One of the other Malifaux players in the area, Dan, has had all his stat cards laminated.

This is, in a word, genius.

Malifaux stat cards suck.  You use them to track damage so, like Warmachine cards, they need to live in plastic card sleeves.  Unlike Warmachine cards, though, they’re not single cards: they’re two cards wide and fold in half… with all of the special rules and things that get referenced on the inside.

After three sessions of Malifaux, the sleeve I’d been keeping Sonnia Criid’s card in has torn open… something that’s never happened to me with Warmachine (where I use the same card sleeves).

So, lamination is (again) genius.

I stopped by Kinko’s last night to laminate my cards.  Not too many Guild cards, but there are kind of a ton of Gremlin cards.  Although I could have maybe laid out my cards more efficiently, I don’t think I could have reduced the number of lamination sheets I ultimately needed to use.  The whole thing cost me < $12 and the frustration reduction will totally be worth it. Chris suggested that you’d get four cards per 8.5″x11″ sheet.  Necessity drove me to fit five on one sheet, with the pattern:

I did most of my cards in 11″x17″ sheets (8 per sheet in pretty lose formation).  What I couldn’t fit in those (5), I did in the single 8.5″x11″ sheet.   That means I probably could have 10 cards per 11″x17″ sheet (but would have been left with one I couldn’t fit).

The 11″x17″ sheets were just a hair over $4 each and the 8.5″x11″ was $2.50.  So, on a big sheet, you’re looking at 50¢ a card if you’re lazy and do 8, 40¢ if you fit 10.  On the smaller sheets, it’s 63¢ if you only do 4 cards, 50¢ if you do 5.  So, try to do as many as possible at a time and cram them onto the big sheets.