Psylocke & Honed Techique:- Psionic Perfection!

Intro

Last Friday I published my first deck on this site, waxing lyrical about how perfect Venom is with the Honed Technique card, link below.

https://marvelcdb.com/decklist/view/32511/venom-honed-technique-symbiotic-perfection-1.0

One day after posting it my Angel and Psylocke packs arrived in the post and I was immediately struck by how easily Psylocke could be plugged into that deck and have the potential to be even more consistent. Yeah I know, this one IS tapping into the new hotness...

If you've already seen that Venom deck, the text below may look a little familiar as the piloting instructions are very similar. However we need to make a few adjustments but this is made simpler by Psylocke's ability to generate two resources per round fairly reliably.

Honed Technique Psylocke's access to two resources from the get-go makes it much easier to meet the conditions required to get the card to the table, and also ensures you can trigger it at least once per round. Add into this that she starts with her weapons in play (and they can never be discarded) then Fusillade becomes your most damaging event. Most cards have been chosen for their resource to help with this and to potentially open up multiple uses of Honed Technique per round. 2 copies increases the odds of getting it in hand early. It helps that it also has a so the extra copies aren't 'wasted'. Honed Technique has the skill trait so if you can get Training Regimen into play early it will allow you to grab it from your deck.

Good Economy The two resources from her weapons help get around her hand size of 4 and Martial Prowess is there to help with the many many attack events. 2 x The Power of Aggression help with the more expensive aggression cards, most notably Honed Technique of course!

Great Damage Once Honed Technique is on the table, Fusillade will hit for 7, No Quarter will hit for 6, Into the Fray hits a minion for 9, Psi-Bow Attack hits for 6 with ranged and Psychic Assault for 5 and inflicts Confused.

Not really phased by Exhaust effects So many events in this deck provide the majority of your damage, so having your identity exhausted is pretty trivial. You can defend with Psylocke against the harder hitting villains and still be able to dole out enough pain. Martial Arts Training gives her a respectable 3 DEF.

Good Card Draw A hero hand size of 4 hurts a little so this is important. When No Quarter is boosted by Honed Technique it will hit for 6 making it much more likely to cause excess damage. The potential to draw up to 5 cards is very nice! Psylocke is similar to Venom in that she can adjust adjust her ATK from between 2 to 4 so it's quite easy to line up a minion or even sometimes the villain with 1 remaining HP. She will likely be changing to alter-ego to heal quite often so Moira MacTaggert is in the deck to take advantage. Training Regimen can also bag you an extra card in alter-ego as long as you have at least 1 skill card left in the deck. Press the Advantage takes advantage of her ability to throw out lots of confuse status effects and does a respectable 3 damage (with HT in play). Not bad for a 1 cost card! Mental Detection can potentially draw you 2 cards in a pinch but I don't think it's the best use of it.

You're Tough? Psylocke doesn't care Psi-Katana has piercing so this should never be an issue. Access to retaliate through Weapons Training also helps.

Decent Thwarting Capability With both weapons turned to their Psi-Knife side she has a decent 3 THW and Mental Detection can remove up to 5 threat. She will likely struggle against the villains that scheme hard so she's best paired with a good thwarting Hero. Into the Fray has been added to help plug this gap but is reliant on a minion being in play. However, when it works it can be spectacular. Inflict 9 damage and up to 8 threat off the main scheme for 3 cost, easily paid for through the weapons and Martial Prowess. Shame it doesn't have overkill, but that's probably asking too much :-D

Board Control Between Flurry of Blades, Psionic Redirect, Psychic Assault and Psionic Training Psylocke throws out confused status effects like confetti so she can drop to alter-ego with few problems. This is great as she will often need to heal, and take advantage of the larger hand size, Moira MacTaggert and Training Regimen. That's an 8 card hand right there, folks. Telepathic Suggestion is one of the best treachery cancels in the game, doing up to 4 damage or removing 2 threat as a bonus.

Mulligan Priorities I would generally mulligan hard for a Honed Technique or Training Regimen, and when I say hard I mean literally throw away any card that isn't either of these. Honed Technique and a copy of The Power of Aggression is the dream opening hand.

That's it. Really!

I'm a huge fan of decks that aren't reliant on card A or card B before they start to function and I believe this falls into that category. True, it mainly hinges around having Honed Technique in play but it performs quite adequately without it. You will just notice the vast difference in damage potential once you get it to the table.

Closing Thoughts So... who is better with Honed Technique, Venom or Psylocke? It's a tricky one to answer.

Psylocke always has the ablity to pay for Honed Technique, whereas Venom could potentially sit on a hand with no other resources. Venom has much better staying power with 4 DEF and more healing but Psylocke hands out confused so often she can get around this by dropping to alter-ego often, heal and then come out of it with an 8 card hand.

I definitely need to test this Psylocke deck more to be certain, and will likely tweak it over the next few days.

I've listed it primarily as a multiplayer deck as it may struggle against villains that scheme hard, but playing it solo isn't beyond the realms of possiblity.

Edit:- if you want to test this deck out solo, I'd recommend playing against MaGog from the Mojomania set. No-one cares when he threats out, right? :-)