Entering the Lost Zone: 5 Pokemon TCG Decks

What’s poppin’ Po Town readers? Have you explored the Lost Zone lately? The Lost Zone is an interesting way to play the Pokemon TCG because it requires you to send cards that can never be brought back to gain an advantage with some specific cards. Most notably, after you get four cards in the Lost Zone, you can attack for free with Cramorant [Lost Origin], seven allows you to accelerate Energy with Mirage Gate [Lost Origin], and ten cards allows you to spread damage counters with Sableye [Lost Origin]. There are a few more specific ones, but those are the basic inclusions to many Lost Zone decks! While there are many different ways to play these decks, I decided to share my favorite five ways to play Lost Zone Box and share tournament successful lists for each version! If you need any of the cards to build these decks on PTCG Live, be sure to use code zlesage5 right here at the PoTown Store! Let’s jump into the core strategy of most Lost Zone Box decks!

Each game can play out differently, but the early game is going to remain mostly the same. Lost Zone Box decks utilize the count of cards in your Lost Zone to do different things as the game progresses. Your main counts are:

In order to get cards in the Lost Zone, you’ll wanna use Comfey to quickly draw through your deck while starting your stack of Lost Zone cards. Colress’s Experiment is there to help you expedite cards in your Lost Zone and will often be the most played Supporter card for you in each game! The generally agreed upon strategy from our player base is to use Colress’s Experiment before using Comfey to have more knowledge and then proceed to use Comfey. With this knowledge in hand, we can see how each Lost Zone Box differs from one another!

Kicking off this list is a Mirage Gate variant of the deck! While most lists will run Mirage Gate in some capacity, this variant aims to use them on a turn-by-turn basis to fully power up one of your Pokemon! If you face a Lugia VSTAR [Silver Tempest] deck, you’ll wanna attack with Raikou V [Brilliant Stars]. If you face a deck without a Manaphy [Brilliant Stars] on their Bench, Radiant Greninja [Astral Radiance] might be the best attacker. And, of course, Drapion V [Lost Origin] is a great answer against Mew VMAX [Fusion Strike]. All of these cards are mended together with the help of Mirage Gate on top of the existing Lost Zone Box skeleton build. Let’s check out Tyler Matthew’s Top 16 list from the 2023 European International Championships in London, United Kingdom, here:

I recommend picking up the following Pokemon TCG Live codes to help complete this deck: Lost Origin, Astral Radiance, and Brilliant Stars.

Radiant Charizard [Crown Zenith] works as a big attacker that reduces its Energy cost each time that your opponent draws a Prize Card. When they get to 3 Prize Cards remaining, you can use Raihan [Crown Zenith] to attach an extra Energy, attach for turn, and attack for 250! This build has some cool tricks, like using Forest Seal Stone [Silver Tempest] on Pidgeot V [Lost Origin] and shuffling it back into your deck, but it remains relatively similar to most other builds. Both Miltank [Astral Radiance] and Mawile [Lost Origin] are unique techs to this build, but they are fairly situational. Miltank is more of a counter to decks that play Pokemon V without counters, and Mawile can sometimes trap Pokemon up in the Active Spot forever. Let’s check out Pedro Torres’ Top 4 list from the 2023 European International Championships in London, United Kingdom here:

I recommend picking up the following Pokemon TCG Live codes to help complete this deck: Lost Origin, and Crown Zenith.

The Kyogre [Celebrations] build of this deck has always intrigued me because you have this wild turn of accelerating Energy to Kyogre with Mirage Gate, emptying out your deck with any card you can, using Energy Recycler [Battle Styles], and flooding your opponent’s board with damage for the win! It’s a crazy move that can seriously pay off, but it can backfire from time to time. Luckily this build can still attack with Radiant Greninja for smaller board snipes or the unique inclusion of Galarian Moltres [Evolving Skies] that should be good against a decent portion of the metagame! Let’s check out Nicholas Moffit’s Top 16 list from the 2023 European International Championships in London, United Kingdom here:

I recommend picking up the following Pokemon TCG Live codes to help complete this deck: Lost Origin, Evolving Skies, and Celebrations.

When you start to include Pokemon VSTAR / VMAX in your Lost Zone builds, they might end up cutting core cards like Sableye out of the list, but they end up having a stronger mid-to-late game. In this case, Hisuian Goodra VSTAR [Lost Origin] has a tanky 270 HP, can fully heal itself, and can reduce the damage done to it by 80! It takes a whole different approach to the Lost Zone deck, but it still functions off of the same engine! Let’s check out Aidan Khus’ Top 8 list from the 2023 European International Championships in London, United Kingdom here:

I recommend picking up the following Pokemon TCG Live codes to help complete this deck: Lost Origin, Astral Radiance, and Fusion Strike.

Where Hisuian Goodra VSTAR focuses on damage reduction, Giratina VSTAR [Lost Origin] focuses on swinging hard for 280 damage! It can also OHKO any Pokemon with its VSTAR attack if you have ten cards in your Lost Zone. On top of that, due to its Energy requirements, you can still run Radiant Greninja and Sableye as attackers, so the deck still functions similarly as a full Lost Zone Box deck. Hot tip: Giratina V [Lost Origin] can draw cards in a pinch and place cards in the Lost Zone. It also has a “Shred” attack that can go through anything, like an opposing Miltank! There are lots of strategies to uncover with this deck, so let’s check out Cain Greene’s Top 8 list from the 2023 European International Championships in London, United Kingdom here:

I recommend picking up the following Pokemon TCG Live codes to help complete this deck: Lost Origin, Astral Radiance, and Brilliant Stars.

Well, if you didn’t like Lost Zone decks before, I hope one of the five decks above entices you to build one of them! There are so many ways to play this deck that even if you don’t like one build, like Kyogre, you might fall in love with a different build, like Radiant Charizard! These PTCGL decks are some of the best decks in the game and require a decent bit of skill to pilot, but they are incredibly effective in our format! They also usually have a strong matchup against other top decks in the format too, like Gardevoir ex [Scarlet and Violet] and Mew VMAX [Fusion Strike]. I know that I’ve been playing a bunch of different Lost Zone Box decks in my testing, and I hope that I get a chance to play them at an upcoming event! As always, I’ll share any of my findings with our Pokemon TCG community, and keep everyone up to date! If you need to grab any PTCG Live codes to get Credits in-game, be sure to use code zlesage5 to save 5% at thePoTown store! Have fun exploring the Lost Zone, and I’ll catch up with you all next time! Thanks for reading, and happy testing!

Zach Lesage is a contributing writer for PoTownStore.com. As a Toronto local, he has been playing the Pokemon Trading Card Game since 2005 and creates Pokemon content as his full time career. With multiple prestigious accomplishments in the game, such as 2020 Players Cup 2 Champion and 2020 Oceania International Championships Finalist, he has proven his success in the game. Outside of the game, he travels the world, enjoys the culture of designer streetwear, and is a professionally trained chef. You can catch him at most Pokemon events and follow him on Twitter @ZachLesagePTCG.