Great minds, amiright?
I really like the inclusion of a narrative "question" that is left open for players to explore. It makes me wish there was more mechanically involved with those questions, and that there was more to your game than simply attacking the opponent, because those questions would be really excellent to explore in a minis game. "How did the land around the character react to their passage?" Are you kidding me? That's RAD. "What was the impact of the characters actions on the world outside this plane?" Killin' me. "What did the character sacrifice to attack an enemy?" Ugh, so juicy. And all of it so disappointingly under-explored.
There isn't really a lot of spice in your combat as it is, either. A couple of problems: a player with a bad hand is just going to get trounced. Nothing they can do about it. Because there's only one deck, it means a player with a bad hand increases the odds of the other player having a good hand. Very little (or nothing, really) can happen that is unexpected or unprepared for. Maybe if you play a card thinking "oh they can't top this" and then they do, but that's going to be pretty rare. It's a shame that there's so little drama in the combat because that's the only thing the models can do; fight each other. I'm aware of these problems because I worked through the same issues myself in my design. Another issue is that even though your players will be choosing which card they can play, it still may feel like the player has no control, particularly if the two players have very different hands.
I don't really see any of synergy in your design. Everything does exactly what it's supposed to and no more comes of it.
To conclude I think you've got great ideas that are under-utilized. I'd love to see a game where those narrative questions are more the focus and less an after-thought.
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