Cactus Game Design Message Boards

Scenario 1:

I attack with a Blue/Green hero, opponent blocks with a Brown EC.  I play Increasing Numbers, search my deck for 2 heroes, and put them in play.  My opponent plays Haman's Plot and discards those 2 heroes just searched and another character in territory.  I play Abraham's Servant to Ur. 

Key question:  Do the 2 heroes I searched for with Increasing Numbers go back into deck when Abe's Servant negates Increasing Numbers? 

Scenario 2: 

I attack with a Blue/Green hero, my opponent blocks with a Gray EC.  I play Search (not CBN) and search my deck for Reuben's Torn Clothes.  Still my initiative, I play Book of Hozai, draw 3, then play RTC, ignoring Gray.  My opponent plays Foreign Enemy and bands Sanballet into battle, negating Search. 

Key question:  Is RTC cascade-negated because the card that searched it out was negated? 

In both cases, a Search ability gets cards from deck, then something CBI/N happens to the searched-for cards, and then an ability tries to negate the search. 

I think we can all agree that the way the rules are now, and how we've traditionally played them, the heroes stay discarded in Scenario 1, because Haman's Plot is CBN, and it "happened", therefore it "sticks", but RTC is cascade-negated in Scenario 2, because Play abilities are not given the same "CBI" treatment that all other CBI/N abilities are.

And since I know someone will point out that one example is a question of cascade-negating and one is not, let me point out that the examples are the same from one viewpoint, and that is the one that matters.  Haman's Plot puts those two heroes in discard CBN, so they stay there.  The search isn't negated because "something CBI" happened to the searched-for card.  Implicitly, we all acknowledge that the search can't be undone - hence, why the characters stay discarded. 

In Scenario 2, the exact same principle is in play.  "Something CBI" happens to the card that was searched out - namely, played via a Play ability.  The very fact that the played card stays in play proves that Play abilities are CBI.  By definition, you can't undo the search that searched out the played card.  So why are we needlessly complicating things by saying that "Well, we can't undo the search, so let's just say that the ability of the played card is cascade-negated"?  How is that simpler than just following the existing rules and saying "CBI means CBI, so therefore the played card can only be negated via a direct negate"?

How can RTC be negated indirectly by Sanballet when the only thing Sanballet negates (Search) by definition can't be negated because the card searched out was put in play by a CBI ability?

^^Exactly.

This goes back all the way to Claudia/Ethiopean Treasurer/Abe's Servant.

Abe's Servant sticks in battle because the play ability is CBI, not because Abe's Servant itself becomes CBI. Abaddon can still come along and negate Abe's Servant to make the battle non-fbtn.

My mind is blown...

So can someone explain to me why a play ability can't be interrupted or isn't undone by a negate? I think I'm getting a picture but i don't understand it fully right now.

There's still lunacy going on, I just favor a different solution than I did back then. I've said elsewhere that there is no way to have consistent play without either being able to return CBN cards or not cascading searches/adds at all.

The difference is that now my understanding of how the game works and interacts with grammar has evolved. I now see that a lot of the confusion and inconsistencies comes from slightly misusing words that have a specific meaning in Redemption. I now see play abilities as simply being outside the purview of negation rather than "CBI," and prefer the solution by which even cards with CBI/N effects go back to deck (although the abilities remain used).

I also believe that the reason we got into this mess was because of bottom-up rulings to prevent re-use combos that were deemed too powerful at the time.