Rock Paper Scissors Card Game - Collect Cards or Discard to Use Abilities

Hello Everyone!

Don't be discouraged by the sea of text below - I'll sum it up for you in the beginning and provide more details towards the bottom. Don't get all TL;DR on me yet!

Here’s the concept in a nutshell:
Battle other players in RPS and collect 4 cards of different colors to win. Discard cards to use their special abilities to slow your opponents down or help yourself out.
This is supposed to be a light, casual game that you could play in a coffeeshop or bar with rules easy to memorize but also enough depth to keep the game interesting.

The questions I eventually have for everyone are:
-Any suggestions for tightening the gameplay and adding fun?
-Rather than leave the cards as simple Rock, Paper, Scissors icons with numeric values and abilities, which might sound like a tired concept to some, make this game more thematic and try to change the cards into characters that have these abilities?

Mechanics used in this concept (using definitions listed from Board Game Geek):
-Rock, Paper, Scissors
-Set Collection
-Take That

Components:
- 13 Rock Cards (numbered 1-13, various colors of red, blue, green and purple)
- 13 Paper Cards (numbered, various colors)
- 13 Scissors cards (numbered, various colors)
- 4 “Instant Win” cards (1 for each color)
- “Cancel” cards, each player gets 1 to use for the game

—BASIC RULES—
Each player has 1 Rock, 1 Paper and 1 Scissors card in their hand. On their turn, a player decides if they want to play one other opponent or all opponents at the same time. Players simultaneously play one of their 3 cards.
- Rock beats Scissors, Scissors beats Paper, Paper beats Rock.
- The player whose card beats more opponent cards than anyone else wins.
- In the case of ties, the highest number on the card wins.

Winner of the hand collects winning card, draws a new card from the appropriate draw pile, other players return their cards to their hands.

For kids, you could probably stop right there with the rules if you wanted to. I originally designed this with kids in mind. But I wanted to add a little more depth.

—ADVANCED RULES—
For more advanced play, you can use the card abilities. Each color comes with a special ability, which you use by choosing to DISCARD your card instead of collecting it.
- Red cards remove cards from others’ collections (knock the winning player down a peg)
- Green cards let you forcibly trade cards with others (give an opponent a color they already have in exchange for a color you want)
- Purple cards allow you to steal cards (pretty straightforward)
- Blue cards let you collect one of the cards that lost the hand instead of your own (example: you won the hand with a blue card, but you previously collected blue and the opponent played a wild card this turn? use the blue ability and collect their wild instead!)
- Wild cards can be any color and therefore can use any ability

To complement this set of card abilities, each card has an immunity to one of the following:
- red (being destroyed)
- green (being traded)
- purple (being stolen)

Collecting more than one card of a single color, allows you to COMBINE immunities for cards of a single color. Therefore, it is possible to eventually “lock down” a color so they can’t be removed by opponents. I thought adding this feature would also help keep the game moving towards an end and not go on forever.

—SPECIAL CARDS—
Additionally, there are some other card types to throw into the mix. At the beginning of the game, each player is given a special “cancel” card face down. Players can flip these face up to remove an RPS card that was just played and potentially change the winner of the hand. Once you've used the cancel card, you can “renew” it by sacrificing 2 winning RPS cards to flip the cancel card back to its face down position and use it again.

Finally, there are 4 “instant win” cards (one for each color/ability) that immediately trump all other cards in play, (can still be countered by the “cancel” card). These can not be collected and must be discarded for the ability or to renew the cancel cards.

That’s the core concept of the game. I wanted to give the winning player of each hand a bunch of different but fairly equal choices:
- Should I collect this card I won with and increase the number of colors I have?
- If it’s a color I already have, should I collect it to build up the other card’s immunities?
- Should I sacrifice it to use its ability and prevent another player from getting ahead?
- Should I sacrifice it to renew my cancel card?

Thoughts, questions? I look forward to any and all comments!