A Blast from the Past — Ancient Box in BRS-TEF

Hey everyone! It’s Charlie and I’m happy to be back with another article. I’ve been really excited for rotation to hit and finally get a fresh format. Trying to build cool new decks and innovate is what makes Pokemon so fun for me, so moving on from what appears to be a relatively solved format has already gotten me excited for the future. In this article, we’re going to cover one of the decks that I’ve been having the most fun with, which is the new Ancient Box!

Ancient Box’s History

Attacks fueled by a specific number of cards in the discard pile have seen success in many different forms. One of the most dominant decks ever, Night March, was based around the powerful attacks of Joltik, Pumpkaboo, and Lampent increasing in damage as more of them hit the discard pile. We’ve also had more general applications of this concept, like Vespiquen and Flareon‘s powerful Revenge attacks that did 10 more damage for each Pokemon in your discard pile. Temporal Forces gives us a new take on this idea with Roaring Moon‘s Vengeful Fletching, which does 10 more damage for each Ancient card in your discard pile. Unlike other versions of this attack, there are Ancient Pokemon, Items, Tools, and Supporters, which gives you a lot more versatility in what kind of cards can increase your damage output. We also have a brand new Koraidon that does 30 damage for each Ancient Pokemon you have in play, which is a strong early game attacker when you don’t have enough Ancient cards in your discard pile yet. Pairing both of these attackers with Ancient Booster Energy Capsule gives them either 190 or 200 HP, which is very high for a single-Prize Pokemon, even evading an OHKO by Charizard ex‘s Burning Darkness before you take any Prize cards! These cards combine to create a very fast and powerful deck that also gets stronger as the game goes on. Let’s get into my first draft of a list:


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