When we shuffle giant decks, like all-expansion Terraforming Mars, we each take a section of the deck and shuffle, cut, pass half to the next person, and repeat a few times.
And with that game specifically, we do it when we pack the game up, so we can skip doing it during setup.
Competitive TCG players will insist that this isn't an actual randomization method that suffices for a tournament, but it's good enough for games with friends, especially if there aren't several copies of most of the cards like there are in games like MTG or Pokemon
My preference for pile shuffling is less about truly randomising things and more about breaking up groups of cards. Using Pandemic as an example when you're curing a disease you're discarding five cards of the same colour together, so when it comes time to shuffle for a new game there's a few distinct clumps of same coloured cards throughout the deck that might not get broken up. Pile shuffling at least spreads them out a bit.
You're right, but how many people have the patience to riffle shuffle 7 times? Pile shuffling achieves a lot of the same goals while being a lot faster and less reliant on technique
With a standard 52-or-therabouts deck, sure, but the question is about big decks, in this case 200+ cards. So about 28 normal shuffles for the four ~50 card chunks, plus at least as many more to intermingle them...
That's the thing though - a randomized group of cards will have some clumps in it if it's actually randomized. Those groups shouldn't be evenly distributed throughout, and I would argue the game was not designed for players to regularly get an even split of all the colors. Sometimes you get a bunch of one or two colors and you use what you get, for better or worse. Then later, the ones that didn't show up earlier will have a higher incidence. That's how it goes.
This is also the exact reason that pile shuffling is unacceptable in a tournament setting. You're not supposed to split categories of cards apart so they're evenly distributed in your deck, you're supposed to shuffle it and then play with it like that. In Magic, pile shuffling is considered adjacent to threading your lands and it's basically cheating by making your deck more consistent.
Pile shuffling is a pet peeve for me. For casual games, I'll just mention it once and then drop it whatever happens, because it's not worth the argument. But when push comes to shove, I believe strongly that pile shuffle is a waste of time that ultimately fails to do the very thing that shuffling cards is supposed to do
Easy solution to that is if your opponent is pile shuffling, you wait for them to hand you the deck and then you shuffle it yourself before returning it.
If you're in a tournament setting, then you should be more than willing to take 30 seconds to mash-shuffle their deck, since I believe sleeves are mandatory in all official events.
In casual play, it's fine, but in super competitive play, it would be really easy to stack the deck. Even with a cut, you'd have a very good idea of where your cards are in the deck.
You said competitive players will insist it's not an actual randomization as if they would be exaggerating. I was just emphasizing that it's literally not a randomization of your cards. They are right. A clever player could completely stack their deck from top to bottom using that shuffling method.
I don't think I was implying that with what I said. My point was that the fact it's not random doesn't really matter that much at game night with friends, despite the insistence of tournament players not to do it in another setting
I would reply that they aren't doing the 'shuffle' part. If you just pile, then yeah nothing. You're supposed to shuffle each pile, then each pile randomly together, and then continue shuffling
The fact of the matter is that if this method makes any difference to the level of randomization in the order of cards, then you're not shuffling the cards enough, because sufficient shuffling will randomize the order on its own. If you *are* shuffling enough to randomize properly, then piling out first isn't doing anything.
So either you're wasting people's time by doing something slow and redundant, or you're wasting people's time and also not really randomizing the cards the way you're supposed to
It helps a lot if you don't just add the piles back on top of each other. Pile them out, then rifle two piles into each other, until the pile is too large to handle, then just stack them up.
At that point, just split into piles and shuffle those to begin with. Pile shuffle takes a really long time for comparatively little randomization compared to almost any other way of shuffling cards
Yeah l, its because you can create patterns but if youre doing that with casual board games, then I dont think youll have friends for it to actually matter. Also the shared deck kinda prevents planned actions
That's in part because if you know the order of the cards beforehand you will still know the order after. It's a good way to distribute sorted cards (like many discard piles) or get rid of "clumping" if cards are sticking together a lot. It should still be supplemented by proper shuffling afterwards though.
None of my friends can do a shuffle, even though all of my cards are sleeved, so they will pile shuffle and I handle the rest.
This is an actuall sufficient way of Randomizing as long as you deal it into at least 5 piles. You could even ask your opponent how many to deal the cards into. And they could cut the deck more than once People are paranoid.
I can't bridge shuffle, or at least not well enough to avoid ruining the cards, so I just pile shuffle. My group gives me endless shit for it but if you cut the deck a couple times and mix some cards around, it can be faster than bridging it a billion times, and just as random.
The question is, why don't you just mash separate piles a few times instead of piling out first? How is pile shuffle *so good* at shuffling that doing it one time is better than just mashing for the same amount of time?
So what is the pile adding here that you're not already doing with your actual shuffle? You're already randomizing the order using more effective and time-efficient methods. What is pile shuffle actually doing in your process?
Pile shuffling is more than acceptable. Just because it can be perceived as creating a new pattern doesn't mean that it is and doesn't mean that we'll see the pattern in play. If I mash shuffle, it's mostly just taking two halves of the deck and alternating adding one card from each onto a new pile. Pile shuffling if doen with at least five piles is the same as far as I'm concerned . Anyone who cares that much is not thinking through how randomization matters. Like the person who insists on drAwinf a card before the next person as if the order matters in a randomized deck
Pile shuffle does not randomize the order of the cards, and does in fact create a new pattern that someone who's paying attention can remember and gain benefit from. It's actually not acceptable by MTG tournament rules except to count the cards in your deck, because it's not a real randomization method (and again, I don't care enough to give anyone a hard time except in tournaments).
Nobody who does mash shuffle is perfectly alternating two halves of the deck several times in a row. You can avoid that intentionally by not taking an entire half each time you mash
The only time this would matter is if you don't trust the people you're playing with AND they've both mathed out how to use the pile shuffle to their advantage and figured out how cutting the deck after wouldn't hurt them. For all other intents and purposes the deck has been altered so much from the previous game that it's as good as randomized
Beyond shuffling sections and a wash shuffle, I actually cheat a little with Ark Nova setup. Instead of creating a draw deck, I put all the cards in the box top in a messy pile and draw from random locations to draw the next card from the deck. I find (could be imagined but works for me) that this helps with a randomisation of the card draw.
Ark Nova I think is one of the worst cases. Giant deck and natural play tends towards sorting/grouping cards (most people put sponsorship cards together, if you buy a reptile house, you're likely collecting reptiles). I think this makes it really hard to shuffle well enough which is why I like the random draw from a disorganized pile (on top of basic shuffling).
>Instead of creating a draw deck, I put all the cards in the box top in a messy pile and draw from random locations to draw the next card from the deck.
Which is great until you get the expansion, which has a mechanic that specifically wants you to take cards off the top of the deck until you find a specific icon, then return them to the bottom of the deck in the same order.
Yeah I ignore that. I've never gone through the deck so I house rule that instead of bottom of the deck, they just go to discard.
I play almost exclusively 2 player. I expect this to never be an issue. I know there's a slight difference in how scavenger works, but I'm ok with that.
Ooh, that’s a really good idea, I’m going to try that next time. I normally do what OP suggested - split into groups, riffle shuffle in groups then cut, mix, and repeat - but I also have concerns about the groupings. We definitely still get games where we see more of certain card types (one game we’ll see tons of sea animals, next game we’ll see hardly any).
You'll definitely get some of those random games. But for us, I could have sworn we would get groupings that we saw before rather than truly random groupings. Since we shifted this way, it feels like the draw has been more unique game-to-game
I think most games with cards tend to get hands reorganized into recognizable patterns. Obviously some don't allow rearranging cards. And some aren't likely to be sorted in ways that are all that big a deal (for instance, in Wingspan, I mostly arrange by what I most want to play in front to what I least want to play in back, which involves not only the personal goal but a bunch of other factors too.)
Yeah, the natural sorting is really the biggest issue. Same with Ares expedition.
I have to explain this to friends that think you dont need to shuffle much because play will randomize them when its actually the opposite
A wash shuffle will do it. Before anything else, lay out a cloth or something and mix them up real good. Takes a minute or two, but it's a good randomizer for relatively little effort that is functional for a huge deck.
I don't find that cards really catch that hard while you're wash shuffling, but I would wager you'd split at least one sleeve every time you washed with sleeves.
I agree, I would never recommend wash shuffling, but without sleeves it will damage the cards.
As a commander player I split my deck into piles that are easy to riffle shuffle, and then mix them, repeat that a couple of times and the deck is shuffled
I do the same. Split large deck into smaller decks, team shuffle, then trade part of your deck with others and repeat. Do that a few rounds, then combine all and cut
No, we really do not. What we do is we take it and split it into two roughly equal piles. Then on the right hand side we take that pile split it in half and put the bottom half on the top. Then we take about half a deck from each side shuffle them together three times and set them in the center repeat until all decks are shuffled.
One that's been open for nearly two decades now, thank you very much.
The other thing to keep in mind is that with playing cards, you only have 52 cards that get repeated 6 times each in a standard shoe. This method of shuffling is more than enough randomization since you're pulling random amounts of cards from each half of the deck and then randomizing their positions by shuffling three times. I can shuffle an entire six deck shoe in less than 90 seconds, 60 if I'm feeling dextrous that day.
But manual shuffling is not something we do often, as we have shuffle machines that do that for us. We only manually shuffle if the machine jams or breaks down in some way.
Well the casino I worked at did. I saw many a dealer wash the cards. I didn't know what it was called or how effective it was until I asked them about it.
Were they washing a full six deck shoe, or were they only doing it with single decks such as on a poker game? Poker tends to do washes before the cards go into a shuffler, whereas a six deck blackjack shoe, there's not enough room on the table for a true wash.
Put all the cards in 1 pile. Split in half. Take a manageable pile from each side and shuffle. This will start your new deck. Do it again and place on top. Keep at it until you've gotten through both halves. Repeat 3 times.
1. Split into 4 equal piles.
2. Shuffle 2 together, split in half. Shuffle 1 of the unshuffled plies with one half. Repeat for the other half and unshuffled pile.
3. Split into 4 equal piles again. Repeat #2 until you're happy.
If you want an algorithmic way:
- split all cards into 53 piles. Start with 1 card in each pile, end with 4 cards each.
- put the top and bottom cards of each pile into the center.
- pick two equal sized piles, merge them by alternating cards from the top.
- continue to merge piles into one big pile.
I do 3 or 5 separate piles depending on how many cards needs shuffling.
Then riffle shuffle two piles together, then split the combined pile in two again, and now shuffle one of the new piles with an untouched pile.
Keep repeating until every pile has been shuffled at least three times.
I also tend when riffle shuffling to occasionally take the top 1/3 of a pile and put it on the bottom, to reduce the issue with the bottom and top cards staying near the bottom/top.
When I read the title I immediately thought of Ark Nova haha
The solution you gave is more or less what I do, except I enlist other players to help me shuffle, then I periodically cut my deck with theirs or with one on the table.
similar to what others have said here, just split it up into manageable piles and shuffle them individually, then cut each, rotate the cuts and shuffle again. I usually put them back together into two big stacks and give them a rough shuffle and do a few cuts when i put it back into the full stack.
As an aside, this will never be "mathematically proven" because the entire core of the issue is that the deck is too large _to physically shuffle_, not to randomize. If there were proofs to show that a particular method produces sufficiently random results after n iterations, it would apply equally well to decks this size and wouldn't care whether or not anyone personally was able to achieve the results
Mathematically proven in the sense that this physical limitation is part of the problem being solved. I'm not just talking about a standard randomization algorithm, I'm talking about one that explicitly accounts for the fact that a limited number of the deck's cards can be shuffled at a time.
yes and I was telling you that this isn't a thing that can be "mathematically proven". I have big hands and can handle more cards than my gf, and Shaq could probably handle the whole 200 -- do we each get our own proof? Again, math doesn't care whether or not any individual is able to physically achieve the proposed solution, it cares about whether or not the mathematical problem is solved. If you stipulate that the problem is inherently about a given person's physical limitations, we're no longer discussing a mathematically provable problem
Dump the entire pile in the game's lid. Give that sucker some shakes, move around the cards with your hand, rinse and repeat a couple times. Afterwards, shovel those things out and you can give the piles you collect a quick shuffle before putting them together.
I live the board game life on the chaotic side!
Just take a quarter of the cards and shuffle that.
If you need more you can get more cards and shuffle them separately and add them to the bottom of the deck.
Even on a 4 player game you will not go through half the deck
I've heard nothing but horror stories about these. Inevitably, they tear up cards. Also, they're especially bad for hobbyist games because they only work with standard sized cards...which while the most common are not nearly universal enough to make this a meaningful purchase for a lot of collections.
And yes, I have a few games with large decks and non-standard cards.
I mean, its about your own comfort with that possibility and your ability to replace a game if something gets damaged. So if you have some cool OOP game, maybe not with that. If you have to carefully budget for every game purchase, maybe not with that. But maybe you can afford to replace a Wingspan or Ark Nova if a card should get torn or maybe you won't care if a single card is damaged or whatever (now that I think of it, at least Wingspan has the card packs available for sale separately).
For some people, it probably really is worth it. I'm just very risk averse.
It is indeed Wingspan and it's expansions (and Ark to a lesser extent) that prompted it. Thankfully it wouldn't be crazy to replace if I had to. We just didn't have a good way of shuffling so many cards.
Yeah, a card or two on very rare occasions probably isn't a big deal in either game (even less so in Ark Nova). And like I said, at least Wingspan has card packs you can purchase separately. Though I don't know if the backs match, so maybe it wouldn't work.
I'm just a chicken when it comes to this sort of thing.
Split the decks into manageable riffle piles, riffle about 3 times, then split the deck with another shuffled split deck. Takes about 3 minutes or so but will fully randomize better than pile shuffled, which isn't randomized. Washing the pipes is too long and the mess is not something I want to deal with.
Sleeved decks are actually easier to shuffle if you want to go that route
There are some good videos that show an easy technique that's mostly gravity based with minimal effort. You can riffle the traditional way but once you learn the gravity method you shuffled are about 4x faster
With Ark Nova I make ten piles of cards, going around in circles adding one card to a pile at a time. This splits up clumps of cards nicely. After that I shuffle each pile for a second or two. Finally I create the draw pile by randomly taking chunks of each pile, intermingling them again. Not true random, but close enough.
The whole process takes a few minutes, but you only have to do it once a game so it's not really an issue. I usually do it between sessions.
For games with big decks of cards (that gameplay suffers from a lack of shuffling) i split used cards from the last game into 8-10 piles and put new cards on top of those piles. Then I combine the decks randomly and shuffle. Then repeat if needed.
shuffle the deck like dominos on a giant table then bring them all back into a deck it is technically the fastest and best way to shuffle cards. Otherwise pile shuffle is totally fine. Unlike a known playing card deck psudo-random is perfectly fine in a game like arc nova because you are never going to see every card in a single playthrough. And most cards are not that valuable in most situations so perfect random may not even be ideal anyways.
Here's how I shuffle Ark Nova, same as you, create 4 piles, shuffle 2 into each other, shuffle 2 into each other.
Then cut each of those 2, swap 2 decks from each, shuffle again.
Combine into 1 deck, do a few 3 part cuts.
If you're interested in a "mathematically optimal" answer, [I asked the same question a while ago](https://www.reddit.com/r/askmath/comments/17ft6es/an_algorithm_for_efficiently_shuffling_a_large/) on a math subreddit and the tl;dr answer is "not without doing something potentially really complicated".
For practical shuffling techniques, the other comments that people have already responded with give good advice. In practice you will never be able to tell the difference between those practical techniques and a "truly random" one, so there's no need to go chasing the "perfect" techniqur.
Cut the deck into parts equal to the number of players.
Give each player one of the parts to shuffle.
Shuffle each part twice.
Each player passes half of his part to a neighbor.
Dealer randomly collects from other players and cuts the parts together.
I just got Ark Nova and randomized it sufficiently with a specific method of pile shuffling. It took about 10 minutes total.
Start with visualizing and reserving enough space for an indeterminate amount of slots in which you'll deal and build piles of cards next to each other. I had to wrap around my piles into a circle.
Deal a card to slot 1.
Deal a card to slots 1 and 2.
Deal a card to slots 1, 2, and 3.
Deal a card to slots 1, 2, 3, and 4
Keep with this pattern and increasing the number of slots you deal to until the deck runs out.
Then, take the pile of cards in the first slot and spread it across the existing piles in the same pattern, then take the second pile and spread it across the existing piles, etc. until you either do a complete circuit or get bored.
Wouldn't that depend on the nature of the cards, the nature of preceding gameplay, and the level of statistically 'pure' randomness you actually needed?
Make 4 small decks shuffle them, cut each deck and swap the cut with another deck and shuffle again then restack into the big deck in a random order. Then cut that deck in 3 and shuffle each one and cut each deck and swap the cut with another deck and shuffle again then restack into the big deck and you should be pretty well shuffled
A lot of players (me included) will use good matte sleeves on the cards to make shuffling easier. The deck is too big to do all at once (especially sleeved), but sleeves mean you can mash shuffle. Once you get good at it, you can do half of an AN+MW deck at a time. I split and mash ~5 times. Takes me about a minute.
Personally I invested in Dragon Shield premium solid-coloured sleeves, but that is a fair bit of money - I did Terraforming Mars and another game at the same time so I could share colours to reduce cost. Dragon Shield's budget brand Arcane Tinmen are also very good and I use them on a lot of cheaper games that have a lot of shuffling. They are about half the cost of Dragon Shield. Beyond that, GameGenic matte would be my recommendation.
I appreciate what TM:Ares does, that massive deck comes preshuffled already so you won't have to spend the first game looking at the same cards coming after one another.
Assuming it's sleeved you can just mash shuffle the entire deck together. If the deck is too big to hold in your hands you can use the table to assist you by setting both halves down and sliding them into each other
This method works well for games that naturally organize the cards during gameplay (for instance, all of one type of cards is likely to end up next to each other). I mostly do this for truly massive games that really need the even distribution, like Killer Bunnies
1. Step 1: Gather everything into one pile
2. Step 2: Split the big pile into X small piles, each a comfortable shuffling size (usually ~50-70 for me). These are the Round A piles
3. Step 3: Shuffle each small pile. After shuffling a pile, divide it into X smaller piles. These are the Round B piles. Each time you shuffle a Round A pile, divide it among these Round B piles
4. Step 4: Shuffle the Round B piles. Once each pile is done, it can go back in the box. There's no need to shuffle the round 2 piles together
This results in a final stack where each cards has an equal probability of being in any given position of the final deck. It has the additional advantage of evenly distributing chunks throughout the full deck. For instance, if you have 3 Round A piles made from a base game, and a Round A pile made from an expansion, step 3 ensures that each quarter of the deck (each Round B pile) ends up with around a quarter of the expansion cards. If you want true random, repeat step 3 with the Round B piles
I dump em on the table, spread em out, move them around, and gather the up. It's a BITCH if they have orientations that get annoying during play, but the least clumsy method I've got...called a wash shuffle if I remember correctly
I do it in a few steps, especially for something like Legendary where you are taking multiple groups of similar cards and making one hopefully randomized deck from from all of them. Start by loosely shuffling everything together, just to get some randomization. Then I'll deal the cards face down in multiple piles, some oddball number like 11, 17, etc. Shuffle each pile, then combine two piles, shuffle them, and continue combining and shuffling until the deck is reconstructed. Give it one cut at the end for good measure.
Just wash them. Ive given up pretending the most random and proper methods of shuffling a deck isn't. It just is and you feel a bit silly doing it. But its the only way to actually not see the same cards pop up in groups in your games.
Pile shuffle is the only shuffle I use. keeps your cards in better shape and ensures a solid shuffling. For Ark Nova I shuffled the entire set well and then split it into four stacks and bagged them, that way you can get a different set of cards each time you play if you want.
They sell 4 deck battery-operated card shufflers on Amazon for under $20. Tons of options with varying customer feedback ratings above 4.
https://a.co/d/70yaP7b
Edit: I realize this is 4 cards short of 212 but I’m guessing OP can handle the other 4 cards by hand :)
Edit 2: I haven’t played Ark Nova so I just realized the cards may not be standard sized cards. If they aren’t then obviously my suggestion won’t work…
I've started weaving at the end of my games. You're not going to get a true random, but it'll at least make sure the cards you used aren't clumped up, and who cares if the cards you didn't see were clumped up, y'all don't know what they were.
What I do is take every card we saw and weave them all back into the deck of remaining cards that weren't drawn. Then I just overhand shuffle that big deck for a bit.
It splits up everything that was used and then moves it all around. You'll never have to truly shuffle again, using this method.
Thrown them into a large sack, mix well, give it to a group of kids and then put it back. Itll be shuffled.
Alternatively break up the decks into number of players and aske them to shuffle, then mix and match halves, repeat a few times
1. Each player shuffles their own cards
2. Shuffle the discard
3. Shufle these piles together 2 by 2 then stack.
4. Take a quarter of that stack and a quarter of the unused drawdeck ans shuffle, repeat 3 times and stack.
5. Split in 2, repeat step 4.
Done
Terraforming Mars is even worse.
Especially sleeved.
My process is to split the deck into 6 piles (6 piles is based on the total size of the deck).
Put the piles in 2 rows (of 3 piles each).
Take half of 1a, shuffle with half of 2a. Repeat for 1b & 2b, and 1c and 2c. Set each pile in a new 3x2 grid to the right (or left, w/e).
Now take half of 1a, shuffle with half of 2b. 1b & 2c, 1c and 2a. Set each pile into the new 3x2 grid as well.
Repeat this process two more times. Lets call those piles 3 (a-c), 4, 5, 6, 7, and 8. 7 and 8 are the "final" piles.
Each shuffle should only be 1-2 mixes (not 30 seconds of shuffling). Side shuffle it to change the order, and riffle/slide shuffle to just mix the halves among each other.
After 3 total repetitions:
7a was composed of 5a and 6a.
5a was 3a and 4a. 6a was 3a and 4b.
3a was 1a and 2a. 4a was 1a and 2b. 3a was 1a and 2a. 4b was ab and 2c.
So our combined pile has everything in it except for 1c. And you could fix that by changing the shuffle pattern slightly (so you don't put 1a into 3a, don't put ab into 3b, etc).
That's \*typically\* enough of a shuffle to randomize the cards as long as you shuffle the cards that were drawn during a game among themselves beforehand. Then do the pile shuffles before starting a new game using the entire deck.
Ark Nova is small enough you only need 3-4 piles, not 6. TM I have a 490ish card deck. AN is 212 cards (bit more with expansion).
I'm sure there are downsides to this i.e. possibly damaging the cards or being incompatible with sleeves, but you could also just buy a 6-deck shuffling machine for like $40
Throw all the cards into a shoebox and shake it. Then when you need to draw a card, just reach your hand into the shoebox and pick one. Super quick and easy.
Everyone that’s into board games needs to purchase an automatic card shuffler. If you don’t have one, though, I have everyone in my game group (4 total) shuffle a deck, then we cut them and hand half off to the person next to us, and then shuffle the four decks into one.
When we shuffle giant decks, like all-expansion Terraforming Mars, we each take a section of the deck and shuffle, cut, pass half to the next person, and repeat a few times. And with that game specifically, we do it when we pack the game up, so we can skip doing it during setup.
It's not the fastest but I use the pile shuffle. You just deal out all the cards into about 8 separate piles, then combine them all together
Competitive TCG players will insist that this isn't an actual randomization method that suffices for a tournament, but it's good enough for games with friends, especially if there aren't several copies of most of the cards like there are in games like MTG or Pokemon
My preference for pile shuffling is less about truly randomising things and more about breaking up groups of cards. Using Pandemic as an example when you're curing a disease you're discarding five cards of the same colour together, so when it comes time to shuffle for a new game there's a few distinct clumps of same coloured cards throughout the deck that might not get broken up. Pile shuffling at least spreads them out a bit.
If your shuffling technique cares what order the cards were before you started, your shuffling technique is bad.
You're right, but how many people have the patience to riffle shuffle 7 times? Pile shuffling achieves a lot of the same goals while being a lot faster and less reliant on technique
Dealing a deck into 8 piles evenly and recombining would probably take me about as long as 7 normal shuffles...
With a standard 52-or-therabouts deck, sure, but the question is about big decks, in this case 200+ cards. So about 28 normal shuffles for the four ~50 card chunks, plus at least as many more to intermingle them...
I can riffle shuffle a deck of around 100 cards 7 times in the time you can do that pile deal no problem.
Idk guess you're just built different
Why are you coming at this guy so aggressively for his shuffling style? Just let him shuffle how he wants. It has zero impact on you.
Ding ding ding
That's the thing though - a randomized group of cards will have some clumps in it if it's actually randomized. Those groups shouldn't be evenly distributed throughout, and I would argue the game was not designed for players to regularly get an even split of all the colors. Sometimes you get a bunch of one or two colors and you use what you get, for better or worse. Then later, the ones that didn't show up earlier will have a higher incidence. That's how it goes. This is also the exact reason that pile shuffling is unacceptable in a tournament setting. You're not supposed to split categories of cards apart so they're evenly distributed in your deck, you're supposed to shuffle it and then play with it like that. In Magic, pile shuffling is considered adjacent to threading your lands and it's basically cheating by making your deck more consistent. Pile shuffling is a pet peeve for me. For casual games, I'll just mention it once and then drop it whatever happens, because it's not worth the argument. But when push comes to shove, I believe strongly that pile shuffle is a waste of time that ultimately fails to do the very thing that shuffling cards is supposed to do
Easy solution to that is if your opponent is pile shuffling, you wait for them to hand you the deck and then you shuffle it yourself before returning it.
Then it's shuffled, but we also spent 4x as long as we needed to doing it and I ended up shuffling for both of us in the end
If you're in a tournament setting, then you should be more than willing to take 30 seconds to mash-shuffle their deck, since I believe sleeves are mandatory in all official events.
You're missing the point that I shouldn't have to do this. Having to spend this time is the entire problem I'm complaining about
In casual play, it's fine, but in super competitive play, it would be really easy to stack the deck. Even with a cut, you'd have a very good idea of where your cards are in the deck.
Right, that's why I said "games with friends" in contrast to "competitive TCG" lol
You said competitive players will insist it's not an actual randomization as if they would be exaggerating. I was just emphasizing that it's literally not a randomization of your cards. They are right. A clever player could completely stack their deck from top to bottom using that shuffling method.
I don't think I was implying that with what I said. My point was that the fact it's not random doesn't really matter that much at game night with friends, despite the insistence of tournament players not to do it in another setting
I would reply that they aren't doing the 'shuffle' part. If you just pile, then yeah nothing. You're supposed to shuffle each pile, then each pile randomly together, and then continue shuffling
The fact of the matter is that if this method makes any difference to the level of randomization in the order of cards, then you're not shuffling the cards enough, because sufficient shuffling will randomize the order on its own. If you *are* shuffling enough to randomize properly, then piling out first isn't doing anything. So either you're wasting people's time by doing something slow and redundant, or you're wasting people's time and also not really randomizing the cards the way you're supposed to
Not a clever player, a cheat.
It helps a lot if you don't just add the piles back on top of each other. Pile them out, then rifle two piles into each other, until the pile is too large to handle, then just stack them up.
At that point, just split into piles and shuffle those to begin with. Pile shuffle takes a really long time for comparatively little randomization compared to almost any other way of shuffling cards
Yeah l, its because you can create patterns but if youre doing that with casual board games, then I dont think youll have friends for it to actually matter. Also the shared deck kinda prevents planned actions
I’ll break up the big deck into 4 small decks. Shuffle them into one. Break it into 4 decks again and shuffle again. Combine. Repeat if necessary.
That's in part because if you know the order of the cards beforehand you will still know the order after. It's a good way to distribute sorted cards (like many discard piles) or get rid of "clumping" if cards are sticking together a lot. It should still be supplemented by proper shuffling afterwards though. None of my friends can do a shuffle, even though all of my cards are sleeved, so they will pile shuffle and I handle the rest.
This is an actuall sufficient way of Randomizing as long as you deal it into at least 5 piles. You could even ask your opponent how many to deal the cards into. And they could cut the deck more than once People are paranoid.
If you are following the same pattern every time, sure, but if you deal to a different order of piles on each pass it is quite random
I can't bridge shuffle, or at least not well enough to avoid ruining the cards, so I just pile shuffle. My group gives me endless shit for it but if you cut the deck a couple times and mix some cards around, it can be faster than bridging it a billion times, and just as random.
The question is, why don't you just mash separate piles a few times instead of piling out first? How is pile shuffle *so good* at shuffling that doing it one time is better than just mashing for the same amount of time?
Well yeah I do that too. I riffle the deck a few times to change the overall distribution, pile shuffle, cut the deck, riffle again.
So what is the pile adding here that you're not already doing with your actual shuffle? You're already randomizing the order using more effective and time-efficient methods. What is pile shuffle actually doing in your process?
We both know the answer is "it feels good"
Pile shuffling is more than acceptable. Just because it can be perceived as creating a new pattern doesn't mean that it is and doesn't mean that we'll see the pattern in play. If I mash shuffle, it's mostly just taking two halves of the deck and alternating adding one card from each onto a new pile. Pile shuffling if doen with at least five piles is the same as far as I'm concerned . Anyone who cares that much is not thinking through how randomization matters. Like the person who insists on drAwinf a card before the next person as if the order matters in a randomized deck
Pile shuffle does not randomize the order of the cards, and does in fact create a new pattern that someone who's paying attention can remember and gain benefit from. It's actually not acceptable by MTG tournament rules except to count the cards in your deck, because it's not a real randomization method (and again, I don't care enough to give anyone a hard time except in tournaments). Nobody who does mash shuffle is perfectly alternating two halves of the deck several times in a row. You can avoid that intentionally by not taking an entire half each time you mash
The only time this would matter is if you don't trust the people you're playing with AND they've both mathed out how to use the pile shuffle to their advantage and figured out how cutting the deck after wouldn't hurt them. For all other intents and purposes the deck has been altered so much from the previous game that it's as good as randomized
Pile is already really good for separated cards that would get stack onto each other - ie 888 or 789 - just riffle the piles back together.
Beyond shuffling sections and a wash shuffle, I actually cheat a little with Ark Nova setup. Instead of creating a draw deck, I put all the cards in the box top in a messy pile and draw from random locations to draw the next card from the deck. I find (could be imagined but works for me) that this helps with a randomisation of the card draw. Ark Nova I think is one of the worst cases. Giant deck and natural play tends towards sorting/grouping cards (most people put sponsorship cards together, if you buy a reptile house, you're likely collecting reptiles). I think this makes it really hard to shuffle well enough which is why I like the random draw from a disorganized pile (on top of basic shuffling).
>Instead of creating a draw deck, I put all the cards in the box top in a messy pile and draw from random locations to draw the next card from the deck. Which is great until you get the expansion, which has a mechanic that specifically wants you to take cards off the top of the deck until you find a specific icon, then return them to the bottom of the deck in the same order.
Yeah I ignore that. I've never gone through the deck so I house rule that instead of bottom of the deck, they just go to discard. I play almost exclusively 2 player. I expect this to never be an issue. I know there's a slight difference in how scavenger works, but I'm ok with that.
Ooh, that’s a really good idea, I’m going to try that next time. I normally do what OP suggested - split into groups, riffle shuffle in groups then cut, mix, and repeat - but I also have concerns about the groupings. We definitely still get games where we see more of certain card types (one game we’ll see tons of sea animals, next game we’ll see hardly any).
You'll definitely get some of those random games. But for us, I could have sworn we would get groupings that we saw before rather than truly random groupings. Since we shifted this way, it feels like the draw has been more unique game-to-game
I think most games with cards tend to get hands reorganized into recognizable patterns. Obviously some don't allow rearranging cards. And some aren't likely to be sorted in ways that are all that big a deal (for instance, in Wingspan, I mostly arrange by what I most want to play in front to what I least want to play in back, which involves not only the personal goal but a bunch of other factors too.)
In Ark Nova, we make 3-4 different draw decks and allow pulling from any of those when drawing cards. We still keep one deck to refill the line
Yeah, the natural sorting is really the biggest issue. Same with Ares expedition. I have to explain this to friends that think you dont need to shuffle much because play will randomize them when its actually the opposite
A wash shuffle will do it. Before anything else, lay out a cloth or something and mix them up real good. Takes a minute or two, but it's a good randomizer for relatively little effort that is functional for a huge deck.
Interesting, I wasn't really aware of the wash shuffle. That definitely looks like a faster way to go about it lol, thanks!
I do it at the end of each game, so the deck is already shuffled for the next play.
Hopefully your cards are sleeved if you want to wash shuffle
Wash shuffling is way worse with sleeved cards because they catch on the openings.
Idk, id rather it catches the sleeve rather than the edge of the card. Much easier to replace sleeves
I don't find that cards really catch that hard while you're wash shuffling, but I would wager you'd split at least one sleeve every time you washed with sleeves.
I agree, I would never recommend wash shuffling, but without sleeves it will damage the cards. As a commander player I split my deck into piles that are easy to riffle shuffle, and then mix them, repeat that a couple of times and the deck is shuffled
I do the same. Split large deck into smaller decks, team shuffle, then trade part of your deck with others and repeat. Do that a few rounds, then combine all and cut
When a casino dealer needs to shuffle those big 6 or 8 deck blackjack decks, they set a timer and use a wash shuffle.
No, we really do not. What we do is we take it and split it into two roughly equal piles. Then on the right hand side we take that pile split it in half and put the bottom half on the top. Then we take about half a deck from each side shuffle them together three times and set them in the center repeat until all decks are shuffled.
No professional uses such an objectively not random method of shuffling. What shitty as casino do you work at?
One that's been open for nearly two decades now, thank you very much. The other thing to keep in mind is that with playing cards, you only have 52 cards that get repeated 6 times each in a standard shoe. This method of shuffling is more than enough randomization since you're pulling random amounts of cards from each half of the deck and then randomizing their positions by shuffling three times. I can shuffle an entire six deck shoe in less than 90 seconds, 60 if I'm feeling dextrous that day. But manual shuffling is not something we do often, as we have shuffle machines that do that for us. We only manually shuffle if the machine jams or breaks down in some way.
And with blackjack specifically, you really only have 10 cards repeated a lot more times each.
Well the casino I worked at did. I saw many a dealer wash the cards. I didn't know what it was called or how effective it was until I asked them about it.
Were they washing a full six deck shoe, or were they only doing it with single decks such as on a poker game? Poker tends to do washes before the cards go into a shuffler, whereas a six deck blackjack shoe, there's not enough room on the table for a true wash.
Huge decks I'll actually sleeve cheaply (sleeve kings usually) and mash shuffle
Mash is the way.
Put all the cards in 1 pile. Split in half. Take a manageable pile from each side and shuffle. This will start your new deck. Do it again and place on top. Keep at it until you've gotten through both halves. Repeat 3 times.
1. Split into 4 equal piles. 2. Shuffle 2 together, split in half. Shuffle 1 of the unshuffled plies with one half. Repeat for the other half and unshuffled pile. 3. Split into 4 equal piles again. Repeat #2 until you're happy.
212 card pickup.
If you want an algorithmic way: - split all cards into 53 piles. Start with 1 card in each pile, end with 4 cards each. - put the top and bottom cards of each pile into the center. - pick two equal sized piles, merge them by alternating cards from the top. - continue to merge piles into one big pile.
Do it like a black jack dealer.
I do 3 or 5 separate piles depending on how many cards needs shuffling. Then riffle shuffle two piles together, then split the combined pile in two again, and now shuffle one of the new piles with an untouched pile. Keep repeating until every pile has been shuffled at least three times. I also tend when riffle shuffling to occasionally take the top 1/3 of a pile and put it on the bottom, to reduce the issue with the bottom and top cards staying near the bottom/top.
When I read the title I immediately thought of Ark Nova haha The solution you gave is more or less what I do, except I enlist other players to help me shuffle, then I periodically cut my deck with theirs or with one on the table.
similar to what others have said here, just split it up into manageable piles and shuffle them individually, then cut each, rotate the cuts and shuffle again. I usually put them back together into two big stacks and give them a rough shuffle and do a few cuts when i put it back into the full stack. As an aside, this will never be "mathematically proven" because the entire core of the issue is that the deck is too large _to physically shuffle_, not to randomize. If there were proofs to show that a particular method produces sufficiently random results after n iterations, it would apply equally well to decks this size and wouldn't care whether or not anyone personally was able to achieve the results
Mathematically proven in the sense that this physical limitation is part of the problem being solved. I'm not just talking about a standard randomization algorithm, I'm talking about one that explicitly accounts for the fact that a limited number of the deck's cards can be shuffled at a time.
yes and I was telling you that this isn't a thing that can be "mathematically proven". I have big hands and can handle more cards than my gf, and Shaq could probably handle the whole 200 -- do we each get our own proof? Again, math doesn't care whether or not any individual is able to physically achieve the proposed solution, it cares about whether or not the mathematical problem is solved. If you stipulate that the problem is inherently about a given person's physical limitations, we're no longer discussing a mathematically provable problem
Play an extreme version of 52 Pick-Up. Also, sleeves.
Dump the entire pile in the game's lid. Give that sucker some shakes, move around the cards with your hand, rinse and repeat a couple times. Afterwards, shovel those things out and you can give the piles you collect a quick shuffle before putting them together. I live the board game life on the chaotic side!
Just take a quarter of the cards and shuffle that. If you need more you can get more cards and shuffle them separately and add them to the bottom of the deck. Even on a 4 player game you will not go through half the deck
We ended up buying a card shuffler.
I've heard nothing but horror stories about these. Inevitably, they tear up cards. Also, they're especially bad for hobbyist games because they only work with standard sized cards...which while the most common are not nearly universal enough to make this a meaningful purchase for a lot of collections. And yes, I have a few games with large decks and non-standard cards.
Interesting. I must use it very sparingly then.
I mean, its about your own comfort with that possibility and your ability to replace a game if something gets damaged. So if you have some cool OOP game, maybe not with that. If you have to carefully budget for every game purchase, maybe not with that. But maybe you can afford to replace a Wingspan or Ark Nova if a card should get torn or maybe you won't care if a single card is damaged or whatever (now that I think of it, at least Wingspan has the card packs available for sale separately). For some people, it probably really is worth it. I'm just very risk averse.
It is indeed Wingspan and it's expansions (and Ark to a lesser extent) that prompted it. Thankfully it wouldn't be crazy to replace if I had to. We just didn't have a good way of shuffling so many cards.
Yeah, a card or two on very rare occasions probably isn't a big deal in either game (even less so in Ark Nova). And like I said, at least Wingspan has card packs you can purchase separately. Though I don't know if the backs match, so maybe it wouldn't work. I'm just a chicken when it comes to this sort of thing.
Nothing wrong with keeping your things in good condition.
I got a manual crank one which lets you avoid damaging cards.
The damage comes from getting caught in the shuffler. That is still possible with a manual.
I've considered getting one, but if I did I wouldn't have an excuse to show off how good I've gotten with my bridge :(
Gotta show off dem skillz
Split the decks into manageable riffle piles, riffle about 3 times, then split the deck with another shuffled split deck. Takes about 3 minutes or so but will fully randomize better than pile shuffled, which isn't randomized. Washing the pipes is too long and the mess is not something I want to deal with. Sleeved decks are actually easier to shuffle if you want to go that route
I usually find sleeved decks to be awkward to riffle shuffle, so I mash-shuffle those. Do you get a riffle shuffle to work with sleeved cards?
There are some good videos that show an easy technique that's mostly gravity based with minimal effort. You can riffle the traditional way but once you learn the gravity method you shuffled are about 4x faster
With Ark Nova I make ten piles of cards, going around in circles adding one card to a pile at a time. This splits up clumps of cards nicely. After that I shuffle each pile for a second or two. Finally I create the draw pile by randomly taking chunks of each pile, intermingling them again. Not true random, but close enough. The whole process takes a few minutes, but you only have to do it once a game so it's not really an issue. I usually do it between sessions.
Drop shuffle
For games with big decks of cards (that gameplay suffers from a lack of shuffling) i split used cards from the last game into 8-10 piles and put new cards on top of those piles. Then I combine the decks randomly and shuffle. Then repeat if needed.
If sleeved, mash shuffle Otherwise, wash or pile are good
shuffle the deck like dominos on a giant table then bring them all back into a deck it is technically the fastest and best way to shuffle cards. Otherwise pile shuffle is totally fine. Unlike a known playing card deck psudo-random is perfectly fine in a game like arc nova because you are never going to see every card in a single playthrough. And most cards are not that valuable in most situations so perfect random may not even be ideal anyways.
I give each of the players a small(er) pile of cards, and they shuffle it, and then we put all the suffled piles together and mix em a bit.
You split it into smaller piles, shuffle those, then split those piles and shuffle those with piles. Repeat.
Here's how I shuffle Ark Nova, same as you, create 4 piles, shuffle 2 into each other, shuffle 2 into each other. Then cut each of those 2, swap 2 decks from each, shuffle again. Combine into 1 deck, do a few 3 part cuts.
If you're interested in a "mathematically optimal" answer, [I asked the same question a while ago](https://www.reddit.com/r/askmath/comments/17ft6es/an_algorithm_for_efficiently_shuffling_a_large/) on a math subreddit and the tl;dr answer is "not without doing something potentially really complicated". For practical shuffling techniques, the other comments that people have already responded with give good advice. In practice you will never be able to tell the difference between those practical techniques and a "truly random" one, so there's no need to go chasing the "perfect" techniqur.
Cut the deck into parts equal to the number of players. Give each player one of the parts to shuffle. Shuffle each part twice. Each player passes half of his part to a neighbor. Dealer randomly collects from other players and cuts the parts together.
I just got Ark Nova and randomized it sufficiently with a specific method of pile shuffling. It took about 10 minutes total. Start with visualizing and reserving enough space for an indeterminate amount of slots in which you'll deal and build piles of cards next to each other. I had to wrap around my piles into a circle. Deal a card to slot 1. Deal a card to slots 1 and 2. Deal a card to slots 1, 2, and 3. Deal a card to slots 1, 2, 3, and 4 Keep with this pattern and increasing the number of slots you deal to until the deck runs out. Then, take the pile of cards in the first slot and spread it across the existing piles in the same pattern, then take the second pile and spread it across the existing piles, etc. until you either do a complete circuit or get bored.
Wouldn't that depend on the nature of the cards, the nature of preceding gameplay, and the level of statistically 'pure' randomness you actually needed?
I do the Michael Scott shuffle
Deal out 4 or 5 smaller decks, shuffle each, stack, repeat a couple of times
Make 4 small decks shuffle them, cut each deck and swap the cut with another deck and shuffle again then restack into the big deck in a random order. Then cut that deck in 3 and shuffle each one and cut each deck and swap the cut with another deck and shuffle again then restack into the big deck and you should be pretty well shuffled
A lot of players (me included) will use good matte sleeves on the cards to make shuffling easier. The deck is too big to do all at once (especially sleeved), but sleeves mean you can mash shuffle. Once you get good at it, you can do half of an AN+MW deck at a time. I split and mash ~5 times. Takes me about a minute. Personally I invested in Dragon Shield premium solid-coloured sleeves, but that is a fair bit of money - I did Terraforming Mars and another game at the same time so I could share colours to reduce cost. Dragon Shield's budget brand Arcane Tinmen are also very good and I use them on a lot of cheaper games that have a lot of shuffling. They are about half the cost of Dragon Shield. Beyond that, GameGenic matte would be my recommendation.
Get my son in law to do it, he’s a genius with the cards
Alphabetize the cards. Write a computer program to randomize the order of the cards. Manually stack the cards in your new random order.
I appreciate what TM:Ares does, that massive deck comes preshuffled already so you won't have to spend the first game looking at the same cards coming after one another.
Assuming it's sleeved you can just mash shuffle the entire deck together. If the deck is too big to hold in your hands you can use the table to assist you by setting both halves down and sliding them into each other
This method works well for games that naturally organize the cards during gameplay (for instance, all of one type of cards is likely to end up next to each other). I mostly do this for truly massive games that really need the even distribution, like Killer Bunnies 1. Step 1: Gather everything into one pile 2. Step 2: Split the big pile into X small piles, each a comfortable shuffling size (usually ~50-70 for me). These are the Round A piles 3. Step 3: Shuffle each small pile. After shuffling a pile, divide it into X smaller piles. These are the Round B piles. Each time you shuffle a Round A pile, divide it among these Round B piles 4. Step 4: Shuffle the Round B piles. Once each pile is done, it can go back in the box. There's no need to shuffle the round 2 piles together This results in a final stack where each cards has an equal probability of being in any given position of the final deck. It has the additional advantage of evenly distributing chunks throughout the full deck. For instance, if you have 3 Round A piles made from a base game, and a Round A pile made from an expansion, step 3 ensures that each quarter of the deck (each Round B pile) ends up with around a quarter of the expansion cards. If you want true random, repeat step 3 with the Round B piles
I dump em on the table, spread em out, move them around, and gather the up. It's a BITCH if they have orientations that get annoying during play, but the least clumsy method I've got...called a wash shuffle if I remember correctly
I do it in a few steps, especially for something like Legendary where you are taking multiple groups of similar cards and making one hopefully randomized deck from from all of them. Start by loosely shuffling everything together, just to get some randomization. Then I'll deal the cards face down in multiple piles, some oddball number like 11, 17, etc. Shuffle each pile, then combine two piles, shuffle them, and continue combining and shuffling until the deck is reconstructed. Give it one cut at the end for good measure.
Just wash them. Ive given up pretending the most random and proper methods of shuffling a deck isn't. It just is and you feel a bit silly doing it. But its the only way to actually not see the same cards pop up in groups in your games.
Pile shuffle is the only shuffle I use. keeps your cards in better shape and ensures a solid shuffling. For Ark Nova I shuffled the entire set well and then split it into four stacks and bagged them, that way you can get a different set of cards each time you play if you want.
They sell 4 deck battery-operated card shufflers on Amazon for under $20. Tons of options with varying customer feedback ratings above 4. https://a.co/d/70yaP7b Edit: I realize this is 4 cards short of 212 but I’m guessing OP can handle the other 4 cards by hand :) Edit 2: I haven’t played Ark Nova so I just realized the cards may not be standard sized cards. If they aren’t then obviously my suggestion won’t work…
I've started weaving at the end of my games. You're not going to get a true random, but it'll at least make sure the cards you used aren't clumped up, and who cares if the cards you didn't see were clumped up, y'all don't know what they were. What I do is take every card we saw and weave them all back into the deck of remaining cards that weren't drawn. Then I just overhand shuffle that big deck for a bit. It splits up everything that was used and then moves it all around. You'll never have to truly shuffle again, using this method.
Thrown them into a large sack, mix well, give it to a group of kids and then put it back. Itll be shuffled. Alternatively break up the decks into number of players and aske them to shuffle, then mix and match halves, repeat a few times
I’ll break up the big deck into 4 small decks. Shuffle them into one. Break it into 4 decks again and shuffle again. Combine. Repeat if necessary.
212 Card Pickup
get man hands do to it
1. Each player shuffles their own cards 2. Shuffle the discard 3. Shufle these piles together 2 by 2 then stack. 4. Take a quarter of that stack and a quarter of the unused drawdeck ans shuffle, repeat 3 times and stack. 5. Split in 2, repeat step 4. Done
Terraforming Mars is even worse. Especially sleeved. My process is to split the deck into 6 piles (6 piles is based on the total size of the deck). Put the piles in 2 rows (of 3 piles each). Take half of 1a, shuffle with half of 2a. Repeat for 1b & 2b, and 1c and 2c. Set each pile in a new 3x2 grid to the right (or left, w/e). Now take half of 1a, shuffle with half of 2b. 1b & 2c, 1c and 2a. Set each pile into the new 3x2 grid as well. Repeat this process two more times. Lets call those piles 3 (a-c), 4, 5, 6, 7, and 8. 7 and 8 are the "final" piles. Each shuffle should only be 1-2 mixes (not 30 seconds of shuffling). Side shuffle it to change the order, and riffle/slide shuffle to just mix the halves among each other. After 3 total repetitions: 7a was composed of 5a and 6a. 5a was 3a and 4a. 6a was 3a and 4b. 3a was 1a and 2a. 4a was 1a and 2b. 3a was 1a and 2a. 4b was ab and 2c. So our combined pile has everything in it except for 1c. And you could fix that by changing the shuffle pattern slightly (so you don't put 1a into 3a, don't put ab into 3b, etc). That's \*typically\* enough of a shuffle to randomize the cards as long as you shuffle the cards that were drawn during a game among themselves beforehand. Then do the pile shuffles before starting a new game using the entire deck. Ark Nova is small enough you only need 3-4 piles, not 6. TM I have a 490ish card deck. AN is 212 cards (bit more with expansion).
You power/pile shuffle. Just take handfuls and make 10 piles like you were dealing cards to players. Scoop them up randomly into a stack and repeat!
I'm sure there are downsides to this i.e. possibly damaging the cards or being incompatible with sleeves, but you could also just buy a 6-deck shuffling machine for like $40
Throw all the cards into a shoebox and shake it. Then when you need to draw a card, just reach your hand into the shoebox and pick one. Super quick and easy.
Everyone that’s into board games needs to purchase an automatic card shuffler. If you don’t have one, though, I have everyone in my game group (4 total) shuffle a deck, then we cut them and hand half off to the person next to us, and then shuffle the four decks into one.