The above cards were brought to me by Panu Karppinen, a highly competetive player here in Jyväskylä who also happens to like foils and other premium cards. The Fireball and two of the Mountains are from the Premium Deck Series: Fire and Lightning deck and the third mountain is from the Premium Deck Series: Slivers deck. All of the cards are extremely severely bent beyond all hope of recovery. Before I reveal exactly how they got this way, I have to deliver the extra-salty rant I promised in yesterday's post, so here goes.
Although these cards have been destroyed later, they were never tournament legal for real. You see, the so called ''premium'' foiling process used for the Premium Deck Series and From the Vault series of products is a scam. Those cards are marketed and sold as real tournament legal Magic cards, but that is outright false advertising in many parts of the world.
Normal foils tend to bend easily, but they can be prevented from becoming marked cards with some care and a bit of effort. The alternate foiling process on these cards however involves a different foiling layer, which turns the card into a kind of a bi-metallic strip thermometer. This means that the foil layer and the cardboard attached to it react to thermal expansion and absorption of humidity differently, which makes the cards bend heavily as the climate they are in changes.
Here in Finland temperature can vary between the extremes of -30°C and +30°C and humidity likewise varies between extremely dry and extremely humid. In climates like this, all attempts to take proper care of foils like this are doomed to fail. These foils are not quite as bad in areas where seasonal variation in climate is not as extreme, if the cards come from a factory that has a similar climate as the area the cards are used in. Playing with these cards in a climate that is different that where the factory was located is still a very bad idea, even if it has mild seasons.
A few years ago, we had a Pro Tour Qualifier in winter, and many people brought decks that play FTV Grove of the Burnwillows and some other cards for which the "premium" version is the cheapest and most available one . It was -25°C and very dry outdoors, and in the fully packed tournament venue the climate was extremely warm and humid. A few rounds into the tournament, just about all deck checks the Judges performed led to Game Losses and Groves and other "premium" foils being replaced with basic lands, as even the foils that had been taken proper care of became marked cards and strictly illegal for tournament play due to the difference between the climate outdoors and the climate indoors.
This is the reason why these versions of these cards tend to be the cheapest ones on the market, and the problem just keeps on propagating as unsuspecting new players buy them, thinking they are buying real Magic cards. If someone from Wizards of the Coast happens to read this, please go to some managers office, slap them, and tell them this has to stop. This foiling process should have never passed Quality Assurance, and it is time to take responsibility for that failure. I suspect it may be cheaper than the regular process used in other products, but if you can not afford to use the foiling process that kind of works, make your premium products with full art instead.
This brings us back to how these cards are stuck being this badly bent. I mentioned earlier that Panu likes his foils and full art cards, so having unplayable ones naturally frustrates him. Being a very tenacious person, he doesn't give up easily, so he scoured the Internet for any and all tips and tricks that are rumoured to be able to fix bent foils. He then systematically tested all of them, even the outlandish ones, on cheap foils and recorded the results.
The result of his scientific experiment was that none of the tricks work, and some of them outright ruin cards, as expected. The Fireball and the Mountain that are bent horizontally were thermally treated in an oven on low heat setting and the laterally bent Mountain was treated with a blow dryer.
| Cards | W | U | R | B | G | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Nonland | 46 | 5 | 11 | 6 | 16 | 9 |
| Land | 19 | 4 | 3 | 6 | 4 | 3 |
| Total | 67 |
Jos kyse on todella valheellisesti turnauskelpoisina markkinoiduista korteista, eikö silloin ole mahdollista valittaa kuluttaja-asiamiehelle? Eri asia on sitten, mitkä ovat kuluttaja-asiamiehen vaikutusmahdollisuudet suhteessa ulkomaisiin yrityksiin.
ReplyDeletePeriaatteessa joo, on vaan todella monesta kohtaa tulkinnanvarainen tapaus, ja vaikutusmahdollisuudetkin rajallisia.
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