More cards are starting to come out for Mega Brave and Mega Symphonia. While they’re not the marquee features of the expansion, we do get to see TPCi (The Pokemon Company International) give more support to Single-Prize Pokemon.
New Nincada Lines for Mega Symphonia
Nincada
Scratch: 20 damage.
Ninjask
Ability: Cast-off Shell
When you play this Pokémon from your hand to evolve 1 of your Pokémon, you may search your deck for Shedinja and put it onto your Bench. Shuffle your deck afterward.
U-turn: 90 damage. Switch this Pokémon with 1 of your Benched Pokémon.
Shedinja
Ability: Fragile Shell
If this Pokémon is Knocked Out by damage from an attack from your opponent's Pokémon ex, your opponent can't take any Prize cards for it.
Damage Beat: 20x damage. This attack does 20 damage for each damage counter on your opponent's Active Pokémon.
This is probably going to be one of the more interesting Single-Prize Pokemon lines to come out of this paired expansion.
First is the fact that both Ninjask and Shedinja don’t have a retreat cost, which makes them very useful at the start during set-up, as you can easily switch between them and your main attacker without much investment of energy.
Ninjask gets even better as it can attack and tag out at the same time. This makes it pretty useful in a toolbox set-up where a player would like to lean into a different Pokemon depending on the match-up.
Shedinja is most likely the main draw of the Nincada evolutionary line. It’s searchable by Ninjask, saving precious search cards. It can also turn a half-health value of damage counters, regardless of Pokemon, into a lethal threshold.
Shedinja also makes itself a nuisance even when knocked out by denying any prize cards if knocked out by an ex Pokemon.
With how prevalent ex Pokemon are in the competitive scene, or in general, Shedinja makes for an interesting counter for the present-day meta.
The issues facing this evolutionary line are three-fold. First, is that Ninjask can’t be searched out itself unless you are using an item card like an Ultra Ball. Second, is that Nincada would have to pull double duty for Ninjask and Shedinja each.
With a maximum copy limit of four per card of the same name, even a deck focused around this gimmick will have to work around this consistency issue.
Lastly, it’s the fact that each card in this evolutionary line is exceptionally fragile.
With the likes of Dragapult ex, Marnie’s Grimmsnarl ex, Munkidori, and Froslass running around, all of which can fling damage onto the bench, it won’t take long for any of these Pokemon to get sniped.
Thankfully, cards like the Shaymin from Destined Rivals or the Luxurious Cape from Paradox Rift exist.
Players interested in using this evolutionary line would probably have to consider such tools to at least extend the longevity of Shedinja on the bench for any follow-ups.