A few of the development cards (such as "Unholy Ballistics" and "Predator's Will") change the base that units resolve fate cards during battle. Based on the wording, "during battle, ___ resolve fate cards as if they were ____ units," I'm fairly certain of my interpretation, but it was recently called into question, so I'd like a second opinion.

The base change only applies, during battle, and only while resolving fate cards, correct? That is, out of battle, do Leonx riders still count as rectangle bases, and (more importantly) while tallying strength, do routed Leonx riders not count as hex units? Thanks.

Basically, those development cards basically just mean when in battle, for those units you use the new section. IE, for Leonx Riders, you look at the Hexagon section of fate cards instead of the Rectangle section. For all other purposes, they are still Rectangle units.

The development card texts are pretty specific, in that they say "During battle, UNITNAMEs resolve Fate cards as if they were SHAPETYPE units". So out of battle, the upgrade has no effect.

Tallying Strength is still part of a battle, but even that isn't affected by these cards - the developments specifically only apply to "resolv[ing] Fate cards", and checking strength is not resolving Fate cards.

I hope this helps I'm guessing whoever is arguing for a different interpretation hasn't carefully read the text of those developments.

Thanks, sigmazero, that's what I was pretty sure was the case- no one was arguing that the new base type applied out of battle, the question was more the distinction between drawing fate cards during battle, and being treated as a type during all battle conditions. I agree that the wording is important that the specific unit resolves fate cards as if they were a particular shape base. That prevents, for example, the warlock's special ability targeting an upgraded skeleton archer as if the archer were a "rectangle" unit. since it is not the archer resolving the card, it's treated as a "triangle."

Exactly For all other purposes, in and out of battle, the figure is still it's normal shape. It's only for resolving it's own fate cards that it uses a different shape.