Some cards hinder and enhance units on the playing surface while other cards describe limitations or restrictions.  

How many cards are given to each player in the game can vary, but generally the game starts with 3-5 cards per side; the better the commander the more cards. The number of cards to be given out to players at the start of the game can be dictated by their overall commander's Command Valuation System (CVS) character trait of Tactical skill.  For instance, a 7 value commander would draw only 3 cards (ten minus three = seven), and a 4 value commander would draw 6 (10-4=6).  Remember, some cards are fake or blank and these are held in case one player attempts to use an Espionage card, wherein they can select blindly from another player's cards.  

Once a card is used no other cards are available to a player, but, again, Random Events or even some cards can dictate if another card can be available to a player.  

During the game, a player may decide to play a card on himself rather than his opponent, for whatever reason, and this is permitted.  Other cards affect both sides at the same time such as communication, and other cards create "fog of war," where a player can substitute an item on the table for something that it did not originally appear to be:  an example of this is replacing a light infantry unit with a heavy infantry unit at just the right time, or light artillery with Heavy artillery.  

A World War II example would be replacing a "Tiger" with a Panther or even a Panzer IV; of course, there are restrictions for those kinds of cards.  "Shift" cards, or its equivalent random event, causes the positions of units to be shifted from their present location.

To articulate this "hidden" movement or "fog of war" reality another way, you can't show all the vehicles in a WWII game from the beginning of the game and still be able to say the game "simulates" something. The fact is, in order to have the reality of not knowing where you're enemy was you can't put anything on the table. Well,  this begs the question "where's the FUN in that?" and "Why play a game where the only thing on the table is little bits of paper as representative markers?"

One answer to this, like the age old Birds-eye-View problem of war games with miniatures e.g. "if I can see his army how can I play as if I DON'T see them?" is to allow everything on the table BUT every game piece must be given an objective. 

An example of an unacceptable objective statement or written order would be "your objective is the left flank." In other words, you can't just say "the left flank" you have to say something like "your objective is to hold where you are until further orders." But does this allow the owning commander to adjust the placement of his units? Can't he move the .50 from the left of his position to the center where it might have a better field of fire? Does HOLD mean you can't do ANYTHING or you can't move TOWARD the enemy?

So you see, there is gray area here. Another way around this is the Spotting optional rule, where everything is placed on the table but before one can actually shoot at it, it must be spotted first until a minimum range is reached for the size of the object; for vehicles, this might be 4 hexes and for ATG and infantry this might be 2 hexes (COUNTING the auto-hit or neighbor hex around an item's location that is doing the observing)

The challenge that all war gamers face is coming up with a system that delivers acceptable results in the greatest degree of circumstances. Many gamers have come up with ideas that work, but most of the time this can only be achieved with some fudging of what gamers are willing to accept in the hobby of war games with miniatures.

One of the ways we saw around the Birds-eye-view problem was with Random Events or a card "draw and play" system, which is becoming more popular in miniature war games.

Card content example

Card front

For this we can again utilize the Command Valuation System- that series of numbers assigned to the various character traits. (remember that this generic chart was designed for American Civil War, hence the year of the conflict and the percentage of that quality of commander for U-nion and C-onfederate).

One method for using a deck of good and bad things (by the way, decks don't have to be limited to 52 cards) is to say the better the commander (4 is best) or the worse a commander (7 is worst) dictates how many cards they can draw per game from the deck after subtracting from the number 10. E.g., 10-4 = 6 cards.

We use the Initiative value: For commanders with a value of 4 they can draw 6 cards, 5 can draw 5, 6 draws 4 and a value of 7 draws 3 cards.

Can you draw cards from the deck at other times? Of course.... in fact, you can even devise a card that SAYS that "this commander can draw another card later in the game.."

The fact is, players and game designers can go bonkers with ideas for these cards, like we did with the following list. You can see it was just stream of consciousness and our first thoughts were ambiguous (conduct ambush... what does THAT mean?) and we got really crazy thinking about anything that might seem interesting. 

The way this works is that players can either play a card on themselves or the enemy, whichever they feel appropriate. Each player also has the limit of not being able to play more than one card from their hand, though here again, another card can be made to permit THAT too. 

Players should state from the very beginning of the game if they will agree to allow any friendly fire and potential casualties to be honored as a result of the cards, or if they will chose to ignore any card where friendly fire is or may be the result. 

a. Cards say "Platoon" and if not enough platoons are in the game, substitute "Two Squads."

b. This card says "Platoons" and this should remain as "Platoons"

c. Working radios means that in order to communicate/change a current order with each squad/item in the platoon, conduct a radio roll otherwise couriers will have to be used.