I made up a set of cards for the KC game on July 3rd, and didn't run into this as we had a small enough group of players.

But after looking at the situation, I do see some questions. The zipfile on the website has "eastern backs" and "western backs."

Which means (I guess) that half of the shared stacks should be printed with eastern and the other half western.
==> But one of the setup for X players has all of the shared commodities in play (but not divided between east and west.)

That would lead to players being able to distinguish those cards when drawn - i.e. use both western sets for 4, and the shared set means that the 3rd set for 4 is 1/2 eastern and 1/2 western.

I am thinking that differtianting the backs gives too much info (imagine a trade where you've lied about the third card, and the other player can tell as the card back is the wrong color.) Or imagine seeing someone draw a certain color back and knowing that they *didn't* draw the non-tradeable calamanity as it would have been the other color.

Admittedly this only occurs with a particular number of players (which requires the entire shared stack in play, but not split between east and west.)

Instead, mark the face of the card to show eastern stack/western stack.

An alternative would be to have *two* seperate shared commodities, one with half one back and half the other, and the other set with only one back. Too complicated.

I agree with you. The backs should probably be uniform. Hopefully we can get new backs soon.

What I'm planning on doing for the July 31st game here in Kansas City is to print out a complete set with only one type of back (I'll pick either western or eastern)...

... and then put a small W or E on a corner of the face of the cards. Marking W for all of the western sets, and half of the shared set and so on.