ACTA2e: The Tie That Only Occasionally Binds

Between a hectic life (Lesson 1: do not allow yourself to get more than three battle report posts behind) and illness (Lesson 2: do not post four League/Minbari battles while fighting off an ear infection), I have not yet had time to crack open my A Call to Arms 2nd Edition rulebooks…in fact as far as I know they’re still in a game store bag somewhere in my apartment along with my copy of Classic Battletech: Total War. A couple of our group members have, however, and the reports have been mostly good. The fleet lists seem nicely balanced and the rules much more accessible. One thing I’ve heard several negative comments on, however, is the binding. Marc (the Grand High League Poobah) sent this in:

Mongoose in seeking to reduce costs, has created their own print shop.   I just have to say that it is a shame that a company that produces such great games cannot get the physical quality issues under control.  I had my Second Edition Fleet Book just a few hours and the last three pages fell out.  It would be nice if they would fix these issues before producing more product.

When I was but a librarian in training (yes, they do train us; you can imagine what our Hell Week is like), I had to take a course on book repair. I’m hoping this kind of severe binding issue is just unique to Marc’s copy, but what I’ve seen of Mongoose’s in-shop work so far makes me less than optimistic. The Battlefield Evolution books I’ve handled all had text blocks (that’s the paper part of the book) that were completely unattached to the cover and only held on by the end papers. The Hawkmoon book the shop acquired has a distinct curvature to its cover that shows that it was bound too tightly.

Hopefully these are issues that will become less prevalent when Mongoose gets a handle on its in-house binding. I support cutting down production costs and keeping some cash in the British economy (no offense China and Canada), but not at the price of having to sort through loose pages.