In each battle you see what twenty cards are available to you although as you progress through the game you may have certain cards that are not on your play options for that battle which I found a little annoying because if you have a powerful card it could be useful in winning the battle but not having the option of choosing what cards you want to use for the battle is one of the very few minor problems I found with this game. Maybe the developers wanted to use certain cards against other  mage specialties to give the game more of a challenge.

Playing the game itself is very straight forward you pick the card you want to play and put it in one of the 5 card playing slots available to you, depending on what your opponent has in their playing slots can determine the life of that card in that slot. In each turn the cards fight with each other. If there is a card in a slot but nothing in the opposing slot when the card takes its turn it will attack the opposing mage directly and take away points from his or her life, pretty straight forward and with each battle lasting no longer than 5-10 minutes not overly time consuming, but I found it slightly addictive nonetheless.