Warhammer 40K Sixth Edition - Ever Hear of a Press Check?
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Warhammer 40K – While I didn't plan on picking up the new edition of the 40K rule book, as I'm not currently playing the game (love the fluff and models, but other games are more interesting to me at the moment). I was at Great Lakes Hobby and Train, getting some plastic parts for my Malifaux project and noticed they had the book in stock and on sale for a decent discount.
Of course GW ships these all shrink wrapped now so you can't look inside. All the copies they had at the store had the same issue with the corners bending slightly. Now big deal right? Annoyed with this "minor defect" I make my purchase and take the book home. Later that evening I crack the shrink wrap and sit down to read through my $75 giant book. That "minor defect" with the shrink wrap bending the corners, well it also is inside the book the top right corner of every page looks to be dog-eared and bent.
As I'm flipping through the pages enjoying that fresh printing smell, some of the pages looked off to me. Upon closer inspection I notice that the registration is completely off, so on several pages the images are ghosted and look like an old-school 3D poster.
As a graphic designer who specializes in printing I'm appalled that this would ever be released to the public. In my copy their are about 15 pages that have major issues. On some pages it appears the magenta plate is off register so there is a pink shadow, and on others it is the cyan so their is a blue shadow. The black plate seems to be fine as I haven't notice a major issue with the text (except when they are in a box with an image). These are noticeable with the naked eye and are so bad it makes it hurt my eyes to look at the pages. How this could have slipped through a press check is beyond me, let alone past a competent pressman (Then I looked at the back cover "Printed in China") and whoever printed this book needs to seriously reevaluate their quality control.
I've contacted Games Workshop's Customer Service Department and have yet to hear back from them. I'm hoping that this is just an issue my my book. However the corner issue existed on every copy at the shop where I picked mine up.
Other than the terrible quality control the book is really nicely laid out. I can see where some of the added cost came in with the gatefold pages. While they are cool and it's nice to see the art so big, they don't add much to the book other than some added costs to the end consumer.
I haven't had time to thoroughly read through the changes and new fluff but the basic layout and design of the book looks great (apart from shitty printing).
UPDATE:
After sending and email and calling the customer service department (and waiting on hold forever). I'm happy to report Games Workshop is sending me out a replacement copy. Say what you will about GW's business practices, when it comes to sending replacement stuff out they're really good about it. I'm hoping it was only a small portion of the print run that was affected by the registration issue and I'll post an update when I get my replacement.
UPDATE:
So my replacement copy came in the mail over the weekend. The registration issues aren't as bad in this copy and the corner bending is less noticeable. I'm still disappointed in the overall quality of the printing, but at least this won't give me a migraine looking at it.
