Wandering Adventures

How to Store and Protect Your TCG Collection — A Practical Guide If you're playing or collecting trading card games, your cards are an investment. Whether you're sitting on a binder full of Flesh and Blood Majestics, a set of Pokémon chase cards, or a competitive Magic deck you've spent months building, the difference between a well-protected collection and a poorly stored one can be hundreds or even thousands of dollars. Here's exactly what you should be doing to keep your cards in the best possible condition. Sleeve Your Cards — No Exceptions This is the non-negotiable starting point. Every single card you care about should be in a sleeve. Full stop. Unsleeved cards pick up wear incredibly fast — shuffling, handling, and even just sliding in and out of a deck box leaves micro-scratches on the surface that add up quickly. A card that's been played unsleeved for a few months looks noticeably worse than one that's been sleeved from day one, and in the secondary market condition is everything. Think of sleeving in three tiers depending on how much you care about the card: Minimum — Single Sleeved One good quality outer sleeve is the bare minimum for any card you're playing with. Dragon Shield Dual Mattes are widely considered the gold standard for competitive play — they shuffle smoothly, they're durable, and they come in enough colours to colour-code your decks. Gamegenic Matte Prime sleeves are another excellent option at a slightly lower price point. For standard size cards across Pokémon, Flesh and Blood, Magic, and Riftbound, both work perfectly. Better — Double Sleeved For any card worth money or that you'd be gutted to lose, double sleeving is the way to go. Put the card in a tight-fitting inner sleeve first — these are thin, snug sleeves designed specifically to fit the card — then slide the whole thing into your regular outer sleeve. The inner sleeve seals the card away from moisture and edge wear while the outer sleeve takes all the shuffling abuse. This is how most serious competitive players sleeve their decks and it makes a noticeable difference in how well cards hold up over time. Maximum — Triple Sleeved For your most expensive cards — high value foils, chase rares, cards you've spent serious money on — triple sleeving is the gold standard. Inner sleeve first, then your regular sleeve, then a thick outer sleeve on top of that. The outer sleeve adds a third layer of rigid protection that essentially armours the card against virtually anything short of a direct coffee spill. It does make the card thicker and some deck boxes won't fit triple sleeved cards, so it's best reserved for your most prized singles rather than your entire deck. Deck Boxes Once your cards are sleeved they need somewhere to live that isn't just loose in a bag or rattling around in the bottom of your backpack. A good deck box keeps your cards upright, protects them from being crushed, and prevents the sleeves from getting scuffed against each other. For a single deck, a rigid deck box like the Gamegenic Bastion XL or the Ultimate Guard Boulder is ideal. These are hard shell boxes that won't compress under pressure — important if your bag is getting thrown around at events. Avoid flimsy cardboard or soft plastic boxes for anything you care about. For players who run multiple decks, a larger storage box or a portfolio case is worth the investment. The Gamegenic Academic 133+ XL holds a full double sleeved deck plus tokens, dice, and everything else you need for a game night in one organised package. Binders and Portfolio Albums For your collection cards — pulls you want to keep, singles you've bought, cards you're not currently playing — a good binder is essential. Side-loading pages are significantly better than top-loading ones because cards can't fall out if the binder is tipped upside down. The Gamegenic Prime Album and the Ultimate Guard range both use side-loading pages and are well worth the few extra dollars over cheap generic binders. Organise your binder in a way that makes sense for how you use it — by set, by rarity, by colour, whatever works for you. The important thing is that cards are stored flat, not bent or crammed in at angles, and that the binder itself is stored upright rather than lying flat with weight on top of it. Toploaders and Card Savers for High Value Cards For your most valuable cards — anything worth $20 or more — a sleeve alone isn't enough for long term storage. Toploaders are rigid plastic holders that keep a single card completely flat and protected from bending. Put the card in a soft penny sleeve first, then slide it into the toploader for maximum protection. This is standard practice for storing and shipping valuable singles. Card Savers are a softer semi-rigid alternative that are preferred by grading companies like PSA and BGS if you're ever considering getting cards professionally graded. If grading is on your radar, store your candidates in Card Savers rather than toploaders to avoid any edge indentation from the rigid plastic. Temperature, Humidity, and Light This is the part most collectors don't think about until it's too late. Cards are paper and paper reacts to its environment. High humidity causes warping and can lead to mold in extreme cases. Direct sunlight causes fading — even through a window over time. Extreme heat can cause cards to warp or sleeves to stick together. Store your collection somewhere cool, dry, and out of direct light. A climate-controlled room is ideal. Avoid garages, attics, and basements where temperature and humidity fluctuate significantly. If you live somewhere particularly humid, silica gel packets in your storage boxes absorb excess moisture and are cheap insurance for an expensive collection. We stock Dragon Shield, Gamegenic, and Ultimate Guard sleeves at Wandering Adventures — including inners and outers for double and triple sleeving. Browse the full range at wanderingadventures.ca/collections/trading-card-games.

If you've spent any real time in a game store, you already know where this is going. Tabletop gaming is a hobby built around shared spaces. We sit shoulder to shoulder at Warhammer 40K tournaments, lean over the same Pokemon and Flesh and Blood tables for hours, and pass cards, dice, and miniatures back and forth all night. Hygiene isn't a side topic in this community. It's part of the social contract. Showing up clean and smelling good is a sign of respect for everyone else at the table, the same way sleeving your cards is a sign of respect for the game. That's why Wandering Adventures in Woodbridge is now carrying Lathr, a Canadian grooming brand that makes its products with natural oils and builds everything around one simple idea: smelling great shouldn't cost a fortune. Lathr's colognes are the headline. They craft fragrances inspired by some of the most popular and expensive colognes on the market, the kind that normally run $200 to $400 a bottle, and they sell them for around $40. These aren't cheap knockoffs in a plastic bottle. They're made in small batches with quality natural oils, and the performance holds up. If you've ever wanted to smell like the guy wearing the designer bottle without paying designer prices, this is exactly that. Alongside the colognes, we're stocking Lathr's natural soap bars and grooming products. Everything is made with natural oils rather than the harsh synthetic bases you find in big-box body wash, which matters if you're washing your hands a dozen times during a long tournament day or scrubbing hobby paint off your fingers after a painting session. So why is a tabletop gaming store carrying cologne and soap? Because the connection is more natural than it first sounds. Our whole hobby is about craftsmanship at an accessible price point. A pot of Citadel or AK Interactive paint costs a few dollars and lets you create something beautiful. A $40 bottle of quality cologne fits the exact same philosophy: real craft, real quality, no gatekeeping price tag. Lathr is a small independent maker doing things by hand in small batches, which is the fragrance world's version of an indie miniatures studio. Supporting them feels the same as supporting the small hobby brands we've always championed. There's also the practical side. Game nights are long. Tournaments are longer. A pocket-sized cologne in your bag next to your dice and deck boxes is one of the easiest quality-of-life upgrades in the hobby. Your opponents will thank you. Your local game store definitely thanks you. And one more thing. We didn't just pick Lathr off a shelf. We've been talking with the people behind the brand, and let's just say the conversation has gone well beyond stocking their existing lineup. There may or may not be something brewing that's built specifically for tabletop gamers, something you won't find anywhere else. That's all we're saying for now. If you want to be first to hear about it, keep an eye on our blog and socials. In the meantime, come by Wandering Adventures at 7766 Martin Grove Rd, Unit 5 in Woodbridge and check out the Lathr lineup in person. Smell a few testers, grab a bar of soap, and pick up a bottle before your next tournament. Whether you're battling in the Vaughan area's most competitive Warhammer 40K events or just showing up for casual Commander night, you might as well smell like a legend doing it.

How to Prime and Base Coat Your Miniatures — A Beginner's Guide to Getting It Right If you've just bought your first box of miniatures and you're staring at them wondering where on earth to start, this is the article for you. One of the most common mistakes new painters make is going straight to a brush and a pot of paint without any preparation. The result is usually paint that rubs off, colours that look dull, and a model that ends up looking worse than it should. The good news is that avoiding all of that is straightforward once you understand priming and base coating — the two most important steps before a single highlight or shade goes on. We see a lot of new painters come through the doors at Wandering Adventures and this is consistently where the questions start. Here's everything I tell them. Assembling Your Miniatures — Don't Skip This Step Before primer goes anywhere near your model, it needs to be properly assembled — and that starts with mold lines. These are the thin raised lines of excess plastic that run along every piece from the manufacturing process. They're easy to miss when you're eager to get painting, but primer and paint don't hide them — they make them more visible. Run your finger along every surface before assembly and scrape them off gently with a hobby knife. Five minutes per model here saves a lot of frustration later. When gluing, use plastic cement for plastic kits rather than super glue. It actually fuses the plastic together for a stronger bond. Apply sparingly, hold firmly for 30 seconds, and leave to cure before handling. Check for gaps where pieces meet — filler or a small amount of green stuff smoothed over a seam before priming will be invisible once painted. Leave it and it'll show forever. Finally think about sub-assemblies. Some models are genuinely easier to paint in pieces — arms off, pilot separate from vehicle, backpack separate from torso. A little planning at the assembly stage saves a lot of awkward brush angles later. What is Priming and Why Does it Matter Priming is the process of applying a base layer to your model before you paint it. A primer is a specially formulated paint — usually applied by spray can or airbrush — that does two things. First it gives the paint something to grip onto. Plastic, resin, and metal are all naturally slippery surfaces and regular paint won't adhere to them reliably without a primer underneath. Second it creates a consistent surface colour to paint over, which affects how your subsequent colours look. Skipping primer is the single biggest mistake new painters make. You might get away with it for a session or two but the paint will start chipping and rubbing off surprisingly quickly, especially on areas that get handled a lot like bases and weapon barrels. A good primer coat takes five minutes and makes everything that comes after it dramatically better. Spray Can vs Brush-On Primer For most beginners a spray can primer is the easiest way to go. You hold it about 25-30cm from the model, apply light even coats, and you get consistent coverage without brush marks. Citadel, Army Painter, and AK Interactive all make solid spray primers. The Citadel sprays are the most widely available and they work reliably straight out of the can. Brush-on primers are useful when you can't spray — if you're in a flat with no outdoor space for example — or when you're working on a single model and don't want to open a spray can. They work well but take a bit more care to apply evenly without leaving brush streaks. One important note — always prime in decent weather. Cold temperatures and humidity are the enemy of spray primers. If you spray on a cold damp day you risk a chalky, grainy finish called frosting that ruins the surface of the model. Aim for above 15 degrees celsius and low humidity if you can. Choosing Your Primer Colour This is where a lot of beginners get confused because there's no single right answer — it depends on what you're painting. Black primer is the most common choice for dark armies — Chaos Space Marines, Nighthaunt, dark fantasy models. It pre-shades the recesses of the model naturally and makes darker colours look richer. The downside is that it can swallow lighter colours so you'll need more coats if you're going bright. White primer is the go-to for bright colour schemes, light armour, and anything where you want colours to pop with full vibrancy. It's less forgiving than black because every imperfection shows, but the results with bright colours are significantly better. Grey primer is the middle ground and honestly it's what I recommend most often for beginners. It works with both dark and light colour schemes, it's forgiving, and it gives you a neutral base that doesn't fight against whatever you're painting over it. Coloured primers are also worth knowing about. Citadel's Wraithbone and Skeleton Horde sprays are popular base colours for Age of Sigmar and anything with a warm bone or cream tone. Army Painter do a huge range of coloured primers that can actually double as your base coat, saving you a step entirely. What is a Base Coat Once your primer is dry, the base coat is the first layer of actual colour you apply to each area of the model. This isn't your final colour — it's the foundation that everything else gets built on top of. Think of it like undercoating a wall before you paint a room. The base coat establishes the colour and gives you something solid to shade and highlight over. Base coats should be relatively thin and even — you're not trying to get perfect coverage in one pass, you're building up the colour in two or three thin layers rather than one thick one. Thick paint obscures detail, fills in recesses, and dries unevenly. Thin paint flows better, dries flatter, and preserves the fine detail that makes miniatures look good. Thinning Your Paint This is the part where almost every beginner goes wrong at first. Paint straight from the pot is almost always too thick to apply directly to a miniature. You need to thin it down with water or a dedicated medium until it has a consistency closer to skimmed milk than to double cream. A good test is to put a small amount of paint on your palette, add a drop or two of water, and mix it. Drag a brush loaded with the thinned paint across the back of your hand — if it flows smoothly and covers evenly it's about right. If it sits in a blob it's too thick. If it's so thin you can see straight through it, add a touch more paint. Citadel Base paints are specifically formulated for base coating and have good pigment density that means they cover well even when thinned. Vallejo also makes excellent base colours with consistent pigmentation. AK Interactive's 3rd Generation range thins beautifully and flows off the brush really well — I use them regularly for base coating larger flat areas. A Simple Process to Follow If you're just starting out, here's the exact process I'd recommend: Clip your models off the sprue and clean up any mold lines with a hobby knife or file. Glue them together if needed and leave them to cure fully. Then prime — one or two light coats from a spray can, letting each coat dry before applying the next. Once the primer is fully dry, usually an hour or two, start your base coats. Work area by area — base coat all the armour first, then all the cloth, then all the metal, then skin and details. Don't try to do everything at once or you'll end up with a muddled mess. Two thin coats per area, letting each one dry, and you'll have a clean solid foundation to work from. From there you're ready for shading, highlighting, and all the fun stuff. But get the primer and base coat right and everything that comes after it is easier, more enjoyable, and looks significantly better.One more technique worth knowing about as you progress is zenithal priming — a two-coat method using black and white spray that pre-shades your model before you've touched a brush. It's a game changer for speed painting and making Contrast paints look their best. We've got a full guide on it over on the blog at wanderingadventures.ca/blogs/news. What You'll Need To get started you really only need a few things — a spray primer, a selection of base coat paints for the colours in your army, and a decent brush. We stock everything you need at Wandering Adventures in Vaughan. For primers check out our Hobby Supplies range at wanderingadventures.ca/collections/paint — and if you're not sure what to pick up for your specific army, come in and ask. Helping new painters get started is genuinely one of our favourite parts of running this store. Everyone starts somewhere. Get the foundation right and the rest of the hobby opens up in front of you.