You know what time it is. We’re about to turn that corner of the year when all of the presents are under the tree but daddy won’t let us open all of them. They are just sitting there begging us to rip them open. Fortunately, as a Dimir mage, we just wait and open one when no one is looking. Oh my, what have we found here?
Seems I’m not the only one doing bad things. It’s a Breaking and Entering:
There’s just something lovely about milling your opponent to death. For everyone out there who has played with [card]Glimpse the Unthinkable[/card], you know all about what I’m saying. Breaking is a Glimpse minus two cards, but it’s also a [card]Mind Sculpt[/card] plus one—so it’s hard to say just how good it could be. In order for this card to see play, we’re going to have to design a tier 1 deck that abuses it. The Entering portion of the card is expensive for Constructed play, but late in games you may be able to return your opponent’s [card]Angel of Serenity[/card] or another fatty to beat them down with in addition to milling them.
I love Esper in Standard, and would appreciate a dedicated milling strategy that works faster. If you’ve played Esper, you know that some of your games can just take forever, because having only Drownyard as a win condition is plain slow. With this build, we can quickly kill our opponents and aren’t as vulnerable to decks dealing with our Drownyard.
[deck]3 Snapcaster Mage
1 Consuming Abberation
4 Augur of Bolas
4 Breaking // Entering
4 Mind Sculpt
2 Psychic Strike
4 Azorious Charm
4 Supreme Verdict
4 Thought Scour
2 Dramatic Rescue
2 Jace, Memory Adept
4 Drowned Catacomb
4 Glacial Fortress
4 Watery Grave
4 Hallowed Fountain
4 Isolated Chapel
3 Nephalia Drownyard
3 Godless Shrine
1 Blood Crypt[/deck]
Our rough build is a conventional Esper deck that focuses more on sending our opponent’s deck to the trash can quickly. Our deck is going to be very good against the midrange and control decks in the format, but weaker against the super aggro decks. Either way, having an actual deck that is dedicated mill is exciting for the many of us who enjoy watching our opponents frown as their favorite toys hit the bin.
So what’s this card actually worth? Like we said before, in application, it is somewhere between [card]Glimpse the Unthinkable[/card] and [card]Mind Sculpt[/card]. That’s a huge gap considering this is what the price index of Glimpse the Unthinkable looks like:
And this is Mind Sculpt:
With Breaking // Entering being closer to Mind Sculpt than to Glimpse the Unthinkable, we can naturally deduce that our price point will be nowhere close to $20.00. It is a rare instead of a common, but that doesn’t feel like enough to push it over the $2.00 mark.
I’d really like to speculate and pick up say 100 at $0.35 or $0.50 because if we can find a home for it in a competitive deck, the ceiling becomes, say, $8 – $10. So if you can trade or buy these at $0.50, I’d pick up as many as I could at that price.
In summary, Breaking // Entering is going to end up being more of a casual card than a format staple. Pick it up on the cheap if you can, because we have some room to grow as a cheap alternative for people who don’t want to pay $20 for Glimpse the Unthinkable.
