Ancient Box, a powerful new archetype, that was introduced in the recent Temporal Forces set, and has quickly become the strongest single-prize attacking deck in the standard format. Single prize decks such as Ancient Box consist of Pokémon that can only give your opponent one prize at a time when they knock you out; rather than giving up 2 prizes for Vs or EXs. In most matchups, a deck like Ancient Box has a strong advantage in the prize race, but that’s not the only reason why it’s strong.
As far as the deck goes, Ancient Box revolves around increasing your damage for Roaring Moon; by discarding as many ancient cards throughout the game. Pretty much any other ancient Pokémon or Trainer card is meant to be discarded for Roaring Moon. Roaring Moon’s ‘Vengeance Fletching’ attack achieves this goal and gets even better as the game goes on. This deck can easily one-shot anything that your opponent throws at you, it’s truly a satisfying feeling and a sight to behold.
This deck has managed to achieve very high placements in most recent regionals such as 5th Place at the Special Event in Bogotá, Colombia; 2nd Place at the Special Event in Buenos Aires, Argentina; and even at the Regional in Orlando, Florida, to name a few. Even myself, I have even played this deck in a few local tournaments and league challenges, and have found success with Ancient Box. I have been able to win one of my recent League Challenges at Empire Trading in Ottawa with this deck.
Special Event Buenos Aires - 2nd Place Ancient Box:
Special Event Bogota - 5th Place Ancient Box:
Regional Orlando, Florida - 2nd Place Ancient Box:
Overall, Ancient Box is a very strong and formidable deck, but it is notorious for having a weak Charizard matchup. On one hand, it does very well against every meta deck, on the other, the deck has a straightforward game plan, that requires a lot of strategy, navigation, and decision-making every time.
Deck List Showcase
Before I show you the deck list, I quickly want to mention that Ancient Box can be customized in a few different ways, and played using different methods; whether it be to further increase your damage, countering certain decks, or milling your opponent’s deck to zero.
Ancient Box with Great Tusk: $46.82 CAD | 34.30$ USD
Pokémon:
4 Roaring Moon - TEF
4 Flutter Mane - TEF
3 Koraidon - TEF
1 Great Tusk - TEF
1 Radiant Greninja - Astral Radiance
Trainers:
4 Professor Sada's Vitality - PAR
4 Explorers Guidance - TEF
1 Boss's Orders - PAL
1 Penny - SVI
4 Earthen Vessel - PAR
4 Pokegear 3.0 - SVI
4 Nest Ball - PAF
2 Ultra Ball - PAF
2 Super Rod - PAL
2 Counter Catcher - PAR
1 Awakening Drum - TEF
1 Superior Energy Retrieval - PAL
1 Pal Pad - SVI
1 Lost Vacuum - Crown Zenith
4 Ancient Booster Energy Capsule - TEF/PAR
3 Pokestop - Pokemon Go
Energy:
6 Dark Energy
1 Fighting Energy
1 Fire Energy
Ancient Box with Cobalion: $49.16 CAD | 36.01 USD
Pokémon:
4 Roaring Moon - TEF
4 Flutter Mane - TEF
3 Koraidon - TEF
1 Cobalion - Silver Tempest
1 Radiant Greninja - Astral Radiance
Trainers:
4 Professor Sada's Vitality - PAR
4 Explorers Guidance - TEF
1 Boss's Orders - PAL
1 Penny - SVI
4 Earthen Vessel - PAR
4 Pokegear 3.0 - SVI
3 Nest Ball - PAF
3 Ultra Ball - PAF
2 Super Rod - PAL
3 Counter Catcher - PAR
1 Awakening Drum - TEF
1 Superior Energy Retrieval - PAL
1 Pal Pad - SVI
1 Hisuian Heavy Ball - Astral Radiance
4 Ancient Booster Energy Capsule - TEF/PAR
3 Pokestop - Pokemon Go
Energy:
6 Dark Energy
1 Fighting Energy
As you can see with these deck lists, they aren’t too different from one another, except each one has a slightly different game plan. The 1st deck aims to win normally by stacking up damage for Roaring Moon’s Vengeance Fletching attack; however, there is a Great Tusk in place to provide an alternate win condition, which is being able to discard your opponent’s deck.
Now, you can use the Great Tusk at a time when you know your opponent has very few cards left in their deck, or you can use it early to mid-game if you want to (or if you’re forced to) in order, to hopefully discard some important cards from your opponent’s deck. The other list with Cobalion aims to further increase your Roaring Moon’s attack by an extra 30 damage to your opponent's Dark-type Pokémon with its ‘Justified Law’ ability.
This increase of damage comes in handy when going against your worst matchup Charizard EX. With that extra push, you can hit that 330-damage range, which is the exact number needed to knock out Charizard EX. Both lists are solid and very affordable, but choosing between the 2 depends on what you expect to play against in your local tournaments, cups, and regionals.
Most people, including myself, opt to play the 1st list since it’s the standard version and provides an alternate win condition to mill your opponent with Great Tusk. On the flip side, if you know that there are a lot of Charizards, you can easily swap out Great Tusk with Cobalion, no sweat; or you can have both in your deck if you’re the daring type.
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How To Play Ancient Box
Ancient Box aims to blaze through a load of cards as fast as humanely possible. Radiant Greninja and Pokéstop are your core cards for your draw engine. You can draw cards with Greninja by discarding your energy and using Professor Sada’s Vitality to load up your attackers consistently, while also discarding all of the other ancient Pokémon to boost up Roaring Moon’s attack.
The Awakening Drum ACE-SPEC from Temporal Forces is a very powerful and important card within the deck. It can draw you multiple cards depending on the amount of ancient Pokémon you have in play. This means you can draw a maximum amount of 6 cards. Realistically, you'll be able to draw into 3-4 more cards, which is still insane!
Sometimes at the start of the game, you’ll find yourself using Koraidon to deal damage or take an early knockout or two. Koraidon is capable of dealing heavy damage with its Primordial Beatdown attack. Its damage scales up when you have multiple ancient Pokemon in play.
For the most part, Koraidon is meant to be discarded and not heavily relied on as an attacker. Your Roaring Moon should one shot anywhere from turns three and onward, as long as you had a good start. It will also be your primary attacker in the mid to late game.
It’s crucial to keep track of your energy management with Roaring Moon, and also your deck so you don’t deck yourself out and lose. This deck has a lot of draw support and you will be surprised by how quickly you burn through your deck.
Another thing to note is that at some point you will need to stop using Pokéstop to prevent yourself from decking out, and also when you know you have enough resources to close out the game.
Super Rod and Pal Pad are two very handy cards that can help you put a couple of key cards back into your deck. When you Super Rod, you mainly want to put back two Roaring Moon and one dark energy into your deck.
For Pal Pad, you usually want to put back Boss’s Orders and Professor Sada’s Vitality into your deck so you can continue accelerating energy using Sada, and having Boss’s Orders to bring up a target that you need to knock out to win the game.
If you want to see Ancient Box in action, you can watch this video linked below. The video is covered by LittleDarkFury, who is a very well-known YouTuber and competitive player within the Pokémon TCG community.
Other Inclusions/Honorable Mentions for Ancient Box
As far as other inclusions go, there have been experimentations with some decks taking out Koraidon entirely and replacing them with Walking Wake from the new Twilight Masquerade set:
The main reason for this inclusion is because of its low retreat cost of one energy. Sometimes your opponent will want to stall if they have a bad start, and will always try to promote your Koraidon with Counter Catcher, Prime Catcher, or Boss’s Orders since it has a bit of a hefty retreat cost of two energy.
It honestly sucks when that happens, because you’re left with extending your resources to bring Koraidon back to your bench. However, with Walking Wake you don’t run into this issue.
One thing to mention is that by having Walking Wake, you’re solely relying on Roaring Moon to get the job done even more, instead of using Koraidon as a potential early-game attacker.
I’ve been experimenting with Walking Wake instead of Koraidon, and its merits are there, and it works very well, but I have also experienced the cons. All I can say is that this choice comes down to preference.
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