Here's something I've been thinking about for a bit: a loaded icon works best when ignoring it causes no damage to the game-state.
To expand that - I don't mean "are you playing well" or "is your deck sub-optimal", but "would an opponent/TD give you flack for playing the game incorrectly". If you play the game as if the icon wasn't there, how badly have you broken the rules?
On one extreme is the infiltration icons. If you play as if the icon wasn't there, you're.. well, you're probably playing them like 99% of players do today, because infiltration ain't a big strategy. But you won't have done anything *wrong*.
is in the same bucket - yes, you're missing out, but you won't break any rules by just ignoring it.
The other extreme is
and
, where ignoring them means you are almost certainly breaking rules around requirements to report or where cards are allowed to exist.
In the middle is stuff like Nemesis icons or
, where you're fine until it comes up and then you'll have not done something you were supposed to do.
Obviously all of them have baggage, but I would argue that it's far preferable to do stuff that is optional than stuff that is hiding "you broke the rules" gotchas.