New

• Combat hover lines — hover any board unit and lines now draw to every valid combat target
• Ascended status — new permanent ★ pip (non-purgeable). Farid's earned-once buffs now read directly on his card instead of hiding behind charges
• Active turn flame — animated flame on the active player's info bar
• Retaliate indicator — edge-spike visual on cards with Retaliate while on the board

Improvements

• Helga reworked — heals 3 when she deals damage (previously triggered after combat)
• Zombie moved to the neutral faction with new art
• Dominate (Helm of Command) — given a 3-round cooldown to match other heavy on-activation abilities
• Tooltip card references — "transform" / "replace_creep_spawn" descriptions now name the actual card instead of "a different unit"
• Aura wording — "Give adjacent Loyal Beasts +2/+2" instead of "Give adjacent allies +2/+2"
• Targeting arrow — new shader family (marker / outline / fancy / simple) for cleaner reads at different ranges
• Status badges — single-stack statuses now show the count pip; Retaliate icon registered in keyword tooltips
• Board layout — lane improvement slots no longer share a midline; player and opponent hands no longer clip the board edge
• Cleave spike polish — dark silhouette reads against bright card art, sized to avoid z-fighting
• Card data tweaks across Normark and Ostland (see RULESET.md for current values)

Fixes

• Helm of Command — Dominate reachable — equipment on a hero now populates the ability panel, lights the ready-glow, and shows valid targets.
• Spell on_kill triggers fire — Duel, Lightning Bolt, Shockwave, Skewer, Timber Chain et al. now fire on_kill (Zara al-Sayf gold gain, etc.); previously only combat-phase kills triggered.
• Old Gregor — Loyal Beast spawn animation — beasts spawn at base stats and animate to the buffed values, instead of jumping to final stats and back.
• Mirror Shade — Untargetable on summon — pip renders immediately on spawn.
• Max-health buffs no longer vanish — current health stops being clamped by stale max-health when an aura applies.
• Cross-lane reactions no longer trigger — Battle Smith and Veteran's Counsel only react to plays in their own lane.
• Source-lane target effects — selected Normark / Ostland card effects now correctly only fire when the event card shares the source's lane.
• Play Again deck recovery — Win modal's Play Again reloads the correct deck after the GameScene reload.
• End-of-turn flicker — phase transitions no longer briefly flag the wrong player as able to act.

Security & Stability

• Board placement reconcile — reconnect / late-join now restores board placement against authoritative state, removing a source of position drift.