Thanks for the response! I respect your vision and your commitment to avoiding scope creep, it's a good decision. It's easy to forget that the old games were built by teams of people too, so they had a lot of resources to throw at problems.
I agree that Elayne does move a bit quicker and more smoothly, and I noticed that in certain situations I could use that to manouevre around enemies and their attacks, so I think your approach works.
One of my big challenges with designing boardgames is getting caught in a trap of adding more features instead of just getting on with building the game. Plus, deliberately limiting features can create a more focused gameplay experience, which is often missing in modern games.
I'm more familiar with boardgame design so the technical details you mentioned that come from designing a video game were enlightening. Are you working from an existing game engine or are you building your own?
Anyway, looking forward to trying the next demo!