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Decipher's Quality Control, or Lack Thereof by Alidar Jarok Personally, I just can't figure out what's been up with Decipher over the past year. Over the past year, Decipher's self-proclaimed commitment to quality and customer service has been steadily on the decline. Shall we start listing examples? Enahnced First Contact - Printing the premiums in the middle of a flood was a bad idea, as just about anyone in the world could tell you. All of the premiums were water stained, some of them severely. For the most part, it was possible to spend half an hour with a damp cloth to remove most noticable marks, but it's still quite annoying to have to fix your cards (especially the cards that people were buying the set for). Decipher's response to this? There was no official response, at least not on the web site. A few posts on the mailing lists and BBS basically said "moisten a towel and wipe it off yourself." The other option was to send them in to be replaced, but this process often takes well over a month. How did these cards get out in this condition in the first place? It's not like they were released in time for the holiday rush... Blaze of Glory - Shall we start a list? Bad collation - In two boxes, how did I get 28 of one common and none of another? Why did the first seven packs give me three of one rare and four of another? Why did a lot of people seem to get loads of a few rares (as in four or five of a single rare per box), and couldn't pull a few despite buying a case? I personally didn't even get half of the 50 rares after more than two boxes (24 different rares among 66 packs). Most of the other players in my area were in the same boat... but with the same duplicate rares! Koloth was in high demand, let me tell you... The sum is not greater than the parts - What good is half of an uncommon in one pack, and half in another? A friend of mine had about 10 such uncommons sliced in a box. Empty packs - It wasn't all that uncommon to pull a sealed, empty pack in Blaze of Glory. While kinda funny at first, you do get cheated out of a pack of cards. Foils - The set was rumored to have been delayed while the foils were printed - spoilers were released two months before the set was released, with a pre-release shortly after that. Yet Koloth had a printing defect, a number of foils had noticable horizontal lines across them damaging their value, and they still curled quite a bit in the summer heat. Rules of Acquisition - Sure, this set was released at relative lightning speed, and with somewhat decent collation. But at what cost? Rareless packs - A frequent complaint on BBS's were of packs that contained no rares. Quite annoying to the average player. And if you want to get your rare, prepare to wait a month while Decipher responds to your complaint... Commonless packs - On the flip side of the last problem, in some packs the commons were replaced by rares, creating packs with six rares each. Little happening in the way of complaints, but still a manufacturing defect nonetheless. Split rarities - Think a rare is a rare? Think again. Some commons were almost as rare as an uncommon, some commons were supercommon, and half the rares appeared 50% more often than other rares (naturally, none of these more common rares were mains). Of course the worst part is that Decipher didn't think it was important to tell us. The rumor of split rarities were flying around since DecipherCon, but were only announced relatively recently. Decipher claimed on a mailing list post a while ago that they didn't think that split rarities were that big of a deal. How could they think that in an industry where rarity means everything to collectors? Second Anthology - First, a pre-release in Germany back in late October had to be canceled at the day of the event because Decipher didn't have any Anthologies ready. A box defect forced the set to release over four months late. Even the checklist in the box says that the Anthology was released in December 1999. And after all that, the premium distribution is horrible. Some have two of one premium and none of another, some are just flat out missing a premium, and others received extra premiums. Preliminary reports from various play groups around the world indicate that somewhere between a quarter and a third of all Second Anthologies have problems. Of the five Anthologies that I have opened or seen opened, there was a different card on the top of the premium pack each time. Excuse me, but why are the cards appearing at random like this? Why not just make all the packs the same, like First Anthology, seeing that the cards are supposed to be fixed? Coincidentally, First Anthology didn't have many distribution problems like Second Anthology. That's a bad track record over the past 15 months. The only set that didn't have any major distribution problems was The Dominion (and even then, there were reports of indentical boxes here and there). What has Decipher done about this? All of the complaints about too many/too few rares in a pack and damaged cards seems to have disappeared a couple of weeks after each set's release. But then again, a great bulk of sets are bought in the first weeks after their release, and you just don't see many people buy boxes of old sets months after their release. So this part is inconclusive. Decipher is willing to replace packs that are missing cards, like the Second Anthology premiums and booster packs. However, they can take over a month to get back to you, and you have to pay to send the defective pack to them in the first place. This can cost $0.50-$1.00, depending on the pack you're sending; even more if you're shipping them overseas. While Decipher will replace the cards for free, they shouldn't have to be replaced (at least not at such an alarming rate) at all. Why won't Decipher officially disclose the split rarities? Sure, it would have an impact on the secondary market. But then again, Decipher has stated in the past that they have no control nor care of the secondary market prices, right? Why did Decipher ship EFC in the first place, knowing that the premiums didn't meet their quality standards? Same goes for the Second Anthology premiums, though this is more of a packaging problem. The irony is that the premiums are the main (and sometimes only) thing many of us buy these sets for, and they're what comes damaged. Second Anthology was delayed for four months due to a defective box, yet they release it with defective premiums? Most people I know couldn't care less about the box - it's the premiums that they want. With printing and packaging problems in just about every set over the last year and a half, shouldn't Decipher decide that enough is enough and move on to a different printer? There's gotta be more than one in the world, and these problems have only cropped up since the OTSD or so - I've never seen the premiums packaged incorrectly in hundreds of OTSD's. So why the sudden problem with all of Decipher's recent sets? While Decipher is taking steps to take care of most of these problems, they're doing them after they happen, not before. Hopefully Decipher will find a way to finally fix these problems. While most people understand that mistakes do happen, their increasing frequency are starting to push most of us over the edge. If these problems go on, it will lead to even more people leaving the game, which is bad for both players and Decipher. Alidar Jarok bwa@force.stwing.upenn.edu http://force.stwing.upenn.edu/~bwa/stccg/ Comments about this article? Post them on the WNOHGB BBS!