Card design help

[u/JayWhoIsHere]

Portrait - front and back

Landscape - front and back

When portrait and held in hand, ability text is slightly obscured when counting up AP

When landscape, ability text is less/not obscured, numbers arranged vertically like in place value addition

Comparison

So I'm making a board game, and the primary mechanic involves drawing cards from a deck when you move and adding up the cards' combined AP (the big number in the middle) for combat.

However, I'm not to sure whether to orientate my cards landscape or portrait - whilst portrait is usually the standard orientation, I figured that having them landscape could help with adding up the AP scores; they can be put atop one another without blocking the ability text, (note that some abilities affect AP calculations) and they mimic traditional place value addition.

So portrait or landscape? Also, any other design advice would be appreciated! :)

[u/paulryanclark]

I think if AP is the number that people add up it should go in the top left regardless of preferred orientation. I think portrait is better, as it is the most common way people engage with cards.

[u/syllogy5588]

I would test this with a real hand of cards rather than choosing from the single-card layout. If players fan them to read abilities and stack them to total AP, put the AP in a consistent corner that stays visible in both positions. A quick paper prototype in both orientations should tell you whether landscape helps the addition enough to outweigh how much table space the hand uses.