Despite @Vincent's post about the upcoming revision, we went ahead and played with what we had, and this is a report of our first session:
We made five characters, one of each of the current playbooks. Generally, character creation was quick and smooth, with no major snags. Players who were familiar with AW obviously had a slightly easier time of it, but new players didn't have any problems. Were I to do this again, I would probably send the "Common Knowledge" section out ahead of time for player prep, though in my experience nobody ever does their homework anyway.
Play was pretty straightforward. We started with everyone rolling Fortunes, because it produced a lot of tension and interesting problems on the map right away. I would say this was my favourite part. One of the big issues that Apocalypse World doesn't have is that everyone is assumed to start quite close to each other, geographically. That doesn't exist here, and so I made a a few triangles (one with two PCs and a troll, one with three PCs) and then moved things so everyone would end up in the same place by the end of the session. Everyone having obligations from Fortunes made that a lot easier, because I was able to find reasons for the organisations to be at odds (there's a forest full of trappers and outlaws that sits on the border between the War-Herald's relatively civilised domain and the Troll-Killer's more wild haunts).
I had somewhat expected it, but it was definitely the case that the Dragon-Herald and the Outlaw Heir tended to galvanise action. They are characters around which it is easy to collect a group. I'd be curious to see a game without those two books. I feel like it would be a bit more free, and the objectives of play would be less immediately obvious.
In terms of mechanical feedback, we had some troubles with the War-Herald's warband. We couldn't figure exactly when you would "use" traits like Large, or their Harm and Armour stats, other than the obvious, but if the obvious is true, then it is incredibly easy for the War-Herald to mark XP, since a single Battle could result in 5-6 marks. Given that there are a lot of potential fight-related XP marks to earn, combat seems strongly encouraged. This hangup was probably my least favourite part.
We had a single Prayer (the Wicker-Wise prayed to help the Outlaw Heir, who had blown a Take Stock roll) and it was cool. The Wicker-Wise player told us about the old god of the area, a god of prosperity who slept beneath the earth, giving bounty in the form of a nearby silver mine. The slumbering god rejected the blood sacrifice he was given, and my move was to foretell some badness. I'd say this was the biggest surprise, just how fun it was coming up with gods and sacrifice.
One of my players commented that personal goals that don't face other PCs don't have XP as an incentive. This is probably fine, since the reward for pursuit of those objectives is the completion of the objective itself, but it did sit strangely with my group.
Finally, the line between Take Stock and Take Bearing isn't entirely clear just from the names. The moves themselves are quite distinct, but my group thought the names could be a little clearer.
Overall, everyone had fun, and the game flowed naturally back and forth between rules and fiction. I dig it, and I'm excited for the next revision!