Thread by @JasonILTG

Late thread today on Resculpt and Sudden Breakthrough. ALSAs of 9.29 and 8.67, respectively. I didn't talk about these earlier because I think they're correctly evaluated as generally very bad, but I do want to touch on them a bit to show how they can be used. 1/x

Here are the Card Evaluation Metagame graphs for the two. Resculpt was initially a lot higher (though still the lowest blue common); I wonder if other people, like me, thought that its synergy with treasure (like Breakthrough) was going to be good in Prsimari. 2/x

First let's talk about Resculpt. This looks like Angelic Ascension, but the 4/4 not having flying makes a huge difference. Without flying, the 4/4 is much more medium for you, but it's still good enough that you're almost never happy giving it to your opponent either. 3/x

The obvious synergy with Resculpt is treasure tokens; that's the reason why I'm talking about it with Breakthrough. But the problem is that there aren't ways to make treasures incidentally; Breakthrough is bad, Storm-Kiln is medium, and discarding big spells isn't worth it. 4/x

But there are some other synergies worth mentioning: Resculpt serves as a great sac outlet for Mascot Interception, and the rate of upgrading a Pest into an Elemental for 2 mana is fine, but not exciting. 5/x

Beyond that, Resculpt also serves as protection against removal, similar to how Make Your Mark works. But you don't get the ability to trade off in combat while still getting your 4/4, which makes it much worse than Make Your Mark. 6/x

Now let's talk about Sudden Breakthrough. This one is bad mostly because it's a bit below rate and not well positioned. There are a lot of better combat tricks - Enthusiastic Study, Beaming Defiance, Make Your Mark - and not very many decks that want a lot of them. 7/x

However, one unique thing that Breakthrough does is help ramp and fix you by banking a mana in the form of a treasure. This can be useful for casting one big spell, or for splashing, or for a double spell turn, but is one-time-use only. 8/x

So where am I playing these cards? Well, mostly I'm NOT playing them, especially not maindeck. But they do make each other better, and sometimes I side into Resculpt against removal-heavy decks, and then might also decide to side in a Breakthrough to help that package. 9/x

One thing that I kind of want to try but doubt will come together easily is a Grixis deck built around leveraging 1/1s with Resculpt, First Day, and Breakthrough, with the added combos of Interception and Breakthrough with Resculpt. Here, the black is mainly for pests. 10/x

Conclusion: try not to play these cards, and definitely don't pick them highly, but do acknowledge that there is a synergy package that is very hard to make work but might be worth exploring or siding into occasionally. 11/11