What’s the Best Lost Box Variant Right Now?

Hello PokeBeach readers! Here’s Gabriel Semedo again with another Pokémon TCG article, and this time I’m going to talk about the three most popular Lost Box variants in the format: Turbo Lost Box V, Lost Zard, and Lost Box / Galarian Moltres / Kyogre.

Tournaments around the world are happening in droves, so we have a huge amount of information about this format. With all the decks that have been doing well, it’s normal to be lost in all the possibilities. Preparing well for a Regional Championship has become more and more difficult, as it takes more time to master the metagame.

With all this change in the metagame, many players are finding it harder to answer what the best version of Lost Box is. Since the European International Championship, we have seen three main contenders, and all of them have been successful in major competitions. The first and most popular version is Lost Box V, which has existed since before the rotation and has needed only minor changes since then. Lost Zard has been around for a long time as well and was one of the first successful versions of Lost Box, but it had a considerable downfall and is only now returning as a good option for the current format. And then there’s the newest version of the three: Lost Box / Moltres / Kyogre, which focuses on single-Prize Pokémon with high attack costs and high damage outputs. All three versions are balanced for the current global metagame, but each has quirks that can help it stand out locally.

In today’s article, I’m going to talk a little about each version, present my lists, and discuss which version I like the most for each type of metagame.

Turbo Lost Box V

I believe that in time, Turbo Lost Box V will just be called Lost Box V, as the “turbo” part refers to a particular adaptation that aims to get seven cards in the Lost Zone on the first turn. The need to make the deck faster is because of the current metagame, which is well prepared for the classic Lost Box strategy of attacking with Cramorant for a turn before moving into your Mirage Gate attackers later. In the turbo version, you can’t always use Mirage Gate on the first turn, but by the second turn, you definitely can, and that solves a lot of problems.

Being able to use Mirage Gate a turn earlier helps a lot against top decks in the metagame. Against Lugia VSTAR, you can already Knock Out Lugia V on the first turn with Raikou V. Against Lost Box and Gardevoir ex, attacking with Radiant Greninja means two free Prizes, in addition to destroying the opponent’s setup. In most cases, if the opponent loses two Ralts or two Kirlia on the second turn, it’s practically a guaranteed victory, because on the next one you can attack with Sableye to Knock Out any other Ralts that might appear. In addition, attacking with Dragonite V for 250 damage on your first turn is truly absurd, and enables you to Knock Out any Basic Pokémon V or Pokémon ex of the format.

The problem with most turbo decks is that they try too hard to make an early-game power play, like putting seven cards in the Lost Zone on the first turn, and then they end up running too low on resources to close out the game. If your power play doesn’t work out, consistency issues can really hurt. Overall, this deck has acceptable consistency, but failing Colress's Experiment on the first two turns can have big consequences.

This concludes the public portion of this article.

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