Dear List,

As you all know, the booster packs for the Obsidian Edition and Time of the Void both contain (on average) two uncommon cards. In addition, many of the ToV packs have reportedly had two identical uncommon cards inserted.

We had no intention of changing the planned mixture of common, uncommon and rare cards in either OE or ToV. Furthermore, we're very dissastisfied with the distribution of uncommons in ToV.

We do not believe that any change to the Uncommon ratio would affect sales in any way. In fact, both OE and ToV were basically sold out when we shipped them, so adjustments made by us had absolutely no effect on our sales. There was no plan in effect to increase sales by making the cards harder to collect.

We have been working with Yaquinto to discover how these problems occurred, and to ensure that they do not happen again in the future. As you may know, we felt that the distribution for Crimson & Jade was about as close to perfect as we could get it, and we hoped to improve from that point, not take a step backward.

Because the OE and ToV were basically produced at the same time, there was no time to adjust after the problems with the OE became evident. In fact, neither FRPG nor AEG even thought that the distribution in packs in ToV would be any different than that in C&J. We should have been more aware of the potential problem, and we have made some changes in our internal process to make sure that this item is checked before cards are released for production in the future.

First and foremost, FRPG is committed to customer service. It has been a tenant of this company and its affiliates since day one to make every effort to make our customers feel satisifed and happy with their purchases and interaction with us.

Let me tell you what we're doing to address the OE and ToV issues:

To begin, I need to start off by admitting that we have a special problem with Time of the Void. The set has been wildly successful, and it is all gone. We do not have any extra ToV at all, either decks or boosters. We cannot replace decks with the wrong card mix, and we have no extra uncommons. In fact, the set is in such short supply that the FRPG staff itself may not receive much ToV at all - something that has never happened before. As much as I would like to, I cannot provide additional uncommons to those who bought ToV boosters.

Here is what we do have:

200,000 OE uncommons (Yaquinto printed them, they just didn't pack them out!) Several thousand IE, SL, Preview and Promo cards in various random assortments. Several thousand "Imperial Assembly" cards from 1996 and the first half of 1997.

and

An Imperial Herald days away from going to press (on glossy paper for the first time and at the new expanded size)

Here is our current plan:

We are going to work with Yaquinto to have the OE uncommons packed into special 10 card boosters - they will have simple silver finseal wrappers with no graphics. We're going to print an extra 20,000 or so copies of the Imperial Herald, and we're going to have those packs "blown in" to the Herald along with random other cards from Taka's Treasures giving each Herald about 20 cards.

The majority of those Heralds will be sent through the channel to the retailers, on a pro-rated basis based on how much OE and ToV they purchased. They should be given away to consumers who bought those products to help make up for the problems that the less than ideal uncommon distribution has caused.

Any individual can send in 10 Koku from any source and we will direct mail one of these "special" Heralds right to them. We ask that each person only use this program once, but if there are special cases like group purchases or clubs we'll be happy to make exceptions.

As soon as we have confirmation that this program can be implemented we will make a second announcement with specific dates and timing. We'll have specific addresses and the form that you will need to follow to get a special card-heavy Herald.

We apologize for this situation. This opportunity to demonstrate that we listen to and care about the concerns of our players is one of the things that we hope makes us different from the rest of the industry.

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