Battles now open with both armies standing still for a moment. It changes more than I expected it to.

Thanks to everyone playing. Most of this came out of match data again.

[ BATTLES ]

• Both armies hold their opening formation for about a second before anyone moves. Fights used to start already in motion, so there was never a moment to see who was on the board or what you were about to watch.
• Units shove each other around less. They also end up standing further apart, because a hard correction overshoots and bounces them back together.

[ SPOILS OF WAR ]

• Spoils now come at rounds 3, 6, 9 and 12. They used to come at 3, 8, 13 and 18 — and round 18 was impossible to reach, since a run ends at 16 rounds at the most. Measured across every recorded run: 1.37 keystones per run, and 15 percent of runs finished without making a single one of these choices.
• Every offer now includes at least one relic only your faction can get. Drawn at random from the shared pool, Bone Legion saw an all-universal offer 31 percent of the time.
• Pandemic replaced. It was the same name, the same effect and the same number as the Plague Caster's capstone, which also carries Contagion on top of it. It is The Wall Bites now: your whole army adds 40 percent of its armor to every swing.
• Your commander's capstone is always one of the choices on your last skill slot. Across 187 runs that filled all four slots, only 64 percent ever got offered theirs.

[ THE CHARNEL ENGINEER ]

He sat at 39 percent and his players were playing him right: 63 percent ranged on
his boards against 40 for the rest of the Legion. The problem was that he fields
four units where his faction fields five, and his fights end at 6.5 seconds
against their 8.4. A gun line given six and a half seconds never becomes one.

• Dead Eyes removed. Now Bone Barricades: two bone works rise in front of your line at the bell. They never attack or move, your own units walk straight through them, and the enemy has to deal with them.
• Enfilade Doctrine removed. Now Charnel Works: when one of your units falls, its bones lock into a barricade where it stood.
• Grave Mortar musters a Skeleton Warrior every round instead of a Bone Ballista every third.
• Firing Drill: 5 percent to 10 percent damage per other ranged ally.

[ THE LICH LORD ]

His skills were the least-taken in the game: offered 211 times, taken 32. And his
spell barely happened — a Lich needs four swings to reach its first cast while his
median fight lasts under seven seconds.

• Forbidden Lore removed. Now Recharge: after casting, your arcane units keep 14 mana instead of dropping to none.
• Soulbound Servants removed. It asked for MAGE units on a commander built around ARCANE ones, and his own players were offered it six times and took it zero. Now Rites of the Risen: every body your units raise banks +1 XP onto the raiser, permanently.
• Grand Conclave removed. Now The Dead Rise As They Were: bodies your units raise come up as half of what they were, armor kept, never weaker than a plain skeleton.

[ FIXED ]

• A second ability-granting item on the same unit did nothing at all. The first became the spell and the second paid only its stat lines.
• Buying a unit from the shop and dropping it straight onto another one fed the WRONG unit from the shelf once anything else in that roll had been bought.
• Feeding reads properly now. The body being eaten is pulled into the carry where you dropped it, instead of flying in again from where you picked it up.
• Abilities say where they came from. A unit carrying a gem read exactly like one born casting.
• The Treasury button says +2 gold per round instead of just "+gold / round".
• Breaking a barricade is not a kill, so an enemy wall no longer feeds every kill-triggered effect in the game.
• Buying a unit and dropping it straight onto its own kind made no sound. That one is a whole level and usually the best gold in the round, and it was the only purchase that happened in silence.
• The pause at the end of a fight got shorter when you sped the battle up, which is why the last kill's blood sometimes went missing at 2x.
• Ironclaw's achievements could not be earned. Six of them, in every version so far.