Tarkir: Dragonstorm’s prerelease party starts tomorrow, as of this article’s writing. Considering the massive hype generated by the set’s contents, we expect this prerelease to be a popular one. Unfortunately, prereleases rarely proceed without a hitch, and stores already report issues.
This time around, it appears that the card quality of some Tarkir: Dragonstorm cards are incredibly poor. Cases of ink bleeding on chase Tarkir: Dragonstorm cards are circulating online.
Problematic Card Quality
Multiple card stores are reporting ink bleeding on English nonfoil rare and mythic rare Tarkir: Dragonstorm cards. While these tend to appear in every MTG set, they are generally sporadic defects and largely removed from circulation. According to Enndalgames, one of the stores reporting an abnormal amount of ink bleeding on nonfoil rare and mythic rare cards, some of the cards opened have more than 50% of the copies with ink bleeding.
Examples of the defects are shown above from Hareruya, Japan’s largest MTG outlet. The bleeding is particularly noticeable when the names of the cards are affected. Another example can be found here, highlighting the cards Dracogenesis, Perennation, and Stormscale Scion.
The good news is that only nonfoil rare and mythic rare cards seem to be affected by the ink bleeding. Commons, uncommons, showcase rares, showcase mythic rares, foil cards and Special Guests appear to be largely unaffected.
These defects are so common that Hareruya will consider cards with ink defects like the ones shown as Near Mint copies in their evaluations. Players could receive copies of affected cards with ink bleeding (and no other defects) as Near Mint ones. Other larger retailers could follow this trend depending on how widespread the problem is.
Does This Affect Everywhere?
As many MTG players already know, there are multiple printing facilities worldwide for MTG cards. Cards are printed in the US, Japan and in Belgium. It’s difficult to know if all three print factories are being impacted by the defect.
Right now, it appears that most of the retailers being affected by the ink bleeding issue are primarily English cards appearing in Japan, but the stores reporting this are all massive in scale.
From more recent reports, it appears that North America is affected by this defect, but on a smaller scale than other areas. The cards shown off by Twitter user Doomdg were opened in the US, but a Canadian WPN store owner reported that their stock was not affected. It appears that players will experience this on a case-by-case basis.
That said, many major MTG personalities like Saffron Olive have stated that they’ve seen a ton of different vendors state similar things. This defect is certainly widespread. At this point, it’s just a question of how widespread.
Player Opinion
Most of the responses from players fall into two categories. Besides the obvious disappointment towards the card quality for chase Tarkir: Dragonstorm cards, many players are curious just how widespread this defect is. Otherwise, some players are excited about potential misprint premiums. In the MTG community, some misprints can ironically make a card more valuable in certain collector circles.
Unfortunately, that is unlikely to be the case with Tarkir: Dragonstorm. Generally, valuable misprints have a massive effect on the card’s appearance or are rare. These ink bleeding defects are both prevalent and have a much smaller impact on a card’s appearance than other misprints. For that reason, there is a strong chance that these Tarkir: Dragonstorm defects will not increase the price of the card.
It currently appears that this ink bleeding defect will impact a significant portion of Tarkir: Dragonstorm rare and mythic rare cards. Hopefully, Wizards of the Coast learns from this mistake and takes steps to prevent this from happening in future sets.