I don't know if this is the right place for this subject, but if not, I'm sure Julia will let me know!

Recently made my first call to FFG about game component replacements, and was disappointed to find that they don't offer replacement parts unless you actually get something defective. I never had that, but most of my non-Spawn, non-Mask monsters are beat up nearly beyond recognition from all their shuffling in the monster cups. I could start rebuying the core game and expansions one at a time, but I'm hoping maybe I can find a less expensive offer from someone with monsters in better condition than mine (especially those from the core game) who may no longer be using them.

Also, anyone who has experience doing this type of search (and also for individual components that might have sustained damage), I'm open to your device.

Thanks in advance for any help!!

Not so sure if I can help you here. Basically you're asking for replacements for worn out components, and a lot of them. I know that some people here got replacements in similar occasions, but for just one or two components. Replacng the monster cup is pretty huge.

A couple of things you might wanna do:

- recreate the most damaged chits by printing and gluing on the originals the images foung on arkhamwiki.com

- use a sharpie to recreate the external color pattern

- sleeve the tokens: miniamerican sleeves suit perfectly; after inserting the token, you fold the sleeve and fix it with transparent tape: I did this with all my Eldritch monster tokens and they are *perfect* after 2 years of plays!

Hope any of these may be of help

Thanks, Julia, I'll definitely try this. The sleeves in particular sound good, but I didn't know they were available.

Muchas gracias!

You're welcome Lemme know if it works

I used coin envelopes. They look great and are waaaay cheaper than card sleeves. Last year I bought 200 for less than half the price of one pack mini american sleeves.

Out of curiosity, how do you store the monster tokens when not playing? Just leave them in the cup?

I've got a felt bag I use as the monter cup, but when I'm packing up the game, I always take out all the monster tokens and stack them neatly inside the box. Granted, this is mainly because it's required to make everything fit back inside one box with all these expansions, but I do belive it has gone a long way toward preserving the integrity of the tokens, too.

I use a felt cup too! (great minds think alike, Steve!)

But I line mine with the chips in, inside the box

I used coin sleeves too for all the monster tokens. Mine are in perfect condition after years of use.

- sleeve the tokens: miniamerican sleeves suit perfectly; after inserting the token, you fold the sleeve and fix it with transparent tape: I did this with all my Eldritch monster tokens and they are *perfect* after 2 years of plays!

Thank you for the tip, Julia! Could you post or send me a photo of the result of such sleeving? I'm very interested whether it's superior to mine solution .

Edit: Sorry, I haven't seen the other posts about coin sleeves. Must had a stale page.

Sure! PM me your email and I'll send you some pics!

Julia,

I now have about half the monsters in the cup sleeved using your method. This is a really good way to do it, and I recommend your method for anyone to use!

Having discovered the usefulness of sleeves, I've already used some of the standard-sized sleeves as well for some of the most worn older cards. However, over

the long haul, it's obvious that card sleeving will be a much greater job than it is for monsters. Adding totals for both large and small cards, with all expansions there are over 2000!

For the nearly 700 cards available for Arkham Encounters on all boards, I'm in pretty good shape. I discovered long ago that shuffling these cards for every encounter is sure to get them filthy and worn out in no time, and I now determine which encounters to use by a system of dice rolling instead: if I have a deck of 36 cards, for example, I roll two dice, and each possible outcome of two dice stands for one of the 36 cards. Once you're accustomed to this, it's actually faster than shuffling, and guarantees a much more random selection.

On the subject of randomness of card draws, I've been a duplicate bridge player for many years, and am aware of a study that was conducted by a group in the UK some years ago. This group was responding to frequent complaints that computer-generated deals had too many weird distributions. They found that the problem was actually with hand-shuffled deals, which because of lack of thoroughness in shuffling were not random enough, and lacked enough unusual distributions. They found that a deck of playing cards must be shuffled at least 7 times to ensure randomness. I'm sure something close to this would be required for AH encounter decks.

Thanks again for your help on sleeving monsters!

I'm happy my method worked for you

Indeed, sleeving cards is almost a must (for me, at least). Not only to prevent damage due to constant shuffling, but also to protect the cards from other "accidents" (grease from junk food you may snack during your games, liquids being spilled, and so on)

Still, it's quite a tough task sleeving all Arkham at once. Our fellow forumite Joe (aka The Professor), IIRC, spent an entire w-end doing so (possibly with some bottles of red? )

i haven't sleeved any of my cards and i'm coming up on a year. I have noticed that my chits are getting a lot of wear, but i really can't tell any difference on the cards themselves. Granted I don't allow greasy food at the gaming table and I have let people know that should they spill drinks they can bet on replacing any components (through purchase of the entire box containing any given piece. I don't do a traditional bridge shuffle but I do more of a deck shuffle for cards. Sure it doesn't do a great job of mixing cards but it gets the job done well enough. Also, with so many encounter cards I only shuffle those on rare occasions.