Sacrilege

Does the large US Games in the green box from 1996 have the same features as the large '96 blue box? It's been reported that they're the same deck in different boxes, it'd be interesting to see if they match. The only Thoth I have left is my greenie.

graspee said:

If there is a difference, it's very slight. By your outrage, I was expecting something akin to watching a widescreen movie in 4:3 or something!

I have left the forum and won't see your replies.

Click to expand...

I love the Thoth artwork and spend quite a bit of time with the deck, but having only recently aquired the later edition, the difference in the Fool's face struck me immediately. Having now verified that difference and compared the planets on the two editions of the Star, it's something I'd like to 'unknow', as I actually prefer the deeper colours and sharper contrast on the 1996. The deck is now unusable for me as I'll be forever picking up 'squashed' details on all the cards. That aside, IMO original artwork should never be altered in this way without permission of the artist.

Not sure why I'm troubling to reply to justify my 'outrage', as according to your sig. you've left the forum and won't be here to read it...

Pen

Abrac said:

Does the large US Games in the green box from 1996 have the same features as the large '96 blue box? It's been reported that they're the same deck in different boxes, it'd be interesting to see if they match. The only Thoth I have left is my greenie.

Click to expand...

Sorry, I can't help with that, as I don't have the US Games green box edition, only the purple US Games one with the three Magi. I heard that the earlier green box cards are greenish like the Greenie, which I do have.

I may have to get the gold box Konigsfurt now, although judging by Gregory's scans they have a distinctly beige cast...

Pen

I wouldn't say beige.... Blame the scanner !

I can't even REMEMBER if I have the green box edition - but only a VERY few of them had greenies in, when it very first came out. So not too many people who own it will experience that.

ETA but USG and AGM used the same printer in Belgium... this is all very odd...

gregory said:

I wouldn't say beige.... Blame the scanner !

I can't even REMEMBER if I have the green box edition - but only a VERY few of them had greenies in, when it very first came out. So not too many people who own it will experience that.

ETA but USG and AGM used the same printer in Belgium... this is all very odd...

Click to expand...

Even if they used the same printer, they'd have used different files. Checking my US Games white-box Greenie, the card titles are in very small print compared to either of the AG Muller decks. I haven't the green-box US Games edition to compare the Greenie with, but I'd guess from what you say above that perhaps they had leftover boxless decks from the white-box edition and had extra green boxes printed to accommodate these. Or perhaps not...

I might do a colour/contrast/definition comparison later on the ones I have and post the results, as the Tarot Garden table doesn't go into that much detail. There's probably not a lot of point in scanning for comparison as scanners and monitors can vary.

Pen

goldenweb said:

Even if they used the same printer, they'd have used different files. Checking my US Games white-box Greenie, the card titles are in very small print compared to either of the AG Muller decks. I haven't the green-box US Games edition to compare the Greenie with, but I'd guess from what you say above that perhaps they had leftover boxless decks from the white-box edition and had extra green boxes printed to accommodate these. Or perhaps not...

Click to expand...

Yes to that last; I think that is documented here.

But the files thing - they ALL say printed by Carta Mundi on the shrink wrap...

gregory said:

But the files thing - they ALL say printed by Carta Mundi on the shrink wrap...

Click to expand...

The artwork in whatever form it was sent to the printer would be what was scanned or processed for colour separation before being printed, so any changes/improvements? in text, colour, size or ratio from the previous edition would be evident in the printed edition. Any print experts reading, please feel free to correct me if I'm wrong.

Different publishers have different ideas on what's an 'improvement' I guess, but I can't imagine why they'd alter the length to width ratio, unless they want all their boxes to be a standard size. I'm pretty sure that length to width ratio is never the fault/responibility of the printer, but originates in the design studio.

Pen

I would never have noticed this flaw with the artwork, but you are right - once you know, its hard to miss.

I'm going to get my oldest Thoth, a greenie, out later and then the other Thoths I have, including the two newest German ones and do a little comparison.

I had already noticed the colour changes but the fact that the artwork was squashed had completely passed me by.

Abrac said:

Does the large US Games in the green box from 1996 have the same features as the large '96 blue box? It's been reported that they're the same deck in different boxes, it'd be interesting to see if they match. The only Thoth I have left is my greenie.

Click to expand...

Dwtw

The two '96 decks are indeed the very same deck, (in different boxes), printed from the same masters. The very earliest green boxes had the old "greenie" deck in them, these were replaced when Cartamundi took over AGMuller and began printing the '96 deck in Belgium. Now they're all the same.

A couple other notes: the standard size 1996 deck does NOT have the distortion problem, so if you really dig the colors, you can still use the smaller size.

As for why the proportions were changed, the fact is that the 1986 printing had poor cropping of the images: check out the Prince of Wands or the Ace of Disks. Where's the rest of the lion's paw?

The 1996 printing went to a wider image to solve some cropping issues, (in order to get the whole image, and resurrect the lion's paw), but in the process I think they also went a tad shorter, thus creating the horizontal distortion, or 'squishing". It's really very noticeable once you see it on a large scale like the Star or Fortune, but changes to any of the smaller image elements are much less noticeable.

So what's a large-size Thoth lover to do? Well, I have been toying for a long time with the idea of making a hybrid deck from the '86 and '96 issues, using my favorite cards from each in one deck. Could be a possibility; the drawback is that the titles are in different fonts, and the backs have different color borders, (white or gray) so that could be annoying. But if you trimmed the two decks...



Litlluw
RLG

Thanks RLG, that's useful info.

One other thing I noticed while trimming the large 1986 AGM is that the cross on the reverse is slightly off-centre. About 1mm is taken off the blue edge of the cross on the reverse with very careful trimming (exactly on the front image edge with no allowance for error), leaving the same amount extra on the red side. Worth bearing in mind if something like this is important to you.

Pen

ETA Re. the hybrid, don't forget that the colours and definition are noticably different - also on the backs...