"Any Ally?" Confused about language

[DonAdam]

On the vast majority of powers that affect allies, they refer to "one" ally or "each" ally. Completely unambiguous.

But then there are some powers that say "any" ally. I noticed these among the Bard powers in PHBII (i.e., Verse of Triumph on p. 70) but there are a few in PHBI.

"Any" is somewhat ambiguous, so I thought I would ask. I'm 80% confident it is simply equivalent to "each" (especially since some powers say "any one") but I wanted to make sure it is not something weird.

For instance, I can imagine it being broken down as:
Each: All allies are affected
One: The power user picks the ally affected
Any: The power only affects one ally, but the ally is the one to trigger its effects, so on its turn any one ally can

But I really hope that's not right and its just inconsistent language.

Thanks for any help!

 

[Bagpuss]

Any: The power only affects one ally, but the ally is the one to trigger its effects, so on its turn any one ally can.

From my reading "any ally" only seems to be used with conditions attached.

So in your example. With Verse of Triumph.

"you and any ally within 5 squares of you"

and it means all allies that meet that condition, not one ally.

So in the case of Verse of Triumph it effects all allies that are within 5 squares of you, if them move out of five squares they loose the benefit, if them move into 5 squares they gain it. Since the effect lasts until the end of the encounter, you check the condition whenever it would be relevant.