Need advice on Data Merge and conditionals

[Cynthia5F88]

I'm designing a card game that will have dozens of cards so data merge makes sense here. However, I'm lost on how I need to set up my CSV file and how to make the InDesign file to read it properly. The cards will have mostly the same elements as a magic card. Anyone familiar with magic understands mana costs. (The icons on the top) which sometimes can be repeated from the same type, also can be combined through different ones. How can I tell my file how many times to repeat an icon or if the column is empty to not "grab" any info? I'm a bit lost and any advice around this would help me a lot!!

Attaching two cases of card - the first one has each kind of icon, the second one is missing one of the icons but repeating one kind.

Planned using images there but hmm I'm not sure how to solve it, some cases would require repeat (some more than others) and some would need to be empty like this example where cost 2 is empty

[patMorita]

You cannot do this with standard data merge afaik. You need to have 1 column per image in your csv. e.g. 3 columns for mana and each contains the image path of the mana image.

[Cynthia5F88]

Aw that's too bad 😞

And what about the empty value in columns? Right now for me to use a master file, I have to add a placeholder for all columns but if they are empty they show... I guess this can't be automated?