Testing, Testing


What’s up, PoTown readers? Have you been testing Pokemon online decks from the new Lost Origin set? I’ve been testing with my friend's non stop for upcoming Regionals, and I think we have stumbled across a very powerful deck. Coming fresh off of a finalist finish at the 3000 player Japanese Champions League event in Yokohoma, Lost Zone box is making a huge splash in the metagame. Additionally, my Shuffle Squad teammate, Cal Connor, won a 400+ player Late Night with a similar list. The deck looks like a mutated version of the Radiant Charizard (Pokemon GO) / Inteleon (Sword and Shield) that recently won the Baltimore Regional Championships. This new version of the deck features the Lost Zone engine, which consists of Comfey (Lost Origin) and Colress’sExperiment (Lost Origin), and a handful of different attackers. Cramorant (Lost Origin) allows you to hit for an early 110 damage, Sableye (Lost Origin) allows you to spread 12 damage counters, and Radiant Charizard is your late-game sweeper. This deck is incredibly simple to understand yet can get extremely complex - let’s jump into the list and dissect that. If you need any cards to build this deck, consider picking up some codes right here at the PoTown store! Instant email delivery, 24/7, and a large selection of PTCGO codes. That being said, let’s get it!


The List


Sableye

Here is the list that Cal used to win the 416 player Late Night series! I believe the only change from this list that placed 2nd at Yokohoma is changing a Boss’s Orders (Rebel Clash) for the currently Japan-exclusive Serena from S11a. They are similar cards, but we can only play cards that we have available in our format for now - let’s jump into the list:


Decklist


Pokémon (13)

Trainers (41)

Energy (6)

4x Comfey LOR 794x Colress's Experiment LOR 1554x Psychic Energy 5
3x Sableye LOR 702x Klara CRE 1452x Fire Energy 2
2x Cramorant LOR 501x Marnie CPA 56
2x Manaphy BRS 411x Roxanne ASR 150
1x Galarian Zigzagoon SSH 1171x Boss's Orders BRS 132
1x Radiant Charizard PGO 114x Battle VIP Pass FST 225

4x Scoop Up Net RCL 165

4x Escape Rope BST 125

3x Switch Cart ASR 154

3x Echoing Horn CRE 136

2x Level Ball BST 129

2x Fog Crystal CRE 140

2x Lost Vacuum LOR 162

2x Pokégear 3.0 SSH 174

1x Pal Pad SSH 172

2x Air Balloon SSH 156

3x PokéStop PGO 68

Lost zone Box decklist

As the metagame changes with major events happening from Limitless, Late Night, unofficial IRL events, and more, I expect this deck to change slightly going forward. Empoleon V (Battle Style) is of the utmost concern, but Escape Rope (Battle Style) is an answer for now. I’ll explain the strategy here alongside some of the more important cards available.


The Strategy


Comfey

The main focus of this deck is getting X amount of cards in the Lost Zone, and that number changes from 4 to attack with Cramorant and ultimately getting to 10 to attack with Sableye. You want to use Comfey’s Flower Gathering with “switching cards”, like Switch Cart (Astral Radiance) or Scoop Up Net (Rebel Clash), to utilize another Comfey. If you are able to use two Flower Gathering Abilities and Colress’s Experiment, you can activate Cramorant’s Lost Provisions Ability to be able to attack with that Pokemon for free. Sometimes between your first and third turns, you want to continuously use Flower Gathering and Colress’s Experiment to get up to 10 cards in your Lost Zone to activate Sableye’s Lost Mine attack. Once you get up to the 10 cards in your Lost Zone, you want to strategically choose to attack with Sableye to spread damage counters or chip away with Cramorant to start drawing Prize Cards. Once your opponent has drawn 4 or more Prize Cards, you can start attacking with Radiant Charizard for a single Fire Energy to sweep up the rest of the game. A quick thing to note is that, unlike the Inteleon version, this version doesn’t play Choice Belt (Brilliant Stars), so you’ll need to set up some KOs with Sableye’s Lost Mine by placing damage counters beforehand. There are a few important things to consider while you are playing this deck so let’s jump into a few specifics:

Lost Zone Engine


Colress’s Experiement

This is the main part of setting up Cramorant and Sableye, but there is a huge strategy that I want to share here. If Colress’s Experiment and Comfey both achieve getting cards into the Lost Zone, which one is better to use first? It took me a while to get an answer, but I think it's much better to use Comfey first. The reason is that you give yourself a larger deck which means it likely has more cards that you can easily Lost Zone. If you do it after a Colress’s Experiment, you’ll likely have already put “useless” cards into the Lost Zone. And with Colress’s Experiment, you see enough cards where it is usually easy enough to decide upon the two that are sent directly to the Lost Zone. If there are ever situations where you feel like one is better to do before the other, treat those as exceptional cases, but the above has been useful for me.

Switching Cards


Scoop Up Net

Escape Rope, Switching Cart, and Scoop Up Net are the cards that allow you to abuse Comfey’s Flower Gathering Ability. There isn’t a set order to use these in, but Scoop Up Net are the most valuable because they can “reset” a Comfey to be used again in the same turn and also work well with Galarian Zigzagoon (Sword and Shield). You’ll rarely want to send these cards to the Lost Zone, and your first couple of turns of the game will usually find you using many, many, many copies of them to achieve your Lost Zone goals.

Manaphy


Manaphy

You might find it weird that this deck plays two copies of Manaphy (Brilliant Stars), but it is to get around Canceling Cologne + Radiant Greninja (Astral Radiance) plays that can find your opponent stealing the game from you. If you aren’t worried about getting your Bench sniped, by all means, send these Pokemon to the Lost Zone.

Echoing Horn


Echoing Horn

A neat strategy of this deck is to use Echoing Horn (Chilling Reign) to bring back smaller HPed Pokemon, like Sobble (Chilling Reign), to KO with Sableye’s Lost Mine attack. You want to repeatedly use Echoing Horn + Lost Mine to spawn OHKO as many easy Pokemon as possible.


Happy Testing!


Whether you’re trying to become the next Late Night champion or play fun games on the Versus ladder, this Lost Zone Box deck is a great archetype to explore for everyone! I’m stoked to continuously test these new Lost Origin Pokemon online decks and learn more about the metagame myself! If you need any codes for your own testing or collection, the PoTown store is one of the best places to pick up cards for the Pokemon TCG Online game. Thanks for reading, and I’ll catch up with you next time!


About the Writer


Zach Lesage is a contributing writer for the PoTown store. 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.