Take a Cerebral Approach to HS—Unleashed!

A good place to start when building a Psychic-type deck is with Jirachi (1/95), a Basic Pokémon with impressive skill. Jirachi can use its Time Hollow attack to force your opponent to remove an Evolution card from each of his or her Pokémon up to the number of Energy attached to Jirachi. Any Evolution cards affected by Time Hollow are returned to the opponent's hand and are therefore playable the following turn.

So, what's the big deal? Well, though the damage counters on the Pokémon don't change, the lower-level Pokémon revealed by the Time Hollow attack almost always has fewer maximum HP than its evolved form. Therefore, while the number of damage counters on a Pokémon might not be enough to Knock Out its evolved form, they may Knock Out its next Stage down! For example, your opponent has Beedrill (12/95) on the Bench. It has already been roughed up and has taken 80 damage. That's not enough for it to be Knocked Out—however, if Jirachi uses its Time Hollow attack and forces Beedrill back into your opponent's hand, returning it to its Basic 80 HP Kakuna, that Pokémon will get Knocked Out!

You can perform this attack on as many of your opponent's Pokémon as you have Energy attached to Jirachi, and that's where Jirachi's other skill comes in! Its Stardust Song Poké-Power lets you dig through your discard pile for up to three Psychic Energy cards (the actual number is dependent on the results of three coin flips) and attach them directly onto Jirachi. Later on in this article, we'll check out other ways Stardust Song can help you, too.

Another impressive Basic Pokémon is Misdreavus (54/95), a Psychic-type Pokémon with a single attack. The Sharpshooting attack lets you choose any 1 of your opponent's Pokémon and do 10 damage to it. At first, that doesn't sound like much unless the Pokémon your target is already close to being Knocked Out. However, once you evolve Misdreavus into Mismagius (5/95), it pays off! Mismagius can use its Psychic Pulse attack to do 30 damage to the Defending Pokémon, as well as 10 damage to every Pokémon on your opponent's Bench that already has damage counters on it. The more you've used Misdreavus's Sharpshooting attack on multiple targets, the more effective Psychic Pulse becomes. What's particularly nice about this combination is that both the Sharpshooting and Psychic Pulse attacks are cheap, each costing only 1 Psychic Energy.

There are two other good ways to prep your opponent's Bench for Psychic Pulse.  You could use Zubat's (70/95) Double Attack attack, which lets you choose 2 of your opponent's Benched Pokémon and inflict 10 damage to each of them. Like Sharpshooting, this attack costs a mere 1 Psychic Energy. Alternatively, bust out Metagross's (4/95) Double Leg Hammer attack—delivering a hefty 40 damage to 2 of your opponent's Benched Pokémon! On a cautionary note, while Metagross's attack is the more powerful of the two, it costs 3 Psychic Energy and the Pokémon itself is a Stage 2 Evolution, making it more difficult to get into play.

You can also take advantage of Mismagius's Magical Trans Poké-Power, something that works well with Jirachi's Stardust Song Poké-Power. Magical Trans lets you move 1 Psychic Energy from one of your Pokémon to another of your Pokémon once per turn. This means that all the Energy you collected via Stardust Song can be distributed quickly to other Pokémon. There is no restriction as to the type of Pokémon Magical Trans works on, so you can transfer the Energy to Pokémon with attacks that rely on larger quantities of Colorless Energy. For instance, in your deck you could include Sudowoodo (9/95): a Basic Pokémon with 90 HP, and a Rumble attack that does 40 damage. It's a Fighting-type Pokémon, but Rumble requires only 3 Colorless Energy—meaning you don't have to mix in other Energy besides Psychic to use the attack.

Several of the Psychic-type Pokémon are effective at inflicting Special Conditions, which is good for stalling or interrupting your opponent's plans. HS-Unleashed has two Crobat with attacks that cause Special Conditions. Crobat (14/95) can use Supersonic, which not only does 30 damage, but also makes the Defending Pokémon Confused. (Incidentally, this Crobat also possesses an attack that is, potentially, one of the strongest belonging to a Psychic-type Pokémon in the HS—Unleashed expansion: its Hurricane Wing attack does 30 damage times the number of heads you get in four coin flips—meaning it can deal up to 120 damage in one turn.)

The other Crobat, Crobat Prime (84/95), takes the Poison Special Condition to a whole new level of intensity! Its Severe Poison attack doesn't just Poison the Defending Pokémon; it quadruples the potency of that Special Condition. After every turn, the Poisoned Pokémon has 4 damage counters added to it instead of the usual 1. And, continuing with the theme of attacking Benched Pokémon, Crobat Prime can also use its Skill Dive attack to hit any of your opponent's Pokémon for 30 damage.