Quick Pstryke

Playing Psylocke reminded me of when I first got into psudoku: frustrating and confusing at first, but the more I kept at it, the more it started to become a really interesting puzzle.

To my psurpryse, once I started understanding her gameplay, I started to understand that she psynergized well with certain cards that were collecting dust in the collection: mainly Brute Force and Quick Strike.

The idea of this deck is similar to the classic Hawkeye deck "Brute Force Arrows" from teamcanadahockey2002 https://marvelcdb.com/decklist/view/14937/brute-force-arrows-1.0

The first and a big difference is the inclusion of Honed Technique. Quick Strike just so happens to be an event, so with HT down you are looking at a minimum of 5, but we can push that up to 9 as the game goes on.

Speaking of upgrades, all 9 upgrades have something in common…they’re all pskylls. An early Training Regimen makes it incredibly easy to build your board up. Couple that with Forge being an extra way to ensure Cerebro gets down early means you are going to be built up in no time. Flipping up to hero with 8 cards and 2 bonus resources? Don’t mind if I do.

Why Forge with only 1 target for his tutor? He’s still a 2 cost ally that can cheaply ping a tough and chump block.

Back to our upgrades, Honed Technique and Combat Training are your priority targets to get down asap. These two alone get your Quick Strike up to 6 damage. I tend to play psolo so more often than not my basic power is going to thwarting. This means the Forced Interrupt is a non-issue from Brute Force, pushing our Quick Strike up to a potential 9 damage.

I’ve been able to consistently get 2 Quick Strike’s off to close out an encounter, hitting for a respectable 25 (2 qs + basic) after getting fully set up. That’s a very attainable number, and you can push the damage much higher if you’re lucky. Angel can add as much as 13 to that combo (your basic for 7 + 2 from Angel + 4 after you’re readied) or the jackpot is 3 Quick Strike + Angel in hand to get up to 40 damage. It will be tough to get as you'll need 2 double resources in hand and to pull both an ally and skill from your supports. Utilize Assault Training to stack the deck in your favor.

Even just one Quick Strike and cashing out your Brute Force with a basic hits for 16.

Two notable outliers in the deck are Press the Advantage and Sunfire. I like PTA as a cheap ping for tough as tough becomes an obstacle with this deck, and you're almost assured the card draw the Betsy. bonus points for being a mental resource! Sunfire looks like an awkward slot in with his inability to consistently trigger his kicker, but he's a two-cost block to ping said toughs and more importantly can be grabbed with Cerebro. That fact puts him above other picks like Spider-Girl and Throg in my opinion. Both these spots are very flexible so sub in what you like.

Lastly and probably most importantly is figuring out how to psequence your attacks. When pstryking quickly with Quick Pstryke, you want to end with both Psi-Energies landing on Psi-Katana. Psi-Knife is a surefire way to trigger Honed Technique, and after you exhaust it, you may flip it over to the side we want it to be on. If you start your turn with 2 Katanas in hand, a basic thwart sets this up perfectly while also thwarting for two. Both weapons start out on Psi-Knife? Thwart for the big 3 and now you have two ways to trigger HT guaranteed. Even if you don't need to flip them, say on a setup turn or just getting an ally out, keep it on Knife and keep some great thwart while having access to HT procs!

This is geared solo but scales great into 2 player. Just make sure you have the ability to flip Psi-Energies if needed by having some leftover threat on a scheme or by making sure to Defend.

Thanks for checking this out! Psee you in the next one.