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• Can't say I am looking forward to this. I thought the FLR cards were awful, and so I was glad when plays had to at least earn reknown cards in encounters but these things are a whole new level of arbitrary nonsense.

• Dungeons & Dragons: The Gathering.

  Haha!

  Anyways on a more serious note, I will try them see how they play out. I think it is a good idea for newbies, but for more experienced players, it will just make it easier to win encounters and harder for the DM to DM properly. Oh, well. We shall see.

• I'm pretty ambivalent about this. I think it could be fun, but I'm not about to run out and start buying them. I think it's an interesting idea, although I might want to tie it to in-game rewards somehow (e.g. roleplay a situation well and get to draw a card).

  As crass at it may sound, if it results in more support and business for FLGSs, then I support the idea. It's obviously (at least partly) a money-maker, but I try to remember that it's not only Wizards who makes the money. Not that I have anything against giving Wizards my money - my bookshelf will attest to that.

• I think I'd like the cards better if some bad fortune was included in the booster - the worst it apparently gets is having to discard or not be able to draw again. I'd like to see something like bad footing that slows your movement or being knocked off-balance and suffering an attack penalty.

  Maybe WotC will provide similar cards for DMs, so that the monsters can have a few boons, too; I'd be okay with balancing things out in that way. But right now, this product just looks like a pack of free PC buffs in a game already weighted in favor of the PCs.

• I picked up the Encounters packet yesterday from the game store and looked through it. The new pre-gens seem pretty cool. I'm adopting a wait-and-see approach as far as the Fortune Cards. I do think newbies will love them, though. There were no Impervious cards in my packet, however- just Cautious Maneuver and One More Chance. Anyone else have this happen?

• I think this is a good idea overall. You dont have to use em if you dont want to in oyur home game, and for a thing like encounters, it gives the FLGS that incentive with D&D as it may create the repeat buy customer like they see with magic cards during in store play.

  Ill wait and see how it actually plays out, but I think its a good idea for that environment, and can be a cool addition to D&D if handled corectly.

• @Alric I just had a chance to playtest a legal deck of 10 fortune cards for the first time, and the card "Gambler's Eye" has different effects depending on a d20 roll. It actually hurt me! And it was the only card I was able to play during a 5 hour LFR session. :-( More on that and additional analysis in the link below.

• hate these so much

• This just adds a confusing layer to an event that is geared towards new players. Learning D&D can be confusing enough, do we really need to make it a CCG as well? Boo.

• My apologies for repeating this post, as I have posted this write up on Sunyaku's blog as well.

  I received a nice DM gift pack from Wizards with a cool calendar, some DM status tokens (if you buy their DM token kit in the wooden box, they are similar to those tokens), 1 special DM promo Fortune card and two packs of fortune cards. Now that I have a few packs of cards, I think I can talk about them without as much speculation.

  Looking through the cards, some of them are straight up beneficial:

  Defense – Only a Flesh Wound – Gain a +5 bonus to a death saving throw.

  Attack – Full Speed Ahead! – Charge and gain combat advantage against the target.

  Tactic – Distracting Banter – During your turn, take a move action to allow one ally within 5 squares of you shift 3 squares as a free action.

  Others include risk, as Alric was hoping for:
  Tactic – Risky Move – Shift your speed. At the end of the shift, roll a d20. On a result of 9 or lower, you fall prone.

  Attack – Reckless Onslaught – Reroll missed attack roll. You must use second roll, even if it is lower. You then fall prone and take damage equal to your level.

  I like Distracting Banter and a few others, but what it boils down to is an extra action for each person, each round (if they choose). This is exactly what I do not want, as it adds to a battle that takes too long anyway and is going to slow down the game. Essentials came out to minimize and simplify the game for new people, and the next second Wizards whips up additional rules and actions with these cards. I enjoy 4th edition, but one of my big criticisms are battles are much longer, I believe this has the potential to add to the length.

  I am in a rough spot. As a DM, I do not have to allow the cards, but as the coordinator for my store, who pays nothing but is given tons of resources, I feel compelled to at least not block the possibility of sales, so I will still allow them.

  My tentative solution is to only allow them to be played with the spending of an action point. I feel much better allowing someone to use an AP to play Distracting Banter before fireballing an area than to just letting someone take an extra action every round.

  I may even make a community deck, so everyone can use cards and is not forced to buy any, though that would still favor people customizing their deck to some small degree. Since AP usually only occur once every two weeks, I do not see the advantage being too big.

  I am a big fan of earned renown cards, and have already told my players they can use them next season as well. I am not going to hand over the 100 point cards on Wednesday just to tell my players they can never use them.