MTG Alter: Prismacolor Marker Bolted Border Brass Man

I've done a couple of quick "alters" on my MTG cards before using black Sharpies and ink pens. It's usually just a doodle, something quick to commemorate an event or fancy up my signature. But actually coloring on a card is something I've been wanting to try for a while. Thanks to the pandemic, I've got some time on my hands to try new things.

Up first, I raided my kids' art supplies. I grabbed everything that looked like it could be useful including paints, brushes, and markers with lots of different colors and tips. My kids love art, so they get lots of art supplies for gifts. I'm not what you would call naturally talented in the art department. I took a few art classes in high school, but that's about it. This will become obvious as the post continues.

To begin, I took a cheap card out but one that I knew I would enjoy seeing when I played casual games. As this is my very first attempt at something like this, I thought it would be best to choose a card that I wouldn't have fits over ruining. But I did want to use a card that I might actually play with if it turned out okay. Enter Brass Man. I love this card! A 1/3 for only 1 mana?! I was so pumped when I first saw this card. I remember jamming four of them into my deck along with four Ornithopters. So many robots!

The idea on this step was to erase the surface of the card where I wanted to paint and draw. In this case, I was focused on coloring the border. I don't think this eraser did quite enough roughing up to give the paint something to stick to, but it did remove anything that was lingering on the surface from more than 20 years of play.

Up next, I mixed some paints and brushed out the white border. This is not easy. For people who do this regularly and make it look good, my hat's off to you. I kept trying to let it dry and mix in more colors, but matching up colors is tricky! And I'm not patient. Maybe keeping a hairdryer around to help it dry faster would have helped.

My original plan was to use paint to lay down a foundation of color, then use markers on top to add some texture. Well, it added texture all right. The marker must have something in it that dissolves paint because it started to gum up on the surface as the paint and marker mixed. This turned out to work in my favor later, but it was entirely unexpected when it happened.

At this point, I started trying to add colors using the markers to build up different areas with yellow, brown, orange, and similar shades. I was able to remove quite a bit of the gummy paint just by waiting for it to dry a bit and then running the eraser over the border again. I figured I didn't have anything to lose at this point. That's what commitment feels like.

The Prismacolor markers seem really nice to work with. They have two tips, one on each side, that are more like paintbrushes than markers.

After lots of rounds with the larger markers, I switched to these fine tip Prismacolor markers. This allowed me to draw in the "bolt" details on the corners. I thought the black marker would draw on top of the color that was already there, but it just sort of mixed all in. I bet the ability to mix marker colors is a positive for an artist that understands how to make that work. For me, it was just a lot of trouble since it made the lines look blurry.

Eventually, I got to the point where I didn't think I was making it better. So, I signed it with my trusty black and silver Sharpies. The Sharpies lay down color that seems to "stick" better than the Prismacolor markers. And the Sharpie colors don't seem to bleed into each other or mix. I haven't tried the colorful Sharpies, though. I have some. Maybe I'll try those next.

Here it is without a sleeve on it. The border ended up picking up a lot of the colors in the Brass Man artwork, including the irregularity of the surface of the metal man with the dark brown, light brown, orange, and yellow highlights. The way the marker mixed with the paint gave it more texture than I think I would have been brave enough to try to create myself with markers.

And here's the same finished card in a double-sleeve. I use matte sleeves, front and back.

Here's the same card next to a copy of Brass Man with no alteration. Comparing side-by-side like this, I actually like the way the brown tones came out on the border of the altered Brass Man. It looks a bit like the card is bolted down to a piece of burnished brass. Neat! I'd love to see the same effect done by someone who has more experience and talent.

It was a fun project. It would be something fun to try with the kids. And I know that when I draw this card off the top, it'll have a nice memory attached to it. This is the perfect card to have signed by everyone the next time we are able to get together and play some Magic.

Old School MTG: First Webcam Game

I've been watching the webcam Old School community for a while now, but never took the plunge. I finally connected with my friend Ben to play a few games through a webcam and it worked well enough. Camera placement, lighting, video compression, and communication are all important factors to get right and I didn't want to subject a stranger to me trying to figure it all out!

The main thing is to be able to recognize almost all relevant Old School cards by sight and remember the current oracle working and rulings. Easy. In my limited experience, the card art is all you can see on the camera clearly. So, not only do we get nostalgia from collecting the cards with the original artwork, but it makes games over a webcam easier. Bonus!

While there are a lot of Old School players in the world, the world is a big place. Unless you are lucky enough to live close to one of the hubs where OS games are played regularly, playing over a webcam might be the only way to jam games between trips to events. It also gives you the opportunity to play against a range of opponents and decks and format variations, which is something you don't get even if you have a dedicated group or community to play with in person.

Of course, playing by webcam is not quite the same as playing in person. In some ways, it's more comfortable and efficient. Heck, you're in your own house. But, if you can get out to gatherings to play (once this pandemic is over), that still feels like an important part of the experience. It's not quite the same over a webcam, but certainly better than nothing.

Ben played his Ernhamgeddon deck. I played my colorless Shops deck. Icy Manipulator is the MVP. We played 3 or 4 games with no sideboards in about an hour. I've been playing MTG with Ben for more than 20 years, so we communicate well and we both know that the other person isn't up to any shenanigans. I'm sure that 99% of OS players are cool, but I'm not sure how it would have played out against a perfect stranger halfway across the world. That's the next thing to find out!

The Truth About Dragon Shield Perfect Fit Sealable Inner Card Sleeves

Dragon Shield Sealable Inner Sleeves

I'm one of those guys. I had been collecting sports cards for years before MTG came out, so when I started playing MTG the first thing I did was put all of my cards into penny sleeves. Shuffling penny sleeves is terrible, but I just couldn't imagine playing with my cards without some kind of protection.

Shortly thereafter, thicker sleeves were released that were made for shuffling! I bought hundreds of matching black sleeves so that all of my cards could be protected. The original sleeves were glossy and "sticky" from being too slick. But they worked.



In those early years, I saw plenty of players shuffle MTG decks like playing cards. You can still see the shuffle wear on old cards. It follows a pattern. If a player was careful, they could get away without bending the card too much. But it would still have tell-tale shuffle wear and a slight bend. Other players were hard on the cards. Creases were common. Even if you used card sleeves, bending the cards to shuffle them would eventually create minor creases or cracks on the surface of the cards. Over-hand shuffling or pile shuffling avoided this because the cards were never bent in the process, but it took longer. And because the old sleeves were so sticky/slick, it was difficult to get a satisfying shuffle.



Sometimes people would over-hand shuffle with no card sleeves and it would drive me crazy. Card edges would get dinged up immediately. Sleeves were necessary if you wanted your cards to stay in good condition. But even using sleeves, you had to shuffle in a particular way to avoid creases and bends.

And then there was the problem of the "open" top end of the sleeve.

In those early years, we didn't use play mats. I used to bring a small towel to put down on the table, but it would catch on the edges of the sleeves and made tapping difficult. On the plus side, it saved my sleeves from getting dirty from the grime on the tables at the local gaming store. The store didn't care what players did to those tables. They were just providing a gaming surface. So, there was always spilled pop or hand grease or god-knows-what on the tables. Play mats helped with this by giving you a portable clean surface.

Even so, taking your cards from one place to another, playing on different surfaces, playing without your hands being completely clean, loaning your deck out to other players, and not having secure places to store your cards for transport meant that dust and dirt could slowly work its way into the top of the sleeve.

This small amount of dust that collected on the top edge of the card was obvious after a while. Even re-sleeving your deck regularly didn't fix the problem because the card itself would get micro-scratches during play. You can see this wear pattern on old cards where 95% of the card looks great, but the top edge is hazy and scratched from being worn down. Every once in a while, a large piece of dirt would slip in through the top and start scratching the surface of the card during shuffling.

Inner sleeves to the rescue!



Eventually, thin inner sleeves came onto the market. This solved the problem of dust ruining the top of the card because you could slip the card into an inner sleeve upside down and then slip the sleeved card into an outer sleeve right side up. In this configuration, there's almost no way for dust/dirt to get all the way in the outer sleeve and inner sleeve to start damaging the cards. Whew. Problem solved.

I'm a stickler for keeping my cards protected. I'm also the kind of guy who changes his decks around. Rather than re-sleeving cards all the time, I bought thousands of KMC Perfect Fit inner sleeves to go with my thousands of matching matte black outer sleeves.

This brings us up to modern times. Outer sleeves are way better now. They don't split as often. They are matte, so they over-hand shuffle better. The inner sleeves work, but they aren't super-consistent. And sleeving the cards is tedious. If you get complacent during the process, it's possible to bend the card or rip the sleeves.

The problem is that the tolerances are tight when it comes to inner sleeves. If the sleeve is slightly too tight, pushing the card into the sleeves takes a surprising amount of pressure. It's entirely possible to bend the card. The other problem with the tolerances is that even if you get the card into the inner sleeve, pushing the card into the outer sleeve takes some practice because the card will want to slip back out of the inner sleeve.

Anyone who's sleeved up an entire deck of card this way will know what I'm talking about. You end up with cards where the inner sleeve has slipped off slightly and you need to start over. You can use another card to shoehorn the target card into the sleeve, but there's a chance you'll rip the outer sleeve with that method.

In other words, if you are careful you can get all the cards sleeved and protected. It's pretty good, but not perfect.

Which brings me to the Perfect Fits sealable inner card sleeves from Dragon Shield.

I've been tracking these sleeves since before they were released. The product certainly looked clever. But even when it came out, I was dubious. I'll admit that part of my resistance was not wanting to re-sleeve all of my cards. If I could get back all the time I've spent re-sleeving cards in my life, I'd be a lot younger.

But I've been collecting more Old School cards and I thought it was time to take the level of protection up a notch. I already keep the cards in a fire-rated safe, so the level of insanity has already reached quite high.

I ordered a ton of Dragon Shield Perfect Fit Sealables and went to town. It took hours. I'm talking about all day amounts of time to re-sleeve the cards. Was it worth it?

Here's the truth.

If your collection is starting to get valuable and you are considering taking the next step to use inner sleeve, start with these. It'll save you a ton of time in the end. They are objectively better.

If your collection is already valuable and you want to get that extra 5% of protection from having a sealable sleeve, go for it. They are better, but the difference is marginal.

Think of it this way. Maybe your Old School deck has some dual lands, a mox, some beta rares, and a bunch of unlimited cards. It adds up quick. The price difference between a regular perfect fit sleeve and these sealable sleeves is almost nothing. So, if you can get even just a little bit more protection for a negligible amount of additional cost relative to the thing you are protecting, that's a good plan.

What do these sleeves offer?

Basically, they close off that bottom edge of the inner sleeve. This addresses two key problems with the normal perfect fit inner sleeves. The sealables have a flap that you can use to push the card into the sleeve. It even makes a satisfying tuck when you know you have the card seated properly. No more accidentally bending your cards as you push them into the inner sleeve. The second thing is that when you push the sleeved card into the outer sleeve, it can't slip out of the inner sleeve. The "seal" on the bottom stops it from pushing out. This makes sleeving and re-sleeving easier.

I've seen tests where people sleeve up the cards and dunk them in water. Let's hope that situation never happens to any of us in real life. The worst situation I've ever had happen to me was someone opening a pop and spraying it all over the table while we were in the middle of a game. Everything was sticky, but the combination of outer and inner sleeves protected the cards just fine. I'm not sure the extra flap on the sealable would have made a difference.

These three cards are sleeved with KMC perfect fit.

This card is sleeved with Dragon Shield sealable.

The one other thing I like about these sealable sleeves is that they are super consistent. When the card is in one of these sleeves, it's in exactly the same spot as any other card in the sleeve. When you put it into an out sleeve, it's in exactly the same spot as every other card. It's a small thing, but it drives me crazy with the old inner sleeves when cards would sometimes sit slightly higher in the outer sleeve and sometimes slightly lower. It's not enough to matter. But I can tell the difference.

Here's what I don't like about the Dragon Fit sealable inner sleeves so far. It's enough that if I could snap my fingers and undo everything, I might. Yes, I believe that there's slightly more protection, but the range of situations where that slight extra level of protection is going to matter is vanishingly small.

The sleeves are thicker. Double-sleeved card are already a handful. It's a necessary evil to keep your cards protected, but adding even more thickness is frustrating for storage and shuffling. This is the same number of cards. I pushed both sets of cards down before I took the picture. Dragon Shield sealables on the left. KMC perfect fits on the right.

This is the thing that's going to drive me the most crazy. The cards don't sit quite level. Back in the day, if you only used outer sleeves the cards would sit like this because the bottom edge of the sleeve was sealed and ever-so-slightly thicker. Adding an inner sleeve turned the opposite way leveled this out. The entire deck would sit level once the air was pushed out. Now, with these sealable inner sleeves there is a slightly thicker bottom again. It's subtle. It's possible it will push a little more flat over time. But I'll miss having the deck sit level. It becomes more pronounced with more cards, of course. If you are using these for your Commander deck, get ready for the deck to sit slightly off level.

There's one other thing that drives me crazy. The sleeves themselves in their packaging do not fit in any of my normal storage systems. They are packed from the factory in an "unfolded" state. That's great for actually sleeving cards, but it's not great for storing the extra unused sleeves. With normal perfect fit sleeves, they can be put into sleeve bags and then wedged into a normal storage box. These sealable sleeves are extra long before they are used, so they don't fit anywhere neatly.