Today I added the remaining friendly units, enemy spawns and began testing the feel of combat. Verdict was: way too confusing. Having your health and attack spread across two units made it really difficult to keep track of a) how dangerous it is to be hit, and b) how hard you hit back, which makes risk assessment hard. At their core, roguelikes are all about risk assessment so this won't do.
Today was a mad scramble to combine the two roles into one, so now only one card is in affect at once. You now *are* the card at the front of your hand, which means you know exactly what your abilities and health are. Since the focus is now a singular unit this also makes other odd feeling parts of the UI go away. For example, I previously always colored the attacker card blue and defender silver to try to make it easier at a glance what role each card was currently playing. In practice it was confusing because it was hard to track individual cards through your hand when they change appearance. Additionally, playing with only one role also means I can change the player's current image on the map so you don't have to keep looking down at the hand to know what your status is. Since your hand cycles every 6 turns, this is extra helpful.
Speaking of cylcing, I added bars to the right of the current card, so that you can see how long you have left before it discards. I also figured this would be a good "currency" to use in place of mana for abilities. This way a mage doesn't get 6 AOE attacks in a row, they get maybe 2 or some movement, depending on how the player approaches the situation.
I also added health potions because I discovered it's going to be impossible to balance without controlling a drop rate from enemies. Relying on the player finding new cards (which are actually friendly mobiles standing in the world, not droppables) in a pinch isn't feasable.
I only have one more day after today, so I'm panicking a bit - but I think we'll be fine...