Shocking Strategies With Lost Zone Pikachu ex

By: Natalie Millar · Posted Posted onJan 10, 2025 at 2:35 PM · 4 Comments

Hello everyone! Lost Zone toolbox with Pikachu ex was hyped up a ton before the release of Surging Sparks, however it has failed to deliver tournament results. It still does well occasionally, taking some Day 2 placements at each tournament with some cash finishes here and there but is mostly being held back by an unfavorable Regidrago VSTAR matchup. But I think the deck is still a solid choice heading forward.

Your matchups against all the other decks are very good thanks to being able to attack with Pikachu ex, many decks are unable to deal with its Resolute Heart Ability and Topaz Bolt is able to KO most opposing Pokemon. If you can’t take the one-hit Knock Out with Topaz Bolt, you have the option of setting up Knock Outs with your single-Prize Pokemon attackers. You can even do so while taking a Knock Out by using Radiant Greninja‘s Moonlight Shuriken or Sableye‘s Lost Mine to hit multiple Pokemon at once.

This deck still has the flexibility and aggressiveness of the Lost Zone decks of the past with single-Prize Pokemon attackers such as Radiant Greninja, Sableye, and Cramorant to take apart evolving decks in the early game. Additionally, you can take big Knock Outs later on using Pikachu ex or Bloodmoon Ursaluna ex, and you also have Iron Hands ex to try and take extra Prizes against opposing decks with small Pokemon, or against Lugia VSTAR as Lugia V is weak to Lightning-type Pokemon. This deck is more Energy hungry than ever, with Iron Hands usually taking two copies of Mirage Gate to power up and Pikachu ex discarding all its Energy. This makes hitting your attachment each turn very important as you are only usually able to use three copies of Mirage Gate per game with one typically ending up in the Lost Zone. This is why Bloodmoon Ursaluna ex is still in the deck, even though it’s a weaker attacker than Pikachu ex, as it’s very helpful for allowing you to close out the game with a two-Prize Pokemon Knock Out without having to use a Mirage Gate.

When building a Lost Zone toolbox deck, I often try and base the list on Andrew Hedrick’s NAIC winning deck. This list had a lot of solid consistency counts, such as the four copies of Switch Cart and four Switch, the three copies of Lost Vacuum and the four copies of PokéStop. This made Hedrick’s list very consistent at using Mirage Gate on turn 2, all the way to getting to seven cards in the Lost Zone either by using Comfey‘s Flower Selecting a bunch of times or through sending a Pokestop to the Lost Zone with Lost Vacuum. The one thing Hedrick’s list didn’t include that I would like to find space for is the fourth copy of Buddy-Buddy Poffin, however, it makes sense to skimp on this count first. Unlike Switch, Lost Vacuum or Pokestop, drawing into a second copy of Buddy-Buddy Poffin doesn’t do much for you. The first one has likely found two copies of Comfey or one Comfey and one Manaphy if you need it, so the next few copies usually end up in the Lost Zone or burned from your hand. You will likely use multiple Switch per game to move between different Comfey as you find more cards, and Pokestop is always useful to bump Stadiums and dig deeper through your deck. Lost Vacuum is both useful to increase your Lost Zone and to disrupt your opponent by removing their Tools and Stadiums.

However, when including Pikachu ex, you need more Energy than the deck did at NAIC, as you need to account for Topaz Bolt’s three different Energy types. This also forces you to significantly spread out your Energy types if you want to be able to attack with Radiant Greninja and Sableye, which is something that I prioritize as they are some of the deck’s strongest attackers. I don’t want to have to go to one copy of Pikachu’s required Energy types as you risk sending those cards to the Lost Zone early, but I think going to one copy of Psychic Energy and two copies of Water Energy is fine. This still gives you 11 Energy total which is three more than Hedrick’s list. Having 11 Energy in your deck makes it so that you can consistently hit your attachments for turn, as well as having enough Energy to discard to use Radiant Greninja’s Concealed Cards. It does seem like a low amount of Energy cards to have with Topaz Bolt requiring three types, but two copies of each type makes it manageable to chain Topaz Bolts if you need to.

With those ideas in mind, I constructed this deck to try and be very consistent and be able to chain the correct attacks each game, so let’s dive in!

This concludes the public portion of this article.

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The free portion of this article alone shows a significant amount of insight into the construction and piloting of this deck. I'm more of a retro Pokemon player, but since I'm probably gonna build several Brilliant Stars through Prismatic Evolutions decks when the last set rotates and the singles are cheap, I wouldn't be surprised if I come back and buy a week's subscription to read the rest of this piece. (After all, everything becomes retro eventually! I'm willing to play most and enjoy many formats, I just don't go to sanctioned tournaments or local leagues.)
 
for context, i am lz box’s biggest fan and have been playing it since day one. in testing and playing lost box a lot i have found iron hands to feel pretty bad in actually games. Against the one prize matchups it’s supposed to help against it only serves to give both you and your opponent two prize cards because they can normally return ko it, and so it just ends up unnecessarily speeding up the game for both players, normally resulting in a loss for you because lz box benefits from having as many turns as possible to set up a checkmate. The only other matchups it helps against are ones where you can exploit a lighting type weakness, and in these you would normally rather use pikachu ex to knock out their main attack. Iron hands real weakness comes in the fact that it basically requires a double mirage gate, and so if you use 2 gates on hands, you can really only attack with pikachu one other time, giving you a likely total of five prize cards from those two. On the flip side, only attacking with pikachu and using three different gates for three different attacks will result in 6 prize cards, assuming you ohko a two prizer each time. Even still, not using all your gates on an iron hands will then open up other op to one such as mixing up pikachu, an early ursaluna, and greninja. Thus, i have opted d to go for using iron thorns instead because it helps with all the same lighting weakness matchups and also fixes your drago and zard matchup a bit.
 
Nuclear said:
for context, i am lz box’s biggest fan and have been playing it since day one. in testing and playing lost box a lot i have found iron hands to feel pretty bad in actually games. Against the one prize matchups it’s supposed to help against it only serves to give both you and your opponent two prize cards because they can normally return ko it, and so it just ends up unnecessarily speeding up the game for both players, normally resulting in a loss for you because lz box benefits from having as many turns as possible to set up a checkmate. The only other matchups it helps against are ones where you can exploit a lighting type weakness, and in these you would normally rather use pikachu ex to knock out their main attack. Iron hands real weakness comes in the fact that it basically requires a double mirage gate, and so if you use 2 gates on hands, you can really only attack with pikachu one other time, giving you a likely total of five prize cards from those two. On the flip side, only attacking with pikachu and using three different gates for three different attacks will result in 6 prize cards, assuming you ohko a two prizer each time. Even still, not using all your gates on an iron hands will then open up other op to one such as mixing up pikachu, an early ursaluna, and greninja. Thus, i have opted d to go for using iron thorns instead because it helps with all the same lighting weakness matchups and also fixes your drago and zard matchup a bit.
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Nuh uh, that title is mine
 
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