We waited months for a reprint.Īnd yes, we did exchange many decks with shipping on the house. It was a grueling, frustrating decision - but it was the right decision. Want proof? We threw away nearly 6,000 decks of Smoke & Mirrors v4 as they did not meet our quality standards. We have not printed a single deck on that press since 2007, and we continuously improve quality. With respect to some of our colleagues and competitors, I will withhold citing specific decks, but the majority of custom decks on the market are printed the same, with no better quality than the first edition Guardians. The vast majority of ALL other custom playing cards you know and love are printed on that same sheet fed press, and quality would be similar to the first edition Guardians.

The first edition Guardians were printed on the sheet fed press at US Playing Card instead of the larger, more robust web press. It's not a matter of being 'crappy' decks.