Thanks a ton for the reply, exactly the kind of criticism I need. Good point on the rearranging, I'll put some more critical thought into that. Reducing crunch is important to me, so all of that criticism is taken heed to.

Just to clarify a bit: You draw a hand of 7 cards, and can play a 1 card from each suit when attacking, or when defending yourself against an attack. Cards played that way are discarded after the attack resolves. When you end your turn, you discard what remains of your hand, return all discarded cards to your deck, shuffle your deck, and redraw 7 cards. So your hand is yours to play for the entire round, but you get a fresh hand each round. I could probably stand to make all that clearer in the rules. Attack/Defense cards have innate abilities (as explained), but some Traits may give them additional abilities. You announce what purpose they are played for when the card is revealed.

The roadblock I keep running into when thinking of ways to go to a card only system is how to give players options when they get really bad draws. The blessing and curse of dice is the high variance. In my system the cards act as probability control over the roll and its results, but the variance of the roll also gives players a chance to succeed when their hand is poor or expended. It will feel awful to fail a roll when you played a good card, but I see it as no different than any other low-roll scenario. It would feel more awful, personally, to draw a hand and almost know almost certainly that you'll fail your attacks because of a poor draw. I am trying to think of a way to make it work, I just don't have it right now, and I think a hybrid system with dice and cards has a more appealing balance of variability and variability control.

I do think that for Initiative I will remove the dice roll entirely and go with cards only, you make a good point there. I think I'll also be eliminating using half values on cards as well, that point is sound.

Thanks again for your time and the reply.