CCG Mechanics Encyclopedia thing?

Yes, it is Heero Yuy from Gundam Wing, he pilots Wing Zero and Wing Zero Custom for most of it, and Gundam Epyon for a short while :P.

Well I've played Magic the Gathering, so I'm very familiar with that, and briefly played Pokemon and YuGiOh. I think the difference for my idea is that all the cards are just attacks, items, and equipment, there aren't any creatures or anything. All the cards just act as sort of abilities or upgrades to your character. It's sort of an RPG in a way...
I've been wanting to play that Gundam Wing Card Game for the longest time. I think they finally brought it to the US in english last year, but I'm not sure. It's been long enough lol.
Thanks guys for the posts. I'm probably going to go do a little research on all those games and see if I can't find any examples of play to see if new ideas spark. Right now, I've come up with a few mechanics, such as every card has a discard value, you discard it and you get to draw more cards depending on that value. But then the cards you discard are removed from the game. When you finish using yoru cards you shuffle the used ones back into the deck and start over, leaving hte removed cards out, when you've shuffled twice and used all your cards, you have no more cards to use. The games would take a while and card drawing would go pretty fast I think, but this is just an untested idea for one mechanic of it...anywho.

Well, I wasn't exactly making the decks represent life, at least not totally. The game itself is a board game and uses a sort of card setup for each different class that gives the players their other abilities (each class would come with a few to start) and then damage is dealt almost RPG style, only no damage dice, just a dice for hit, miss etc. I just wanted to make the card game aspect of it somewhat strategic so it isn't just "I drew a card, I use it for an attack, I do 2 damage, next". I wanted it to be more like "I've drawn a card, this has a discard value of 1 and I really need to get a healing potion, discard it, aha I got a potion, yes". What i thought to do with the cards to make it so you don't just go around discarding cards, is that the cards you discard you never get back in that game, but cards you use regularly would go in a replenish pile that after you use all your deck the first time, you shuffle that up and use it as your deck. After the second shuffle you can't shuffle anymore. What I thought was it would make it so you wouldn't want to just go piling through your deck to get the super cards, because the cards you discard you don't get back, and after you've shuffled twice and used all your cards, the only abilities you would have are the abilities that come with the class and weapons. I'm not sure how well this mechanic would work, maybe it will, maybe it will just be boring and no bring any strategy at all, but it's worth a look and to design play around it.
I think my biggest problem is making so that players can affect eachother with certain cards and abilities. The only class I have currently that automatically has an ability it can use to affect someone else without doing battle (which I'll have), is the Thief, who currently when he gets within a few spaces (not sure how many yet), can attempt to steal from you, rolls his dice, and if he succeeds you throw whatever equipment he chooses to steal into your replenish pile, and the thief gets to draw whatever the cards thief value is. So if he steals Sword A and it has a Thief Value of 2, the Thief gets to draw 2 cards.
Other than that though, it's going to take me some brainstorming to think up ideas on how to incorporate the cards into affecting other people. Maybe some cards could make you discard into your replenish pile, or maybe make you lose a turn, or something like that. I want all the abilities on the cards to be pretty class specific though, so I don't want some Knight to go around throwing bolts of lightning at people lol.
It'll take me some time, but I'll get it down, I've only been working on this very little as compared to a lot of the designers on here.