Shadow Era doesn't have them, and I like it that way. It's incredibly annoying in electronic TCG's to have to press the "I do not have a response" button after every single play my opponent makes. (Because there's no other way to provide the opportunity for the user to counter the action he wants to counter.) But there are a couple of effects this will have on the types of decks that become viable that we should take into account as we look at cards Kyle is revealing.

Any card you play in a TCG is vulnerable to something. Ongoing abilities can be destroyed. Allies can be defeated in battle or hit with a burn spell. The player thinking about using these cards performs a cost/benefit calculation in their head before playing a valuable card: vulnerabilities have to be played against the potential advantage the card can yield. In essence, you don't want to drop your glass cannons when you know your opponent can just burn them away when their next turn rolls around, so it's better to just leave them in your hand until your opponent has fewer cards in their hand that could cost you your expensive allies--that way, you maximize the utility you can get out of them. In most games, if a player has one or two cards in-hand, you can make a few assumptions about what kinds of cards they are. You can assume it/they:

• Aren't draw cards
• Most likely aren't burn cards (because they would've already burned you with them)
• Might be a heavy-hitting creature/monster/ally too expensive to play right now
• Might be a card that fails the cost/benefit test described above
• Is/Are most likely to be something the opponent is saving for when you play something juicy

This adds danger to playing that big ally in your hand because, well, lot of good it'll do you if it's frozen, webbed, burned to death or out-right counterspelled. Oh, but wait, it can't be counterspelled! Hmm... What does that say about the paralysis and burn cards? Might they be this game's anti-ally counterspells? Maybe...

I think we should start looking at these cards not for what role they would play in another TCG, but rather what void they would fill in Shadow Era. Paralysis cards in MtG almost always take a backseat to counter cards for obvious reasons (unless they're REALLY cheap--like, say, Icy Manipulator). Paralysis effects are temporary stall tactics and because they stay out longer, they're more vulnerable to unexpected destruction a few turns down the line. Burn cards are faster and more versatile, but their effectiveness is at the mercy of the size of the opponent they're hitting--dealing 2 damage to a 7/7 is shrug-off-able--outright countering the 7/7's appearance on the board however...not so much. Counter cards are instantaneous, have lasting effects (it's dead for good, rather than just inconsequential for a couple turns), consistently disabling (rather than maybe disabling) and are harder to stop because the target has to counter it RIGHT THEN or be stuck with the consequences. Because paralysis/burn cards are generally seen as being inferior to counter cards, I think we've been looking at them as though they are as non-threatening as they would be in MtG or WoW.

Okay, so that's the impact the absence of counter cards might have on cards which could best fill the gap they left. But what about how people actually play?

Without the lurking possibility that the other guy's hand has a counterspell in it, those sweeping, truck-sized ability cards suddenly became a whole lot better. Imagine what Wrath of God would look like if there was no possibility that the opponent could keep it from going off. Cards that change the field as much as Wrath of God are tempered by a) their cost and b) the fact that if the opponent is properly prepared, they can be prevented from going off with card negation. But you can't block abilities in Shadow Era, can you? In discussions of Nishaven, Tidal Wave, Ice Storm, and Supernova, we (myself included) have generally been comparing these sweeping cards to their equivalent cards in MtG, WoW and Yu-Gi-Oh!. But a somewhat-hidden aspect of these MtG et. all cards is their ability to be blocked or otherwise prevented. Objectively, the Shadow Era mega-sweeping ability cards would have to be viewed as being better than their MtG, Yu-Gi-Oh! or WoW equivalents, in that they are at least as powerful as a card in those games that sweeps the field and has the added text "this card cannot be negated" as well.

I'm not sure how big a difference this is, but I'm pretty sure it ain't nothin'. I'm also not convinced that a proper counterargument to this proposition would be anything along the lines of "yeah, but everything in Shadow Era is equivalent to a card in whatever game if it had the extra 'no negation' clause added to it, so it all evens out." I say this because I think it makes the bigger, heavy-hitting cards better more so than it does smaller cards--after all, who would bother spending three to counterspell Shock in MtG?

Honestly, I'm not sure where I'm going with this. I like the counterspell-less environment, especially since the alternative is a UI that would get annoying at a devilish speed. But at the same time, I don't know how I feel about every ability getting to go off with impunity.

Anyway, it's just something to think about...