RE: Gladiator Card Game. I wonder if it's a deck-building game (sort of the in-thing for a while now) or something else. What would the table look like to someone walking by? I'm maybe picturing each player having a spread of cards in front of him maybe representing his fighter. When one player attacks someone else, they remove/tap/something another players particular stack of cards.

Interlude: One thing I may or may not need to quell is how whenever an idea is thrown out I immediately try to think of something that already exists that sounds like it. I guess that's inevitable but I don't know if that's counter productive. For example, when you said a gladiator combat game I thought of JAB . Never played it (not sure if it's even out yet) but the pictures of how the cards are layed out his awesome! Look at the pic gallery.

Back to Gladiators, one thing I think of from tv/film examples of that kind of combat is how there can be random weapons up for grabs. Also, wild animals (if things aren't moving along fast enough.) These things could be cards.