Tuesday was a fun day if you had your eyes on your social media or discord as we had 9 new cards spoiled from the upcoming Faltering Allegiances set courtesy of A Renewed Hope. The card that stood out to me as worthy of an article unto itself was the plot Intelligence Operation.

Today on echobase we are going to take a quick look into the potential power of this plot.

Intelligence Operation is a grey neutral plot that allows for a 31 point team if all of our characters have the Spy subtype. So here it is: the plot that allows you to play both Jyn Erso – Rebellion Operative and Cassian Andor – Efficient Agent both elite on your squad, or if you’d prefer this will allow us to partner Jyn Erso & Galen Erso both elite.

For the Villains we also only have three characters with the character subtype Spy: ISB Agent, Bala Tik and Bazine Netal. This plot allows for two otherwise illegal lineups for villain:

The plot itself does more than just allow for an additional point in squad building: you can exhaust the plot to take an action to play an opponents detected card. This is not limited to events; this could be any type of card: Upgrade, downgrade, or even a support. That sounds nuts good right?

When running two character’s that have the Detect keyword, once both those characters are activated you are effectively working with a 7 card hand as you are able to play those Detected cards (8 card hand if running Bala + 2 ISB Agents). Paired with Jyn Erso‘s ability to lock your opponent out from playing the detected cards, this feels strong.

For your opponent however, there is a work around: Detected cards are always considered to be in a player’s hand and there is nothing to stop your opponent from discarding the Detected card to re-roll dice. The pressure enabled by the plot and Jyn‘s ability may gain you tempo and mess with your opponents sequencing as they may just burn cards as an action solely to prevent you from playing them even if they do not have dice in the pool.

If you are running Galen Erso and your opponent does choose to discard a detected card, you will gain a resource. This is another passive pseudo-control aspect as they may not want to discard the detected cards so that you don’t gain resources. As Galen’s ability is passive you will gain a resource every time a detected card is discarded, not just that first time each round.

As stated on the plot – “Action – Exhaust this plot to play a detected card” and “This card does not ready during the upkeep phase” – this is a one time deal. Once you have used this action the plot will not ready during the up keep phase.

This is where our man Cassian Andor comes in and where the hero build may take an advantage over the villains; with his Power Action (Play a yellow card from your hand. Then you may spot a leader to ready a non-character card) you can play a yellow card from your hand to ready Intelligence Operation allowing you to use the action on the plot an additional time. Cassian allows you to include yellow cards in a mono-red build so long as they have the intel keyword, and thanks to Faltering Allegiances we now have 6 yellow intel cards to choose from:

Intelligence Operations has a really crucial subtype – Mission. Why is this important? It means that we can run Covert Missions to spot a mission plot to search our deck for a card and give a character a shield.

In a Jyn / Cassian build, a round 1 Kamino Cloning Facility to build up over the course of the game to bring a Naboo Palace Guard to your team sounds pretty good. Worth noting the Palace Guard would gain Guardian as Jyn is a Leader. Alternatively, you search your deck for a yellow intel card to make use of Cassian Andor‘s Power Action. Perhaps in a Bala Tik / ISB Agent build you search for the new Vibrosword (that thing is nuts)? Covert Mission is a brilliant card and with this plot it grants you a host of options when drawn, as well as a shield for one of your characters.

I expect to see a few Intelligence Operation decks running wild over the course of the next few months.

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