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I am so glad I didn’t schedule today’s card for Monday.
Why? Probably obvious if you’ve read the card but if
not, read on!
Ninjask
(XY: Roaring Skies 10/108) is a Grass-Type. This
is still a good Type for exploiting Weakness with
popular cards like Primal Groudon-EX and
Seismitoad-EX taking double damage from its attacks.
In terms of support, it’s a bit weak right now as while
said support exists, it either never saw much success or
is indirect and can work with non-Grass-Types. It looks
like XY: Ancient Origins could change that, but
that will be then and this is now. Resistance is easy;
I am aware of nothing in the Standard or Expanded card
pools that sports Grass Resistance. There are some
anti-Grass cards but they haven’t seen a lot of success,
at least as an anti-Grass card: as an example there is
M Rayquaza-EX (XY: Roaring Skies 61/108)
and its Δ Wild Ancient
Trait that reduces the damage done from attacks by
Grass-Types by the same 20 that Resistance normally
would (said Ancient Trait also does the same to Fire-,
Lightning- and Water-Types).
Ninjask
is a Stage 1 Pokémon; while I’ve felt like the game has
been on “fast forward” for a while now, the pacing
doesn’t make it impossible to run a Stage 1 as a major
part of your deck, but it would be quite optimistic to
consider the Stage 1 as the happy medium instead of
“slower but plausible.” Ninjask has a very low
70 HP; this hurts as not only is it a OHKO for nearly
every competitive deck that has completed its set-up,
but even partial set-ups are quite a threat. Fire
Weakness is typical and while it isn’t good, it isn’t as
bad as multiple other Types; the lack of Resistance is
also typical, so while it is the worst a card can do it
is more “missed opportunity” than “defect”. The absence
of a Retreat Card is the opposite, the best a card can
do and a very useful feature for cards in general with
something making it even better for this card.
That something is the card’s Ability: Wing Buzz can only
be used while Ninjask is Active and it is once
per turn per copy, so if you Bench it and promote
another that Ninjask can also use Wing Buzz.
Wing Buzz allows you to discard a card from your hand
in order to discard a card from the top of your
opponent’s deck. This can vary from something that can
win you the game by forcing your opponent to deck out to
something that cripples your opponent by discarding
vital cards to something that just annoys your opponent
by chipping away his or her resources to accidentally
helping your opponent by sending something to the
discard pile that benefits your opponent or getting
something off of the top of his or her deck that they
didn’t want to draw. The attack is called Afterimage
Assault and requires [GC], hitting for 30 while allowing
you to search your deck for two Ninjask and put
them directly onto your Bench. While it isn’t much for
damage at least it is some and obviously the big deal is
swarming your Ninjask while also skipping having
to Evolve (at least for the ones searched out). While
your active Ninjask is almost guaranteed to fall,
you’ll have two replacements ready. With the free
Retreat Cost and Ability, this provides combos for
additional milling.
Unless you’re putting it into play via Afterimage
Assault (and you can’t do that with your first
Ninjask) then you’ll need to run a Nincada;
you have one Expanded only option in the form of BW:
Dragons Exalted 10/124 in addition to XY: Roaring
Skies 9/108. Both are 40 HP Basic Grass-Types with
Fire Weakness, no Resistance, Retreat Cost [C], no
Abilities, no Ancient Traits and a single attack. BW:
Dragons Exalted 10/124 can use Dig for [C], hitting
for 10 damage and (on “heads”) preventing all effects of
attacks done to itself including damage. For the
same price XY: Roaring Skies 9/108 hits for 20
damage while doing 10 to itself. You don’t have a
choice in Standard but in Expanded I’d favor BW:
Dragons Exalted 10/124 as it might save itself and
thus allow you to Evolve it… unless you’re taking
advantage of the branching Evolution (more on that in a
bit). There is one other Ninjask in Expanded,
BW: Dragons Exalted 11/124. It has 10 less HP than
today’s card, one more in the Retreat Cost and a
different Ability and attack. The Ability is Cast-off
Shell; when you Evolve one of your in play Pokémon into
(this) Ninjask you can search your deck for a
Shedinja and put it onto your Bench. Its attack is
Night Slash for [GC] which does 60 and allows you to
switch Ninjask with one of your Benched Pokémon.
This card was reviewed when it was new (but apparently
during a week I sat things out); you can read it
here
but the article isn’t just from a past card pool but
rules iteration. Later on it saw some play but was
never quite competitive.
So what about Shedinja: we have BW: Dragons
Exalted 48/124 and XY: Roaring Skies 11/108.
Both are Stage 1 Pokémon with 30 HP, no Resistance and
no Ancient Trait. BW: Dragons Exalted 48/124 is
a Psychic-Type with no Weakness or Retreat Cost (yay!),
the Ability “Empty Shell” which means it isn’t worth any
Prize cards when KOed and the attack “Cursed Drop” which
requires [P] and allows you to place three damage
counters on your opponent’s Pokémon as you wish (so they
don’t all have to be placed on the same target). XY:
Roaring Skies 11/108 is a Grass-Type with Fire
Weakness and a Retreat Cost of [C] and two attacks: for
[G] it can use “Cursed Rain” to place a damage counter
on each of your opponent’s Pokémon and then must
switch with something on your Bench. For [C] it can use
Hopless Scream to do 50 damage for each damage counter
on itself. This card has potential, and we’ll be
discussing it tomorrow. I can’t say I’d recommend the
other Ninjask or older Shedinja for use
with today’s card, but the version we’ll discuss more
tomorrow might work as TecH (since to run Ninjask
you’d already have everything else you needed for the
card). So… what do you do with today’s Ninjask?
Once Lysandre’s Trump Card is banned (June 15
everywhere but Japan, June 20th there) you try to build
a mill deck! If you can work in Exeggcute (BW:
Plasma Freeze 4/116; BW: Plasma Blast
102/101) you can keep spamming it for the discard cost
to trigger Wing Buzz. So the question is… how much of
the focus should be on using Wing Buzz? While you could
have up to four Ninjask in play, without a
switching effect you’ll only be able to use two
(whatever one is up front at the beginning of your turn,
then the one you manually retreat into). You might turn
to Vanilluxe (BW: Next Destinies 33/99),
as it has an Ability (Slippery Soles) that amounts to an
Escape Rope each turn (and stacks if you have
more than one). With two of the Vanilluxe you
could manually retreat once and then use Slippery Soles
twice to get off four uses of Wing Buzz, but your
Ninjask aren’t going to last too long that way.
Perhaps one should just try for three of them plus
something else you can throw up front to wall with,
either something disposable like Robo Substitute
- I don’t recommend Shedinja (BW: Dragons
Exalted 48/124) because of the resources it eats up
- or something that is just so hard to KO it can soak
hits like Wailord-EX or a Safeguard Pokémon.
The other option is to find an attacker that also
discards (even if it is likely to be OHKOed) and just
keep milling. With a Bunnelby (XY: Primal
Clash 121/160), a Vanilluxe or two and the
rest as Ninjask you could try to keep milling for
five per turn. Not much but if your opponent can’t KO
anything other than Bunnelby, it is a Basic that
is easy to get back and is only worth a Prize. Five
doesn’t seem like much but you can discard a few more
with Trick Shovel and when a player takes his
first draw of the game, his deck is already down to 46:
60 card deck - (6 Prizes + 7 card opening hand + 1 card
opening draw). If your opponent doesn’t include cards
to replenish his or her deck, he/she will always burn at
least one card per turn on the opening draw making your
discard amount an effective six cards or about 8 turns
worth, with Trick Shovel and your opponent’s own
draw efforts making it pretty uncertain; maybe you can
pull off the win maybe you can’t.
Sounds like it is at least a fun deck for Standard but
you might consider other partners for Expanded, such as
Aggron (BW: Dragons Exalted 80/104) and
its Toppling Wind Ability, but that triggers when it
Evolves and Ninjask does gain Level Ball
here. For Limited play I like it; decks are only 40
cards so while your opponent needs to take less Prizes
and won’t be ripping through the deck like an opponent
in the other formats, you’ll probably have plenty of
filler to spare while your opponent has to worry some
key card they probably can’t recycle is going to get
hit.
Ratings
Standard:
3/5
Expanded:
3/5
Limited:
4.7/5
Summary:
Ninjask could be the face of a new mill deck, but
it is going to be a tight race. I am scoring it on the
high side because I think the format is still very fast
paced and so a lot of players even after
Lysandre’s Trump Card is gone will be still be
ripping through their decks, creating an opening for
this card and a deck build around it. It also might
wind up as a creative Bench-sitter in a few builds, not
in multiples but as a single.
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