Psi-Drop Kick

Drop Kick seemed like a no-brainer to me when I first saw that Psylocke had two built in resource generators, but to my surprise there aren't currently many lists running it! Seeking to change that, I ended up building my own deck and settled on this super fun list.

The Plan

At its core, this deck strives to do one thing: stun and confuse the villain as much as possible. With Psylocke's unique cards, Drop Kick, Psychic Assault, and Mockingbird, we have 4 stuns and 9 confuses! This makes Psylocke able to easily flip down and take advantage of that 6 hand size and our other Alter-Ego goodies.

Outside of stunning and confusing, this deck aims to provide as much flexibility as possible. Brawn and Machine Man come along to provide much needed flexibility in thwarting and attacking (or in Brawn's case, both at once!). Directed Force and Psi-Bow Attack both provide additional ways to chip away at the villains health and deal with pesky minions, so this deck has no shortage of damage output. Thwarting is a potential concern, but between all our confuses, Mental Detection, and our ability to have 3 thwart, threat has generally been plenty manageable.

The Buildup

While we're slinging our psionic powers and kicking some heads, we'll use our excess resources to build up and become even stronger. Card draw is very helpful with our 4 hand size in Hero form, so Avengers Mansion and Moira MacTaggert are great ways of giving us more cards. With two Katanas, we still are only generating two physical resources for Drop Kick, so Martial Prowess and Helicarrier both serve as ways to guarantee being able to get the bonus effect on it (and generate resources for other cards when we don't have one). Combat Training provides nice damage, allowing us to hit 4 atk on our hero, and Assault Training lets us shuffle back in Drop Kick and Psychic Assault for even more stuns and confuses.

The Kicking (and Psychic-ing)

In order to keep Drop Kick as reliable as possible, we tend to default to having both Katanas out. However, this doesn't mean that we lack the flexibility our Psi-Weapons normally provide! Through Psi-Energy Control and the effect on our Psi Weapons, it is still quite easy to have Psi-Knives out for basic thwarting or for events.

In addition to kicking, we do a whole lot of other stuff to damage the villain. We have Psi-Bow Attack to deal 4 damage, Psychic Assault to deal 3 and confuse, Flurry of Blades to deal 4 and confuse, and Directed Force to deal 2 damage whenever we make a basic attack (thanks to our Katanas giving us piercing) or use our Bow! I was not originally super keen on Directed Force, but it really surprised me in practice. Its a skill, which means it can be grabbed with Training Regimen. Having such consistent access to it whenever you need it, or being able to just grab it as a resource when you don't need to play it, means that it pretty much never goes to waste.

The Other Considerations

• Professor X is definitely a potential consideration as an additional way to confuse the villain, but between all the other confuse effects and how often you flip down to alter-ego, I found that he was often not really worth playing.
• The Power of the Mind is worth considering due to the raw density of Psionic cards we have. I think that Psylocke is plenty rich enough as is, and running so many resources really ups the risk of getting weak hands with our 4 hand size, so I opted not to include them.
• IPAC is a really solid option as Psylocke loves to have more cards to play with, but I found it wasn't completely necessary and decided to go for the less risky approach.
• Symbiote Suit similarly is another option for letting Psylocke see more cards, and she definitely wouldn't hate the additional stats. Again, I opted to play more safe.
• Weapon X is another option for card draw, and it lacks the drawback of the other two options. This is definitely a sound inclusion, I just opted not to include it because I didn't want to discard Drop Kick or Psychic Assault from my deck.
• Honed Technique generally ends up paying for itself damage wise, but I dislike the awkwardness of needing to care about both and resources, opting instead to solely focus on for Drop Kick.
• Fluid Motion is really easy to trigger with all the attack events we have, so much so that I'd even consider two of these, but I found that we had plenty of damage already and could focus on setting up economy instead.

The Conclusion

This deck has been an absolute blast to build and play. It's very fun being able to stun and confuse the villain so much in addition to doing a ton of damage, and the innate trickiness of making sure your Psi-Weapons are on the right side at the right time keeps your brain engaged. Psylocke has become one of my favorite heroes to play, and I hope this deck will make her one of your favorites too!