Psylocke is one of my (Ina’s) new favourite heroes. Her basic kit is versatile, her cards are strong, and she starts with her resource generators. But why isn’t she S-tier? Well, let’s dive into it.
Psylocke’s Strengths
- On board permanent resource generators
- Versatile ATK and THW
- High amount of skill expression
- Has piercing, guard and patrol avoidance
Psylocke’s weapons start on the board. They are her resource generators and what gives her extra ATK and THW. This versatility, similar to Phoenix, allows her to contribute to killing minions, fighting the villain, and managing the threat levels.
The best thing about Psylocke’s weapons is that they are permanent. Which means nothing can make you remove them. They cannot leave play, they cannot be discarded, and because they are put in play by a setup ability, they do not count towards your maximum or minimum deck size.
Managing your weapons is key to success with Psylocke, regardless of what aspect you are playing. It’s the difference between an extra draw when you need it, damage on multiple targets, and confusion.
Another thing I love about Psylocke is her skills. Martial Arts Training can give you +1 DEF, but being able to ready Psylocke after defending is big. Weapon Training gives her Retaliate, and you can use it to ready any WEAPON, not just her energy weapons. My favourite, though, is Psionic Training. This allows her to ignore guard and patrol keywords, something a lot of newer enemies love to pack.
All of those, you can get with Training Regimen. It’s one of the cards I’ll go hard mulliganing for.
Psylocke’s Weaknesses
- Small hand size
- Low base stats
- Two restricted weapons on permanent cards
- Weak Alter-ego action ability
Psylocke has a small hand size (4) in hero form, which can be extremely rough despite her resource generators. Cards win games, and while she has ways to draw cards, they are not as reliable or come at the cost of something more important. This limit forces you to go with a heavy setup and rely more on your board than on your hand. At least she is better than She-Hulk.
Her weapons are great, my favourite part of her kit, but there is a downside – the Psi-Katana sides are “restricted”. As a reminder, you can have only two restricted weapons on the board, which means you’d need a Side Holster (Venom) if you want to play some cool cards like Psimitar (NeXt Evolution), which works great with her kit. It’s not impossible, of course, as long as you don’t draw her obligation, you can always only keep one katana out, but if you have cards like Godslayer or Hand Cannon, you’d want that extra ATK.
In all of our games, I’ve barely used her alter-ego ability. You can basically read it as “for one resource, shuffle a Psionic card back into the deck. With limited hand size and card draw, that’s not as good. It’s not a deal-breaker, but it’s not especially useful outside of extremely specific circumstances.
Psylocke, Angel and their Team-up
Psylocke’s signature ally, Angel, is not a bad card. 3 Cost, 3 Health for 1 THW and 2 ATK, but most importantly, it’s his response – ready your identity. That means you can ready either your alter-ego or hero form. Sadly, it’s only when he comes from hand, which means Make the Call or other ways to get him out won’t trigger that response.
She is not reliant on her ally, so playing with Hero Angel won’t make her weaker. If anything, it makes them a strong team because they can both benefit from Soaring Hearts.
Soaring Hearts (Angel and Psylocke Team-Up) is alright. I’d include it if both heroes are on the table, as both Psylocke and Angel benefit from being ready, and they have strong identity-specific events. Angel, however, I think benefits more from it, due to being a stronger hero.
Due to the unique rule, you can’t have basic ally Angel, but I think her signature ally is good enough.
Aspect Pairings of Psylocke
- Aggression
- Justice
- Leadership
- Protection
Aggression
Psylocke is terrifying in Aggression thanks to her access to powerful psionic-only attacks like Psi-Bow Attack, which isn’t that good, but is a decent attack with a mental resource available for Honed Technique when needed (which is a Skill!), as well Psychic Assault (which is honestly a better confuse than just about anything available to Justice, strangely).
We decided to lean into this for our own deck, which we’ll talk more about below.
Justice
With Float Like a Butterfly, making a confusion deck was my first instinct. Sonic Rifle is a good choice, but that means I have to either risk losing it or pack a Side Holster. It worked pretty well, but it’s extremely fragile against harder villains that become Steady and Stalwart.
Justice packs some nice skills, and with her support, Training Regimen, you can fish for the right components. Skilled Investigator, Upside the Head, Heroic Intuition, Counterintelligence, Operative Skill, and Sense of Justice are all Skills.
Leadership
Psylocke’s kit is strong on its own, so you can give her any generalised leadership decks and she’ll do fine. Her Psionic nature once again pulls through here, giving you an improved version of Cerebro to grab whatever X-Men character takes your fancy.
Protection
With her skill, 3 DEF (2 basic + 1 from Martial Arts Training) is nothing to sniff at, but her small hand size in hero form (4) makes for some boring turns. With Martial Arts Training, she can ready up after defending, and with Psionic Redirect, she can negate most of the damage.
Our Psylocke’s Deck
For our Legacy Environment (all cards available) deck, I chose to go with Aggression. Check out our list over on MarvelCDB.
The deck’s basic strategy is to play Honed Technique as soon as possible to pump up the power of Psi-Bow Attack and Psychic Assault. The resources in the deck are tailored to support that plan while ensuring Psylocke can continue to deal an insane amount of damage every turn.
At the time of writing, Psylocke isn’t in the Current Environment, so we’ve not put together a Current Environment deck for her. If you’d like to see one, let us know over on our socials!
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