I have been playing DBA's cousin Hordes of the Things (HOTT) with cardboard counters for quite some time, and I like the fact that the rulebook & game slips easily into my laptop case. Like Alexei's, my counters are double-sided (red lettering on one side, blue on the other). For terrain, I keep pads of Post-It notes of several colors that can quickly be stuck onto the table as needed. Similarly, the generals on each side are marked with a tiny sticky rectangle cut from a Post-It note. And, as Alexei says, once the game begins, the counters seem to vanish and the armies come to life.