by entwife
I'm still not convinced by this idea.I can't help wondering whether the motivation to have the different piles easily identifiable by their card backs didn't lead to trying to justify what was a less thematically coherent idea.
I can see that if you were sure what card was coming up next then you could incorporate this into the storytelling e.g "I can hear some growling sound.... and look there's a flash of orange....I think the tiger's close....".
But what about when there's two cards with the same back in the pile, and one of them is on the top. The groups real thought would be: is it the tiger coming up next or is it the other card (I don't yet have the game, so I'm not sure of an appropriate example). It would seem a lot more contrived to have to say "Hmmm. I think I just heard that Tiger again - but maybe it'll leave us alone. In fact maybe what we need to worry about is that snake bite wound - it may be getting worse (but maybe it'll be OK for a bit longer)". I just can't see many people doing this; I think we'd just end up saying "is it the tiger or is it the snake bite?" which wouldn't make a lot of thematic sense.
If the cards had the same backs it would have avoided the whole situation. Thematically we get the hint about the tiger when we added the card to the deck. That did the job of introducing the tiger narrative into the story, and left us all worrying when it would attack. Having absolute confirmation that the tiger will attack next turn seems to remove the excitement of turning over the card, and having a thought along the lines of "I know it's either the tiger or the snake bite?" just seems to undo all the good thematic work of the concept.
However, I don't have the game yet, and it's possible that when I do I won't find it as annoying - and if I do I'll just have to follow one of the many solutions above!