Steppin' in at Modern
In an interesting situation from last night's weekly modern event, my spidey sense went off telling me to step in on a game but I didn't. Should I have? (I'm pretty sure yes but I want to present it to you all.) Here's the situation.
The final match of the night is going and heading towards time. As I collect the other match slips I wander over and see it's a white knuckle, beat down brawl between Blue White Control and Blue White Tron. Blue White control has a Teferi with many counters and a Jace, the mind Sculptor with many counters and a Damping Sphere. (Goodnight tron mana.)
I step away as there's 10 minutes left in the round and go to enter my match slips and banter with some coworkers about the exciting matchup, little did I know about what I would come back to.
So when I do come back, BAM Emrakul, the Aeons Torn hardcast by the UW Tron player. I didn't see it happen but I'm seeing the extra turn taking place, and it's looking bad for UW Control fellow. But wait, there's only 14 lands used to cast that Emrakul. I count again, and a third time, yup, 14 lands. I see no signets and I don't want to go through the player's graveyard to confirm and distract from them playing through this match as it's drawing close to time, but this is where I was thinking I should have.
The game ends in fairly quick fashion (Eldrazi Titans do tend to do that) and after the match ends before the players scoop up I ask about how the Emrakul was cast, specifically referencing the land count and the lack of signet or any other mana generation I can see. Tron players says “Tron lands.” I remind both players of the Damping Sphere. They both have the “Oh… we were paying more attention to the other ability” moment and I explain to them that it's not really a problem since both of them missed it, though the Tron player would have the incentive to cheat, I'm quite sure he didn't in this case, and I reminded them both to play more carefully.
The question to you all is, should I have stepped in? Damping Sphere introduces a replacement effect so casting the Emrakul would be a GRV at Competitive, and the Damping Sphere controller would have a Failure to Maintain Game State. But the fix for the improperly cast Emrakul would have been easy when I could have caught it.
I feel like I failed the UW tron player here as it looked like he had it in the bag.
Thanks for reading.