Let's contrast this Mearls gimmick with the Tortle Package, just to give you a clearer idea of my issue with the former:
The Tortle Package, from all indications, is a pretty slapdash piece of work. (Really, guys? The question of 'what happens when a tortle wielding a shield withdraws into its shell' never came up during playtest at all? Really??) Yet it was put together by multiple designers, and while it was teased by folks outside the AL, there was an official announcement by AL admins, indicating that the project was pitched and sold to the admins as a good thing for the campaign, meaning the admins also got a chance to chime in to give their opinions on, say, how to roll out the package, how to implement it into AL's resource rules (the 'treat the Tortle Package as part of XGtE' advice was clearly an admin decision), and such. The admins and the designers are clearly on the same page here.
Meanwhile, for the second time in eighteen months, Mike Mearls announces something unilateral, for a limited audience, that is going to be shoe-horned into AL without anyone from the AL admin staff knowing about it or having any idea what's involved prior to the announcement. No buy-in, no feedback, no chance to have their opinions taken into consideration. It creates, as an admin pointed out during the previous discussion, "problems with...the philosophy of the campaign".
Unfortunately, the other discussion made it clear that, while everyone involved is uncomfortable with such a situation, Mearls clearly has the authority to do what he is doing, and nobody on the D&D team or the AL admin team can stop it. Nor can an AL DM declare the cert to be illegal -- it's an official cert and must be accepted at the table. As an AL DM, my only option to protest this sort of activity is to simply refuse to run a game where someone possessing such a cert appears, which while unfair to the other players at the table is sadly the only legal option left to me to show my own distaste at the practice.
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Pauper