Page 12: Mallard ability Ill-Tempered - functionally useless. Using the optional pushing rules (let's be honest, everyone will), you can already push your roll in exchange for becoming Angry (or any other condition). Ill Tempered is basically a worse substitute of a push for 3 WP. This needs to change or no one will play Mallard.
The idea of the Mallard ability is that you can give yourself a boon on ANY roll except for INT based ones for 3wp, and you can use it before you roll. (The fantasy being the Mallard getting so mad they bruteforce their way through the problem). This is quite powerful overall, as most abilities only lets you have a boon on specific skills and situations. Even if you go with the pushing rule, it can avoid you getting an extra condition that would give you more banes on other skills.
The ability to allow Mallards to become angry is in case there is no specific way to get the Angry condition through normal gameplay and your NOT playing with the Pushing rules (Only very specific events lets you become angry, otherwise you must get a condition you already have in order to pick Angry). In the first version of the Demo, the ability basically said "If you play a Mallard, use the optional rule", but it got changed because people pointed out it was weird to enforce an optional rule on one specific kin.
It's still functionally worse than pushing UNLESS already Angry as this allows you to gain a boon without suffering any other conditions besides being Angry. If not already Angry, then just push your roll instead and choose Angry as your condition. Now one area I do find this interesting is that it can functionally cancel out the effects of a bane from another condition, allowing you to have a straight roll. Okay, maybe you're right and I underestimated this ability. It's very situational, but strong when needed.
How is it worse?
Pushing gives you a condition, which means any roll with that attribute is always done with a bane untill it is cured. And healing conditions on the field is not easy. You can cure one (or two once per shift rest if using mementos) per stretch rest, which can be interupted. And you can suffer conditions from the adventure itself, meaning the amount of pushing you can do per adventure can be unpredictable, (some monsters have multible ways to give you conditions). Likewise maybe you have already used your "dumpstats" for conditions, meaning if you push again you gotta put it on the attributes you actually use.
While you do get angry with the ability, you can then afterwards use your wp which you have more control over how you use and spend it, and won't give you more more conditions and therefor more banes. If a roll is really important, is'nt it better to spend 3wp before the roll and avoid getting another condition?
And again, the ability to get angry is in case you wanna get angry immediatly, rather to activly fail a roll, then push to get angry. This is especially true if your skills have gotten so high that the risk of failing is minimal, or you simply never failed a roll that you actually wanna push. Pushing is meant to be used on rolls you REALLY don't want to fail, not for smaller things just so you can activate an ability. Especially if you are a group ghat is not playing with the pushing rule (most will i'm sure, but some might skip it)