The game play as I understand it from comments I traded with CB on RH facebook is as follows:
(I think this is for campaign play - not sure about the other modes)
- Each character has a set of a main character card with some default abilities (as the character progresses the powers get better)
- a deck of action cards from which they will draw a hand at the start of each round,
- equipment cards
- extra ability cards
- several initiative cards (more powerful more cards they get).
The game is played in rounds and characters go in initiative order. The round has several steps:
- All the players and bad guys initiative cards are shuffled into a pile
- Top initiative card is drawn
- Character takes one or many actions
- Rinse and repeat until initiative deck is all done
- Special end of round effects
- Loop to start
When your initiative card is drawn you take an action (or as many as you want). It should be noted you do not redraw action cards until the next turn. The cards offer bonuses to skills, attacks and defence. As I understand it you would use a card to move and a card to shoot. You could use all your cards to move and shoot but that could be dangerous.
When you are attacking (via melee, gun, spell, psi-power) you play a card, the target can choose to play a card to improve defence. Then standard palladium highest wins.
Your character has a hit points (looks like around 5-6) and some damage is reduced by armour. Once you have taken your max hit points, and need to take more you must discard action cards out of the game (from discard or hand I believe). This will limit what cards you can play in future turns, and eventually you will have no action cards to lose so I presume you die.
I made some comments, as it looks to me to be ideal if you go last, you can save your actions for defence, and if you have a stack of cards left you can go nuts using all the cards knowing you get a full redraw the following round. I would rather you draw cards on your initiative, better still your initiative cards are split into 2 types of refresh a full refresh and a mini refresh. I think this will make the game a little more fluid and reduce the benefits of going last.
The cards shown in the most recent update seem to mesh with what's said toward the beginning.