Well, I received a copy of the expansion as a gift for Christmas and just got around to opening it as we've been on the road a lot. Much to my disappointment one of the two decks has some significant damage to it. It's weird and I haven't really seen anything exactly like it before. Definitely not with FFG's cards.

It's as if during printing, the ink or semi-gloss they use on the cards was scuffed or touched before it was dry. Almost every card in the deck has a rough textured glaze or marking all over it. I only just opened the packaging on the two decks, and it's only on the individual pack. Doesn't look like any sort of humidity or water damage.

Anyway, I was just curious if anyone else had ever run across something similar to this. I've already sent off a message to the FFG Customer Service, so hopefully I can get this resolved without too much hassle. Still, man am I feeling bummed. I was all ready to update my Martell deck and try it out! Thanks for any helpful info, and for just letting me vent a bit too.

Never got anything like this. Though it happend in CCG era that few of the cards were cut out wrong so they had no bottom margin and double the top margin. But that was not so bad. Since mostly I had it on some Commons I didnt use.

I found that one of my decks had a few cards with bent upper right corners. Was odd, because the other deck was free from this defect. Other than that, didn't notice any printing errors. I attempted to flatten the bent cards by placing them in a book. It's a bit better, but one can still see the crease in the cards that were affected. Not unplayable, but an eyesore for me.

Still happy with my expansion, though. So glad Martell is finally in the LCG environment.

ASoIaFfan

No, no problems on my end, and I picked up two Martell sets (split the second one with a friend).

FFG is usually really good about replacing defective stuff. My core set had a Sunset Sea where the front and back were separating from each other, and they replaced the one card. Normally I wouldn't even have cared, but I was replacing some other stuff at the same time so I brought it up. If the whole deck is bad, you can probably expect a replacement deck.

I love FFG and for the most part their stuff is very high quality. But I have to admit that the quality assurance of the Thrones cards is lacking. I have had an occasional card significantly crimped along the edge or the corner. The size of the cards seems to vary a hairs width in some of the chapter packs. And there is even color differences along the edges. For example taking decks from different core sets and putting them together you can easily see they came from different runs.

Thanks for the replies, fellas. Looks like I'm isolated in my experience with the box. I have noticed the sometimes slightly uneven cutting of the cards Stalkingwolf, but especially sleeved it's never been a truly detrimental issue.

Side note, does anyone have a typical time frame on responses from Customer Service? It's been about a week now and aside from the automated email confirmation they received my message, I haven't heard anything back yet.

So... Apparently 10+ days isn't long enough to expect a reply from customer service. Anyone have a better direct email address I can use to try and get a reply? Went through the regular contact form on the website, received the confirmation email that my message was received, and zilch since then.

FFG is usually good about this kind of stuff from what I hear, not having dealt with them personally before though, I'm mildly frustrated at this point.

I can understand the frustration. Sometimes matters like this (especially if there are multiple people who are complaining of the same thing) take a while to resolve because they need to establish a clear solution for all such complaints that conforms to company policy. This may include (almost definitely does if multiple people are complaining) contacting their printers and finding out what happened and therefor who is at fault and ensuring that it doesn't happen again and that the appropriate people are responsible for clearing the issue up.

I'd say send another complaint by way of the site noting the date of your first contact and your receipt of a confirmation email. If that doesn't work, come the site for someone's direct email (possibly in the support section?) and send them email noting the dates of your last two emails. Be respectful but firm when you express your disappointment. Having done customer support and managed customer support I can tell you ranting, threats, and foul language almost never produce a faster response... though you seem like a reasonable person so probably already knew that.

Best of luck.

I've occasionally run into issues where it has taken about 2 weeks to get confirmation that my missing/damaged parts are coming but I am also a retailer, so I don't know if that means I get it somewhat faster or not. There might also be some issues involving replacement at this time, because the replacements office is (or perhaps was?) in the same site as the Events Center, so I don't know if they are moving things around or not. Just a speculation.