It’s a giant week for Magic: The Gathering as Wizards of the Coast revs up these wands for its Secrets and techniques of Strixhaven set with prerelease occasions at native card retailers in every single place. Longtime followers of MTG are particularly excited for this one, because it’s a return to a beloved setting we haven’t seen get its time within the solar since 2021’s Strixhaven: College of Mages. However some sharp-eyed magicians have noticed one thing that doesn’t belong on a few of their new Strixhaven playing cards: an X-Wing. You realize. Like from Star Wars.
Throughout Reddit and different card-collecting and misprint teams, a handful of oldsters have reported that the tiny anti-counterfeiting holo stamp on the underside of their rarer Strixhaven playing cards is not the standard one with the Magic brand and mana symbols. As an alternative, it has a bunch of tiny X-Wings flying by, which is the anti-counterfeit stamp sample for a distinct card sport completely: Star Wars: Limitless. Is that this the top of the world? Hardly. It’s only a humorous misprint. Somebody received combined up on the card issue and put the improper stamp on the improper machine. Most individuals received’t even discover it, and it’s attainable that, if the stamp is uncommon sufficient, collectors would possibly see worth in it and need to pay extra for the playing cards.
However it’s emblematic of what some followers are saying is a notable slip in high quality management throughout MTG and TCGs extra broadly, presumably led to by the surge in reputation of TCGs in recent times and the necessity for extra factories to print extra playing cards sooner than ever. As an example, simply earlier this yr, some of us who bought Commander decks for the Lorwyn Eclipsed set ended up with traces of Pokémon card power faintly printed on their playing cards:
It’s not restricted to simply Magic, both. A yr in the past, a number of of us reported Pokémon holo playing cards with soccer playing cards faintly printed over them: After all, misprints usually have all the time been a factor—playing cards generally make it by means of machines incorrectly and find yourself off middle, or with funky ink colours, or bizarre splotches, or any variety of different distinctive odditties. Heck, there’s a complete subreddit devoted to particular person errors like that, to not point out dozens of Fb teams the place such playing cards are purchased and offered. However mixups on this degree are a bit completely different, and appear to be taking place extra incessantly. It additionally appears like different high quality management points could also be seeing an uptick in frequency. For a non-printing error instance, Lorwyn: Eclipsed’s pre-release was met with some disillusioned followers who opened their packing containers to discover a Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles card as an alternative of a Lorwyn card. And final yr’s Tarkir: Dragonstorm appears to have seen an unusually excessive variety of common print errors:
And anecdotally, some of us are none too happy with Strixhaven on that entrance both: Critically, the web being what it’s implies that it’s a lot simpler to see the oldsters who complain about having a problem. Most individuals aren’t logging on to announce that their pack or their pre-release or their no matter got here precisely as marketed. As such, it usually appears as if issues like this are much more widespread than they really are. Nonetheless, for me, the Star Wars and TMNT errors fall into an analogous bucket of corporations within the TCG enterprise, whether or not that’s Wizards or a printing manufacturing unit, making an attempt to do far an excessive amount of abruptly and letting points like an X-Wing fly proper by means of a top quality examine unchallenged. I think that may solely occur extra usually so long as TCGs keep their immense reputation, each as video games and as collector’s objects. Nonetheless, an X-Wing on a Magic card is kinda cool. I checked, however sadly didn’t get any in my pre-release. Perhaps if I’m fortunate they’ll sneak a The Hobbit card early into my subsequent few Strixhaven packs.
