In my Symbolic set, it's the only thing that will distinguish between Pawns or Gold Generals on each side.
While they could more easily tell Silver Generals apart, it would take some learning, but the wedge shapes help a player immediately tell which is which.
If it weren't for the baselines in the Motif set, it would have similar problems. But even when players can recognize the orientation of each piece without wedge shapes, these shapes provide a consistent means of recognizing which side is which that doesn't require further knowledge of the individual pieces, and that can be helpful even when you do already recognize the pieces.
Also, in the western set I criticized, the Silver and Gold General images would be too unfamiliar to players for them to easily tell which is on which side right away if only orientation was used to distinguish them. When I first looked at them, it seemed like they were oriented differently than the other pieces, and it took me a while to figure out that they probably represented epaulettes on a shoulder.
In my Symbolic set, it's the only thing that will distinguish between Pawns or Gold Generals on each side.
While they could more easily tell Silver Generals apart, it would take some learning, but the wedge shapes help a player immediately tell which is which.
If it weren't for the baselines in the Motif set, it would have similar problems. But even when players can recognize the orientation of each piece without wedge shapes, these shapes provide a consistent means of recognizing which side is which that doesn't require further knowledge of the individual pieces, and that can be helpful even when you do already recognize the pieces.
Also, in the western set I criticized, the Silver and Gold General images would be too unfamiliar to players for them to easily tell which is on which side right away if only orientation was used to distinguish them. When I first looked at them, it seemed like they were oriented differently than the other pieces, and it took me a while to figure out that they probably represented epaulettes on a shoulder.