[Icehouse] Marking Martian Coasters as Xeno

[David Artman]

> From: Dennis Duquette <dennisdduquette at yahoo.com>
> suggested, but I do not think I would care for the
> aesthetics of the X. I like the idea of suits for the
> coasters: drawing a small icon on each corner square with
> the dot. The black and red coasters would get the suits
...
> That's my $0.02. What do you think?

Another strong idea, to be sure. I am not sure, though, what the suits
get you that marking just to show "look at the arrows" doesn't? In fact,
it seems there's a new issue introduced by these suits: remember which
suit is Xeno and which is Rainbow; I'd rather just use a binary marking,
myself (i.e. X marks Xeno; no mark means Rainbow).

And there's another issue, I just realized: what if, say, a Black Large
is on that designation square (or even a Blue Large)? Anything which
requires me to pick up pieces to check the coaster is not ideal, in my
opinion. (The arrows are already tricky enough, when a Large is on a
square). That's why my "background X" idea is (my personal) current
favorite: it's never covered, it doesn't intersect smaller details (the
arrows), and it's a direct symbolic associations: X = Xeno.

OOOPS! Yes it does impact a small detail: the corner dot. OK, I'd stop
short of a full corner-to-corner line, either for just that particular
corner (thereby highlighting it, incidentally) or for every corner, not
drawing it past any of the outermost corner squares (for consistency).

See what I mean, folks? For me, this is a really tough decision (hence
the reason I routinely beg for a Xeno print run--oops, I did it again)!
;)
David