By Natalie Millar, Contributing Writer
More Paradox Pokémon are here thanks to the Pokémon TCG: Scarlet & Violet—Temporal Forces expansion! Paradox Pokémon provided unique options in the recent Paradox Rift format, and we now can build an entire deck around their Ancient or Future synergy. If we could harness that synergy, could the “Ancient Toolbox” deck make waves in the current metagame…or should it just be left in the past? Let’s take a look!
Decks that do damage based on what is in the discard pile have been around for ages in the Pokémon TCG. In previous formats, decks revolving around Flareon or Vespiquen have tried to fill their discard pile with Pokémon—and don’t forget the recent United Wings deck that did damage for each Pokémon in your discard pile with the United Wings attack! However, Roaring Moon from the new Scarlet & Violet—Temporal Forces expansion provides a slightly different take on this with its Vengeance Fletching attack, doing 70 damage plus 10 more for each Ancient card in your discard pile.
Initially, this seems very daunting: Pokémon these days can have massive HP—all the way up to Charizard ex’s 330! However, Ancient cards can fill a wide variety of roles in a deck, and there are a ton of strong cards that just happen to have the Ancient tag. This makes it very easy to start swinging with Roaring Moon’s Vengeance Fletching for two-hit Knock Outs on any Pokémon, and it only goes up from there.
There are also other Ancient options from Scarlet & Violet—Temporal Forces, including the impressive Flutter Mane. This Pokémon has an Ability that significantly improves matchups against some of the top decks in the format. While Flutter Mane is Active, Midnight Fluttering shuts off all Abilities on your opponent's Active Pokémon, which can be really annoying for some decks to deal with. Your opponent would be frequently forced to use their Abilities on the Bench, which can sometimes be difficult if, for instance, their Charmander or Lugia V is Active and they need to evolve and use Charizard ex’s Infernal Reign or Lugia VSTAR’s Summoning Star.
Midnight Fluttering is also strong against any Lost Zone deck, as it prevents opponents from using Comfey’s Flower Selecting Ability while Midnight Fluttering is Active. Flutter Mane has a solid attack as well—Hex Hurl does 90 damage while allowing you to spread 2 damage counters however you want on your opponent's Bench. While a 3-Energy attack cost initially looks a little hefty, we do have Professor Sada’s Vitality to help power it up, and it's a great attack to use while an opponent is struggling under Midnight Fluttering. With these two main Pokémon in mind, let's look at the deck list I put together for Ancient Box!
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Ancient Toolbox
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6Darkness Energy
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2Fire Energy
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4Explorer’s Guidance
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4Professor Sada’s Vitality
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1Boss’s Orders (Ghetsis)
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4PokéStop
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4Ancient Booster Energy Capsule
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4Earthen Vessel
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4Nest Ball
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4Pokégear 3.0
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4Ultra Ball
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2Counter Catcher
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1Awakening Drum
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1Pal Pad
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1Superior Energy Retrieval
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1Super Rod
I built this deck list around consistency. Single-Prize Pokémon often look appealing because your opponent can only take a maximum of one Prize card per Knock Out, so you are typically forced to power up a new attacker every turn. Because of this, there isn’t much room to fill your deck with many options, and you instead have to play cards that enable an attack turn after turn.
Discard, Draw, Dominate
Professor Sada’s Vitality is the perfect card for this deck—it accelerates Basic Energy from the discard pile to two of your Ancient Pokémon in play while also drawing a few extra cards. To discard the Energy, this deck list has Radiant Greninja, PokéStop, and Earthen Vessel. While we can’t attack with Radiant Greninja, its Concealed Cards Ability is a great fit for this deck, drawing cards and letting us put Energy in the discard pile for Professor Sada’s Vitality.
PokéStop is a Stadium that lets 3 cards be milled and sends all the Item cards found to your hand. This is great for finding more cards as well as discarding more Ancient cards and fueling Vengeance Fletching. We also have an Earthen Vessel, which lets you discard a card from your hand, search your deck for 2 Basic Energy cards, and then add those Basic Energy cards to your hand. What makes Earthen Vessel even stronger is that it is an Ancient card, meaning it can fuel Vengeance Fletching even further!
Speaking of discarding cards, this deck also features a full four copies of Explorer’s Guidance. This is a pseudo reprint of the older supporter Hapu, just with an Ancient tag. Explorer’s Guidance lets you look at the top 6 cards of your deck and add 2 of them to your hand. This is great for digging through this deck and discarding more Ancient cards—another Roaring Moon and Professor Sada’s Vitality are often found for the next turn!
Ancient Beatdown
The ACE SPEC card I chose for this deck was Awakening Drum. Prime Catcher could also be a solid option, but we have Counter Catcher to fill a similar role in this deck. Nothing is like Awakening Drum though: it often draws 3 to 4 cards just as an Item card! As many of our Pokémon are Ancient, this fuels both Vengeance Fletching and Awakening Drum.
Speaking of Ancient Pokémon, this deck has two side attackers at the ready. Koraidon is an interesting option: Primordial Beatdown does 30 damage times the amount of Ancient Pokémon in play. This usually caps out at 150 damage thanks to Radiant Greninja not being an Ancient Pokémon, so we have a maximum of five slots remaining. Primordial Beatdown shouldn’t be used every turn, but it is a nice option to fill in turns if there aren’t enough Ancient cards in the discard pile or if no copies of Roaring Moon remain.
The other side attacker you have is Great Tusk. Great Tusk is usually featured in dedicated mill decks, but here it acts as more of a threat to opponents. In single-Prize mirror matches, an opponent will often dig straight through their deck to hit attacks every turn and usually get to small numbers quickly. They also usually don’t play a lot of ways to recycle their deck and simply rely on having enough resources to power up six attackers.
This is where Great Tusk comes in. We already play the eight Ancient Supporter cards, so activating the Ancient Supporter clause on Land Collapse is typically very easy. If your opponent has a small number of cards in their deck, switch gears from taking Prize cards to attacking their cards in the deck with Great Tusk. You can even use Counter Catcher to bring up a Pokémon that might be unable to attack and try to trap it in the Active Spot for a bit! I think the matchup where Great Tusk will shine the most is the mirror match—you’d be ripping right through your decks with PokéStop, Explorer’s Guidance, and Professor Sada’s Vitality, so forcing your opponent to suddenly stop drawing cards could be very useful.
Prehistoric Prop Up
The card that ties this whole deck together is Ancient Booster Energy Capsule. Pokémon Tool cards that just give Pokémon extra HP always have some risk attached to them: if an opponent attacks your Pokémon and removes the Pokémon Tool, then your Pokémon will just automatically get Knocked Out. However, the opponent has to actually play a Tool removal card and find it on the right turn.
Pokémon Tools that just increase HP weren’t often powerful in the past, but recently they have become much stronger. Ancient Booster Energy Capsule boosts the HP of the Ancient Pokémon it’s attached to by 60, which is huge! One of the strongest aspects of the Ancient Box deck is how annoying its Pokémon are to Knock Out in one attack. Roaring Moon has 140 HP, which is boosted to 200 with the Ancient Booster Energy Capsule.
Plenty of decks are capable of hitting 200 damage, but not a lot can realistically do it turn after turn to KO single-Prize Pokémon. 200 HP puts Roaring Moon out of range of an Amp You Very Much attack from Iron Hands ex, which is the bane or most single-Prize decks. It's also very solid against Chien-Pao ex decks, which need to discard 4 Energy to hit for 200 damage. It also puts Roaring Moon out of range from a Trinity Nova from an Arceus VSTAR with a Double Turbo Energy attached.
These same decks don’t typically play ways to remove Pokémon Tools: they often aren’t worth the card slot. And with Path to the Peak rotated out, many decks likewise have cut their Stadium cards and their copies of Lost Vacuum. Forcing opponents to KO Pokémon with 200 HP that only give up a single Prize card every turn is a strong strategy—many decks are unable to keep up!
Staples for Any Era
Rounding out this deck are two non-Ancient cards. We have four Nest Ball and four Ultra Ball to find our Pokémon turn after turn. While these can be easy cuts to make space for other cards, I tend to dislike removing Pokémon search cards because they are useful at nearly every point in the game. Ultra Ball truly shines when we discard a bunch of Ancient cards and fuel Vengeance Fletching into an increasingly strong attack.
I chose to play only one copy of Super Rod because we have such a wide variety of attackers that typically won’t need more recovery. Super Rod is also an awkward card to use in this deck as it removes some Ancient Pokémon from the discard pile, so keep that in mind before playing it. Pal Pad plays a similar role: we want more access to Professor Sada’s Vitality throughout the game, so having the opportunity to Pal Pad some back in is important.
There is also one copy of Boss’s Orders, which lets us bring an opposing Pokémon into the Active Spot. This is helpful even though it takes up the Supporter for the turn, making it difficult to use. Counter Catcher does provide a similar effect to Boss’s Orders, but you’d have to be behind in Prize cards to use it. Keeping the Prize trade in mind is important when using Counter Catcher: sometimes it’s correct to set up a Pokémon on your opponent’s Bench instead of taking a Knock Out just to stay behind in Prize cards!
Ancient Box is a new way to approach the Scarlet & Violet—Temporal Forces format. It takes advantage of Pokémon that need to discard Energy for their attacks with Ancient Booster Energy Capsule, and it often trades up against bigger Pokémon ex. Use Flutter Mane to disrupt in the beginning, then swing for massive damage with Roaring Moon, all the while keeping Great Tusk and Koraidon in reserve as additional options. Ancient Box has a ton of flexibility, and I hope you’ll enjoy finding all the different routes to take each game!
For more Pokémon TCG strategy and analysis, visit Pokemon.com/Strategy.
Natalie has been playing Pokémon casually since late 2013 but started attending more competitive tournaments in late 2017. She won the first Regional Championships after the pandemic in her home city of Brisbane, Australia, and has been attending most major tournaments since. Outside of Pokémon, she studied psychology, but it doesn’t help with reading opponents as much as you would think. You can find her at most major tournaments and can follow her on X at @nataliem9999.
