Academic Espionage
Academic Espionage is a 4 Mana Cost Epic Rogue Spell card from the The Boomsday Project set!
Card Text
Shuffle 10 cards from your opponent's class into your deck. They cost (1).
Flavor Text
The tenth Pyroblast really felt like overkill.- Mana Cost: 4
- Crafting Cost: 400 / 1600 (Golden)
- Arcane Dust Gained: 100 / 400 (Golden)
- Rarity: Epic
- Class: Rogue
- Card Type: Spell
- Set: The Boomsday Project
- Mechanics: From Another Class
Academic Espionage Additional Information
Academic Espionage Card Review
Another insane card from this expansion. On the one hand, shuffling a bunch of random cards into your deck was never a good thing. On the other hand, those cards now cost 1 mana each. Exactly, 1 mana. So, on average, a huge discount will be applied.
On the one hand, I already want to play around with it. On the other, from the competitive side, I absolutely dislike this card, because there is A LOT of RNG involved. Such RNG cards are fun if they’re bad, but this one might not be. While I know that it’s somewhat of the best case scenario, imagine losing a game as a Druid to a Rogue drawing a 1 mana Ultimate Infestation from this, into a bunch of other 1 mana stuff from your class? It would feel horrible.
This card will obviously be an auto-include in Burgle/Pick Pocket/Tess Greymane Rogue, since it specifically synergizes with cards from other classes. It will make it much easier to keep the weapon (Spectral Cutlass) alive, and Tess is going to be huge once you drop her. Will it be good enough to put the deck into the meta? Hard to say, but it might be.
Basically, the only downside of this card is spending 4 mana for no immediate effect (well, you can always Preparation it, but that’s still 2 cards for no immediate effect). That said, with 10 cards shuffled, you should be able to “take” that mana back quite quickly, often after the first card you draw. And of course, you can still end up getting a bunch of bad cards that cost 0-2 mana anyway and the discount will be wasted. But the pool of bad cards is considerably smaller when everything costs 1 anyway. Like, normally you wouldn’t be happy with getting something like Cruel Dinomancer. 6 mana 5/5 is bad. But a 1 mana 5/5 is suddenly pretty damn good.
Another cool synergy is the one with Myra's Unstable Element. Not only you can get a full hand, but if you play this afterwards, you still end up with a bunch of cards in your deck. And each one of them is discounted. I could see Miracle Rogue with the Legendary Spell running a single copy of this card just to make that combo work. But even without Myra, remember that Rogues have some nice way to cycle or draw cards. Like, playing this during Gadgetzan Auctioneer turn. Or playing Prep + Sprint after. Or even dropping an Elven Minstrel and hoping to draw some good 1 mana minion (doesn’t have to be great, some random 4/4 is still great tempo-wise). And after you overcome the initial tempo loss of this card, it will just start getting value.
I honestly think that this card is broken, and not necessarily in terms of power (because yeah, it still does nothing immediately) – but I still think it’s pretty damn strong. I feel like it might get nerfed in a way Yogg-Saron, Hope's End was – even if it wasn’t completely broken on the ladder, it just ruined the competitive play.
Card rating: 8/10
Academic Espionage Full Card Art
– Unreliable, delayed, much like the 4/4 spider shuffle
– Gives enemy card advantage for a while
– Sometimes the drawn cards are 1-3 mana meaning you don’t get much value out of the cost reduction
+ Huge combo potential with Prep, Unstable element etc
+ Adding cards into your deck can give birth to fatigue rogue
+ Massive value
I think this card is like 3.5/5, it won’t be ran in most rogue decks due to being control, Draw and RNG based but is great at what it does, outvalueing the opponent.
I will definitely run this over Pick Pocket. In fact, I might not even run Pick Pocket in my Tess deck when I replace it with this. For 4 mana I get twice the amount of cards compared to a 10 mana Pick Pocket and they cost 1! Sure I don’t get them in my hand, but I’ve always felt that Pick Pocket was very weak. Hallucination, Blink Fox, and Academic Espionage. That sounds good to me.
Should say, “Shuffle 10 copies of cards.” Always with the logical errors, this game.
It doesn’t really matter as it’s not shuffling cards from your opponents deck into your deck, but cards from their class.
i have to agreed yes its op but its also balance card why:some meta deck have around under ten class card in deck
you have to drwa this to play it so find it in 330 card is a bit hard
many class card doesnt fit rogue synergies exp stealing card from odd pala means nothing in total so dont worry at first week players play it ALOT and then throw it away OR they keep playi g it and so called deer blizzard nerf it but i will use it XD
Ok 1 you need to reread the card. 2 learn english
What?
Hard to rate but I a agree with Evident’s review. This could get annoying fairly quick.
Am I reading this right? To me it seems you take 10 random cards from your opponent’s deck. That is usually more than a third. Seems quite likely any combo deck’s win condition now is in your deck. Gnomeferatu could, with luck, destroy combo decks, and this is 10 Gnomeferatus (without the bodies)?
No it’s from their class, not their deck.
No this puts 10 random cards from your opponents CLASS not deck into your deck and changes their cost to 1, so you do NOT steal your opponents cards like benedictus or something.
So this is a boost too togwaggle and the preist legendary that copies opponents deck 🙂
I hope that this card will make Tess more playable. Even though my win rate isn’t that good (45-50%), I just can’t stop using her.
I compare this to Renounce Darkness from warlock, their effect is pretty similar.
A few differences:
– Renounce is cheaper
– Renounce reduces card cost in your hand
+- Renounce changes cards in your hand
+ Espionage cards only cost 1.
Now Renounce was played in a meme deck, however could still win you a lot of games if you’re lucky. (ofcourse this had a lot to do with the Barnes-Y’Shaarj combo).
Renounce has the upside that it’s cheaper and it can get rid of useless cards in your hand. But because of the existens of Preperation and because I think changing your hand in random cards is overal bad (including making them cost 1 less), these upsides are almost non-existant.
Espionage on the other hand has the huge upside of you being able to draw a 1 mana high tempo card. Combo this with Rogue’s amazing carddraw:
-Fan of knives (Shiv or Thalnos)
-Elven Minstrel
-Gadgetzan (works well with 1 mana spells)
-Sprint
Running a lot of carddraw also makes rogues strongest card, , even stronger.
Combine this with Valeera the Hollow and you might have yourself a control rogue.
Now I’m not saying it’s OP, it’s randomness will probably (at least a little bit) make this a meme card. But keep in mind the amount of different decks that are playable right now, some of them also look like meme decks. I think it might be unwise to say this card is unplayable because you’ll probably be surprised.
I’ll admit, I’m a sucker for deck/class stealing cards, so seeing this card printed makes me very happy. That said, I’m not entirely sure how much play it will see. On the plus side, this card has the potential to regularly generate huge amounts of value. Most class cards, for most classes, are at least playable at 1 mana. However, as others have pointed out, you’d be spending 4 mana that wouldn’t impact the board state, and you still have to actually draw the cards you generated. Its rate of play may depend on the meta of Boomsday more than anything else.
People largely overestimate the size of random class cards.
An average class card costs 3.5 mana. Which means you get a 2.5 mana discount for each of the shuffled cards that you draw. Those are bad cards, so let’s say it’s a 2 mana tempo gain, and that’s being generous.
If you play this when there are 20 cards in your deck, you draw a discounted card every 3 draws. So it’s horrendous: you need 6 turns to get your mana back, and at this point you’re still down 1 card, so you need 9 turns to break even.
There is synergy with tess, spectral dagger, and myra’s, but the card is so bad in the first place, you shouldn’t be too hopeful.
Or you prep sprint.
If you use your turns four and five to do little else other than hopefully getting a god turn six and beyond, then you are really asking for any deck faster than Big Spell Mage to run your over during the two free turns you’re giving them. Perhaps you’ll survive, but without getting a massive taunt or board clearing spell in the first five cards off your deck, you’re probably going to still lose.
I aggree. Overated. Diluating tour deck like this isn’t a good idea.
you can re-spawn the converted cards with tess and you have 2 in a deck,
be nerf like 4~5cards in deck , lol this card is so stupid