Friendship is everything. The ultimate form of friendship is self-sacrifice for the sake of another. Pina offers her life for her master, willing to leave this world to revive her master. What is Pina, you might ask? Pina is best girl and the best character in SAO, period.
The original Pina was not in fact the Pina shown above. With the same wording effect, the original Pina seems to have come from Lucky Star in the form of Kanata, Konata’s mother back in 2009. The Pina above came out in 2013 in the first booster of the Sword Art Online set.
Pina’s namesake effect is on its second ability. Whenever another card of the particular condition is sent to the waiting room (doesn’t need to be by battle), you may pay the cost by sacking the Pina to bring that card back to stage rested. Pina must also be in your backrow to resolve this effect. Keep in mind that Pina effects do not stop sent to waiting room triggers, meaning that effects such as Chiyuri will still go off while retaining the card on field the following turn.
*There are some variants to the wording for Pina, but nevertheless, if the effect consists of sacking the Pina to revive said character, then it will still be considered to carry the namesake.*
For the most part, Pina effects have not really changed. The secondary effect outside of the self-sacrifice ability can vary widely. Pina is a very powerful effect that maintains consistency for the deck that it is played in. The reason for this is that the Pinas can be used to maintain a powerful card on board, especially a card that carries a consistent effect/reverse effect outside of on-play. Pinas are also hard to get rid of, considering that they lie in the backrow, which only rare specific cards are able to snipe.
The two Pina clones above have also been banned at some point in the game or are still banned. As such, do consider the Pina profile when you’re building your decks. Compared to backups which may require power contention, Pina simply revives your characters at a relatively free cost. Make use of Pina’s selfless effect to bring your victory.