"It’s weird, but whenever I see a clip of that moment it always looks like it’s someone else there." Mr. Craig Jones is, of course, referring to his brief time as an international cricket player. Wait. No. Sorry. He was talking about the one of the greatest topdecks of all time.
Facing down the French all-star Olivier Ruel, Craig had his back to the wall. It was game five and Ruel’s "Hand in Hand" deck had managed to break out of Jones’ dominating board position after finding an Umezawa’s Jitte, going up to seven life before Tin-Street Hooligan shattered the legendary equipment.
Even with the Jitte gone, Ruel demolished Jones’ creatures and Craig was left with no way to attack through to finish his opponent off. A Char seemed too little, too late as Craig was at a precarious six life. An attack by Olivier with a 1/1 Spirit token and a 2/2 Hand of Cruelty left Jones at three. Craig had been considering his options, and he took a line a play that commentator Mike Flores argued against. He pointed the Char at Olivier’s head. Four damage to the face. Flores believed the right play was to Char the Hand. For Jones, though, "The face was the only obvious correct play (the other merely delays Olivier’s victory for a turn)." When he found out the crowd and commentator reactions he "was surprised anyone would think otherwise because it seemed so obvious at the time."Â
Looking back almost seven years later, Craig shares an invaluable piece of information for players look to improve with their aggressive red decks. When it came to the outside viewpoints on his controversial decision, Craig thinks it is possible that "players can get stuck in an ‘aggro-is-brain-dead’ mentality, which leads to either playing the decks very, very badly or gifting wins to experienced opponents through underestimating the opposing deck."
Down to his last card, Craig went to draw normally for his turn. "Slam it," Ruel said, and Jones obliged, blinking at the art box as the twin orange and white bursts sent him into the finals of Pro Tour Honolulu. After a split with eventual champion Mark Herberholz, he earned $31,000 for his win, $16,000 more than he would have earned had he lost in the semifinals. Basically, the powerful Ravnica uncommon ended up being the most valuable burn spell ever.
But it’s a long road to reach the finals of a Pro Tour. Fortunately, Craig Jones got started early. He picked up the game "just before The Dark expansion came out… Some friends and I picked up the game and used to play while we were waiting for everyone to show up for [a role-playing game session]. The local shop used to organize tournaments every month, and we formed regular raiding parties to [attend] tournaments across the country on the other weekends."
Moving out of the brick and mortar card shops into the Grand Prix scene wasn’t easy, either. "Tournament organization was a lot more ropey back then." At Grand Prix Birmingham in 1998, the players "were kicked out of the venue and had to finish the tournament in a nearby hotel." Then again, the abrupt change of scenery gave Craig time to polish off a pint of beer before heading back to battle, so maybe it’s a wash. He escaped a horrible misplay in the semifinals to face off against some unknown German kid. He prevailed and added Grand Prix Champion to his early resume along with a Pro Tour qualification.
"My first PT, like pretty much all of my early [Pro Tours], was a complete disaster. There was no Magic Online, people rarely drafted, and I kept going to constructed PTs with either god-awful homebrews or beta versions of archetypes that were weeks behind the PT metagame."
Still, being able to bring a homebrew to a tournament is one thing Craig Jones seems to especially miss. Bad brews and outdated technology did have a chance to win back then. "It used to be possible to fight Mr. Suitcase with decks scraped [together] out of uncommons and commons." It’s more difficult now, he adds, "to build a cheapo deck that stands a chance of even putting up a fight let alone be competitive enough to win tournaments."
"Now they just get squashed whenever a Titan or something similar hits the table."
He may not sling cards as often anymore, but like many "ex" Magicplayers he still follows what is happening to the game and is still refreshingly honest when it comes to advice about the game. He believes that players should develop "a good understanding of how luck, intelligence, and hard work interact in the real world." If you realize that there is a meta-metagame, that knowledge leads to a better appreciation for the way the different components of the game beyond the game come together.
"I’ve seen a lot of players get extremely frustrated. They put a lot of work in, understand a format, but then they make the mistake of thinking that entitles them to a PTQ win or a high finish. That’s not how it works. There is still a luck element. What the hard work does do, though, is put someone in a much better position to take advantage when luck does break their way."
"Working hard and being good at something won’t guarantee success, but you have to work hard and be good at something to give yourself the chance at that success."
When it comes to improving your overall game, for Craig the Titan problem represents a major shift in philosophy. One that he does not entirely agree with, although he does make sure to mention that "I should preface this with the comment that I’m talking about how I regard it personally. If a decision loses ten of me but gains a hundred new players, it’s a correct decision on [Wizards]’s part."
"The game has changed, mainly from the top…The biggest problem facing Magic is, first, an abundance of thinking outside of the box for the sake of showing how clever you are by thinking outside of the box, and, second, an unhealthy influence of marketing over design."
Wizardshas made some unpopular decisions in the last year or so, but Craig thinks that some of the issues go back even further to the introduction of the mythic rarity. "I’m not against the concept; I spoke out in favor when it was first announced." Still, he believes "it’s being abused." The implications of the new rarity and the number of high-powered cards that are printed with that rarity are clear when you consider that "Magic was not a game where rare card X directly supplanted uncommon card Y which directly supplanted common card Z."
He is concerned because that has completely changed. You can "contrast Serra Angel (once a potent finisher in its own right) with Baneslayer Angel." Or, as Jones put it, "a Titan with anything." Many of the most popular mythics do supplant less rare versions of similar effects. To Craig, "Mythics were initially touted as a solution to putting out smaller sets while still maintaining a degree of collectability." Adding chase rares that are even rarer than normal is definitely a positive move for a company interested in boosting sales and improving small sets. But, "if those mythics also completely outclass cards of other rarities, then the pool of viable cards to build decks out of becomes tiny."
The end result of which is that "you get Jace, the Mind Sculptor and Stoneforge Mystic environments where something has to be banned to unclog it. It doesn’t seem to be hampering the current format from what I’ve seen in tournaments, but mythics have pretty much killed off my interest in the game."
Sometimes it seems that the reason he doesn’t "play anymore" is "because the things I found interesting about the game don’t exist anymore." He explained in more detail: "I love the deckbuilding aspect of Magic. I get the most fun out of the game when I’m building janky little decks out of the new sets."
Even his enjoyment of the online game is waning. He told me, "When my job meant I couldn’t play competitively anymore, I still would spend time building decks to play casually on Magic Online. It just isn’t worth it anymore. Too much quitting, moaning, or otherwise completely lopsided games. It went from getting about 3-4 interesting games out of 5 to maybe 1 out of 5, and at that point I’m better off spending my leisure time playing other games."
The issue has grown for Craig into one that suggests an unhealthy marketing influence. "It seems to me sometimes there are pressures for certain cards to be good." It appears almost as though Design is catering to the needs of the brand and creative teams. There is a certain amount of that to be expected, as Magic’s immense popularity has grown with improvements in the overall brand, but "when there’s pressure for a card to be ‘tournament good’ it’s dangerous, as it’s really easy to turn the dial too far and then you have Jace, the Mind Sculptor."Â
Craig reminded me that, "[he doesn’t] remember Gerrard or various other members of the Weatherlightcrew ‘having’ to be good tournament cards as well. They put the cards out and the tournament scene filtered which ones were good."
"I played exactly two online Worldwake drafts," he went on to say. "In the second I met someone with Jace in the finals. After two highly unfun games where I realized too late wiping out every single creature I had on the board to take out their Jace was apparently the correct tactical decision, I wondered what the hell they were smoking to even think that card was safe to release into the wild and stopped playing the game for about six months."
While the initial uproar over mythics has quieted down some, the power level of the mythics spoiled already in Avacyn Restored is quiet high, and it won’t take long to find the next automatic four-of. But Jones wasn’t afraid to address another frustrating revision made by Wizards.
As a foreign player, Craig felt that "the changes to organized play were poorly thought out." Basically, "when they sent out that message [that the World Championships were being cut] it was sticking up two fingers to the rest of the world and saying, ‘we don’t give a f*** about you.’" To Craig, "[it] should be the flagship tournament."
"To the community’s credit, they made it clear the uproar wasn’t the usual kneejerk reaction to change." It was, instead, "a clear ‘this is a stupid decision and you need to fix it.’"Â
Wizards’ mental missteps this year are well documented, and it was hard to believe the game had slipped so far. "For a period of a few months, it seemed like [Wizards] had been gripped by a bout of collective insanity and was fully prepared to toss [the competitive history of the game] into the trashcan."
Craig did admit, "It seems like we’re back from that brink, but so many of the decisions seemed so obviously bad in hindsight I have to wonder how they made it as far as they did in the first place."
His accomplishments and success on the Pro Tour is something that Jones is very proud of, and he hopes to preserve the high standards for professional play.
"Magic’s tournament structure should always be one of its assets. Changing Elo to funsy-everyone-gets-a-gold-star-for-showing up points is ripping out the heart of what makes Magic so compelling."
Oh, and that unknown German kid he beat at the Grand Prix went on to win more or less everything for so long he became known as the "Juggernaut." Does the guy who once took down Kai Budde have anything he’d want to say to Wizards if he could? "I’d like for Magic to still be around in 20 years’ time because I’m a (very small) part of the history of that game. So don’t f*** it up. Okay, dudes?"
No stranger to controversy himself, Ben Snyder is always working on new writing projects designed to inflame the community. You can read some of them on his blog. Please keep in mind that in this case "inflame the community" means something more like "make you laugh or wonder" and does not hold to the traditional definition. Follow him on Twitter and send suggestions to [email protected].