Help on going about a Card Game

Hello,

I am fairly new to programming and am currently undergoing a practical task which is to basically create a program using Visual Basic.There are no limitations besides that it must be used with vb.net.

I was wondering about the level of difficulty to create a simple card game like Magic (the gathering) minus the animations etc.

For example:
Monster A has 2 hit points and 2 damage points
Monster B has 1 hit point and 1 damage point

They are both summoned and obviously Monster A wins with a remainder of 1 hit point.

How would each 'card' have a profile that can be summoned at the click of a button (or picturebox) and pitted against the other players choosing. Id think it would be relatively simple because only 1 monster can be drawn at a time (for now, just need a basic understanding on how to get the program to work)

I have tried using simple integers pitted against each other but the code ends up being messy with all the buttons being hidden and shown.

Any advice is appreciated.

Thanks