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[cont'd from prev:] Alright, what have we got? We have: a king and leaders
[guards]; queen; rook; bishop; knight; pawn; alfil, dabbabah, wazir; ferz
for our basic piece types. That's 11 basic icons, but all or most should
be familiar to players. We also have 5 Movement Patterns, 4 of which have
specific identifying mini-icons to be used on the piece icons. So we've
got 10 or 12 things to remember, and we don't have any medium-range
pieces yet. Oof! 
After a few brief moments of panic, I came up with this: Christine
Bagley-Jones made some fide icons with black diamond-shaped spots on them
to indicate they were shortrange pieces, moving as many squares as they
had dots. If I use those pieces and make each dot represent 4 squares of
movement, we have 2 sets of medium-range pieces, moving 8 and 12 squares,
at a cost of only 1 new movement pattern and icon. 
But there's still 13 things we gotta remember now, and we haven't taken
this stuff to the board yet. On the plus side, we have a very versatile
system with those 13 things, and many if not all are familiar. Each
individual component is simple, easily explained, and visually obvious.
This could work.