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My $60 deluxe card shuffler turned out to be a loud paper jam machine
Bought that fancy automatic shuffler for game night and it shredded two cards from my copy of Dominion in under 10 minutes. Anyone else had better luck with a specific brand of shuffler that won't eat your decks?
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valsullivan1mo ago
Oh man, that hurts to hear about the Dominion cards (ouch, especially since replacing those can be a pain). I actually had a similar nightmare with a cheap shuffler that sounded like a dying blender and mangled a couple of my favorite Magic: The Gathering decks. The trick I found is to skip the automatic ones entirely and just get a good manual shuffler that you crank by hand, it's way gentler on the cards and doesn't jam up nearly as much. Something like the "Innohave" brand (or similar manual models) works pretty well for standard card sizes, just make sure to feed the decks in evenly so they don't get stuck at weird angles. For Dominion or any game with thick card stock, you might be better off just doing a pile shuffle by hand, it's slower but at least your cards won't end up in the shredder.
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That "dying blender" comparison made me laugh, I know exactly what you mean. But I think there's an even bigger issue here that nobody's talking about - most card shufflers are designed for standard poker cards, not the thicker, premium card stock that games like Dominion use. I learned this the hard way when my shuffler turned the corners of my Terraforming Mars cards into little white creases. The difference in card thickness can really throw off the mechanism, so even a good manual shuffler needs to be chosen carefully for the games you actually play.
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