Ensky Playing Cards, Sleeves and Board Games

Everything on this page is printed on the same board as our puzzles and in the same plant: Ensky playing cards in standard 54-card decks, character card sleeves cut to Japanese size, and a handful of table games — karuta, memory pairs, old maid — meant for two to six players at a kitchen table.

A deck of ours is a deck first. The faces are legible, the stock takes a shuffle, and the design carries the characters on the backs and the court cards rather than on every face. That is deliberate: a pack nobody can read is an ornament, not a game. The Japanese karuta sets are the exception — those are built to be played fast, face-up on the floor, and the cards are larger for exactly that reason.

Sleeves are sized for Japanese small cards and sold in packs; the entry says how many each pack contains, because that is the number that decides whether one is enough. They are high-quality print on clear backs, officially licensed like the rest, and they are the one item here that gets bought by people who do not otherwise collect toys at all.

Ghibli, Pokémon, Kirby, Sanrio and Yu-Gi-Oh! supply most of the artwork, with a Magic: The Gathering item or two. A deck is a good small gift for a fan of a show, and the memory games work for a child too young for a 500-piece jigsaw puzzle but old enough to enjoy winning.

Each entry carries the piece or card count, the finished size and the series, which is the information people ask us for first. The latest sets usually celebrate an anniversary, and they are printed once. Questions we are asked often enough to publish are answered below, and anything more personal can go to our inbox — the excitement of a table game is in playing it, so the figures should be settled before you buy.

These decks are printed in Japan on the paper our puzzle boards come from, which is why a pack feels heavier than it looks in the photograph. A karuta set featuring Spirited Away or a memory game featuring Kirby is the cheapest honest way into the collection: no table to clear, no hour to find, and the design holds up on a shelf between rounds. Ensky playing cards also travel, which a 1000-piece jigsaw does not. We celebrate the same anniversaries here as everywhere else, the licence is official on every item, and the high-quality stock is the reason a deck survives a year of being shuffled by children who do not take their time about it.