If you had asked me 10 years ago what the best MTG sleeves were, my answer would have been completely different. Although I have tried and tested many sleeves during my years of playing card games, for the longest time I have been using KMC Hyper Matte sleeves exclusive. Until Now…
Let’s talk about why “Dragon Shield Matte Art sleeves” are the best sleeves you can buy for Magic The Gathering right now.
What I love
| + High Durability |
| + Easy Double-sleeving |
| + Full Opacity |
| + Smooth Shuffle |
| + Non-slip Matte Back |
| + Price/Value |
What I Dislike
| – Limited Art Available |
| – Only 100 Sleeves |
KEY TAKEAWAYS
Dragon Shield Matte Art sleeves are highly durable and have a smooth shuffling experience.
They are one of the only sleeves on the market that offer card collectors the ability to have gorgeous artwork options on their sleeves while still not having to give up the matte back texture.
They are easy to double-sleeve and the back of the sleeves are fully opaque, making them ideal for tournament play.
WHO SHOULD BUY?
Magic The Gathering players who are looking to protect and play with some of their more valuable cards should consider these sleeves. The high durability and nice thickness of these sleeves will keep your cards protected, and make it unlikely that they will split during your games. These sleeves will meet the needs of Magic The Gathering players that play Standard, Modern, or any other 60 deck formats.
If you were once a veratrin KMC sleeve user, like myself, and have gotten fed up with the drop in sleeve quality from the company, then these are not only a great alternative, but if I am being honest, they are a strict upgrade.
My only reservation is for players that mostly play Commander. Although these sleeves are tough, and I can’t really imagine them breaking during normal play, since they only come in packs of 100, one broken sleeve will require you to buy a second pack.
If that worries you, you may want to look for slightly lower-quality sleeves that come in larger quantities. With that said, for the quality you are getting from the Dragon Shield Matte Art sleeves, I genuinely feel the price is great value for what you are getting.
I have no issues, whatsoever, just recommending to Commander players that are concerned about the number of sleeves, to just save themselves the hassle and buy 2 packs – at that point, it’s likely the sleeves will outlast your Commander deck!
Dragon Shield Art Matte: Better Opacity Standard Size Sleeves
Although there will be some variation depending on the color and the artwork you choose to get on your sleeves, from what I have seen from my own sleeves and talking to Magic players, the Dragon Shield Art Mattes are practically full opaque.
For some of you who may be new to Magic The Gathering competitive play, you may be wondering why the opacity of the sleeves even matters?
Going all the back to 2011, with the release of the “Innistrad” set and the introduction of double-faced cards into Magic, the opacity of the sleeves you are using became much more important.[1]
It was important that players didn’t get an unfair advantage while playing with double-faced cards by being able to identify what cards might be on top of their deck, or in their opponent’s hands, by seeing the card art appear through nonopaque sleeves.
Since double-faced cards don’t have a traditional card back art, they can be very easy to spot if the opacity of your sleeves is too low.
Players were given the option to either use a “checklist card” card or make sure their entire deck was sleeved in opaque sleeves -failure to do so can result in someone thinking you’re cheating and other serious consequences.
I’m happy to say, that you don’t need to worry about any of that if you are using the Dragon Shield art matte shields.
Unless you intentionally shine a powerfully light source through one side of the sleeves, you won’t be able to tell which card is which by looking at the back of these MTG card sleeves.
This was not the case with all of the “Dragon Shield Matte” sleeves, where some colors were light enough that you could see the back of some cards.
This is just one of the many reasons and improvements that the “Art Matte” Dragon Shields has put into place that finally made me switch from KMC sleeves.
Even with some of the more limited edition card art on Dragon Shield art mat standard sleeves, you won’t have a problem.
Dragon Shield Art Matte: Best MTG Cards Durability Sleeve
I’m not ashamed to admit that I avoided sleeves with any kind of artwork for years – And for good reasons.
I was tired of spending money on packs of sleeves that had cool artwork on them, only to have them start to fall apart on me within the month. During my time at university, I only got to play paper Magic twice a week and even with that little playtime, I still had sleeves with artwork on them falling apart!
However, I’ll give credit where credit is due – Dragon Shield outdid themselves here and are the best.
They went back to the drawing board and created MTG art sleeves in a way that no other company was doing at the time, especially not to this quality.
If you didn’t know, before the release of the Dragon Shield Art Mattes sleeves, art sleeves would normally be made using different layers of material which were in some way glued together. This allowed companies to add an “art layer” to their existing sleeves, but the end results were flawed.
Since these MTG sleeves were made up of multiple layers and glued together, the different layers would ALWAYS come apart after enough shuffling and usage – I have never had a pack last more than 3 months.
Not with the Dragon Shield art matte though.
The reason why this doesn’t happen with these MTG sleeves is because they’re made differently, they don’t use multiple layers and glue them together. Instead, the artwork is printed directly onto the sleeves and then sealed to the actual sleeve material.
Dragon Shield was so proud of what they had accomplished with their sleeves that they put together a YouTube video explaining the difference between inferior art sleeves and their new line of art matte sleeves.
Apparently, they weren’t the only ones impressed by what they had done as the video received over 1 Million views on YouTube. You can check out the video for yourself below.
Even with all this excitement and talk about their new art sleeves, at the time, I wasn’t interested.
I had just been burned by too many cool-looking MTG art sleeves before, that I had formed a strict “no art” sleeve policy. However, my once indestructible KMC sleeves kept breaking on me.
A review for another day perhaps, but it has been said that KMC changed the way they manufactured their sleeves – and the lower quality certainly showed.
I’m happy to announce as of writing this post, that I still have almost a complete set of sleeves from the 3 different sets of Dragon Shield sleeves that I own for the last 2 years – I did have one sleeve rip due to getting caught on the edge of a deck box, but that was mine and the deck box’s fault, not the sleeves.
Having sleeves that you can rely on during an official game of Magic is one less thing for you to worry about, and I won’t be going back to KMC for their Hyper Matte line – probably for the best.
Dragon Shield Matte: MTG Sleeves Texture & Shuffle
The shuffle feel for these sleeves are the best and I have no real complaints.
The shuffle feel isn’t as smooth as some of the “Glossy” alternatives on the market, but these sleeves are matte after all, and that is to be expected.
That doesn’t mean they’re bad by any stretch of the imagination, far from it. I loved the KMC sleeves for the shuffle feel and you could often find me sitting at my computer shuffling some draft commons in-between my work breaks.
Yes – I have a dedicated “Keep my hands busy” shuffle deck next to my computer… don’t judge me.
The Dragon Shield sleeves haven’t left me disappointed. I’m personally not a fan of glossy sleeves as I find them too slippery, especially when it comes to using them for my best commander decks.
With Commander decks, glossy sleeves have a hard time staying in place and cause my deck to fall over whenever I try to draw a card.
After a while, glossy sleeves will start to behave themselves, but I think that is due to dirt building up on the sleeves, which creates friction and adds grip, making them less slippery. If that is the case, I would rather just go with matte sleeves, and so far, I’m sticking with Dragon Shield.
If you want to get an idea of what all Dragon Shield matte versions are like to shuffle, you can check out the short video below.
Although I am sad to see the decline in my own beloved KMC Hyper Matte sleeves, I would be lying if I said I missed them – I have simply moved on.
The Dragon Shield Art Matte does everything I need my Magic sleeves to do and I’m constantly trying to keep an eye out on all of the new designs they are keep coming out with – they seem to be ramping up their range. More quality choices for you and me!
As I have mentioned, I had an aversion to buying art sleeves as I believed them to be a waste of money. Spending money on something that was only going to last a few months, just wasn’t worth it for me.
Ideally, if I want a new set of sleeves, it should be because I want a new design, not because the ones I currently have are unusable.
The art matte sleeves are 100% my best pick for Magic The Gathering players looking for great, reliable sleeves for their decks, especially with their improvement over the regular matte sleeves to the opacity – no need to second guess yourself when heading down Friday Night Game.
I would be surprised if your local game store doesn’t already stock these sleeves as they have become so popular recently, but in case you want a specific design, particular the limited edition artworks, you can check out the links below to see what options are available to you if you are interested in picking up some highly recommended sleeve for your Magic cards.