Ummmmm......the green arrows pointing at each other and when you tooltip over them it says SimulGear.

I don't think most casual players take the time to hover over every icon before joining games, and certainly not newbies - for whom having to deal with something like this would probably be a turn-off.

Here's a challenge - find all of the SimulGear boards by just looking at the Boards page. Hover anywhere you like.

Find all the Boards you can and can't play team games on.
Find all the Boards capital cities are on.
Find all the Boards abandon is on.

Make SimulGear super special and too distinguished and you make it super special and too distinguished. Flush it in as just a normal Rule/gameplay and people will quickly either accept it and play it, or know it and avoid it because they don't want to play it.

Yertle wrote: Find all the Boards you can and can't play team games on.
Find all the Boards capital cities are on.
Find all the Boards abandon is on.

Make SimulGear super special and too distinguished and you make it super special and too distinguished. Flush it in as just a normal Rule/gameplay and people will quickly either accept it and play it, or know it and avoid it because they don't want to play it.

I agree in principle, but it feels like SG boards are hidden or even camouflaged in there.  What if I like SG?  How do I find SG boards on the Boards page?  Right now SG boards are practically indistinguishable from regular boards.  As a designer, if I create an SG version of one of my boards, I want it to be very clear what it is.

Yertle wrote: Find all the Boards you can and can't play team games on.
Find all the Boards capital cities are on.
Find all the Boards abandon is on.

Make SimulGear super special and too distinguished and you make it super special and too distinguished. Flush it in as just a normal Rule/gameplay and people will quickly either accept it and play it, or know it and avoid it because they don't want to play it.

I find this to be an argument that many things are too hidden, not that further things should therefore be hidden.  Think brand new to all of this having only played risk 10 years ago and this site is very confusing with all it's hidden game-play styles.

I think it would be cool if the future board sorting system did help account for this type of search.

I had the thought: What if we added the SimulGear icon to the info given on the "Boards" page?

That lead to: But why not all the other special rules of boards?

So, I made some icons for them that look like this:

I figured they'd look more or less like this:

It probably needs some style changes, and some of the icons still need a little work, but you get the idea.

I like the idea, but I think a more simplified set of icons would be more appropriate.  After all, some boards will have multiple scenarios. So for instance, if a player is looking for a standard board and sees a SimulG icon, they might assume there is not a standard version of the board available.  Same applies to just about any of the icons when you think about it.

High on my list of preferences is a filter or sorting system and I still think we need to come up with a rating system like "Riskyness" because and alpha system is not working at this point.  The number of Boards available to play is getting too unwieldy.

That said, I think there is an urgency to devise a system for differentiating boards that are Standard, SG, or both.

Toaster - This is a great idea and nice icons.

As M57 brings up, there needs to be a way to view the scenarios with the same information. These icons could appear on the create game page as well (below or next the board name)

Nice work Toaster. I started writing down a few ideas for the new board list page on Friday - one idea I had was for a window with basic info about the board which would appear when you moused over the board image. Potentially the icons would sit in there.

Regardless there will be full sorting options for the board list view including SimulGear vs Regular of course.