At long last, we have finally sleeved the cards in one of our board games. When I wrote about Terraforming Mars: Ares Expedition, I was pretty confident that would be the first game we sleeved. I was wrong. Grand Austria Hotel is the winner!
Let’s talk about the cards
Grand Austria Hotel has lots of really nice components. Nice player boards, lots of nice tokens, but the cards stink. They are so flimsy, after one standard shuffle they had a bend. If you bridge shuffle them, they’ll flex back into shape. Apart from being thin, I was also concerned about their durability of the printing.
If we didn’t particularly care for Grand Austria Hotel, I wouldn’t have wasted my time with card sleeves. It took me forever to get a copy of this board game. I hesitated on it a couple a couple years ago, and the next day it was sold out. I missed the Kickstarter. Finally, last December I came across it again, and immediately bought it. It was well worth the wait, Grand Austria Hotel is an awesome board game. Hence, we sleeved the cards to protect it!
The card sleeves
The cards in Grand Austria Hotel are 59x92mm. This is a standard size for Euro board game cards, which made it easy to find plenty of options for card sleeves. I ended up picking up 3 packs of 50 card sleeves made by Fantasy Flight Supply. There’s 120 cards in the game, so I still have some leftover!
I was surprised by how easy it was to sleeve the cards. Once you get in the rhythm, it’s actually kind of fun. The FFS sleeves fit the cards perfectly.
Using the card sleeves
It took a bit to get used to the sleeved cards. These particular sleeves are slightly shiny, and I’m wondering if there are matte versions out there. Sometimes the overhead light reflects off the sleeve, and it makes it harder to read them.
