Gladiator Mini Game

[DireSickFish]

So I am thinking about running a Gladiator 5e D&D game. Where the party is a group of Gladiators that are left the gladiator school after the owner of the school dies. Any fight the party is involved in, either that be in the pits or outside of it, will be done with normal D&D rules.

I don't want to have to run simulated encounters with NPCs if they decide to grow the school. So I have come up with a mini gmae to simulate it and help put the management side of things into more game terms. A basic outline of the rules and ideas for gladiators can be found here: https://drive.google.com/drive/folde...20yY2Uxdm1qY0E

The basic idea is that you'll be playing a card game where gladiators have health, affect your hand size, and the number of cards you can play. Then the party can find better gladiators, or spend time training their own to improve them throughout the game. The "recources" would be abstracted from gold and can be their own reward for quests or winning matches.

Any critiques or ideas about the game would be a big help.

Edit: I'm just going to copy/paste what I wrote about how play functions.

A player will place all of his Gladiator and Building cards being used in the fight out in the play area. If there is an arena effect it will go into play in between the competing players and effect the fight based on the card text.

Combat takes place in simultaneous turns. Each player will draw cards up to their hand size (Based on Buildings and Gladiators). Then each player places his cards face down in front of each Gladiator that is playing them. Once all cards have been assigned to each Gladiator the cards are flipped face up and effects are resolved simultaneously.

Damage is assigned and any Gladiators that are reduced to 0 health lose all hand size, card play, and special abilities (unless the ability says otherwise). Then a player may discard as many cards as they wish.

Play continues with drawing and card play until one side is removed from the fight or any fight specific win conditions are met. If a player ever needs to draw cards but can’t the discard is shuffled to make a new draw deck.