This week, I’m catching up on some items that have been on hold for a little bit. I’ll start with a simple little pimping- sleeving cards. Now card sleeves are probably the easiest way to pimp out a game and some might argue that it’s so ubiquitous that it isn’t actually pimping out your game. I disagree, so much so that I will block quote my philosophy:
Pimping a game is any addition or customization that enhances the aesthetic or mechanical enjoyment of the game or game play.
Card sleeves as a protection of your investment will enhance the enjoyment over time, or rather, they will prolong the enjoyment as your components stay undamaged. I don’t tend to sleeve my games but will do it for some exceptions, namely any game that requires different cards to be added and subtracted from frequently shuffled decks. Dominion is probably the biggest example but 7 Wonders also has this, especially since the card quality was so poor and cards showed wear after the first couple of games.
Card sleeves are also something easily acquired and so might not be worth even mentioning in this blog but the card game I was looking to sleeve is pretty unique.
Korsar is the first edition of Knizia’s pirate card game that is now produced under Gamewright as “Loot.”
I first played Loot years ago and while we really enjoyed the game, the art was a bit too kid-ish and so it faded from our table. To be fair, Gamewright announced a new version with updated art. However, I had heard about the original edition called Korsar but could never find a copy. Eventually, a copy showed up and I quickly snatched it up.
As you can see, the art is a bit different and more “adult.” The other thing is the card size is very unique. I have never encountered this card size before and since this was kind of a “grail game” to me, I didn’t want to ruin these cards with excessive play. Card sleeving was really the only option (well not the only option as I could have laminated them) but with such a unique size, I couldn’t find anything that would work.
Finally, I stumbled on a specialized site dedicated to unique card sizes: Swan Panasia. This site has a ton of unique sizes for card types I’d never heard of before and one of them worked for Korsar. The delivery is fulfilled by Mayday Games so I’m not sure what the relationship is between the two companies but it made delivery to the US easy.
I picked up a set and they worked very well. I’m glad I can pull out this game again and get it to the table. The box size is a little weird so I’ll likely set it aside and make a custom tuckbox so that the game can travel easily.
There is one slight issue that I’m not sure about and that is the sleeve height. I prefer them to be a little shorter so that there isn’t so much space at the top. The excess sleeve amount at the top makes it harder to shuffle and can be annoying. I may cut them all down but will need to think about a way to cut them consistently.
In other news, Cosmic Kaboom from Minion Games came in this week as well. I’m excited to crack this open and also get it to the table.
Finally, last week I talked about the 6×6 Game Challenge I’m doing this year and I had left the last entry open to discuss with my friends. We came to a decision via acclimation and so number six in my 6×6 Game Challenge is:
Pandemic Legacy: Season 1
We’ve been wanting to do a Legacy game for a while now. We tried Risk Legacy but then some friends moved away and the game died. Hopefully we’re more successful with this version.