Just curious about a practical side of the game that is often overlooked: shuffling the decks. Which method is yor favorite?

Me, I personally pile shuffle once to get rid of attachment and ally card clumps that are accrued from previous games. Then I gently riffle shuffle 7 times. Riffle shuffling 7 times guarantees proper randomisation in standard 52 card decks so it's pretty much great for Lotr. If done well, it's also less damaging to the cards than endless weave/mush shuffles. If I have to shuffle in game, I just do riffle x2, then an overhand shuffle, the one last riffle and cut.

Took me a while to embrace the riffle shuffle but now I view it as the only way for a properly random deck.

I'm just going to pretend you made up all those words, since I have no specialized shuffle vocabulary to boast of, here.

I tend to 'deal' out the deck into 6 piles, then put them all back together. If it's a freshly made deck, I will repeat the process once. Then I'll usually do a.. um... classic? shuffle once or twice. As in, cut the deck in half and fan the two halves back together.

I started dealing out in piles after I sleeved the cards because I found it hard to shuffle the 'classic' way with the plastic on.

A riffle shuffle is a shuffle like the one you see in poker games: take the cards, split them in two decks, bend the two halves gently and then let them cascade on one another. With a little practice, it works well.

Pile shuffling is dealing the cards in piles randomly, like you said. The catch here is that piles are all about rearranging the cards and not really randomising. So you will get a distorted pattern of cards instead.

Cutting the deck is not shuffling however. It is just reordering which is not same thing. Google overhand shuffle for an easy and infinitely better method.

I make 5 pile, since my deck is usually 50 cards, that makes 5 piles of 10 cards. It is bigger than 3, so even if I have 3 copy of a card, it is possible that 2 copies can be one after the other.

Every 5 cards, I change ~randomly~ how I will distribute the 5 cards over each pile. I then do a classic shufling.

I don't know if it is a good method... but it is fun to do.

I put the first card in a first new deck, the next card in a second deck...till 8 or 10 decks. After join all the decks. Shuffle a little and return to do the same process. Finally, shuffle a little more. It is the best way i have found and the fastest.

Ah no, the fastest is in OCTGN: only 1 click ^^.

PD: the order of putting cards in first deck, second deck doesnt matter.

I do six piles with 49 cards, then mash them together a bunch, cut the deck and put Light of Valinor on top!

Then I put out my 12 Glorfindels for some quadruple hand awesomeness

I shuffle like this.

http://youtu.be/TiQoGiIlGlk?t=24s

I'm currently working on being faster than Gluarung so I can beat him when we face-off in the Speed Shuffling Contest in 2015!!

back to practice shuffling.....

I toss all my cards on the floor a use the awsome wax-in-wax-out technique.

Dual wielding cards like that takes some serious hand eye coordination.

I am light years ahead of you guys.

It's wax ON,wax OFF. Honourable Noccus-san.

No, no, no....it's Noccus-sama.

I shuffle like this.

I'm currently working on being faster than Gluarung so I can beat him when we face-off in the Speed Shuffling Contest in 2015!!

back to practice shuffling.....