Cactus Game Design Message Boards

I can't help but notice that almost every single hero at this level of the contest has one of two attributes.  They either do something that "Cannot be Negated", or they "Negate" stuff.  Surely I'm not the only one who has noticed this.

Consider the following contestants here in round 2, deemed by many of us to be some of the best heroes in the game:

Hur - Cannot be negated.
Philip - Losing against King Amaziah right now, but just barely.  Cannot be negated.
Daniel - Negates ECs AND Cannot be negated.
Strong Angel versus COTH - Two powerful heroes who negate almost everything.
Joshua the Hight Priest - His enhancements cannot be negated.  He's going to lose to Phinehas, but then again again Phinehas has his own CBN enhancement.
Mary the Mother of James - Cannot be Negated (if GardenTomb is in play)
John - Negates ECs except banding.
Joseph versus Benjamin - Two popular Genesis heroes that can play CBN enhancements.
Moses versus Generous Widow - Moses negates everything.  Widow's ability Cannot be Negated.
Centurions - Popular because they negate the abilities of ECs.
Isaiah - Cannot be Negated.
Angel Under the Oak - Cannot be Negated.
Samuel - Cannot be Negated.

Umm, something about this just bothers me.  It seems to indicate two things.  1) FBTN was too powerful (For both Heroes and ECs), and 2) Rather than have players use the counters to FBTN, the game created a plethora of "Cannot be Negated" cards.  Is the game approaching the point where cards like Confusion of Mind, Golden Calf and Negate enhancements have become obsolete?  I truly hope not.  Does anyone else feel like we should slow down on the CBN stuff?  Someone said in another thread that folks are making decks now where everything in the deck cannot be negated.  Personally I just don't see this as a good thing.  Thanks for listening, even if you disagree.

This isn't really new. Negation ruled the world at the release of Warriors. Then Apostles through Kings pushed things in the opposite direction with a lot of CBN(/I/P). Once there are CBN things in the game, no one will use non-CBN things. So the only way to make new cards usable is to make them CBN. It's Power Creep, it's been happening for years, and will without some bigger force in play (different play formats, bans/set rotation) that are unlikely to happen. A lot of players enjoy this degenerate play for some reason.

Here's my take on it.  Like Mierz said, Negation ruled the world during warriors, and it will continue to be one of the most powerful abilities out there as long as there are at least some non- CBI/CBP/CBN cards in existence.  The reason is this, if you can shut your opponent down you win. 

The cannot be type of abilities are a whole different beast, since warriors CBI/CBP/CBN has been the best answer to negate all heroes.  Since then like Mierz has said there has been a power creep to where all the heroes with the best abilities end with CBN.

But why do such abilities like these dominate the meta?  Efficiency.  Ultimately the goal of each deck is to win faster than the other guy, so whichever deck can do that should win.  FBTN is the most efficient thing out there since it can win without support, CBN is the best answer to FBTN so lots of decks will include CBN as well as a bit of negation too.  So the reason for the meta being the way it is is this, Negate is efficient, CBN keeps the other guy from being efficient. 

Do we have solutions to this? I dunno, protection is one way to go, teching against the opponent pre-battle phase seems to be the way we are currently headed, but what about the battle phase?  Is there anything we can do to save it?  I don't know but it'll be interesting to see what happens in the years to come.

I have to admit I really like instead abilities.  But the 'Regardless' abilities scare me, seems to be a lot of potential for brokenness there.