The assessment he's talking about is to determine how much power you have to put into the counterspell for it to be effective. The Warden Sword's enchantment is a set amount of six shifts, so that assessment would be pointless since the counterspell effect couldn't be changed anyway.

I don't think the sword can undo a spell "per se", it helps you (with 3 free shifts) when "you" want to do it.

In the books, the Wardens clearly use the counterspell effect without any need for that assessment, they just swing at the zombie and poof, its magic is gone.

Well, the assessment in this case is a free action, and after all rules are just abstractions needed in order to play the game. As a GM you can do what you want. For example i don't have any problems if a pg wants to stop an incoming lance of fire with another spell (maybe one based on water). It's cool and much more "like the books".

Hi.
Before creating this thread i checked for other posts like this without finding anything. If my post is redundant feel free to remove it without any second thought.

Hoping it can help some of you, i am posting a link to a simple graphic program i created some time ago to help me manage all my NPC during a battle.
It's a simple dice thrower, you press the number of your skill (ex: Discipline 4? press 4) and the program throws 4d6 (fate style) and sum your skill to the result before showing it to you.
It's in java (should work anywhere), ligth (only 5KB), it's aesthetically ugly but do what it has to do. The code is open, under MIT (so feel free to do anything) and posted on github.
I don't think there are any bug (really... it's too simple to have any), but for any problem send an email (that too it's on github).

Hoping is of your interest,
jecnua

Direct Link: https://github.com/downloads/jecnua/FateDiceThrower/FateSystemDiceThrower_v1_1.jar
Project page (for any programmer out there): https://github.com/jecnua/FateDiceThrower

Ps: Like any random thing you can code, i know, it doesn't seem random. But it is.