Palace 101 — An Exploration of the Palace / Hall of Fame Format
Greetings PokeBeach readers! After over a month of testing, running tournaments, and playing lots of Pokemon throughout this quarantine, I’m incredibly excited to bring to light one of my favorite formats that the Pokemon TCG has ever seen — Palace! In this article, I will detail how I go about building decks for this format and offer a ton of fun and innovative concepts with guest commentary from their architects. Pretty much anything is possible in this format; I hope you open up a card search engine and get to work on your own crazy concepts as well.
The Palace format (also known as the Hall of Fame format) is an officially sanctioned format in Japan that consists of sets from Diamond and Pearl to the present! In order to help balance the format, Palace utilizes a “star list.” Exceptionally strong cards are assigned a “star value” of one through four and a few cards are banned outright. A player may only include four stars in their deck total. This allows incredibly strong cards, like Broken Time-Space and Porygon2 to see play in the format, but it stops players from including cards like Shiftry and Forretress from being played alongside them. Overall, the star list eliminates un-fun strategies like turn 1 hand lock, donk decks, and lock decks that have no counters from being played while keeping these powerful cards as options in other strategies. Here is the full star list:
Palace Format Star List
Outright Banned Cards
One Star
- Claydol from Great Encounters
- Shaymin-EX from Roaring Skies
- Seeker
- Unown R
- Azelf from Legends Awakened
- Stark Mountain
- Poké Drawer +
- Crobat G
- Weavile from Undaunted
- Hypnotoxic Laser
- Delinquent
- Lusamine
- Shaymin from Unleashed
- Dedenne-GX
- Floette from Cosmic Eclipse
- Florges from Cosmic Eclipse
- Reset Stamp
- Mew from Triumphant
- Puzzle of Time
- Spiritomb from Arceus
Two Star:
- Forest of Giant Plants
- Cyrus's Initiative
- Junk Arm
- Archie's Ace in the Hole
- Maxie's Hidden Ball Trick
- Ghetsis
- Hex Maniac
- Lt. Surge's Strategy
- Jessie and James
- Chip-Chip Ice Axe
- Hiker
- Wally
- Gengar and Mimikyu-GX
- Trevenant and Dusknoir-GX
- Milotic from Flashfire
- Marshadow from Shining Legends
- Giratina from Platinum
- Red Card
Three Star:
- Archeops from Noble Victories
- Shiftry from Next Destinies
- Forretress from Legends Awakened
- Forretress from Flashfire
- Porygon2 from Great Encounters
- Uxie from Legends Awakened
- Broken Time-Space
- Shuckle from HeartGold and SoulSilver Black Star Promos
- Lost World
- Oranguru from Ultra Prism
- Flabébé from Forbidden Light
- Mismagius from Unbroken Bonds
- Unown from Lost Thunder
- Kabutops from Team Up
- Omastar from Team Up
- Island Challenge Amulet
Cards Explicity Allowed
Miracle Diamond – Trainer
Look at all of your face-down Prize cards. You may choose 1 Trainer, Supporter or Stadium card you find there, show it to your opponent, and put it into your hand. If you do, put this card as a Prize card face up instead of discarding it
Mysterious Pearl – Trainer
Look at all of your face-down Prize cards. You may choose 1 Pokemon you find there, show it to your opponent, and put it into your hand. If you do, put this card as a Prize card face up instead of discarding it.
Wonder Platinum – Trainer
Look at all of your face-down Prize cards. You may choose 1 Energy card you find there, show it to your opponent, and put it into your hand. If you do, put this card as a Prize card face up instead of discarding it.
This star list is technically unofficial because Japan hasn’t provided any updates recently, but this list has been heavily tested through Palace tournaments and individual play. The star list constantly changes; when cards like Scoop Up Net are released in Rebel Clash, the list is bound to change when new strategies become oppressive. However, in the Diamond & Pearl – Sword & Shield format this list has proven to allow for a very healthy metagame of different strategies.
Standout Strategies from Palace Events and Testing
This concludes the public portion of this article.
If you'd like to continue reading, consider purchasing a PokeBeach premium membership! If you're not completely satisfied with your membership, you can request a full refund within 30 days.
Each week we post high-quality content from some of the game's top players. Our article program isn't a corporate operation, advertising front, or for-profit business. We set our prices so that we can pay the game's top players to write the best content for our subscribers. Each article topic is carefully selected, goes through multiple drafts, and is touched up by our editors. We take great pride in our program!