Whenever we go to join a board we pick the color we want to be.  Once the game has started, I think an option that would allow an individual player to change the way his opponent looks on their own screen would be good.  In other words, if Loki is in three of my boards, I could make him show up as red on my screen on each of those games.  If I'm playing a team game, I could always make my teammate appear green on my screen.  If my color is already taken on a board, I could switch myself to that color after the match has started (I try to pick the same color whenever I join a match so that when I go to take my turn I can quickly glance over the board and know exactly where I stand and where I want to attack.  For example, on the maze match I'm playing, I'm light blue and for some reason every time I go to take my turn I end up clicking on navy blue for a few minutes before thinking to myself 'I don't think those are my units'.)  Anyways, the point is that consistency across the games being played makes it easier for the player.  You could make this a premium member option (but I hope that you don't--I'm a student and unfortunately can't afford it atm).

And on an unrelated but similar note (I wanted to pm Tom but I cant), someone said "The game interface is solid thanks to clickable maps, but much of the secondary information is spread out over entirely different pages. The site interface is workable and has a designer's touch to it."  This is something I totally agree with.  I think having the information that's currently under the 'Info' tab displayed on the same screen as the board itself really adds to a sense of completeness and handiness. It's important to know who's going next ('I have to break their bonus, their turn is next'), how many cards they have ('are they about to drop a set'), reinforcement bonuses ('who's in the lead'), and what player is what color ('Paul's aggressive, I need to put extra units next to orange') [that's how this ties in to this thread] and having all this information available at a glance without having to navigate away from the board I feel adds a lot to the site.  I know that you chose to make this a premium member option but my question was, do you think this may bring more to the site itself as a standard?

The only problem I see about being able to change colors is that sometimes players refer to each other by their color in chat. A player using such an option would just have to keep the "true" colors in mind.

We had a long discussion about the custom user-selectable personal colors a while back that I can't find right now...

i spose with developers in control of their own palette that it would be hard to have the games remember which color i like to chose...

I think (could be wrong though) that the complaint about info being spread across different pages dates back to the original layout for the site where there were tabs at the top of all the game pages.

As regards making the info available for all - there does need to be some incentive for players to go Premium otherwise the site may as well be completely free :)

re: custom colors - it has been discussed before, I'm not averse to the idea but it's one of those things that's not simple to do but will take quite a while and not have a huge benefit... i.e. it's pretty low down on the list!

tom wrote: I think (could be wrong though) that the complaint about info being spread across different pages dates back to the original layout for the site where there were tabs at the top of all the game pages.

That's my understanding as well.