Valakut Awakening Doesn't Cast When All Cards Have Mana [Investigating]

Anonymous2112

Card: Valakut Awakening
Type: Spell
Set: Zendikar Rising
Rarity: Rare
Card Text: Discard all cards without mana from your hand. Then, draw that many cards plus one. Landforming: Create a Valakut Stoneforge token.

Was it the intention of the MtGPQ developers to prevent this card from casting if there are zero cards in hand without mana? The way the card text is worded, it seems like you'd still be able to cast the card if only to draw a single card thanks to the "plus one" clause. The code for this card would be pretty straightforward when Valakut Awakening is cast.

1) Identify the number of cards in hand without mana.
2) X = Count of cards in hand without mana.
3) For each card without mana, discard that card.
4) Draw X cards, plus 1.

Yes, I realize this is an old card, it'd sure be nice to not have a completely dead card in your hand when you get one of them fancy cascades that fills up your mana on all your cards. Or when Valakut Awakening is the only card in hand. Heck, even the AI might appreciate the ability to cast it.

Janosik

This is due to old style Oktagon card text templating. (Oktagon were the previous dev team before the current developers, Webcore)

According to Oktagon, "Do A. Then: Do B" means "Do A. Then A. Then, if and only if A was successful, Do B".

Effectively, 'Then:', when written like this, means 'if'.

This is, of course, counter intuitive to the English language; it also differs from the intuitive templating that WOTC use on paper MTG cards, which is "Do A. If you do, then Do B".

Hopefully, to avoid misunderstandings in the future, Webcore will use the more intuitive card text from now on.

Anonymous2112

@Magic:PQ Support Team - is what Janosik is describing correct? That "Valakut Awakening" is working as designed?

If "working as designed" the case, then allow me to make the plea to have this card fixed to where it's actually useful. Thank you.