I think this really does need an answer and/or errata, because of all the confusion.
I am very clear myself that these and a few other things are all unfortunate misunderstandings caused by the new edition's attempts to streamline wordings, which sadly left out clear rules which were in the originals. It looks pretty clear to me too what happened, though it may be presumptuous, but it seems Steve tried to have basic Melee be his model, and as he wrote right before the final PDF draft, he didn't understand what the issue was (so no, this is not a case of some subtle act of genius intentionally changing the game) when several of us were trying to get him to re-insert some of the clarifying language, particularly the very clear language which occurs identically in Wizard and Advanced Melee, in the Changing Options section.
I guess I need to quote it again:
Quote:
CHANGING OPTIONS
It is legal to change options AFTER the movement part of a turn, to meet changing conditions. The only requirement is that the figure must not already have moved more than the NEW option allows. If you moved 0 or 1 hex, you may switch to any option you could have taken when the turn began; if you moved 1/2 your MA or less, you may attack, defend, dodge, or drop; if you moved 1/2 your MA you may do nothing else that turn.
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I have also suggested many times that he must have meant the "
act" sense of the word "move" when he wrote in the new edition "The options available to a figure depend on whether it is engaged, disengaged, or in HTH combat at the moment its turn to
move comes." Which would mean the same thing as the Wizard / Advanced Melee rules, at least to me.
(The other confusion of course is the mis-reading of the options list to assume that figures can only defend if they moved 0 or 1, because defend happens to be listed as an engaged option, but to me that's obviously a confusion caused by the options list organizing into engaged and disengaged, and it's double-obvious to me and explicitly incorrect when considering the original Wizard / Advanced Melee Changing Options rule above, which says the limit for Defend is 1/2 MA, and has no requirement to be engaged either. And it also makes sense and cleans up all these questions in one quick surrender to the old rules.)
I know from these forum discussions that some people were also confused by the old rules (especially people who kept referring to basic Melee), and some people are used to (and/or simply prefer) play styles where there are more rigid limits on what options are available and when people can change them.
However it seems to me that the Wizard/Advanced Melee Changing Options section resolves a long list of these subtle-but-sometimes-important issues in a very simple way that makes sense, as opposed to the weird arbitrary/mistaken technical limits from mis-applying the letter of the Option List to both the Movement Phase and the Action Phase, which seems to me clearly not the intent, and a huge mess of silly side-effects.