Pokemon TCG: Sword & Shield – Shining Fates – Mad Party Pin Collection – Bunnelby

What do you do when you want to play an archetype but fancy jazzing it up? Obviously, the Pokemon TCG has your back. The Mad Party Pin Set isn’t the first to do it, but it’s easily one of the best.

It’s a Mad Party…

Mad Party is a deck based entirely around four Pokemon – Bunnelby, Polteageist, Mr Rime and Dedenne. They all share an attack, the titular Mad Party, with a fun effect. For each Pokemon with Mad Party in your discard pile, Mad Party deals 20 more damage! Old Pokemon players might remember the incredibly powerful Night March (and less powerful Lost March) archetypes, but don’t worry! The average HP of Pokemon in the Sword and Shield era means that Mad Party isn’t going to destroy the meta like Night March did.

The cards themselves are great. They’re all based on the classic novel Alice in Wonderland, specifically on the participants of the Mad Hatter’s Tea Party! Mr Rime is the Hatter himself, Bunnelby is the March Hare, Dedenne is the Dormouse and Polteageist is the teapot.The crazy, psychedelic art definitely shows it too, with the foil effect really bringing out the weirdness. The pins, although nothing out of the ordinary, are very well made too. They only have a single clasp, but it feels very tight and the artwork is bright.

…And You’re Invited!

The boxes also contain 3 Shining Fates booster packs apiece! These special expansion packs aren’t available on their own, and can contain some great pokemon like Reshiram and Kyogre to pack into a deck. They can even contain more copies of any of the Mad Party pokemon, or useful cards like Oranguru!

Now, onto Mad Party itself! The 4 cards you get in these are obviously super important, and you’re going to want at least 3 of each, but 4 Bunnelby and 4 Polteageist is recommended, as these will actually attack. You normally won’t play any Psychic energies, so Dedenne is discard fodder, as is Mr Rime as you won’t be playing any Galarian Mr Mime cards. With these, Mad Party can swing for an absolute max of 260, or 300 if you use 4 of all the cards! This is more than enough to knock out most major threats in the TCG right now, while also only putting a single-prizer in danger. On top of the previously mentioned Oranguru, there are other super important cards you’ll need. With rotation approaching very swiftly (September 10th, 2021) I’ll keep the cards that will survive rotation.

A Goodie Bag of a Deck

A good example of something important is Cherrim (Battle Styles #008). This pokemon’s Spring Bloom ability allows you to put as much grass energy on a pokemon as you want, as long as they don’t have a rule box (V, GX ,etc). This means that it’s perfectly fine to use on your Mad Party! Although you don’t actually have any grass Pokemon, you don’t need them to use the attacks as both Polteageist and Bunnelby are colourless attackers. You’ll also probably want to grab good old Crobat V (Darkness Ablaze #104 + #182, Shining Fates #044, SWSH098) to draw after discarding! Twin Energy (Rebel Clash #174 + #209) is also a major cornerstone of the deck.

These packs are, simply put, great. The combination of an incredibly strong meta defining set of cards, as well as 3 Shining Fates packs, really make them valuable for both a collector and a player. The extra swag from the pins only add to that of course!