YANGI (yet another new game idea) - in need of theme: draft/play/run your row!

For a while now I've had some thoughts about a dynamic - I'll see if I can describe it here:

So you're drafting cards into your hand, then you're playing cards from your hand onto the table. Like Thurn & Taxis, you want to (or have to) keep extending your row of cards in play until you can't, then you get rid of those cards and start a new row. So while you're building your row in front of you, you're building your NEXT row in your hand.

I've had this idea for some time, but as yet I haven't really seen a good way to put it together. Last week I was in Seattle at Sasquatch, and I caught a glimpse of Mombasa, which had an interesting mechanism that looked cool - you build a path out of some book tiles, then you advance up the path for rewards. Well, this morning, while lying in my bed evading sleep, these ideas returned to mind and merged, with an important new detail...

Imagine you draft a card into your hand from a supply (like Ticket to Ride), and then you play a card from your hand onto the table in front of you, let's call that your "row." The cards give you resources when you play them. Then after you play a card, if you have the right resources, you may "run" your row, paying the required cost for each card to discard the row and score for accomplishing that goal. Then next turn you'll begin a new row.

This is sort of the opposite of Thurn & Taxis, where you want the row to grow as much as possible before you need to reset it. In the case of my new game idea, you'd want to pay for and reset your row (and score) as often as possible, so you'd want to draft the right cards to earn the resources you need, or draft cards that cost the resources you already have (or can already make).

So for example, maybe a card gives you a red and a blue resource, but costs a yellow resource to clear. Maybe another card doesn't give you any resources, but instead gives you an action (steal a resource from an opponent, draft an additional card into hand, trade some of your resources out for other ones from the supply).

As I type this, I think perhaps each card could have 2 sides, one with say 2 cubes (worth 1 point) and the other with maybe 3 cubes (worth 2 points). When you play the card, you choose which side to take resources from, and which side you will pay to get points... so the more resources you collect, the worse you will score and vice versa.

I think as a mechanism that would work, and I might make a prototype and try it out, but I do not have a theme for this - what does it sound like to you? Leave a comment below and let me know where you would go with this idea thematically, and whether it sounds like a game in and of itself, or the driving mechanism for a larger game (what game would that be?)