Commentary ranked in (my personal) order of importance.

Pros:

1) Advancement checkpoints. I actually like this. As a DM since 1st edition D&D, I like focusing on the narrative and role play more than a party hack-and-slashing anything they can for experience. Pick a slow or fast progression. That’s nice.

2) Some magical items were a bit overpowered and problematic. A lot that they nixed, however, were not.

Cons:

1) My primary concern is that WoTC staff didn’t listen to their player base regarding these new rules. They didn’t ask if we wanted them. They didn’t ask our opinion on them. They didn’t ask us to playtest them or review them. Here’s what’s even worse: when the community overwhelmingly responded in a vastly negative manner to these (poorly thought-out) changes, they ignored nearly every major concern that was addressed. A few insubstantial tweaks were made, and the D&D Admins proclaimed, “You spoke, we listened!” No. No you didn’t. And this is my number one issue with the new season eight rules. WoTC is going to make a massive overhaul to the entire landscape of D&D AL without any input from thousands upon thousands of players? I’m truly dumbfounded how they missed this.

2) These rules are not fun. Fun? Who cares about fun?! Everyone. Everyone plays D&D because D&D is fun to play. The season eight rules kill the number one reason people play D&D. Which is? That’s right! Fun.

3) Everything is now overly complicated. You now need more pdfs, more books, and more documentation to play D&D. Want to trade that magical item? It will require cross-referencing. Is this magical item unlocked in this hardcover? That’s something we’ll have to look up. Can I use this magical item in an adventure? Sorry, it was only for that book. Oh, treasure points! Yes, but only those treasure points can be used to unlock those items (but not that one) from that tier (but not that tier).

4) Most of the rules make little to no sense. Killed a villain in half-plate? You can’t loot it. Found a dragon horde after fighting your way through volcano and defeating a powerful wyrm? Here’s your 150 gold and treasure points.

5) I feel the other specific issues have been properly addressed by the community (issues with gold, imbalance of classes that rely on heavy armor, prior season complications, etc.).

That all being said, many D&D AL players & DMs are leaving AL retreating to their homebrew games.

For the love of all things good, WoTC, listen to your community before you dismantle it.

Veteran DM here with a review of A 1000 Tiny Deaths. I ran this module at a Con last weekend.

Pros: The basics module is very straight-forward, with an intro encounter and a miny dungeon crawl. Also, there's a good mix of traps and combat (kolbolds are sneaky little suckers!). Some of the enemies listed are unique and very fun to run. It can make for interesting combat, for sure. There's also space for a few RP areas with the baddies.

Cons: This can easily be a four-hour module (even though it says a two-hour). There are a LOT of combat encounters and an array of enemies with unique abilties. Also, kolbolds have pack tactics. So, in almost every encounter there is a chance the baddies are rolling with advantage against your players. That, by itself, can easily take out a T1 party. Secondly, there's a lot going on in the dungeon with the kolbold traps. You'll have to take some time to map out the traps and figure out where everything goes. So, plan for about an hour of reviewing the module to really understand it.

All in all, it was a fun module to run. I run a very efficient table, and it still took us 3.5 hours to get through.

The BEST spell cards for D&D 5e! I only wish I could purchase every spell, but there are restrictions via the open gaming license. The detail of these spell cards are amazing, from content to the cutout. You will not be disappointed.