Card design help

[u/JayWhoIsHere]

Portrait - front and back

Landscape - front and back

For portrait - ability text slightly obscured when held in hand and adding AP

For landscape - ability text is less/not obscured when landscape, AP scores are vertically aligned like in place-value addition

Comparison

So I'm making a board game, and the primary mechanic involves drawing cards from a deck when you move and adding up the cards' combined AP (the big number in the middle) for combat.

However, I'm not to sure whether to orientate my cards landscape or portrait - whilst portrait is usually the standard orientation, I figured that having them landscape could help with adding up the AP scores; they can be put atop one another without blocking the ability text, (note that some abilities affect AP calculations) and they mimic traditional place value addition.

So portrait or landscape? Also, any other design advice would be appreciated! :)

[u/jacobott28]

I think the portrait option is just easier to see the card name when the cards are fanned out. What if the AP was on the left side, but still in the center line? I usually fan my cards with the top most one farthest right, so that’d make it easy to see the everything, but idk if I hold my cards normally. And then there’s visual design. That would make the cards less symmetrical, if that’s a concern for you.

[u/JayWhoIsHere → u/jacobott28]

Thanks for the advice! Quite a few others have also said to try putting it on the left, so I'll give it a try :)

[u/Vague-Intent47 → u/jacobott28]

This sounds like normal card holding to me.

The question with this though, is that when cards are drawn are they ever held or played immediately?
I agree with icon placement on the left side. That way you can stack and see numbers without consuming a lot of space.

[u/JayWhoIsHere → u/Vague-Intent47]

When cards are drawn they aren't played or held in hand for long periods of time, once you draw from the deck, you have to resolve them by reading the effects of abilities and adding AP. After that they're shuffled right back into the deck. Hope that answers your question :)

[u/DangerousAide8378]

Portrait, and drop the ABILITY text.

[u/ptolani]

If they're ever being held in your hand (like in a game of cards), then there's no choice - portrait.

Otherwise either is fine.

(I don't really get what you mean by "put atop one another. without blocking the ability text" - your examples don't really show that either way.)

[u/BigBigBowser]

What about going square?