Let's talk about the recently revealed Shedinja, a weird card for a weird Pokémon. https://twitter.com/ToineLay/status/1301742793535102977?s=20

First: there's a dead guy on the illustration. This is a reference to the ~lore~ as described in Pokédex entries (e.g. "It is believed that this Pokémon will steal the spirit of anyone peering into its hollow body from its back.") but it's still unusual.

More importantly for me, though, it's a Basic Pokémon that you can't play as a Basic Pokémon, but only by evolving Nincada into Ninjask with Cast-Off Shell (which lets you search your deck for Shedinja and put in on your Bench).

It's not the first time we've seen these sorts of mechanics but usually Shedinja is a stage 1 and can also evolve normally. (Also note the synergy between Ninjask DRX's attack and Shedinja DRX's Ability. There's nothing of the sort going on with the new Ninjask and Shedinja.)

Having Shedinja as a Basic with its detrimental Ability brings up some rules issues. For example, for a deck to be valid it needs to include at least one Basic Pokémon. What if it's Shedinja? https://twitter.com/ToineLay/status/1301760784259624960?s=20

OK, you can fix this with an errata to either the rules or Shedinja but it's still weird.
Moving on, Shedinja can only be put into play with the Cast-off Shell Ability. So no playing it from hand, no Revive, no Nest Ball. No Molting, even though that should be the point.

Can you put Shedinja into play with Ninjask LA's Cast-off Shell Poké-Power? I assume you can't since Poké-Powers aren't Abilities.

Now for something more relevant (for Expanded at least), what if Shedinja's Ability is turned off? Say, with Silent Lab or Garbotoxin. Now you can play Shedinja from your hand, or get it from the discard with Revive.

However, I'm pretty sure that you can't Nest Ball for Shedinja even with Silent Lab in play because Shedinja will still have its Ability when it's in the deck.

All in all, I'm not sure why they made Shedinja a Basic this time. Is it just, as @ToineLay suggests, so we can't use Triple Acceleration Energy? If so, why not give the attack another cost? Maybe they want us to play it, for example with Garbodor and Dimension Valley.

Anyway, if you can get three Energy on a Marshadow-GX, you can use it to copy Shedinja's attack. Add a Hypnotoxic Laser and OHKO VMAX Pokémon. It's like Raticate but without Triple Acceleration Energy!