Although the Lost Zone Box deck has long fallen from its place as the dominant deck of the Pokémon TCG metagame, this hasn’t precluded it from use in tournament play. These days, it’s usually deliberately picked as an anti-meta deck using non-mainstream strategies—sometimes to much success. Recently, Yūya Nakamae placed sixth in the Japan-exclusive Champions League Aichi tournament using a Lost Zone Box deck.

One interesting point about this deck’s new version lies in the fact that although it contains the Sableye card from Lost Abyss [S11] and the Radiant Greninja card from Battle Region [S9a], both are no longer used for attacking purposes. Instead, Iron Hands ex from Future Flash [SV4M] and Roaring Moon ex from Ancient Roar [SV4K] unleash the deck’s true destructive power via their Amp You Very Much and Frenzied Gouging attacks respectively.

This deck also makes use of the Colress’s Experiment and Mirage Gate cards from Lost Abyss [S11] to fill up the Lost Zone, thus enabling the same set’s Cramorant to strike for 110 damage per hit without needing any Energy cards.

Although past versions of the Lost Zone Box deck focused on spreading damage, the newer anti-meta version favors a more direct offensive approach. This is because the new setup serves as a counter to Jirachi from Raging Surf [SV3a] and Manaphy from Star Birth [S9]—both current meta staples.

The total cost of all the cards in a Lost Zone Box deck is at least 6,000 JPY (~US$39).

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