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...but I didn't mind the card because it attempts to bring battles back.

I can appreciate this aspect of the card as well. Battles these days are practically non-existent...unstoppable super bands and TGT have saturated the meta towards free walk-ins. CWD helps bring back the battle in that regard (although TGT can still walk through and thus abuse it). Iron Pan is a card that can easily mitigate the NPE caused by TGT, but is a very well-balanced card. CWD is a similar card in the respect it simplifies the game state just like Iron Pan, yet it receives no checks. Why was this? That is truly the only thing I think was poorly designed on the card itself, no checks towards a severely powerful absolute coupled with restrict and CBN together. One or the other would have probably been fine, if either of those at all.

Part of the nature of the game lends itself to this kind of creep. Since there is no cost in Redemption, there's nothing stopping a card from getting loaded up with whatever. In MTG, they have a formula for their cards. Haste costs 1, a 2/2 costs 2 and flying costs 1, so generally if you had a 2/2 flier with haste it'd cost 4 mana as opposed to a 2/2 which costs 2, limiting the creep because better cards tend to be more expensive. In Redemption we have no such limitations, so there's literally zero reason to use a 7/6 White Hero when you can use a Garden lady instead.

This^
is exactly why I was confused when I started playing Redemption when it first came out in the mid 90's, and I was getting out of magic.
I was used to paying the costs for things, and thought it was odd there was no cost to things in Redemption, so there was no reason to use "underpowered" cards, where in magic there were ways to make successful, quick "underpowered" aggro decks that cost very little. I don't know how to fix it, although I liked windows of narrow light (gives protection to no special ability characters), but again it's easier just to use a better hero that already has the protection than risk windows getting trashed or at the bottom of your deck.

It would have to tap into some kind of resource in the game. I'm not exactly sure how one would implement that unless an entirely new card type were created. While the MtG mana/cost system does help keep the game considerably balanced, it has always been highly criticized due to the fact you have to include otherwise useless cards in your deck just to satisfy costs and play cards. Mana drought, or the deprivation of actually drawing into these resources, has also been an issue with the game. In that regard, I have always liked Redemption and Yugioh since it has no such inherent cost associated with playing their cards, but instead relies on game mechanics and costs on the cards themselves to promote balance.

Yeah, I wasn't saying either one was better than the other either, just which one I prefer overall. I like the balance an 'everything has a cost' approach MtG does, but I also don't like getting mana screwed either. Miss a mana drop and it puts you behind. Of all the 'resource' driven CCG's I have played, the one that I believe executes it the best is a game called Universal Fighting System. Every Foundation (resource) had a special ability, so they had purposes outside of being simply resources. You also weren't limited to one drop per turn either, so it was possible to make up for slow developments on previous turns. The game also uses the cost/control system as well (sort of reminiscent of the old Decipher Star Wars CCG), where every card has an inherent cost to play it, as well as a control value used to fulfill the costs of other cards as well as generating a value for other card effects.

The most genius aspect of the game is the progressive difficulty (cost) to play cards. You are allowed to take as many actions as you like during a turn (such as playing a Foundation, playing an attack, etc.), but every time you did so the cost of playing that card was 1 higher for each card played before it (if you failed a cost, your turn essentially ended). A brilliant system that plays heavily upon player management skills as well as weighing whether a risk to play a card was truly worth the reward.