I don't know that this would be considered a "mechanic"... more of a "method", I suppose, but anyway...
I'm working on a card game idea, and I need a method for counting VPs or resources (money, etc.), and I'd like to be able to do that without any other components, so all you need for the game are the cards. I'm trying to use 108 total cards (two 54 card decks), so the fewer cards needed, the better, but also, the greater range of number counting, the better.
I have an idea for how to count 0-15 using four different cards (1, 2, 4, 8), with enough of each of those cards for each player, so for example, if you have 11 you would use a 1 + 2 + 8. For a 5 player game, that would require 20 total cards. Actually, for just 5 more cards I could cover 0-45, as there could also be a card that has 2x on one side and 3x on the other.
Any other ideas for using cards to count like that?
Ah thanks. Yeah, I had thought of something like that a while ago, with a bunch of numbers on a card, and you use another card to cover up parts of it, but I wasn't sure how high that could go. But that would probably work well for what I want.