I looked up 'if you do' on gatherer. The rulings on academy rector are ambiguous. It says 'you do not have to find an enchantment if you don't want to'. Is this referring to the fact that when it is put in your graveyard, you MAY exile it, thus triggering the tutor, or does it mean to imply there is a hidden 'may' after the 'if you do'?

If 'if you do' has a hidden 'may' in it, then the templating is wrong for this card. I want it to force you to discard then draw, not be a strictly better cancel. But even if that's not a problem, I'm still not happy with the templating, as it seems to me that if the only card you have in hand is Deny Axiom, weird things might happen. Maybe you counter the spell then nothing else happens since you can't discard. Or you counter the spell, can't discard, but draw anyway.

I'd prefer if this spell couldn't be cast unless you have an extra card in hand to discard. But the only way I can think of adding that kind of requirement to the card is with an awkward 'cast ~ only if you have two or more cards in hand' clause.

You could go with the..."As an additional cost to cast this spell, discard a card. Counter target spell. If you do, draw a card."

This means you can only cast it if you have another card in hand to discard but you only get the draw if the counter is successful which would make it a strictly worse Cancel what with mandatory discard and conditional draw. Seems to basically do what you want from the card though.

My original templating for this card used 'as an additional cost to cast this spell, discard a card.' But I changed it because I didn't want this spell to be weak against countermagic. This was before I came up with the card concept though; now I think it fits pretty well, as it is my experience that if you claim to have undermined an axiom and are proven wrong, you lose big. Also it'll make my soft counter (not yet designed) more significant.

Do you think it's too weak compared to cancel? I'm designing this set so that players will always have plenty of cards in hand, so it will often happen that one can ditch a useless land for a draw. I'm a little fuzzy on the power levels of contemporary counterspells, as I haven't played since way back when 4 counterspells where automatically included in any deck running blue.

­Academy Rector, and any other card that searches your library for a card, does not force you to find the card you are looking for. This is because your opponent can't prove that you do or don't have the card you are looking for in your deck (in the case of Academy Rector, you may have just looked through your library and found out that you don't have any enchantments in your deck).

If the card operated the other way, where you had to fetch a card out of your library whether you want to or not, and you were in a tournament, things would get sticky. Let's say you didn't have an enchantment left in your deck. You look through your library, don't find one and declare you don't get one. Your opponent doesn't believe you, but what can he do besides constantly waste a judge's time? Better to let the player 'cheat' and have the option of not finding a card.

As far as the card is concerned, I think it's considerably better than Cancel. A cancel that allows you to get a free loot is pretty awesome. If it was me, though, I'd get rid of the "If you do" condition, then put it back so that it says "Counter target spell. Discard a card, then draw a card if a card was discarded this way.", then increase the cost of the card by 1. The card looks more all-upside that way.

The truth is, that while Camuth points out that you may not draw a card because the base spell may not be countered, it would be a rare situation where the spell you're countering, for some reason, can't be countered.

Thanks for clearing up Academy Rector for me. I was beginning to suspect there was more going on there than a simple 'if you do' rule.

I'd rather make a strictly worse dismiss than a in-many-situations-strictly better cancel, especially given that I want curves up to 7 mana to be viable in this set. So I'm going to change it to what you suggested. Thanks for the help.

I just realized I'm still confused. Is it possible to cast this version of the card if it's the only card you have in your hand? Would you successfully counter the spell, and then nothing would happen?

If that's the case then it misses out on some of the flavour I was looking for. Then again, that flavour was obscure to begin with. Also, I'd like to try out this 'all-upside' style of design.

Yes, your interpretation is precisely correct. It'd just counter a spell without forcing you to cycle a card, if you have no cards left in hand when this resolves.

BTW, the key thing about the "if you do" on Academy Rector is that if AR is no longer in the graveyard by the time the trigger resolves, you can't exile it, and thus you don't get to tutor. This applies in cases like Cremate, but also Undertaker, and token copies of the Rector from things like Spitting Image, since the tokens cease to exist before you can exile them.

The way that you can fail to find something if you search is a red herring; that's not what the "if you do" is referring to.

Alright. I've come to the conclusion that my intentions for the card where mislaid (that is, it was a mistake to want the discard to be a necessary part of the counter). This way is a lot cleaner, and I think the flavour is (somewhat) accessible, whereas before the flavour was clumsy.

Academy Rector seems to be quite a bit more confusing than I realized. This figures, as it's one of the combo boogeymen that made me give up the game in the first place.