I think it has been around since version b28. I agree, it would be nice to make it smoother. What I would like to see is the token mapped to a state. So you can right click choose a state and it changes the token. That way if you set state to dead for example the token changes to a "dead token". Additional states will need to be added such as attacking, defending, running, etc to really give it a lot of 'gusto', but once the mechanism is there it should be easy.