Missing an effect

[Wollblad]

Here is a rather tricky question regarding intention.

The situation is as follows:
Player one has an Academy Rector in play and a Cabal Therapy in the graveyard.Player two has cards in hand, but no mana up.  Player one flashbacks the Therapy, saccrificing the Rector, puts the Therpy and the Rector out of game. Then he says "I choose Mana Drain". Player two then says: "You named a card before you searched for an enchantment, thus you may not do any search at all". At this time, I, as a spectator say, "Stop it right there, I'm going to fetch the judge." Player two ignores this, shows his hand (without Mana Drain) and start to takes his turn and player one who seems to think that player two is right says "OK, let it be so for this time". Once again I "Wait a minute so I can get the judge" and this time they actually wait.

The thing here is that for the triggered ability of the Rector, an active choice must be made, and since he put it out of play, it can be interpreted as choosing to search. On the other hand, you can say that since he mentioned a card without finding an enchantment, he has also choosen not to find any or that he just faild to perform the effect. On the third hand, the eagerness of player two to show his hand could be interpreted as player two forcing an illigal action. And what complicates it all is that player one actually agreed on player two's interpretation.

If this would have happened at a high REL, how would you have judged this situation?

[Toad]

The stack would be the following :

* Fetch an enchantment and RFG the Academy Rector
* Cabal Therapy

Fetching an enchantment with the Academy Rector is an optional ability. If the player names a card for Cabal Therapy, this implies he choose not to use the Rector's ability or choosed to find nothing.
The fact that the Rector got RFG from the game changes nothing to the situation. This is a simple search, which means you are not forced to find an enchantment in your library if you don't want to.

As a judge, I would not allow the active player to search for his enchantment.

[Wollblad]

If the player names a card for Cabal Therapy, this implies he choose not to use the Rector's ability or choosed to find nothing.
The fact that the Rector got RFG from the game changes nothing to the situation. This is a simple search, which means you are not forced to find an enchantment in your library if you don't want to.

But you cannot choose not to shuffle your library, and that has not been done either. There is thus a possiblity to make the interpretation that he cannot yet have taken a descission whether to find anything or not.

[DEA]

so to add insult to injury he gets slapped with a procedural error - minor
his own fault for not knowing the rulings for the cards he plays with

[Toad]

But you cannot choose not to shuffle your library, and that has not been done either.

If you are required to shuffle your library and If the game is in a state where the library can already be considered as randomized (ie no Brainstorm stacking the first cards, for example), then the shuffling is not mandatory (that is a common shortcut used when resolving a big Mind's Desire when no spells are played between the resolution of two copies).

There is really no possibility that the Rector player have not taken the decision to find anything or not. That player had a window where he could find the enchantment (ie. before naming a card for the Cabal Therapy), he missed it, that's not the judge's fault or his opponent's fault.