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I recently got back into wargaming after a 15 year break and am looking into simple games to get me started again. One game I remember enjoying at the club I used to attend was a Gladiator game which used playing playing cards in place of dice. I believe each suit represented a different skill: clubs for attack, hearts for life/wounds and possibly spades for movement and diamonds for initiative but I'm afraid that's as much as I remember from that long ago. None of the guys from those days remember playing it and I can't find anything online so it may well have been a house game we only played a few times but I'm sure I haven't made it up completely!

Has anyone played a similar game or ever used playing cards as the base of a wargame before?

It's called Malifaux

You might want to look at the April issue of White Dwarf if you can get a copy. There is a mini game called 'Destined Duel' which is almost exactly as you describe. Two miniatures face off in a duel played with a pack of playing cards. Hearts are your life, Clubs are attack moves, Diamonds are block moves and Spades are sidestep moves. You play three actions in a round with a matrix to decide the outcome, and after the 3 actions each player does a follow-up action based on the cards they played before (so if you played Club, Club, Club in the 3 actions your follow up move is called 'All Out Attack').

It seems pretty cool

Thanks for the replies. I have come across malifaux but I'm afraid it's not what I am looking for.

The White Dwarf game sounds very similar and I will try and track a copy down. The game I remember was played with around 5 or 6 players each taking control of a Roman Gladiator and the card mechanics working very similar to what you describe. Not sure I'll ever find those rules but as I eventually intend to get back into 40k then this could be the best of both worlds

Jugula is the gladiator game, pretty good according to reviews.

There's a few Western themed games that use poker cards to play.

I generally think that straight playing cards, while useful because they're easily obtained, is a little bit of a waste of design space. Cards are cheap to print, designers should experiment more with customized decks.

The old TSR Marvel Saga System game used a custom deck of cards instead of dice and was my only experience with the mechanic.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marvel_Super_Heroes_Adventure_Game

Numerous games use the card mechanic - but I do think Jugula is the most recent Gladiator(esque) game which makes use of that system.

I love (read: LOVE) card decks in games. Particularly random events, etc. My own games feature many of them, including my only published game.

I have yet to really delve into games where the cards cover everything though (such as dice results, etc.). It's an intriguing idea and I do think that my future games will feature multi-purpose cards if possible.

You typically see card mechanics in games fall into two broad categories.

1. Initiative- The card deck is used to randomize activation with a depleting pool with certain cards/end of deck triggering the end of the turn. You can see games like Mad Dogs with Guns or Black Ops using this method.

2. Resolution- The game uses cards to resolve the action, such as you described in your initial post about gladiators. You can see this in games such as Jugula, Malifaux and Longstreet.

Are you interested in resolution mechanics or initiative mechanics for your games?

The resolution mechanic is most similar to the game I remember. I was mostly interested in it as a simple ruleset and inexpensive way to get playing again quickly so some of these other suggestions seem to fit those critea and I'll look into them further.