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Quality Control of Tarkir

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Miscuts and misprints are nothing new, really. They happen all the time. What doesn't happen all the time is a token getting inserted into a booster pack with Sharpie on it.

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Is it Sharpie? The guy who opened it said it looked slightly like it was printed on, which is even more confusing.

This seems like a new class of misprint I'm not used to seeing. I realize the cards are printed, and sometimes there are malfunctions with the printers.

This is a good example. I'm assuming this is from a deckbuilder's toolkit.

I personally came into possession of an entire miscut sheet that fits together that all ended up in a deckbuilder's toolkit I ended up with as part of a collection I bought. Deckbuilder's toolkit and Event deck cards always look slightly different from cards opened in boosters leading me to wonder if they are printed by a different company.

The Quality control for Khans boosters is atrocious, however. When we're not getting miscut foils...

we're getting reports of booster packs that had no rares. Every prize pack I opened at the prerelease had a card in it upside down.

Is a new company doing the printing or packing for this set that hasn't been used before? I can't say, but I don't like that it appears Quality Control is taking a nose-dive. With the failure of Magic Online to serve as a credible alternative to playing paper Magic, it's a worrying sign that the paper product shows signs of neglect. This is still the best game there is, but that doesn't mean WotC can slack off.

 

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Jason Alt

Jason Alt is a value trader and writer. He is Quiet Speculation's self-appointed web content archivist and co-captain of the interdepartmental dodgeball team. He enjoys craft microbrews and doing things ironically. You may have seen him at magic events; he wears black t-shirts and has a beard and a backpack so he's pretty easy to spot. You can hear him as co-host on the Brainstorm Brewery podcast or catch his articles on Gatheringmagic.com. He is also the Community Manager at BrainstormBrewery.com and writes the odd article there, too. Follow him on Twitter @JasonEAlt unless you don't like having your mind blown.

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7 thoughts on “Quality Control of Tarkir

  1. Further proof of my conspiracy theory: Pre-release boosters are stuffed with statistically unlikely levels of power and chase cards, both to make them fun and to encourage new players to return or buy more product.

    Apparently, the company that made the current round of power packs didn’t do such a hot job at QC!

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