card. )I can even bridge this way. It does take a bit more force, but doing a proper Riffle+Bridge shuffle, while it does start to break down the cardboard over hundreds of shuffles, does not leave a bow. Plus, as stated above, this helps rough up those glossy dragon shields (and even the Hyper Matte's are slippery at first) so they stay stacked in a deck.

Sentinels cards are easily replaced if they get damaged. I've riffle shuffled mine for years and they are totally fine. The only bend in the cards is from the expansions that came that way (Villains of the Multiverse original printing IIRC?).

Some of us don’t have enough budget to drop the cost of board games on a regular basis, unfortunately. shrug

I freely admit you’re more adept than I am, then, as cards bend on me after I riffle them. That experience being common and the desire for speed of shuffling is a lot of why “mash shuffling” became so popular in Magic and other communities. shrug

I’m going to likely also sleeve my copy of ODD too with some of my now leftover stash of sleeves because those too proved to be bending on me if I riffled them and hard to shuffle via other methods.

More power to you if you can make it work your own ways, but many of us find it easier and more convenient on ourselves to sleeve things.

I understand, and many of us find it easier and more convenient to not sleeve things, too =). I'm not denigrating your choices.

Imagine drawing a card.

But it’s covered in plastic.

this post made by no sleeves gang

I used dragon shields for the varients both foil and non-foil.  Penny sleeves for the rest.  My main game group meets at a tap room so given our table space sleeves were a must.

That reminds me that the foil heroes and my small handful of original promos I have in a collector's binder along with my other nerdy trading card things I've collected over the years. They would fit in the Collector's Case now that I own it, but I prefer to leave them in the binder. (The hero variant pack cards are in the Case tho.)

I sleeve my hero cards and variant cards to keep them nice and shiny (especially with the foil cards). I also keep all my variants alongside the hero deck they belong to, rather than in a "variant" section in the back, and having them sleeved allows me to quickly visually separate those cards from the unsleeved hero deck.

I don't sleeve the rest of the cards as I'm with MigrantP and shuffling sleeved cards just doesn't feel right. But then, I've played poker for decades, I'm very comfortable with riffle shuffling cards and mash shuffling seems wrong.

I haven't sleeved my cards yet. I'm still looking for an option that I won't have to repeatedly replace, but can still see the card backs. But I have sleeved most of my deck building games and for those I use BCW Deck Guards.

I would second the KMC Perfect Fit options. They are inexpensive, fit the sentinels cards really well, and aren't super thick so store in the collectors case without concern or having to shift dekcs to different drawers.  I don't sleeve all my games but I will on any that sees regular play and we play Sentinels nearly every week.

As far as just buying a new set, right now that is an option, but when I first got into SoTM, it was through trying the Steam Game to decide if I wanted to back OblivAeon. I really loved the game and wanted to play right away, but shopping around most place were sold out. The only place I could find any expansion was The TinkerPack (Patrick Rothfuss' charity driven webstore) to get Rook City/Infernal Relics box. So while right now its easy to get replacement sets that not always the case with the Ebbs and Flows of print runs.

Plus if you're like me and end up playing probably too late into the night, so aren't very vigilante about putting everything up after the final game. It can be really frustrating to replace a whole game because your stupid feline companion decided to stick its head in an unfinished glass of water and ruin a handful of cards. Much nicer to just dry a table and some plastic.