Like everyone else, I was excited to get this show started with Faltering Allegiances. The tournament this weekend proved that it’s a fantastic addition to our game, and I was (and am) bouncing around excited to get my hands on some nice looking physical cards. I had everything lined up and ready to click ‘Print’ when an unfortunate thing happened.
EMERGENCY ERRATA
In the best of times, creating a new set of cards like this is a herculean effort of coordinating people, teams, ideas, and logistics. It’s nuts. This time around, however, a few things were layered on top of that to make it even more of a truly staggering accomplishment. First, this set was accompanied by the monumental feat of building the entire card-making process. Logistics, leadership, assigning tasks, organization, communications channels, legal… The list goes on and on of the things that the ARH team had to do before they could even get around to making cards for us to play. Then, only a couple of months into that process, the entire world shut down. With COVID-19 looming over everyone’s shoulder, unpaid organization and product creation should have been the last thing on everyone’s mind. Instead, the team flourished under pressure and continued to grind away at the task of keeping to magical creation of Star Wars: Destiny going.
Under all of that pressure, the team delivered, and, counter to everything we’ve ever experienced when logistics were handled by, ahem, someone else, they delivered it on time (early even). Through all of that we, the players, got a set that was incredibly fun and well-balanced. It’s been truly an amazing thing to see. Despite all of that, there were a few flaws in the finished product, and just before the opening Release Event, ARH updated a handful of cards to make them fit more with the intent than the crazy shenanigans people were coming up with. Here are those changes:
- Selling Intel should read, “Choose a detected card in an opponent’s hand to gain 1 resource, or 2 resources instead if the chosen card’s cost is 3 or more. The chosen card is undetected.” This was done to ensure a card would have to be detected to get the resource.
- Planned Operation should read, “Spot a Red character to heal 2 damage from a character. Spot 2 Red characters to turn a die to any side. Spot 3 Red characters to resolve one of your dice, increasing its value by 1.” This was done to preserve the intent of the card, which is to resolve YOUR dice, not any die.
- ISB Agent should read, “Before an opponent discards a card from hand, if it is not detected, you may force them to switch that card with one of their detected cards, if able (the detected card will be discarded).” This was done because the previous wording applied to cards in play and that wasn’t the intent.
Honestly, it’s crazy that these are the only mistakes immediately turned up by this passionate player base shortly after the set released.
While the text has been updated on swdestinydb.com, the art team is taking a much-needed break after the crunch they went through getting these cards out on time, and won’t be releasing updated pictures of the cards until about a week after the release. Those guys busted their asses to deliver, and they need just a little bit of downtime so that they aren’t burnt out whenever it’s time to get started on the next set.
What does that mean for printing?
Well, as I said earlier, I have these card images lined up and ready to go. Finger hovering over the ‘do-it’ button, I had to make a choice. Do I get the printing process started immediately and knowingly deliver incorrect cards to my customers, or do I delay slightly and make sure that the cards I get into people’s hands are as accurate as they can be? I truly agonized over this for a while. Like you guys, I REALLY want to sleeve these up and start playing them in person. In the end, I thought about Kingwood Hobbies’ reputation in delivering extremely high-quality products with outstanding customer service, and that pushed me to the conclusion that I needed to wait, if possible. I conferred with the ARH team about their plans for the updated cards and was given the timeline above. That’s on the outside of what I’m willing to delay, but it’s still feasible. My finger pulled back from the ‘do-it’ button, and, just like everyone else, I’ve settled in to wait for the final-final images.
If you’re disappointed by this, I completely understand. I’m disappointed by this as well because I want these cards yesterday. If you’re disappointed enough that you would like to cancel your order, please reach out to me on Facebook and I will give you your money back. I hope you’re willing to stick with me, though, because I’ve seen other cards come out of my printer, and they’re glorious.
Rest assured that work is already well underway on the other aspects of these sets. Dice sorting and provisioning and sticker production are in full swing, so everything will be ready to go the moment these cards come in.