Hasbro’s annual Investor Day event is an opportunity for the company to promote its strategic “Brand Blueprint” among investors. For those readers with an interest in corporate strategy, toy marketing, or even just a better understanding of the major drivers in the mass-market toy and game business, I highly recommend listening to the recorded presentation (which runs about an hour).

From that presentation, however, I’d like to call gamers special attention to CEO Brian Goldner’s description of the Magic: The Gathering brand blueprint (see his presentation slides below). Using Magic as an example for how digital products are essential to the development Hasbro’s “franchise brands” (its biggest and most important properties), Goldner revealed plans for a product he referred to as “Magic Digital Next“.

Our stories are told to foster the personal connection audiences demand. These stories are curated by fans, personalized around brands, and told through a variety of mediums…

In a world where stories create personal connections with consumers, the role of digital is omnipresent in franchise brand development. This connection requires creating a digital ecosystem that spans from ideation and development to learning about a brand through engagement and stories to purchasing and ultimately interacting and playing with that brand. At Hasbro, the digital ecosystem is developed and celebrated throughout our organization…

I want to speak briefly to how our investments in digital for one of our franchise brands, Magic: The Gathering, will expand the opportunity and audience for this global franchise. At the core of the Magic blueprint is storytelling. We activate Magic stories on every platform, analog and digital. The story we’re telling today is around the Battle for Zendikar set, which is resonating very strongly with gamers around the world. In the past few years, we have doubled the number of play events and stores running these events. By the end of 2015, over 800,000 official events will have run in over 6,000 store locations around the world, this year alone. And we expect this trend to continue and the brand to continue growing. Perhaps our biggest opportunity to keep expanding Magic is to improve the digital Magic ecosystem. We know Magic players want to play in person at events and also play similar level competitions online. Right now we have digital offerings at both ends of the knowledge and engagement spectrum. Magic Online is for the highest level players and we have Duels as an entry experience. The greatest opportunity for Magic is to create a new digital experience leveraging contemporary technology to create a seamless digital experience that meets all the players needs from new players to pro players. This is what we are investing in and we have a team in place to deliver the first new Magic Digital Next product in the next few years. In the meantime, we will optimize the Duels and Magic: The Gathering Online experiences to continue driving the overall Magic business.

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Although I’ve played various versions of Dungeons & Dragons, I’ve never really played in the Forgotten Realms. (Or any of the published settings for that matter, save Planescape and Spelljammer.) But with Wizards of the Coast’s last three adventure campaigns set the Realm’s Sword Coast, I was excited to see what the Sword Coast Adventurer’s Guide had in store for someone running games in the setting.

Well, that and the book is a Green Ronin product—a company that makes products I enjoy, including spearheading the Out of the Abyss adventure campaign book—and some people that I know worked on this project. Unfortunately, the Sword Coast Adventurer’s Guide isn’t a book I would recommend for players of 5th Edition.

Open the book up to the preface and you see on the right-side page a map of the Realms, extending through the gutter to the margins of the left page. Interesting, but it’s poorly executed. To someone new to the setting—players who have only encountered the Sword Coast through the Starter Set, the three campaign books, or the organized play games — the Sword Coast is their reference point to the Realms. The Sword Coast falls in the gutter, swallowed up by the binding and thickness of the book’s signature. There’s “Neverwin” if you fold the page back far enough. The “Mer…ead Men”. “Luskan ford crossing”.

The map also raises another question: why is it even here? To show how large the Realms are? Well, it cuts off all the Dalelands — pretty much everything east of Cormyr is off the page and the place where the Fifth Edition’s adventures take place isn’t readable. The book is called the Sword Coast Adventurer’s Guide, so why not show off a map of just that area? There is no overall Sword Coast map in the book, just this map of the continent and closeups from it scattered throughout the book. (The map and map segements are done by Mike Schley, who has contributed to most of the 5e line. The full map can be purchased at his site for download.)

I’m spending too much on page 5. Let’s move on.

The next section contains incredibly brief passages on areas of the Realms: two paragraphs for The Dalelands (all of them), one on Chessenta, the four nations that make up the Cold Lands get two. There’s a very brief history of the Realms, followed by a lengthy listing of the major deities of the setting. Do you have any of the earlier editions of the setting boxed sets or sourcebooks? More importantly, do you have access to a Forgotten Realms wiki? Not even a minute of searching landed me at the entry for Malar on a Forgotten Realms wiki, which had more information on the Beastlord than this sourcebook.

Page 43 gets us to a section that’s about the Sword Coast… and the North? Okay, so much more than just the Sword Coast, although the we’re really looking at the cities of the Lord’s Alliance in the Sword Coast region covering the top four inches by one-and-a-half inches of that full-page map. Some cities are shown on callout maps, none of the dwarfholds are. This section is full of in-character recollections of various areas by different adventurers, but they feel like they’re written by the same person. This is the only section of the book that is in first person, and some of the entries in this section can have pages go by between sentences where the fictional author inserts themselves, letting you forget that it’s written in first person. If you want overviews of some of the cities and areas (and don’t have access to a wiki), this is a decent section. But there’s no really deep drill-down into the entries. Don’t expect to run a game set in Daggerford based solely on the information here. Consider this more a “Rough Guide to Faerûn” than a detailed setting bible.

This seems unsatisfying, and it feels that opening up the scope of the setting book from just the Sword Coast to take in all of the area of the North in sixty pages is to blame. If those pages were devoted to just the Sword Coast section (Waterdeep and Daggerford on up north, inland to The High Forest), we’d have a book that has more information about that area. As it is, there’s a lot of high-level information that can be easily found elsewhere. However, the sections at the back of the book appear to be more useful for a setting sourcebook.

The Races of Faerûn chapter is more of how various races fit into the setting. Actual game mechanics amount to sentences like “Sun elves have the racial traits of high elves in the Player’s Handbook” or small sidebars. Tieflings start to branch out to the variety of the “race” from the AD&D Planescape days, instead of demonic half-breeds.

The Classes chapter has a few ways to customize your character, but most seem to be a veneer over the actual class customizations in the Player’s Handbook: This monastic order follows this path in the Player’s Handbook. This druidic group follows this circle found in the Player’s Handbook. This paladin order follows this order in the Player’s Handbook. There are a few things that are neat here: an actual new order for Paladins, two Rogue archetypes, a new patronage path for Warlocks, and a fourth edition Warlord-like archetype for Fighters.

More backgrounds in the aptly-named Backgrounds chapter, but the most fascinating thing here is the M C Escher-level wackiness in the artwork introducing this chapter. There’s a Faction Agent background, but I was under the impression from the Starter Set and the various published campaigns that the five factions in the game were things that the characters join up with as the game goes on. But here, you can choose to be part of The Lord’s Alliance from the get-go. As with the races and classes, many references here to use the traits, ideals, and bonds from exisiting backgrounds in the Player’s Handbook. (Of the twelve background options, only one has a set of these.)

Anyway, that’s the book.

This is a book that wanted to either be longer to fill out… well, everything, really. Or it wants to be a book that focuses on just the Sword Coast.

I would have a rough time recommending this book—it simply doesn’t do the job it wants to. As a setting guide, you can get more out of the Dessarin Valley section in Princes of the Apocalypse to run a whole campaign from. The book doesn’t do much more than a basic wiki for the Realms does, except for the backgrounds and some of the class options. There’s nothing particularly compelling about the Sword Coast Adventurer’s Guide that requires an immediate purchase. A better use of your gaming dollars: buy Mike Schley’s map at his site, and pick up either Princes of the Apocalypse or Out of the Abyss to get enough setting material to run your own overland (Princes) or Underdark (Abyss).

The Sword Coast Adventurer’s Guide retails for $39.95 and is available now.

A copy of the Sword Coast Adventurer’s Guide was provided free by Wizards of the Coast for review purposes.

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Gideon Jura, Jace Beleren, Chandra Nalaar and Nissa Revane, join forces in their battle against the Eldrazi in the 2nd, and final, set of the Zendikar block. Releasing on January 22nd of 2016, with a Magic Duels Magic Online release on February 1st, 2016. A release date for Magic Duels has not yet been set. Oath of the Gatewatch will contain 184 cards, and will be available in Booster Packs, Fat Packs, and Intro Decks.

Pre-release dates for the set are January 16–17, 2016.

UPDATE: Corrected release dates for Magic Duels and Magic Online.

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Out now is the Dungeons & Dragons Sword Coast Adventurer’s Guide from Wizards of the Coast. The book, a mix of character options and background information, is meant to be a resource for players and dungeon masters using the Out of the Abyss campaign or otherwise adventuring in the Forgotten Realms.

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While the next card set out for Magic: The Gathering, Oath of the Gatewatch (the second in the Battle for Zendikar block), will not release until January 22nd, Wizards of the Coast has already begun teasing the set to follow, Shadows Over Innistrad. The announced release date for Shadows Over Innistrad is April 8th, or for Magic Online April 18th.

Preceding the full set, Blessed vs. Cursed Duel Decks will hit retail February 26th, pitting the humans, spirits, and angels of Innistrad against the demons and shambling dead.

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We knew that we were getting two new Planewalkers, one being multicolored, in January with the Battle for Zendikar expansion for Arena of the Planeswalkers. Now Wizards of the Coast and Hasbro have announced that the expansion will come with a new Battlefield scenario that pits the players against a colorless Eldrazi Ruiner controlled by another player.

The miniatures look amazing in this set, and the inclusion of the cooperative scenario is huge. While I was just hoping for more spells and units in this expansion, I’m now even more excited with the news of this inclusion.

You can preorder the Battle for Zendikar Board Game Expansion Pack from Amazon now for $19.99. I’ll have a full review in January when I receive my set.

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Today marks the full release of Battle for Zendikar, the latest expansion set for Magic: The Gathering. The set features a return to the plane of Zendikar, now threatened by an invasion of the Eldrazi. The Eldrazi are led by Ulamog, the Ceaseless Hunger, a 10/10 legendary creature costing 10 mana but which also exiles 20 cards from an opponent’s library every time it attacks.

On the normally staid land side of Magic, Battle for Zendikar features full-art land cards, land cards that awaken in to creatures, and a special premium series of foil-art land cards with unusual abilities, Zendikar Expeditions.

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Wizards of the Coast and Cryptozoic Entertainment have settled a dispute that saw the former sue the latter in federal court with allegations of copyright, patent, and trade dress infringement. WOTC had essentially claimed that Cryptozoic’s digital trading-card game, Hex: Shards of Fate, was a copy of Magic: The Gathering.

Other than to say that “the parties have entered into a settlement agreement and license with undisclosed terms,” no further details of the deal were provided.

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Wizards of the Coast will be releasing the Out of the Abyss campaign book on Septebmer 15th as part of the larger Rage of Demons storyline. The adventure book, developed by Green Ronin, steals adventures away into the Underdark of the Forgotten Realms where they encounter a secret society, a relentless foe, and demon lords galore. Will they ever see daylight again? The overall storyline will be told through digital and tabletop versions of Dungeons & Dragons.

We’ve received a copy of the adventure and need to see how it stacks up to the earlier campaigns and storylines for the fifth edition of D&D. Wizards of the Coast’s earlier adventures were partnerships with other companies and I was really impressed with how Sasquatch Game Studio handled the Elemental Evil adventure book, Princes of the Apocalypse. Green Ronin — no stranger to fantasy roleplaying games — developed this campaign book and the forthcoming Sword Coast Adventurer’s Guide (available November 3rd).

Out of the Abyss begins with the heroes in an underground slave pen with an eclectic group of prisoners. The first order of business: escape. Assuming they do, the book devotes a few pages about travelling in the Underdark, the vast network of tunnels and underground cities that span the world of Faerûn. Along with notes about adventuring in the Underdark, a map showing the general location of the Underdark’s regions with a surface overlay of the Sword Coast is provided. (We assume that like earlier storyline maps, a version of this with and without labels will be available for purchase on Mike Schley’s website.)

Oh, and the locations! By the time the you’re about halfway through the book, there are so many different locations and interesting NPCs, you’ll never think of underground locations as “just a bunch of caves” again. I was surprised to see the variety of areas the staff at Green Ronin were able to come up with. Also a neat thing to keep the page flipping down, larger areas have several details from the main map sprinkled throughout the chapter, near location descriptions. It’s good for reference and also makes the world below feel like it’s not just something that fits nicely on an 8-1/2″ by 11″ sheet of paper. (Several maps are by Jared Blando, who has maps available at his site.)

It’s difficult to review the adventure without revealing surprises about the product. I was skeptical that a whole campaign set in the Underdark could be interesting — I was in the “just a bunch of caves” camp when it came to that place — but the myriad different locations, the huge cast of NPCs, the thing in the middle, the way the adventure grows… Green Ronin’s team has me believing that the Underdark is not just a place to visit: a whole campaign can be run down there. And even if you don’t run the campaign, the various underground set pieces (I’m especially fond of the region in chapter 3) are well worth using for your regular D&D game.

Out of the Abyss is a 256-page adventure for a group of heroic spelunkers, available on September 15th. MSRP is $49.95.

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Announced at PAX Prime, the first expansion to Magic: The Gathering Arena of the Planeswalkers will be bringing Zendikar love to the game. Two new Planeswalkers, Kiora and Ob Nixilis, join the battle with new squads and spells. The really cool part? Kiora is multicolor, allowing you to field a force of Blue and Green. Exact details are sparse right now, but I’ll make sure to post what I find as soon as I know more.

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