Turbo Lost Box and Paldea Evolved

Hello everyone! Recently the last Regional Championship of the North America circuit concluded in Fresno, leaving us to look forward to NAIC and the new Paldea Evolved format. I want to briefly talk about the conclusion of the previous format, where my group and I played different variants of Lost Box and had strong finishes at several Regionals. Understanding the fundamentals of these decks and what led to our success can help us predict how Lost Box will fare going into the new format. We already have some results from Japan to look at, but those rarely translate one-to-one into our circuit.

One of my previous articles went over the Kyogre deck in detail. For Portland, Hartford, and Milwaukee, my group played the Forest Seal Stone version of Kyogre and saw great success. At each event, at least one of us made Top 8, with three of us making Top 8 at Milwaukee. Nearly all of us made at least Day Two at each tournament. This Kyogre list was incredibly powerful and consistent, and I expect Kyogre to remain strong in the next format.

However, for Fresno, Kyogre had a big target on its back. It would have been easy for anyone to include a Manaphy into decks such as Lugia VSTAR, Mew VMAX, or Arceus VSTAR. Those decks typically do not play Manaphy, so in the past, we relied on the Kyogre strategy to take them out. A surprise Manaphy at the wrong time could have completely ruined us. For Fresno, we chose not to risk it at all, and switched to a turbo version of Lost Box instead.

I had this deck cooked up for London and even wrote about it in an article here, but we hadn’t gotten the chance to play at a major event before Fresno. It was incredibly strong, though a bit risky as it relied heavily on getting a turn-one Battle VIP Pass. Our results were alright. Gedemer got second place; I unfortunately bubbled out of Top 8 after winning five in a row on Day Two; and Azul made Day Two, but he ended at 33rd, constantly lamenting, “Just give me a VIP Pass, bro.”

I have to say, getting so many turn-one Mirage Gate attacks in one tournament was incredibly satisfying. The deck has enormous potential to shut opponents out of the game with its ridiculously strong tempo, and I have no reason to think it won’t also be strong in the upcoming format.

Paldea Evolved for Lost Box

Iono

Paldea Evolved has many implications for Lost Box. First up is Iono, which is perceived to be quite a big threat to the deck. Although Lost Box certainly doesn’t enjoy having its hand disrupted, I don’t think Iono will be as big a deal as it sounds. Lost Box had to deal with Marnie for several months and managed to survive, and Iono is similar enough to Marnie to draw the comparison. Since Iono’s disruption is weak in the early game, it is even less threatening than Marnie overall. You won’t often get shut out of the game due to Iono. Of course, Iono’s disruption does scale with how many Prize cards you have taken, but this is not a problem for a few reasons.

For the Kyogre version of Lost Box, you can easily play around Iono by taking only one to three Prizes and setting up for a big Kyogre turn to win the game. This way, Iono will never set you to one or two cards. For the turbo version, I found in Fresno that it was virtually unfazed by disruption due to its ability to aggressively thin the deck. I was always able to recover from Judge and even Roxanne. Turbo Lost Box thins cards like crazy, and the extra copies of Lost Vacuum get rid of extra Battle VIP Passes. Furthermore, its attackers are relatively low-maintenance compared to Kyogre, so it needs fewer cards each turn. Iono will not be a problem for it.

This concludes the public portion of this article.

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