Psylocke Delegates Diplomacy

Introduction

This deck aims to exploit the power of Gunboat Diplomacy without relying too heavily on a single gimmick.

For early iterations of this concept, I focused on pumping up Psylocke's THW, allowing Gunboat to reach stratospheric numbers (9 thwart and 9 damage). However, it's very costly to ramp that hard. This is a higher tempo alternative which still focuses on Gunboat Diplomacy without going overboard (pun intended).

Part of Gunboat's value is that it utilizes allies without causing consequential damage. When we target two allies, we are essentially getting the value of 4 activations without expending any ally HP. In other words, that's essentially 2 readies and 4+ healing for 2ER. We also get to use our THW values for the damage.

Our ultimate goal is to get two allies into play, each with Mission Training, and then target them with Gunboat Diplomacy. The combo generates up to 7 damage and 7 thwarting and can be distributed among targets how we choose, which is pretty crazy for 2ER. Meanwhile Psylocke can do whatever she wants while her allies do her bidding.

Allies

We're running a combination of X-Men and X-Force allies since the ultimate goal is to target two allies with Gunboat Diplomacy. We want more X-Men allies overall, which gives us more consistency since Psylocke can always sub in as the X-Force character in a pinch.

• Blindfold's stats are below curve, but her ability makes up for it.
• Dazzler's confuse is a big deal because we want to flip down every chance we get.
• Deadpool's stats help us find extra damage.
• Marvel Girl is a great Gunboat target whose stats pass the vanilla test.
• Marrow is here on her own merits. She's 4 damage and chump blocker for only 3ER. She's helpful if you don't have a dedicated damage dealer at the table, but she can be cut if the damage isn't needed.
• Pete Wisdom is the ideal Gunboat target with his beefy THW stat.
• Professor X is great on his own merits, awesome for Gunboat, and can be brought back repeatedly with Betsy and Cerebro.
• Triage helps keep us and our allies healthy.
• White Queen is a good Gunboat target. Her ability also helps us clear off any statuses that are blocking us from getting max value from Gunboat.

Events

Psylocke's kit includes 10 events, so we don't need many more.

• Gunboat Diplomacy is our bread and butter.
• One Way or Another is a card I rarely include because my decks are multiplayer-focused, but it's very strong in this deck as long as we know the scenario has side schemes that we can handle. It helps cover for Psylocke's main weakness, which is her hand size in Hero form.

Player Side Schemes

• Build Support helps us get out whichever support is most critical, including supports we may have discarded.

Resources

• We're just running the basic double resources. They help us get our allies and supports out faster. I do not recommend adding any more resources. You may even want to cut some of these doubles to ensure you don't draw a dead hand in hero form.

Supports

• Avengers Mansion is a perfect complement to Psylocke's kit. She has tons of money but lacks card draw.
• Cerebro lets us tutor X-Men to enable Gunboat. It lets us tutor Professor X, who can then be reshuffled into our deck using Betsy's AE ability. If nothing else, it lets us draw an extra card to use as a resource. Since we're Psionic and flipping down constantly, this card pays for itself very quickly.
• Children of the Atom lets us get maximum value from Utopia and also makes it easier to enable Gunboat.
• Utopia lets us get even more value out of our buffed allies. Once Children of the Atom is in play, we can ready up Psylocke instead.
• Vigilante Training is very slow, but getting two extra copies of Gunboat Diplomacy each time we go through the deck is a lot of value. I'm still experimenting with this card.

Upgrades

• Mission Training is primarily here to make Gunboat even stronger. We'll typically want one copy on Pete (via Children of the Atom) and another copy on a 2-THW ally, bringing Gunboat's total value up to 7 damage and 7 thwarting.
• Skilled Investigator pays for itself almost immediately. It works especially well with One Way or Another since we'll be intentionally putting extra side schemes into play. We can also tutor it with Training Regimen.
• X-Gene works for all 10 of Psylocke's events.

Honorable Mentions

• Heroic Intuition and Specialized Training can boost Psylocke's THW for Gunboat, but I generally want her to be attacking, defending, or recovering instead.
• Psimitar is cool, but it's awkward since our Katanas are restricted. Psionic cards are also not very high on our list of priorities.
• X-Mansion can help keep us a bit healthier, but we really don't want to draw a full hand of supports and upgrades when we need answers to threats.
• Team-Building Exercise has a lot of targets, but it is outclassed by other options. We don't need more money; we need more cards.
• I experimented with two copies of Children of the Atom to help get Gunboat online. It does do the trick, but the second copy feels terrible to draw.
• I tried two copies of Vigilante Training, but drawing a hand full of low tempo cards can easily kill us if we're not careful.
• Moira helps us draw more cards, but she's outclassed by other options in terms of efficiency.