High-Speed Riders is just around the corner, and with it comes a new purely Psychic-Type Deck theme: PSY-Frame! Psychic monsters have made a splash in the past in themes like Gusto and Ritual Beast, but finally have a full group of monsters that are dedicated to reading your opponent’s thoughts and controlling every action they make in the Duel. Next you’ll say: “There’s no way such a thing is possible!” and then click “read more” to find out what I’m talking about.
The PSY-Frame theme is based around predicting your opponent’s moves, and being able to stop their plays before they even happen. Your PSY-Framegear Tuner Monsters have effects that can to respond to each basic action in the game, like activating a Spell Card or attacking with a monster. The only condition is that you have to control no monsters to use these effects!

The cool thing about this Deck is that each of your Tuners will Summon itself from your hand and another monster from your hand, Deck or Graveyard with its effect, but they’re banished during the End Phase. Thankfully, there are a number of things you can do with them while they’re on the field, including Synchro Summoning on your opponent’s turn!

The first PSY-Frame monster we’re going to look at is the most important despite the fact that it’s a Normal Monster. You’ll be seeing a lot of this card whether you’re playing against PSY-Frame or using the Deck yourself:

PSY-Frame Driver may not have any effects, but it’s the most important PSY-Frame monster in the Deck, since this is the monster that all of your PSY-Framegear Tuner Monsters will Summon when they use their effects. 2500 ATK is nothing to scoff at, so the Driver is a serviceable attacker when you need him to be, and being Level 6 opens up some very strong Synchro Summons!

The PSY-Framegear monsters are all LIGHT Psychic-type Tuner Monsters that you can’t Normal Summon or Set. The only way you can get them into play is via a card effect. You can use things like Emergency Teleport to get them onto the field, but most of the time you’ll be using their effects to Summon themselves! There are 5 PSY-Framegears in High-Speed Riders: 2 Level 1 monsters, and 3 Level 2 monsters, and they all Special Summon themselves from your hand and a PSY-Frame Driver from your hand, Deck, or Graveyard, when your opponent performs a certain action while you control no monsters. On top of that, you’ll get to perform a bonus effect depending on which PSY-Framegear you Summoned!

PSY-Framegear Alpha can activate when your opponent Normal or Special Summons a monster, and will allow you to add any “PSY-Frame” card from your Deck to your hand (except another Alpha). PSY-Framegear Beta triggers when your opponent attacks directly, and will destroy the attacking monster and end the Battle Phase when Summoned. The 3 Level 2 PSY-Framegears all negate the activation of a specific card/effect and destroy it – PSY-Framegear Gamma negates the activation of monster effects, PSY-Framegear Delta stops Spell Cards, and PSY-Framegear Epsilon will negate your opponent’s Trap Cards. The final part of their effects banishes all of the monsters Summoned during the End Phase, which is a pretty hefty downside. However, there are a few ways you can take advantage of them while they’re on the field, two of which are PSY-Frame cards!

As with a lot of recent Deck themes, the PSY-Frame have a Field Spell with which to work their magic. PSY-Frame Circuit gives you the ability to Synchro Summon immediately after Special Summoning a “PSY-Frame” monster! This allows you to circumvent the downside of the PSY-Frames, since you can turn them into a Synchro Monster before they get banished. On top of that, you can send a “PSY-Frame” monster from your hand to the Graveyard and give one of your battling monsters ATK equal to the sent monster’s ATK, making your PSY-Frames useful even if you control a monster! Since you can Summon PSY-Frame Driver from the Graveyard with your PSY-Framegears, sending it to boost your battling monster is very helpful.

PSY-Frame Overload allows you to banish a PSY-Frame monster from your hand or field, to banish any card on the field face-down. If you don’t have PSY-Frame Circuit in play, you can use Overload to banish your opponent’s cards and use your PSY-Frames before they’re banished. Even if your opponent destroys your Overload, you can banish it from the Graveyard and add a “PSY-Frame” card from your Deck to your hand (except another Overload)! With this, you can add PSY-Frame Circuit or even just the PSY-Framegear you think you’ll need to stop your opponent.

Since you can only use your PSY-Frame abilities while you have no monsters, it can be hard to get more than one monster in play at the same time, which of course makes it difficult to deal a lot of damage… However, the 2 PSY-Frame Synchro Monsters fix this problem! We’ll talk about the PSY-Frame Synchro Monsters in detail next time, as well as talk about some of the other cards you can use to make your PSY-Frame Deck the best it can be!