Matte Board Game Sleeves: Catan

The matte card sleeve set is a good accessory for players looking to protect their cards long term. After playing consistently for a year (once or twice per month), you can definitely notice wear and dirt building up on your cards (which replacement cards are going to be more expensive than protecting them upfront). These card sleeves will keep your cards in mint condition. They also allow you to overhand shuffle the cards really easily, which I prefer as a typical riffle shuffle can damage your cards over time.

The card sleeves fit very tightly over the cards, so its important to only purchase them for Catan games. The matte sleeves are my preferred since it allows you to see the art on the cards more clearly. While the other sleeves are cheaper, they can be annoying in certain light settings. Better safe than sorry with these sleeves.

My only complaints with these is the density of the cards increases with the sleeves, so it makes packing the cards into the box more difficult with the standard insert. My only other issue is that one pack of sleeves only covers half of the standard deck of cards in base Catan, so you'll need 2 of these packs to get your base game sorted. It is also annoying that many of the expansions and player extensions have uneven amounts of cards, so you'll end up with extra sleeves. I haven't done the math, but you'll likely need to buy 1-2 more packs for each expansion to Catan you purchase.

Overall though, if you're playing Catan frequently, the…