In case you haven’t heard, Fantasy Flight Games (FFG) discontinued their sleeves roughly a year ago. Their line was essentially handed off to Gamegenic (albeit with different dimensions and feel), an arm of Asmodee.
As a reminder of what FFG’s sleeve line looked like, their (mostly defunct) landing page is still available.
Naturally, a lot of folks were left wondering what to do with their FFG sleeve collection, as they were out of luck in terms of purchasing further product to keep up with future card game releases. To wit, Sleeve Kings decided to create a “Premium Sleeve Line” to fill that gap that was left, and provided us with the product you see above. That line is being tested now before it rolls into full production.
Because this is an LCG blog, we will be looking primarily at the “standard card game size” sleeves, which can be used for Marvel Champions, Arkham Horror, and Lord of the Rings LCG.
As you can see here, Sleeve Kings (right) is aiming to replicate the FFG line down to the sizes and the microns. For the “standard card game size” line that LCG players will be the most interested in, packs come with 55 sleeves (five more than a typical FFG pack), are 100 microns thick, and are 63.5 x 88mm (same as the original FFG sleeves, even down to the exact same nomenclature).
It makes sense when you look at the image of all of the Sleeve Kings premium SKUs together at the very top of this post, as well as the “FFG Sleeve Sizes” list on the actual official FFG sleeve packaging itself.
Observe:
See how everything nicely lines up?
When Sleeve Kings first announced that they intended on creating a 1:1 version of FFG’s sleeves months after FFG’s line ended, it seems like they meant it. Just like FFG’s line, the sleeves leave a little extra room at the top of the card.
Look at this comparison of — from left to right — [old] FFG art sleeves, [new] Sleeve Kings premiums, and [old] FFG’s standard card game size (red):
We were also able to test out FFG clears separately. In all of the below images, FFG sleeves are on the left (Lord of the Rings) and Sleeve Kings are on the right (Marvel).
In my tests, the Sleeve Kings clears are remarkably close, to the point where the hand feel when shuffling feels the same. Again, they’re the same measurements and the same micron level, so this makes perfect sense.
While FFG sleeves are sometimes criticized for their quality, as a whole, I find them to be extremely serviceable, especially for the price. In terms of hand/shuffle feel, the quality of the microns, and the actual size comparisons, the Sleeve Kings premium brand looks very close; if not difficult to pick out of a lineup.
If the aim is to sell a pack of 55 (again up from 50) FFG-replicated sleeves for $2.50, lower than the price that FFG charged when their sleeves were active ($2.99), then they succeeded. Sleeve Kings also tells us that they are looking to allow Kickstarter pledges to grab them for $1.60 per pack at the highest level. That Kickstarter will be live here, and you can set up a notification for its launch.
One more thing: as of the time of publication, solid color back sleeves are not available for the Sleeve Kings premium line, and only clears were provided.
[Disclaimer: Sleeve Kings provided Hall of Heroes with one copy each of the sleeves in the top image. No other transaction was made.]
Hall of Heroes 