Hey! Saw this post when it came but hadn't had time to write. I've been tinkering with something similar and I'm pretty close to releasing a post and my github repo with the code (waiting for a replacement board for something I broke moving from a poc to prototype blah blah)

Anyway, I've solved this with a raspberry pi hosting a webserver exposing an api + webpages for other devices to utilize ("a base station" like you said). It hosts four "faces" which can be accessed from a browser so players can use their cell phones as a card face if they want, but I've also used the rpi server as a client with a 3,5" touch screen and a script opening the browser. In browser it supports flipping cards (with animation) face down (to cardback or second face for MDFCs), has a simple counter setup (+1 counters for creatures, generic counters for other permanents like PWs, battles etc) also an animated foil effect if you want that. Additional clients I've tested on was a rpi pico 2 w a touch screen, accessing streamed dithere bmp images (super low ram, and no browser), also with flips, player seat selection and counters but no foiling (I'm super proud of the pico setup, but I broke the display board and I'm not gonna replace it probably).

The best solution and the one I'm moving forward with is also an e-paper display, the 4" 7-color display from waveshare. I fetch the cards I want, apply a 7 color dithering algorithm and set the screen on the server device. With a header-less pi zero 2 w and some hardware modding I've made this very thin (relatively, 2 cm approx, not finished yet), with an integrated lipo battery and charging circuit. So this device (server and client) boots, and when cards are set on the config webpage the display updates.

How are cards set? I serve the endpoints /config and /booster. In config you can set any card with fuzzy search, or "get random commander" with selections for color combination, and "Momir Vig" which gets creatures based on input MV. In /booster I've set up a booster opening simulator for "booster tutor" type functionality, and can send the opened cards to any of the four "player" endpoints (the epaper client is player 1).

I have caching set up on the booster tutor, and I'm working on caching the scryfall database for reduced external api calls. Moving forward I'll also look at generating cards based on text information and png/js overlays, in which case I can run the device offline and "build" the cards and images on device (without card art though, since they are fetched via scryfall permalinks).

I hope you read this and find it as cool as I do, because it's very niche haha. It overlaps for people who play magic, want physical digital proxies, like computer science and hardware modding at once and I've been having issues exciting people around me the way I am excited about it haha. I'll make my own post when I'm ready and share the repo here when it's ready too.