Exo's page

I would say that I think you're putting too much emphasis in your own experience. I suspect that there arent many in your situation - who received decks from different printings and for whom it is a big issue. From what I see they have no problem with repeat business

I think there are more people than you suspect who are getting sets with different printings. For example, and the only example I can speak to from experience: Amazon.com is selling the base set, the addon, and all adventure decks as if they were the same printing. You cannot order a certain printing, they are just selling all the products of this line willy-nilly. So if you hear by word of mouth that this game is great, and you go to amazon and buy yourself a set, you will more than likely end up with different card sizes within that set.

I suspect that Paizo are more disappointed than you are in how this turned out. Nonetheless, things like this happen. What they have consistently demonstrated is an ability to learn from their mis-steps and put things in place to ensure they arent repeated. They got the first batch printed in China and the quality was unacceptable so they switched to a superior printer for the second printing and future sets - there is a problem between different printings, but if they'd stuck with the Chinese printer for reprints of the RotRL expansions there'd still have been an issue, given the color matching problems.

My gut agrees with you here. From the random posts I've seen from the folks at Paizo, they seem very genuine, very grounded, and very much for the gamer. A company I would want to support and keep track of, to see what else they might have up their sleeves.

Except that I just spent a ton of money on one of their products that is simply unplayable in the state that I got it in. I did see the color variances in my Chinese printed base set, which was a turn off, certainly. I was a bit disappointed in that, but it was forgivable because: things happen, and the game was still playable. I was still having a lot of fun with the game until I got to the US printed Adventure Deck 3. Suddenly the game became unplayable, and here we are. I didn't get on these boards and cry about the color issues of the Chinese printing, because it wasn't a deal breaker for me. What IS a deal breaker is when you spend X amount of money on something (a game, a car, anything) and it is unusable.

I'd encourage you to bear that approach to errors/troubleshooting in mind in deciding whether to continue picking up PACG sets. The first one may have had unacceptable Quality Control issues, in your mind, but it seems to me that issue has been addressed for future sets. Not buying those on the grounds that you were unhappy with the lack of redress with RotRL might be a case of cutting off your nose to spite your face.

True enough. Yet it feels like, for now at least, that I will be doing just that. I have no inclination to go searching out for another Paizo product after this fiasco. Guess I'm gun shy, and maybe I will miss out on some of the good fun that these folks can pump out, but at least I will *certainly* miss out on any other nightmare scenarios that might be in store for me instead (ala buying a card game that comes with different sized cards which are supposed to be shuffled into eachother in order to play the game).

Allow me to put out there two situations that I am currently in, in regards to my board game collection.

I have a copy of Mage Knight Board Game, first print. I enjoyed the game, bought the expansion for it, which was a second print. All the cards are the same size, ofcourse (thought this should go without saying but as you suggest, maybe I ought to go ahead and let you know that indeed the cards from both printings may be played together so seamlessly that you would never know they were different printings).

Not only this, but the makers of that game added additional cards into their expansion that replaced cards which had become outdated due to the expansion in question.

This is a company who went out of their way to make sure the game played well after buying into the expansion. I can only assume that they also took the necessary steps to make sure that their successive printings matched eachother in all the important areas one would need to in order to make sure the game was playable. I think we can both safely say that this did not happen accidentally, but that people were put into place to make SURE it happened the way it did, and all went well.

Now I'm not saying that Paizo didn't take all the necessary steps to ensure that their game didn't become broken at some point to the average consumer that will be buying it. But the problem persists: the average consumer will in fact be getting a variance in card size within their set.

This is unacceptable in my eyes. Not in a CARD game, where the cards are the ONLY component. I don't mean that, since the only thing they are putting into their boxes are the cards, that this should be a process easily perfected -- far from it, I know there's a lot that goes into the manufacturing on this scale.

What I am saying is that when you are making a CARD game, Quality Assurance has to be paramount, even, dare I say it, between printings, or you aren't going to get much repeat business.

Maybe there are other games, who have released printings that were simply not compatable with one another? If so please list them, that I will know never to invest in those games in the future. Thanks.

So disappointed at how this can happen. Base set and decks 1, 2, and 4 all have cards which are a completely different size than decks 3, 5, and 6.

I understand that not everything goes as planned, life is a box of chocolates, etc. But when you are making a CARD game, the CARDS, *all* of the CARDS, must be uniform in size and shape, for the game to actually WORK.

This MUST happen, or your entire game is ruined. Has to be at the TOP of the list of things that absolutely HAVE to happen correctly.

Or now you have a game that's unplayable. After having sunk all that money into this game (bought the base set, liked it, then bought the addon and all 6 adventure decks; that's what, close to $200 all told), now it sits on my shelf during what should have been the honeymoon period (having just gotten the game a few days ago). The game is broken, I tried fixing it (different ways of shuffling, etc), didn't have any success; cards just ended up bunching together and ruining any form of randomization.

So now I'm in for another $100+ to sleeve the set. Now to be honest, I was going to sleeve it anyway. Only difference is I was going to do it at my own discretion; maybe a few months, maybe a year from now, when the set started to show wear and I was sure I would end up putting enough time into the game to make it worth it. Wrong. If I ever want to play the game, even a little bit, that I just spent $175 on, I must first spend another $125 on it in sleeves.

That's $300 into a game that I hope I will end up playing enough to get $300 worth of time out of it. That's alot of money in my world to just fling in one direction and hope it sticks.

I guess this is all my fault in that I bought all the adventure decks without doing due internet research, or I would have saw this string and known what I was in for (and would have avoided the entire trouble by investing in a different game). In any case writing this post has helped vent some frustration. And maybe Paizo, next CARD game you make, while the rules and gameplay may be brilliant, if you cannot actually PLAY THE GAME.. none of it matters, and you end up with confused and upset consumers.