Agreed, but in the other way to do this would have allowed him to just use the aspect he'd created as a justification to roll a defense with an effective skill level of 10.
That's basically just like having blocks, but with more rolling.
What exactly are you trying to accomplish here?
Exactly. In other games, you would have to say "I don't hit him, I push him over" or something along those lines to do something different mechanically. In Fate, the same action can be a different mechanic, depending on your intention. Do you want to hurt the other guy? Give yourself the upper hand? Keep him from doing something else? The intent gives you the action, not the action itself.
That argument could be made for maneuvers as well. You can do a maneuver on yourself and nobody gets to defend against it, but if you do a maneuver on someone else they get to defend themselves. It seems reasonable to apply this to blocks.
I think you're missing my point. The distinction you're trying to impose here, between blocks against someone specific and blocks against nobody in particular, seems to be entirely rooted in the action itself. Not in the intent behind it.
The example I gave was a wall of wind in front of you vs a wall of wind pressing against you. Same intent, same intended mechanical effect, different action. You're proposing to treat them differently.
A block will just stop something from happening, which will then have caused both parties their action without anything really happening. An aspect pushes the action into a different direction, and an active opposition can have a number of different outcomes, depending on how good or bad everyone rolls.
In my experience the average block changes the direction of the fight more than the average maneuver does, actually.
