I've run across a few actions that target "selected" tracks (and are labeled as such) but that actually target the "last touched" track.
That must be what's going on here.
It can get confusing because often 'last touched' and 'selected' are the same thing and thus you usually get the expected behavior.
I wonder if a control surface works with 'last touched' instead of 'selected'...
I use this as a feature. If I select a track with the mouse, the Faderport (a 'control surface') jumps to that track. The last/next track buttons work as expected.
If I select a track by clicking one of the programmable buttons on the UC-33 (a 'MIDI controller') that I have assigned to select a particular track, the selection changes as expected. However, the Faderport doesn't see this. - So I guess it must actually be going by 'last touched' and NOT 'selected'.
So... that lets me "assign" a channel to the Faderport with the mouse that stays put. Then I can then 'select' a new channel with the UC-33 and use the UC-33 fader I have assigned to "currently selected track" to control the new channel. The Faderport stays with the 'last touched' (with the mouse) track.
So I get 2 wildcard faders.
Order of operations is key with that!
And yes I did once pull the leslie track volume down instead of the snare reverb during a show.
But only for a second. Probably no one noticed...