“My mind is sharper than any blade.”
As a powerful telepath and skilled martial artist, Betsy Braddock—better known as Psylocke—cleaves her enemies’ minds with her psionic knives just as easily as her katanas cut through their armor. Psylocke developed strong bonds with her fellow mutants when she trained with the X-Men; now, she risks her life to protect them as a member of X-Force.
This powerful psionic slashes her way into battle with this expansion pack, which introduces Psylocke as a new playable hero alongside her seventeen signature cards. With a pre-built Justice deck ready to play right away, you’ll be able to thwart the villain’s schemes from the moment you open the box. With her versatile upgrades and unmatched skill, Psylocke is a psychic powerhouse who can adapt to any situation.
Psionics and Skill
As a hero all about using her psionics to enhance her combat abilities, Betsy Braddock (Psylocke, 1B) begins the game with two Psi-Energy upgrades in play. She can exhaust these upgrades to shuffle Psionic cards from her discard pile back into her deck, but that’s only scratching the surface of what Psylocke (Psylocke, 1A) is capable of.
Each of her Psi-Energy upgrades is two-sided: their initial side is Psi-Knife (Psylocke, 2A), a handy upgrade that boosts her THW stat and also can be used to generate a “mental” resource. However, by either using it as a resource or through triggering her Psi-Energy Control ability, Psylocke can flip a Psi-Knife over to its Psi-Katana (Psylocke, 2B) side, which boosts her ATK, gives her basic attacks piercing, and can still function as a resource-generator later. This means that, even though Psylocke has a hand size of 4, she has two extra resources she can use each round on top of the ability to tweak her THW and ATK stats to whatever she needs in the moment!
Naturally, the rest of Psylocke’s kit builds off her Psi-Energy upgrades as well. Events like Flurry of Blades (Psylocke, 4), Mental Detection (Psylocke, 5), and Psionic Redirect (Psylocke, 6) all have effects that scale differently depending on how many Psi-Knives versus Psi-Katanas you control. Meanwhile, her signature ally Angel (Psylocke, 3) ensures that she can get multiple uses out of her boosted stats, and her Weapons Training (Psylocke, 11) upgrade lets her ready her Psi-Energy upgrades so they can generate resources multiple times in one turn. With all these tools at her disposal, it’s clear that Psylocke can have an answer to anything the villain throws at her!
Though her signature cards give her plenty to work with, Psylocke’s pre-built deck gives her even more options in battle. Even though her deck uses the Justice aspect, it packs quite a bit of offensive potential, further reinforcing Psylocke’s versatility. Call on Betsy’s twin brother Captain Britain (Psylocke, 12) to help you deal with minions and side schemes, then use Psylocke’s Psi-Katanas to help you pay for a Concussive Blow (Psylocke, 14) on the villain. You may have noticed that, between cards like Psionic Training (Psylocke, 10) and the aforementioned Concussive Blow and Flurry of Blades, Psylocke can inflict a lot of confusion with her deck, allowing her to get full use out of cards like Cypher (Psylocke, 13), Upside the Head (Psylocke, 15), and Float Like a Butterfly (Psylocke, 17).
Of course, being a Psionic hero with a Justice deck, Psylocke has plenty of options for dealing with threat. In addition to the tools in her own kit, Psylocke can use The Power of the Mind (Psylocke, 21) to play powerful Psionic events, or she can use it to fuel the ability on Telepathy (Psylocke, 24) for an extra bit of threat removal. Once you’ve got Psylocke’s thwart engine running, clear off the last threat from Lay the Trap (Psylocke, 16) for some hefty damage to the villain!
The Power of the Mind
With unrivaled flexibility in her signature kit and a skillset that can adapt to any threat, Psylocke is an awesome hero and a fantastic addition to any hero team. Look forward to picking up the Psylocke Hero Pack when it releases!