You can report the legality issue on this thread.

Probably worth noting that open world games (which, while popular now, are hardly new - Link to the Past was a 1991 open world game) are trying to emulate the feeling of adventure from D&D. In a lot of regards, story-based video games developed out of tabletop gaming - it just took a while for computer memory and capabilities to be able to make something that more closely resembled the exploration and open world nature of D&D.

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Personally, I am not fond of them. Beyond just being a Luddite who never got used to their addition to the game, I see the following major problems with them:

1. They slow down gameplay. Not only do they have abilities activated each turn where the controller might have to pause to make a decision, there is fiddling with dice to mark counters on the Walker, and then managing the effects. This makes Walker abilities a bit more unwieldy than other activated abilities, and those can really add up when multiple walkers are on the field.

2. They tend to be filled with text, making it difficult to remember all the nuances of their text boxes. Walls of text lend themselves to “hey, can I read your card” and careful study by other players before deciding if they want to counter or remove the Walker, all of which puts the game on pause. That’s not to say other cards don’t also have this problem - but, as a percentage of card type, planeswalkers almost all have this issue.

3. Additionally, given how many abilities they have, they are most likely to be the cards their own owners make mistakes with (especially problematic for newer players).

There are a few main factors here, among them: (1) Significantly rising production costs, (2) significantly more competition, and (3) significantly more room for error.

Costs of producing both games and hardware are ever-increasing. Where once a small team could get together and make a new game, the processing power and memory of games has increased far more than the human ability to program things. There are so many textures, so many objects, the stories have to be so much longer, etc. That means not only increased staff costs, that means increased costs on your data storage, more powerful computers to render images, etc.

Additionally, staff is more expensive now than ever - the tech boom made programmers pretty valuable, so there are plenty of other places competing for workers. That means wages need to increase to compensate (especially given how miserable folks are given the demands of the gaming industry), and that in turn drives up games.

Rising hardware costs also plays their part - the counsel companies lose money on each PS5 or XBox they sell, with games and subscriptions being their chance to recapture that loss.

Next, there is more competition for games. Want to play a First Person Shooter? You have options other than Call of Duty. MMOs - maybe the most monetised of non-phone games - have exploded both in terms of players (and thus server space) and the expectations of players, all while more and more enter the field and vie for competition. Additionally, the widespread modding culture means you have to compete against folks effectively making free DLC for older games, keeping them viable long after the single “I played through this once, on to a new game” of older games.

And that does not even look at the single most popular gaming platform of all time - mobile - which drastically sucks in customers in a way the traditional systems cannot.

That means each game not only has to compete for customers, they need to make sure they make the most out of the customers they obtain.

Finally, there’s an increased cost for failure. All that additional investment, much of which is pure risk (you are pumping tens, if not a hundred or more, million into a product before you see a single cent), means you have to make a killing in order to break even, let alone see a worthwhile return on investment.

Consider Bioshock Infinite - a game praised in every regard, from its visuals, to its storytelling, to its gameplay - it destroyed the company that made it. It sold extremely well, but it cost a mint to make, and didn’t have enough of a return for Irrational Games to survive in its then-current form.

And that was a decade ago.

Things have only gotten worse since then. Not only are costs up, all that additional technology and size of content means more points of error (see what a buggy mess so many games are on release). It is more expensive than ever to make a game, and it is more likely those games are going to have errors that harm sales.

All that leads to a crappy situation for everyone - and one I just don’t see a way out of.

Personally, I do not mind certain types of DLC. After an early foray into DLC went wrong (horse armor), Bethesda is good at making DLC that actually are with the cost. I’ll happily pay five bucks for another few hours of decent story content - that’s a far better deal for me than going to the movies would be.

And I am generally past buying games on release - with a very few exceptions, I’ll wait for Steam sales (and, more importantly, all the stability patches to be done), so that keeps most things relatively low in price.

So, while it is true games have gotten more expensive, there are also tools that give the customer power to pay a lot less or only pay for the specific content they want. And that feels kind of nice - places like Steam’s infinite library of great, inexpensive, older games allow players to still game, without breaking the bank.

Moving this thread over to the rules Q&A section. Note, this section has some added functionality, like the ability to mark an answer as accepted to indicate you do not have any more follow-up questions.

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You would still die if you activate Jace to draw cards then killed yourself with an instant speed Ad Naus.

You lose the game whenever State Based Actions (SBAs) are checked - which happens after every spell resolves (among other times). So you’ll have Ad Naus resolved with Jace’s draw still on the stack, SBAs will be checked between Ad Naus resolving and Jace resolving, the game will see that you have zero or lower life, and you will lose with Jace still on the stack.

One other thing: Jace does not “trigger” - Jace is a replacement effect that changes how the game works, so, instead of drawing from an empty library, you instead win the game. Replacement effects will contain the word “instead”, modify how an object enters the battlefield, start with “as, or say “skip”. “Triggers” will use words like “when”, “whenever”, and “at” - unlike replacement effects, triggered abilities use the stack and have to resolve, so there are a number of different implications of that and I wanted to clarify since you referred to Jace as triggering.

Your friend was incorrect and you were correct--no players get priority in the middle of a spell or ability resolving. The ability resolving involves revealing, card going into hand, opponents losing life--there is no priority in the middle of any of those portions.

Same goes with Mirthless--though the exact metrics of the ability are different, the fact remains that no one receives priority at any point during resolution.

In the future, please hit the green "Mark as Answer" button to indicate your question is resolved. Since this has been answered for a few days with no follow-up questions, I have gone ahead and marked an answer on your behalf.

In the future, please hit the green "Mark as Answer" button to indicate your question is resolved. Since this has been answered for a few days with no follow-up questions, I have gone ahead and marked an answer on your behalf.

You can do this. When you control two (or more) triggered abilities that go on the stack at the same time, you get to choose the order they go on the stack. You will put Sol'Kanar the Tainted's ability on the stack first and Thassa, Deep-Dwelling's ability on the stack second. Last in is first to resolve, so Thassa's ability will resolve first. That will exile Sol'Kanar. When Sol'Kanar returns to the battlefield, it is a new object and, though the original Sol'Kanar's ability is still on the stack and will still resolve, it does not "see" the new Sol'Kanar and thus you will not have to give anything to an opponent.

As aholder7 is kind enough to demonstrate, there are a lot of really bad takes on the apology by folks who are determined to be angry about the whole affair and put that animosity over critical reading. I know, shocking--normally people who forget the "enter" key exist are such a reliable source of information.

Since someone decided to peddle some nonsense here, let's look at the facts:

the underlying concepts of the new OGL still seem highly concerning.

The "underlying concepts" of the new OGL are (a) they do not want mega companies to benefit from the OGL, (b) they do not want racists to benefit from the OGL, and (c) they do not want folks to make D&D NFTs.

All of these are valid underlying concepts and show flaws in the current OGL that Wizards has been lucky to avoid being problematic.

For the first, nothin presently stops a company like Amazon (who it should be noted recently got more involved in D&D by distributing The Legend of Vox Machina) taking advantage of the current OGL to make a competitor. This is fair--and also something they indicated they are basically abandoning because they do not want to inadvertently hurt Critical Role or the like.

The second is also something they have a clear interest in--OGL content is tied to D&D and uses their intellectual property. That is, after all, the point. Wizards does not want their intellectual property used to promote racism--also a good thing.

And third, nothing in the current OGL prevents folks from making D&D NFTs, and Wizards doesn't really want others to be engaging in the whole NFT grift with their property.

The response they gave today also comes across to me as very disingenuous and attempts to reframe the narrative instead of taking responsibility for their decisions.

Simply wrong. Not only did they say they failed--they said they critically failed. They did so in a cutesy D&D way--but that's kind of the job of PR folks. They also apologized specifically for creating a worse environment for their fans.

I see no reason to believe that wizards has had any meaningful change of heart and is attempting to find the minimal amount of change they need in order to stem the bleed of people leaving.

People do not trust Wizards because they think (with good cause) that Wizards is greedy. That is exactly why you can trust them that they will stick to the promises outlined in their missive--it would be a financial disaster to backtrack on their damage control promises, and corporate greed is not going to let them add that PR disaster on top of a few months of bad PR.

And that's where things actually stand--as far as corporate apologies go, this was not just a good one, but an exceptional one. Not only did it provide information about what happened (lawyers being lawyers; drafts from conversations with major third-parties that were not ready for the less objective analysis of the public being made public), it provided action items that specifically addressed and specifically promised revocation of every legitimate concern folks raised with the OGL draft.

Right now, I think the best course of action is to adopt a "let's see what happens next", approach, coupled with some casual optimism. That and maybe improving education systems across the world, because this entire affair has proven most folks apparently do not know what the word "draft" means and forget how to read when they are angry.

In the future, please hit the green "mark as answer" button to indicate your question has been resolved. Since this question has been answered for several days with no follow-ups, I have gone ahead and marked an answer on your behalf.

Just to provide an update on this for OP's sake and anyone else who might be following, Wizards did get around to responding.

Essentially they confirmed that the leaked document was real--but threw their attorneys under the bus and said that it was a document drafted during the negotiations with third parties. The fact it was pretty draconian is pretty normal in those cases--attorneys often draft documents that represent the strongest possible position in the functional equivalent of drawing a magical Christmas land hand (i.e. if everyone else, including the judge, was dumb and gave them the best possible terms).

With the lawyers being thrown under the bus, Wizards substantively responded on what they will be including in their new draft once released:

1. Preservation of folks' rights under OGL 1.0 for content created under OGL 1.0.
2. Affirmation they will not be seeking a license to use any materials published under OGL 2.0 (and acknowledging this was a case where their lawyers drafted a term which did not mean what they were intending).
3. They are not going to move forward on charging royalty fees on the 20 or so top developers.
4. Expanding the OGL to cover more things than just writings, including cosplay, virtual tabletops, etc.

All told, Wizards has said their actual version, once released, will be removing all the most problematic terms from the earlier draft, so there really is not cause for alarm (unless Wizards is dumb enough to deliver something other than they said they would be delivering--even then, that's not cause for alarm until the document is actually released).

You should post on this thread about the incorrect information and someone will fix it.

Also, as a note, Limited does not have ban lists - the Limited formats are Draft and Sealed and you can play with whatever cards you receive in the packs you open. Historic and Pioneer are both Constructed formats like Modern.

Dead_Blue_ - A gaming website pretending to be journalists - Gizmodo - published an article saying they reviewed a leaked draft of the upcoming updated D&D license Wizards uses to allow third-parties to use Wizards of the Coast's intellectual property. The article--like far too many gaming journalism articles--failed basic journalistic rigor, such as not disclosing what type of draft the leaked was (such as if it was an internal draft, an initial draft, a final draft, etc.) or disclosing that they did not know what type of draft it was, and therefore the contents should be taken with a grain of salt. They also consulted with an attorney, but the quotes from the attorney they included in the article heavily indicated that the attorney said more than the article reproduced--and that the article only reproduced the siliceous possibilities while ignoring "but it may mean something more mundane" analysis.

Folks with little-to-no ability to read critically missed all of the glaring journalistic red flags and have taken the alleged leaked draft as if it were the gospel truth of what Wizards wanted to do. The alleged draft does contain some terms which are problematic--but, and this can't be overstated, it still is just a draft that has no indication of being the final version.

TL;DR: Many gaming journalists should try being journalists first and gamers second and, until that happens, players should learn they need to read gaming articles with a critical eye rather than treat the "reporting" as sacrosanct.

That post--like 99% of the conversation surrounding the alleged leaked draft of OGL 1.1 (D&D's fan content policy)--is mischaracterizing the facts.

Anyone who thinks the alleged draft means anything does not understand what the word "draft" means nor do they understand how negotiations work. Without more information about what exactly that draft represents (a first draft? An internal draft? An initial offer Wizards intended be rejected? A final draft?) it is worth exactly _nothing _in terms of how informative it is.

Now, could Wizards try to do something with their fan creation policy many might see as draconian? Perhaps--but right now we don't know if they will, and anyone who says "OMG, Wizards is trying to do X" is either a fool or purposefully misleading readers/viewers for clicks.

Bad Moon does not give creatures counters - it has what is called a “static ability” which merely confers +1/+1 to all Black creatures without counters. If it used counters, it would say the word “counter” on the card and be templates differently (it would have to be some kind of triggered ability or replacement effect, not a static ability).

As it does not put counters on the creature, it does not cancel out the -1/-1 counters by infect. The creature will have a static +1/+1 boost but will have a -1/-1 counters on it.

Just as a note, strictly speaking only +1/+1 counters and -1/-1 counters cancel out. Other counters - only found on really old cards, will not cancel out. So a Dwarven Armory’s +2/+2 counters do not cancel either two -1/-1 counters or an Ebon Praetor’s -2/-2 counters. This will probably never come up in an actual game, but is mentioned just to make sure the rules statements are clear.