Use them for large armies on the board if you like. You really don’t need the FMG pieces coming out you just want them as I do because they are better than WOTC. It was a just a thought I think they would look awesome. It is purely eye candy on the board. Maybe use them as Victory city markers if you don’t want to have that many of them on the board. After about 3 hours and 4 or 5 coctails I need an easy way to count them.
I suppose it’s possbile that they play blind, but it sounded like you could shift alliances and such, which would mean you would have to have an extra board for every player, and I think they only used two.