NEED help on two of my game elements

QUESTION: What u prefer, to pick your own spells and use them the whole game or every turn facing new available spells?

This depends on the style of the game. Like if you have a DECK with 60 cards, well then the deck-building aspect would make it that you could BUILD the spells cards into the deck and have a library of spells at your disposal but only when you DRAW those cards in your hand.

The other approach is like you are suggesting, in your hand you have like 5 spells and then if you want to change a spell for something new, you need to MEMORIZE the spell and then it becomes part of your spell hand.

MY OPINION: It seems as if your game already has a LOT going on. You have hex cards, miniatures, armies of 20-25 units, command cards, etc. Personally I would restrict spells to a HAND of 5 to 8 cards. This sort of library could be like a 2nd HAND. People say they don't like to manage two hands - but in your game, I think it COULD WORK.

Maybe you could have like a three (3) card MAXIMUM and gain cards as you gain in "experience" (to a maximum of 8 cards). That's like 5 experience levels. And you could of course have spells for different levels (1-5) where you could have 3 level 1, 2 level 2, 1 level 3/4/5.

I think two hands could work well... But that's just my opinion.

I agree with questccg that this seems like a lot going on. I'd let the theme guide your choice here. How does magic work in your world? In most RPGs, Wizards "memorize" a certain number of spells that they can't re-use until they've rested or something. If my wizard in the game has a book or has to memorize (or both), how does he get different spells each turn?

(To be clear: you don't need to convey all this to the players, though flavor text can be nice. But if theme is important to you, I'd urge you to be consistent about it.)

This might be a good way to make bad rolls sting less. A TOUCH OF EVIL has a similar mechanic that if you roll a 1 for your movement, you get to draw an extra event (or search?) card. They explain that your slow movement is because you're being extra careful.

The rationale behind consistent spell cards is that it offers up one less random aspect to foil a player's plans. If your die rolls are already poor then it would be even more disappointing to draw an "Involuntary Lactation" spell in place of the fireball you'd been hoping for.

You could do both though. Games like Warhammer use, or used to (I haven't played since 4th edition), fluctuating spell points to limit what spell casters can achieve in a turn and represent the ebb and flow of magic. You could represent this somewhat differently by having a wizard start with one or more spell cards picked by the player, but then gain additional random ones each turn, essentially having the character power up, like a character from Dragonball Z, over the course of the battle. Perhaps different conditions unlock additional spells, like a Necromancer getting an additional card for each unit destroyed.

You could gain them for seizing and holding objectives. Criteria could be determined by the individual unit type -- like gaining one card if a berserker unit starts the turn in combat or if an undead unit is near a grave.

Damn, this must be Fate, for I have developed a board game similar to yours in many aspects. Is yours by any chance inspired from Nexus Ops? I feel we should work together, on both our projects, in fact, one of my Factions behave very similar to those command cards you have. Let's talk more on this, you can search me up on Facebook. Give me the go sign, and I will message you my name.