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- ↓ 0.10
- ꩜ 0.37
- ↑ 999.99
Ability ⇢ Shell Survival
Put this Pokémon into play only with the effect of Ninjask’s Cast-Off Shell Ability. (When you are setting up to play, you cannot put it face down as your Active Pokémon or on your Bench.)
{C}{C}{C} → Life Squeeze
Put damage counters on your opponent’s Active Pokémon until its remaining HP is 10.
illus. Tomokazu Komiya
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A most peculiar Pokémon that somehow appears in a Poké Ball when a Nincada evolves.
Bagdude
Is this the first card art with a dead person?
secmec
Damn, I never saw that before
Whirlpool
Dude just got knocked out haha
Louis Strasbourg
Has this card seen any use? It seems like the Standard equivalent of the old Raticate (Boundaries Crossed BCR 105) but with an extremely more complicated setup ploy. It might be worth it if the attack only cost C or CC, but CCC seems a very high energy cost for such a circumstantial setup.
Warnock 2022
It’s suddenly a lot more viable with the Pokemon GO Ditto…
Twylis
The new Pokemon Go Ditto is a lovely option to access this attack, but it’s worth noting that ability lock such as Alolan Muk‘s Power of Alchemy and Garbodor‘s Garbotoxin also help by disabling its ability so it can be played like a regular basic. That’s how Cosmic Eclipse Necrozma decks work!
Ditto might be the stronger approach though, since you can use damaging abilities to finish the job (though Alolan Muk at least allows Inteleon, Crobat, Ariados poison, etc to work)
I think the only real advantage Boundaries Crossed Raticate has is access to Triple Acceleration Energy.
Warnock 2022
Oh yeah that’s true. PHF Crobat and AOR Ariados are staples in Expanded!
LordAgwen
The Ditto from Boundaries Crossed works for this use too, except you don’t have to discard the Shedinja! Only disadvantage is the 30 HP you will get opposed to the 70 HP the Pokémon Go Ditto will have, but this will rarely matter because it is going to be OHKO’d anyways.
It would probably be a good idea to include both versions of Ditto, using the Boundaries Crossed version first to quickly get the attack off, and the Pokémon Go Ditto afterwards since the Shedinja would be in the discard now.
Harvstar
Doesn’t Shedinja technically evolve from Ninjask?
Guzma
I can kinda appreciate classifying Shedinja as a Basic Pokemon because you could see it as a single-stage Pokemon that you happen to catch while evolving Nincada, rather than Nincada evolving into 2 Pokemon at once. But obviously this opened up several cans of worms so it makes sense why they have since reverted Shedinja back to a Stage 1.
I believe this is also the final non-Dragon to have no Weakness or Resistance. Something that sort of remained a signature of Shedinja, Sableye, Spiritomb, Mimikyu, and Baby Pokemon (and also the GX Tapus for some reason). Now Weaknesses and Resists are fully standardized and we no longer see odd deviations like this (or Sudowoodo being weak to Water) except for Flying-types.
Squirchampion
I didn’t like when they did this, but there was some precedent for it, when Gen 5/6 made the whole reshuffle of Pokemon that evolved from fossils go from Fossil->Stage 1->Stage 2 to Fossil->Restored->Stage 1. I suspect they reverted this because they either didn’t intend or didn’t quite like the consequences of how these cards could or couldn’t interact with other cards as a result of it (e.g. Rare Candy, ‘Restored’s not being compatible with cards like Training Gym, etc.)
This Shedinja is very similar to the Restored stage cards in particular – they wanted it only to be able to be put into play by way of Ninjasks the same way they wanted those Restored Fossils to only be able to come into play by way of doing the convoluted ‘check the bottom of your deck’ thing the Fossil Item cards of older eras had going on – and they rejigged Shedinja’s evolution stage to do it. And the similarity is continued by both of these rejiggings being abandoned and they revert to whatever they were doing before.
Rejigging elements of a Pokemon feels fine sometimes, and sometimes not, and it can often be arbitrary. I see people complaining about the new Mega Rayquaza ex’s attack cost despite being a Colorless Pokemon and while I do get what they’re saying, it doesn’t strike me as an issue at all. A lot of words have been written about the Weakness/Resistance system, and I’d say I’ve credibly written about it more than almost anyone, but I’m really not bothered when a card like Mr. Mime GX arbitrarily breaks the rules there to make a card work. That’s fine. But there’s something particularly ..I don’t know what, about messing with a Pokemon’s evolution stage. It feels like an intrinsic part of what that Pokemon is.
The only time they’ve messed with stages and not reverted it is for the case of Baby Pokemon, and that’s actually a standing point of disorder I would’ve liked to see them eventually resolve, but it doesn’t seem like they ever will – and I think it’s because it’d feel odd. I’d guess they never fixed it because doing things like making Pikachu a Stage 1 Pokemon wouldn’t sit right with people, but making Togetic or Lucario Basic Pokemon wouldn’t sit right either, and so on. I’m curious if others feel this way or if it’s just me, but the first time a Pokemon is printed as a card, the stage it’s assigned is a fundamental part of it that in my mind even overrides what the the video games have to say about it. If that’s the case, then maybe there’s never much point doing little experiments like they did with this Shedinja, because they’d always have to revert.