Using cards in a deck as life

That is a mechanic I wanted to use in one of my CCG like game, and I know Elemental Clash use this mechanics. WWF CCG use this and the Battletech CCG have something close.

It is a very interesting mechanic where I don't see any dependency to luck. In the WWF ccg, if you flip the right counter move when taking damage, you stop taking damage. I found this very interesting. I also though of a mechanic where cards could have different HP levels. (ex: weak cards have high HP and vice versa) so you would flip less cards if you hit cards with multiple HP.

There's no element of luck beyond what shuffling gives you.

Think of it this way: Suppose you lost cards from the bottom of the deck. These cards would never have been drawn anyway, they would have been left in the deck at the end of the game. So you aren't losing anything (except your score).

Now imagine you had a rule that put cards from the top of the deck on the bottom of the deck without looking. Before, you would have drawn a random card from among those you had left. After, you will draw a random card from among those in your deck. Nothing has changed.

Suppose you move cards from the top of the deck to the bottom, and then lose cards from the bottom of your deck. The first action does nothing, and the section action reduces your score, but those cards would never have been drawn anyway.

Losing random cards from your deck does not affect the game at all. There is no difference between discarding Awesomex the Destroyer to damage, and never drawing him during the course of the game.

The only effect is has is giving players information as to what is left in the deck.

Many players will never figure this out though, and so it will *feel* like cards they actually had are being destroyed, and that they are experiencing great or terrible luck with regards to what has been discarded.

If you have players *choose* which cards are lost, this changes. Now players can manipulate their opponent's deck by ensuring key cards are never drawn, and so reducing an opponent's deck actually makes it weaker.

Technically speaking Magic the Gathering uses this, in a way, with the often-irrelevant rule that if you need to draw from your deck but are out of cards, you lose. Usually by the time that happened one person had lost his 20 "actual" life points, but it is there and you could theoretically build a deck that was designed to burn through the opponent's deck and kill him that way.