Ahoy! Glad to be here, but curious about production quality control ...
Ahoy everybody!!! My husband and I are big fans of Wings of Glory (we often play it against each other or at meetings of the Colorado Military Historians in Westminster, Colorado), and so the transition over to Sails of Glory was a natural one! After getting the newly re-released starter set in the mail a couple of days ago, we played our first game today, and we love it!
Well, we love the game itself, but I'm a little puzzled regarding quality control at the game factory. There wasn't anything major that was wrong with my copy of the game, but there were a host of little things, and I'm wondering if I just got a bad box or if its happened to other people ...
1) None of the four ships' base cards fit into the plastic ship bases. All of the base cards were a bit too large, and they warped and bent when we attempted to carefully fit them in. As I didn't want to trim the original cards themselves, I wound up having to drive to Kinko's to photocopy both sides of all the base cards, then cut the copies to size, making them all slightly smaller as needed. I was able to solve the problem, but it's something that should have been caught in production, I think.
2) Three of the four clear plastic ship-base covers had a line of scuff marks running down the middle. It doesn't stand out when you're playing the game, but it's a minor irritation I was surprised to see.
3) The printing was flawed slightly on the back of one of the ship mats. In particular, a small "spackling" of white (where the printing didn't remain on the cardboard surface) ran along a little area that took it across the back of the "blank" action chit. As a result, the blank chit for that ship cannot be used for declaring boarding actions, because the white spackling makes it obvious which chit it is. This can be sort-of fixed by substituting a different unused action chit for the blank one during boarding actions (maybe making the "grog" counter the accepted replacement), but it's a little annoying, and a sign of carelessness that I was surprised to see.
4) It was heck to get the Attitude Indicators put together correctly without destroying the appearance of the vanes. As it was, the bottom edges of the vanes' printed surfaces were crinkled a bit in the process, and I don't plan on taking them apart again now that they're together.
5) The front and back connectors for the Wind Gauge weren't long enough to hold the gauge together if I used the cardboard washer as indicated in the assembly instructions. Fortunately, when the cardboard washer wasn't used, the Wind Gauge snapped together great and works perfectly, so that was easily fixed, but is still puzzling that it made it through the factory process.
6) Finally, this probably wasn't a factory problem, but it still has me scratching my head. Some of the damage chits were blank, and I found nothing in the rulebook referencing this. I may have overlooked something, but I'm assuming that the blank ones are simply not used in the game.
I do hate the fact that my first post on this forum seems to be one of complaint, but the fact is that I think Ares is a great company (I wouldn't be a repeat customer of theirs if I didn't!) and I already know I'm going to love playing Sails of Glory! It's the fact that Ares IS such a great company which has me so confused regarding how all these little issues made it through the production process.
May the wind always be at your backs, my new friends. See you at sea!
-- Eris
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Originally Posted by 7eat51
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