Barth, did you get your copy yet?
SDR, did you ever reach out to your seller or the company itself regarding your damaged components?
Mine is supposed to be here today. My seller in Tuscon has been very responsive in communications and he even warned me of the poor packing issues. He told me to inspect the game carefully and let him know if there were any problems so they could figure out where to go from there.
I'm going to do an unboxing video when I have time, once it arrives. I'm morbidly curious.
Meanwhile, over at BGG, there's a thread complaining (well, many threads,
but this one in particular is interesting) about the piss-poor packing. The company rep (Michal) that responded to people in that thread was apologetic but stated they essentially just "forgot" a transport tray. Many folks in that thread were very satisfied with the explanation, but I'm not sure this is forgivable, mainly for two reasons.
One, this is a professional company that has many, many other board games to its credit, not a first-time publisher. There's no excuse for skimping on packing/presentation.
Two, tied in to one, is that presentation. All board gamers are VERY visual people and get emotional interest in components, presentation, and the like. It elicits a response in our brains very much like an itch we can't scratch but can suddenly reach. We ALL know that giddy Christmas-like feeling of opening a board game for the first time, and game developers should know that feeling well, too. How the hell you can just 'forget' how people will see your game when they open the cover is mind-bogglingly ridiculous.
The other unforgivable part is, having to turn your customers into auditors, and have us have to sit down with a list of components in one hand and do a meticulous check of the contents with the other. I think we can agree there are certainly gamers out there that do this out of OCD or anal-retentiveness, though I cannot disparage that at all. A game is an investment, not just of money but of time and to an extent, emotion. I'm not one of those people. I trust companies to provide everything needed, but this is going to instill paranoia in me and make me want to start doing that. Not to mention the time it's going to take looking for every last piece and component, because there's a lot of different people in the thread there talking about one piece here missing or another piece there missing.
Makes me wonder if the dev had a conveyor belt of box bottoms going by a chute that they just poured components out of and hey, if everything got in, great...if not, oh well, we're "just humans!"
