I'd like to raise an issue with how Blink is referencing Shift.
Quote:
SHIFT
After moving normally, you may immediately place a Velnesh Alpha on any empty space within 2 spaces of its current placement. Velnesh Alphas will not take leaving engagement attacks while Shifting.
BLINK
After a Velnesh Alpha rolls defense dice against a normal attack from an opponent's figure and is not destroyed, it may move using its Shift special power.
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First, Scytale pointed out
last month (oops, last year) the importance of Blink not being
immediate because of timing conflicts such as with Knockback. However, Blink inherently relies upon Shift to define this placement, and Shift
is immediate, so that feels ambiguous.
Second, Shift is defined as happening after moving normally (and before attacking), but Blink cannot occur in a context that meets this requirement. So technically it's not even possible for Blink to "use Shift" (unless there's some rule I don't know about that defines exactly what does and does not gets overridden when one special power invokes another).
Third, Shift is not really a
move but a
place, so it feels off to say "move using Shift." It really isn't
moving using Shift, it's
placing in the same manner as Shift — which of course is not quite the same thing.
Can anyone think of a reason why this card couldn't just follow the normal Scape standard of being super-repetitive and verbose so 10-year-olds can understand? Something like this, perhaps:
SHIFT
After moving normally, you may immediately place a Velnesh Alpha on any empty space within 2 spaces of its current placement. Velnesh Alphas will not take leaving engagement attacks while Shifting.
BLINK
After a Velnesh Alpha rolls defense dice against a normal attack from an opponent's figure and is not destroyed, you may place it on any empty space within 2 spaces of its current placement. It will not take leaving engagement attacks while Blinking.
I know it's longer, but there's plenty of room; and this seems to avoid the issues with timing, requirements, etc. that come from having one power kick off another one but try to ignore or modify parts of that other power "on the fly." It also makes an explicit difference between Shift being immediate and Blink being non-immediate.
This also has advantages in future-proofing the templates and giving future developers more design flexibility. In this form, BLINK is re-usable on new army cards without being forced to either re-write it or also include SHIFT on the same card. And a designer can even use variants like SHIFT 3 and BLINK 3 to change how far one power or the other can teleport.
TL/DR: This feels more clear, stable, and flexible.