Pokémon TCG ACE SPEC Cards: All 29 Legal, Ranked by Play

Three Regional Championships into the 2027 season, 6,720 of the 6,728 Masters decklists Limitless Labs has published ran exactly one ACE SPEC card. The other eight ran none. Not one ran two, because the rules do not allow it.

That makes the ACE SPEC a deckbuilding slot almost every competitive list fills, and lists fill it differently, and the rulebook's only advice is to look at all of them and pick. So we did the looking. Below is every ACE SPEC legal in Standard right now, with card text from the Pokémon TCG API, and what the full Masters fields at Baltimore (September 18-20, 3,119 lists), Brisbane (September 26-27, 816 lists) and Frankfurt (September 26-27, 2,793 lists) actually registered, from the standings data and decklists on Limitless Labs. Those 6,728 lists are every Masters player at the three events bar four for whom Limitless shows no list.

One ACE SPEC per deck, and it is a construction rule

Appendix 3 of The Pokémon Company's 2026 Web Rulebook (last updated July 2026) states the limit, and the important part is the word "total": your deck can include "only one total ACE SPEC card." Not one copy of each. One, across all 60 cards.

That is the whole restriction. It limits what goes into the deck, not how the card plays: an ACE SPEC Item is still an Item, an ACE SPEC Stadium still follows every Stadium rule, and an ACE SPEC Special Energy still counts against your one Energy attachment a turn. Our Trainer card guide covers those subtype rules. This post is about the choice.

The 29 Standard-legal ACE SPECs split 18 Items, 6 Pokémon Tools, 2 Stadiums and 3 Special Energy. Bulbapedia describes the Scarlet & Violet ACE SPEC design as a magenta frame with ACE SPEC logos, so your opponent can see which one you picked the moment it hits the table.

All 29 ACE SPEC cards in Standard

The Pokémon TCG API lists 33 English printings carrying the ACE SPEC subtype and a Standard-legal regulation mark, which come to 29 distinct cards. Bulbapedia's ACE SPEC page counts the same 29 for the Scarlet & Violet Series, three of them reprints of Black & White-era cards (Master Ball, Scoop Up Cyclone and Scramble Switch). Four were reprinted in Prismatic Evolutions; the table gives the first Scarlet & Violet printing. The last two columns count the Masters lists that registered each card at the three Regionals, and how many of those lists made Day 2.

What 6,728 Regional decklists registered

The top five ACE SPECs account for 5,590 of the 6,728 lists, 83.1%. Here is every ACE SPEC that at least 100 players registered, against how many of those lists made Day 2. Across all three fields, 1,215 of 6,728 Masters lists made Day 2, 18.1%.

Do not read the last column as a ranking of cards. An ACE SPEC goes where its archetype goes, so that column mostly measures decks. Prime Catcher's 24.4% is lifted by Alakazam/Dusknoir, which ran it in 66 of 70 lists and put 20 of them into Day 2, every one with Prime Catcher. Hero's Cape's 15.0% is weighed down by Mega Excadrill, whose 224 Cape lists produced 24 Day 2 lists.

The pattern held at each event. Unfair Stamp led all three fields, at 37.8% in Baltimore, 33.1% in Brisbane and 35.4% in Frankfurt, with Secret Box second each time.

The top cuts tell the same story. Of the 33 players who made the three top cuts (8 in Baltimore, 9 in Brisbane, 16 in Frankfurt), 18 ran Unfair Stamp, 5 Secret Box, 4 Enriching Energy, 4 Prime Catcher and 2 Hero's Cape. The three winners used three different ones: Dylan Kasturi's Basic Box in Baltimore ran Hero's Cape, Edmund Khoo's Dragapult ex in Brisbane ran Unfair Stamp, and Tomasz Chałupka's Alakazam/Dusknoir in Frankfurt ran Prime Catcher. The Baltimore and Frankfurt and Brisbane recaps have the full lists.

Unfair Stamp is the Dragapult card

Unfair Stamp only works the turn after you lose a Pokémon. Then it shuffles both hands away and deals you 5 cards to your opponent's 2: a fresh hand for you, and your opponent cut down to two cards, from one Item.

Its 36.2% share is mostly one deck family. The three biggest Dragapult ex builds, pure, Dusknoir and Blaziken ex, registered 1,875 lists across the three fields, and 1,791 of them ran Unfair Stamp: 95.5%. That is 73.5% of every Unfair Stamp registered. It is also the ACE SPEC in Andrew Hedrick's Worlds-winning Dragapult list, per his decklist on Limitless Labs.

The card it travels with is Fezandipiti ex. Its Flip the Script Ability draws 3 cards, and it switches on under the same condition Unfair Stamp does: one of your Pokémon was Knocked Out during your opponent's last turn. Of the 2,437 Unfair Stamp lists, 2,295 also ran Fezandipiti ex (94.2%). Of the 4,291 lists that chose a different ACE SPEC or none, 2,332 did (54.3%). Hedrick's list has both. Read together, the two cards give a deck that expects to trade Knock Outs two separate ways to refill its hand on exactly the turn it has just lost a Pokémon.

Outside those three builds, 646 lists ran Unfair Stamp, led by the Ogerpon/Meganium/Hydrapple deck (163 of its 193 lists), Basic Box (117), Sharpedo/Toxtricity (76 of 103) and Lucario/Hariyama (60).

Secret Box is the toolbox pick

Secret Box costs three cards from your hand and returns up to four from your deck, one of each of the four Trainer subtypes: an Item, a Pokémon Tool, a Supporter and a Stadium.

Three archetypes account for most of its 1,258 lists. N's Zoroark ran it in 394 of 485 lists, Slowking in 261 of 392, and Festival Lead in 213 of 224. Festival Lead is the clearest fit on card text alone: Dipplin's Festival Lead Ability only lets it attack twice while the Festival Grounds Stadium is in play, and Secret Box can put Festival Grounds and a Supporter in hand together. Grimmsnarl/Froslass (76 of 84) is the fourth-biggest Secret Box deck.

Most archetypes have already decided

For most of the big decks the ACE SPEC is not a live question. These are the 16 archetypes with at least 100 Masters lists across the three events, by Limitless's labels:

Three of those near-unanimous pairings read straight off the cards.

• Alakazam/Dudunsparce and Enriching Energy, 397 of 401. Alakazam's Powerful Hand places 2 damage counters on the opponent's Active Pokémon for each card in your hand, and Enriching Energy draws 4 the moment you attach it from your hand. Four more cards held is eight more damage counters. The two big Mega Lopunny ex builds lean the same way, Lopunny/Dusknoir in 81 of 86 lists and Lopunny/Dudunsparce in 97 of 122.
• Rocket's Honchkrow and Miracle Headset, 136 of 138. All 138 Rocket's Honchkrow lists ran five different Team Rocket's Supporters (Giovanni, Archer, Proton, Ariana and Petrel), and Miracle Headset returns two Supporters from the discard pile.
• Crustle and Hero's Cape, 253 of 254. +100 HP, and no other ACE SPEC in the pool adds HP.

Note the split inside one Pokémon. Alakazam/Dudunsparce is an Enriching Energy deck, but Alakazam/Dusknoir, the deck that went first and second in Frankfurt, ran Prime Catcher in 66 of its 70 lists. Same attacker, different partner, different ACE SPEC.

Where players still disagree

Five of the big decks have not settled, and for those the Day 2 numbers inside a single archetype are the most useful thing in this post, with a caveat: these are three events and some of the samples are a few dozen lists, so treat a gap of a few points as noise.

Basic Box is the biggest deck where no single ACE SPEC reaches half its lists:

The deck that won Baltimore ran the least popular of the three. Kasturi's list has one Hero's Cape, and on his four Mega Kangaskhan ex, 300 HP Basics, it turns any one of them into a 400 HP Pokémon. One win does not outvote 381 lists, and 381 lists do not explain one win.

Slowking splits between Secret Box (261 lists, 24.1% to Day 2) and Prime Catcher (116 lists, 22.4%). That is the closest split in this section.

Mega Excadrill runs Hero's Cape in 224 lists (10.7% to Day 2) and Precious Trolley in 92 (14.1%), with both rates under the 18.1% field average.

Dhelmise runs Legacy Energy in 137 lists (16.8%) and Brilliant Blender in 52 (9.6%).

Lucario/Hariyama has not settled at all: Unfair Stamp in 60 lists, Secret Box in 50, Maximum Belt in 38 and Hero's Cape in 16, out of 174.

The ACE SPECs nobody is playing

Three of the 29 appeared in none of the 6,728 lists: Awakening Drum, Master Ball and Energy Search Pro. Another eleven appeared in fewer than ten lists each, from Neutralization Zone (9) down to Poké Vital A, Reboot Pod and Treasure Tracker (1 apiece). Those 14 cards together account for 40 lists, 0.6% of the field, and only three of the 40 made Day 2, all of them Survival Brace.

Master Ball is the instructive one. Its whole text is a search for any Pokémon. Ultra Ball, which a deck can run four of, performs the same search for a two-card discard. An ACE SPEC slot spent on Master Ball saves you two cards, once per game. That is a reading of card text, not a survey of why 6,728 players passed on it, but the zero is in the data.

Two others are built for one card type. Awakening Drum draws one card per Ancient Pokémon you have in play, and Reboot Pod attaches Energy only to Future Pokémon, so each is only as good as a deck full of that label.

Every one of them carries regulation mark H

Here is the part to know before you buy into the slot. All 33 Standard-legal ACE SPEC printings in the Pokémon TCG API carry regulation mark H, the oldest of the three marks in Standard. They come from six sets, Temporal Forces through Prismatic Evolutions. None of the 11 English expansions released since Prismatic Evolutions, from Journey Together through 30th Celebration, printed one, and the API lists no English ACE SPEC with an I or J mark.

The TCG Tournament Handbook's legality table (September 1, 2026 revision) has H legal since April 5, 2024. For context on how rotation has worked: G became legal April 14, 2023, The Pokémon Company announced on January 9, 2026 that it would leave Standard, and it rotated on April 10, 2026, per the rotation announcement. We found no announcement of the next rotation on Pokémon.com as of October 2, 2026, so nothing here predicts when H goes. What the data does say is conditional: if H leaves Standard before any ACE SPEC is reprinted with a newer mark, Standard has no ACE SPECs at all, and every list above loses its one-of.

Reprints are possible. Bulbapedia's ACE SPEC page records Japanese Mega-era reprints, including Unfair Stamp, Prime Catcher, Hero's Cape and Maximum Belt in the Premium Trainer Box MEGA. None has an English equivalent in the card data yet. Our formats guide covers how regulation marks decide legality, and our tournament rules guide covers the handbook's reprint rule, under which an older printing stays legal through a functionally identical newer one.

Quick Action Checklist

• One ACE SPEC per deck, total. It is a construction limit only; the card still plays as its Item, Tool, Stadium or Special Energy subtype.
• Standard has 29 ACE SPECs, all regulation mark H. No English set since Prismatic Evolutions has printed a new one.
• Default to your archetype's pick. Dragapult ex runs Unfair Stamp (95.5% of 1,875 lists across its three biggest builds), N's Zoroark, Slowking and Festival Lead run Secret Box, Alakazam/Dudunsparce runs Enriching Energy, Crustle runs Hero's Cape, Rocket's Honchkrow runs Miracle Headset.
• Pair Unfair Stamp with Fezandipiti ex. Both switch on after you lose a Pokémon, and 94.2% of Unfair Stamp lists ran both.
• Basic Box is a real choice. Prime Catcher, Unfair Stamp and Hero's Cape all made Day 2 in numbers, and the Baltimore winner ran the least popular one.
• Skip Master Ball, Awakening Drum and Energy Search Pro unless you have a reason the 6,728-list field did not.
• Watch the rotation notice. If H leaves Standard before a reprint, the slot disappears.