Pokémon TCG Basic Box Deck Guide: Builds and Matchups

Luc Gantner of Switzerland won the Nice Regional Championships on October 17-18 at the Palais des Expositions - Nice Acropolis, going 15-1-2 through a 2,336-player Masters Division and beating Maxime Launay's Dhelmise in the final. His deck was Basic Box, the toolbox of Basic Pokémon built around Mega Kangaskhan ex that Dylan Kasturi used to win Baltimore a month earlier. That makes two Regional wins in the 2027 season's first six, level with pure Dragapult ex (Brisbane and Louisville) and ahead of every other archetype.

The Baltimore recap printed Kasturi's 60 and explained two of its cards in depth: Mega Kangaskhan ex and the Area Zero Underdepths Stadium. This guide is about the deck across all six events. Every tournament number comes from Limitless Labs, which builds its tables from the RK9 tournament software: all 830 Basic Box decklists registered at Baltimore, Brisbane, Frankfurt, Recife, Louisville and Nice, and Limitless's matchup tables for those players, Swiss and top cut. Win rates count a tie as a third of a win, the way Limitless does. Card text is from the Pokémon TCG API.

It beat the field's Day 2 rate at all six events, and it has taken 8 of the season's 65 top-cut seats: three in Baltimore, one in Brisbane and four in Nice, where Emma Hagen, Alessio Di Pofi and Hugo De Torres joined Gantner in the 14-player cut. It is also no longer a small deck. Basic Box was the sixth-most-registered archetype in Baltimore, the second in Louisville behind pure Dragapult ex, and the third in Nice behind Dragapult ex (459 players) and Slowking (170).

How the deck takes Prizes

Every Pokémon in the list is a Basic, which is what lets three Abilities and a Trainer line do most of the work.

• Latias ex's Skyliner: "Your Basic Pokémon in play have no Retreat Cost." In this deck that is all of them. Mega Kangaskhan ex has a printed Retreat Cost of three, and with Latias ex in play it costs nothing to send it back to the Bench.
• Mega Kangaskhan ex's Run Errand draws 2 cards once during your turn, but only while it is in the Active Spot, and you can't use more than one Run Errand Ability each turn. Free retreat is what makes that workable: start the turn with Kangaskhan Active, draw 2, then retreat into whichever attacker the turn needs.
• Meowth ex's Last-Ditch Catch searches your deck for a Supporter when you play it from your hand onto your Bench. Its Tuck Tail attack puts Meowth ex and everything attached back into your hand, so the same Meowth can be benched again for another search.
• Crispin finds two Basic Energy of different types, puts one in your hand and attaches the other to any of your Pokémon. Energy Switch moves a Basic Energy between your Pokémon. Glass Trumpet, playable only with a Tera Pokémon in play, attaches a Basic Energy from your discard pile to each of up to two Benched Colorless Pokémon, and Mega Kangaskhan ex and Meowth ex are both Colorless.

That spread of Energy types is there because the deck carries an attacker for most situations, and most of them want a different colour. Here are ten of them, each in at least half of the 830 lists. Meowth ex and Fezandipiti ex have attacks too, but they are in the deck for their Abilities.

Iron Leaves ex's Rapid Vernier Ability is the other piece of the Energy plan: when you play it from your hand onto your Bench, you can switch it into the Active Spot and move any amount of Energy from your other Pokémon onto it. The Ogerpon pair and the Tera rule that protects them on the Bench, plus Area Zero's eight-slot Bench, are covered in the Baltimore recap and our Bench rules guide.

Fairy Zone is the Dragapult card

Dragapult ex has been the most-registered deck at all six Regionals. It is a 320 HP Stage 2 Dragon Pokémon with no printed Weakness. Lillie's Clefairy ex, in all 830 Basic Box lists and at two copies in 782 of them, changes that while it is in play:

Fairy Zone: The Weakness of each of your opponent's Dragon Pokémon in play is now Psychic. (Apply Weakness as ×2.)

It is an Ability, so it works from the Bench, and it covers Dreepy and Drakloak as well. Read the Psychic attackers in the table above against a Dragapult ex in the Active Spot with Fairy Zone on:

• Latias ex's Eon Blade: 200 doubled is 400, a one-hit Knock Out on 320 HP.
• Enamorus's Love Resonance: 200 when one of your Pokémon in play shares a type with one of theirs. Raging Bolt ex, in 691 of the 830 lists, is itself a Dragon Pokémon, so with it in play the bonus is on. Doubled, that is also 400, from a Pokémon worth one Prize.
• Lillie's Clefairy ex's Full Moon Rondo: it needs 160 before Weakness, so 7 Benched Pokémon across both sides. Dragapult ex is a Tera Pokémon, so with one in play, Area Zero Underdepths gives the Dragapult player eight Bench slots too.

For comparison, Mega Kangaskhan ex is Colorless and gets no help from Fairy Zone. Rapid-Fire Combo reaches 320 only with three heads before the first tails, which on a fair coin is a one-in-eight chance. Iron Crown ex's Twin Shotels ignores Weakness by its own text.

That is card arithmetic, and the match records show a modest edge rather than a lock. Across the six Regionals, Basic Box went 649-516-208 (52.3%) against pure Dragapult ex over 1,373 matches, and 989-804-318 (51.9%) against every Dragapult build combined. The pure matchup moved by event: 56.3% in Baltimore, 52.7% in Brisbane, 49.9% in Frankfurt, 47.1% in Recife, 50.0% in Louisville and 55.5% in Nice. Gantner himself played six Dragapult builds in Nice and went 5-0-1 against them, per his match history. How the deck looks from the other side of the table is in our Dragapult ex guide.

The cards 830 lists agree on

These are the cards in at least 90% of the 830 lists, with the count most of them chose:

Cyrano earns its two slots because it searches out up to three Pokémon ex, and most of the deck's Pokémon are. Fezandipiti ex is the draw card for after a Knock Out: its Flip the Script Ability draws 3 if any of your Pokémon were Knocked Out during your opponent's last turn.

One count in that table split the results. Lists with four Area Zero Underdepths made Day 2 at 28.4% (93 of 327), and lists with three or fewer at 20.9% (105 of 503). Gantner ran three. Like every split below, that measures players as well as cards, and standings data can't separate the two.

What moved between Baltimore and Nice

The core has held all season. The last ten or so slots have not. This is the share of each event's Basic Box lists running a card, then the Day 2 rate for all 830 lists with and without it:

Three things stand out.

The deck added Fighting attackers as it got popular. Passimian and Koraidon ex are both Fighting Pokémon, and Mega Kangaskhan ex, Meowth ex and Fezandipiti ex all carry a Fighting Weakness. Passimian's Coordinated Throwing does 20 for each of your Basic Pokémon in play. With Area Zero up and a full eight-slot Bench, that is nine Basics and 180 damage, doubled to 360 against a 300 HP Mega Kangaskhan ex. Koraidon ex, a 230 HP Basic Tera Pokémon ex, hits for 200 with Impact Blow and is a second Tera Pokémon for Area Zero. More Basic Box players means more mirrors: Louisville and Nice produced 120 Basic Box mirror matches between them, against 101 at the first four Regionals combined. Neither card's Day 2 split is large, so read the trend as the field's choice, not a verdict.

Jamming Tower faded. The Stadium that switches off every Pokémon Tool in play, on both sides, was in 37% of Baltimore lists and 16% of Nice lists, and the lists running it made Day 2 at 18.0% against 25.6% without it, which held at five of the six events. Every Jamming Tower is also a Stadium slot that isn't Area Zero.

The ACE SPEC never settled. Prime Catcher (321 lists), Hero's Cape (277) and Unfair Stamp (223) split the deck all season, and none of the three Day 2 rates sits far from the others. Our ACE SPEC breakdown has the full card-by-card case from the first three Regionals; Kasturi won with Hero's Cape and Gantner with Unfair Stamp.

The Prism Energy build

Fifty of the 830 lists ran no Crispin at all, and they are a different build rather than a few odd choices. All 50 ran Lillie's Determination, N's Plan and Prism Energy; 48 ran Bug Catching Set and 46 the non-ex Pecharunt promo. They came from all six Regionals, 14 of them from Frankfurt.

The card text explains the swap. Prism Energy provides Colorless Energy, but attached to a Basic Pokémon it provides every type of Energy, one at a time. In a deck where every Pokémon is a Basic, that pays any coloured cost without hunting for the right basic Energy, which was Crispin's job. N's Plan is a Supporter that moves up to two Energy from your Benched Pokémon to your Active Pokémon. Lillie's Determination shuffles your hand into your deck and draws 6, or 8 if you still have all six Prize cards.

Those 50 lists made Day 2 at 38.0% (19 of 50), against 22.9% for the 780 lists with Crispin. Fifty lists is a small sample, and the same players may simply be stronger. It is still the biggest gap of any split here, and worth testing before the next Regional rather than dismissing.

Gantner's list next to Kasturi's

Gantner's Nice list and Kasturi's Baltimore list share 56 of their 60 cards. Here is Gantner's 60 from his decklist page, with Kasturi's counts from his:

Pokémon - 21

Trainers - 24

Energy - 15

Only one of Gantner's changes runs with the trend table: Passimian in for Enamorus. The other two go against the field. Unfair Stamp was the least-played of the deck's three ACE SPECs (223 lists, 26% of Nice's), and 655 of the 830 lists, 80% of Nice's among them, kept the Special Red Card he cut. Unfair Stamp needs one of your Pokémon to have been Knocked Out during your opponent's last turn; then each player shuffles their hand into their deck, you draw 5 and your opponent draws 2. Only 24 of the 830 lists ran his second Wellspring Mask Ogerpon ex.

His run, from Limitless Labs:

Matchups from 6,665 matches

This is every Basic Box match at the six Regionals against another deck, Swiss and top cut, grouped by Limitless's label for the opponent. Mirror matches and byes are left out. These are the opponents Basic Box played at least 140 times:

Across all 6,665 non-mirror matches Basic Box went 3,141-2,752-772 (51.0%).

The worst large matchup is the Grass deck. Basic Box won under a third of its 258 matches against Ogerpon/Meganium/Hydrapple, and it was below 40% against it at five of the six events. Alakazam/Dusknoir (33.8%) and Rocket's Honchkrow (36.6%) come next, and Alakazam/Dudunsparce, at 43.2%, is the deck that handed Gantner his only loss. On the other side, the best records in that table came against Sharpedo/Toxtricity and Lucario/Hariyama, and the second of those is a Fighting deck playing into Mega Kangaskhan ex's Fighting Weakness. Weakness alone does not decide these. The N's Zoroark row depends on the build: our N's Zoroark guide found its Team Rocket's Watchtower lists beat Basic Box far more often than its N's Castle lists, and the reason is printed on Watchtower: "Colorless Pokémon in play (both yours and your opponent's) have no Abilities." That switches off Run Errand and Last-Ditch Catch.

Crustle and the Stadium fight

Crustle is the matchup the card text explains best. Destined Rivals Crustle's Mysterious Rock Inn Ability prevents all damage done to it by attacks from your opponent's Pokémon ex, and most of Basic Box's attackers are Pokémon ex. These are the attackers in the deck that are not:

• Chien-Pao, in 809 lists: Icicle Loop for 120. Crustle has 150 HP.
• Enamorus: 200 with a type match. Crustle is a Grass Pokémon and so is Teal Mask Ogerpon ex, so with an Ogerpon in play the bonus is on.
• Passimian: 160 with eight Basic Pokémon in play.
• Paldean Tauros, in 84 lists: Spirited Tackle does 90, plus 90 more if the opponent's Active Pokémon is a Stage 1. Crustle is a Stage 1, so that is 180 before Weakness, and this Paldean Tauros is a Fire Pokémon while Crustle is weak to Fire.

Basic Box went 86-114-32 (41.7%) against Crustle. The more Enamorus slots go to Passimian, the more that row depends on Passimian's Bench count.

Chien-Pao, in 97.5% of lists, has a second job. Its Snow Sink Ability lets you discard "a Stadium in play" when you play it from your hand onto your Bench, which clears an opposing Team Rocket's Watchtower even on a turn with no Area Zero in hand to play over it. Two more things follow from the Stadium rules printed on Area Zero Underdepths:

• Any Stadium your opponent plays discards your Area Zero, and when Area Zero leaves play both players discard Benched Pokémon until they have five, the player who played Area Zero first. Plan the sixth, seventh and eighth Bench slots as borrowed.
• A Stadium with the same name can't be played, so while one Area Zero is in play you can't play another copy over it.

Mew Box, and Delta Reign

Mew Box is Limitless's label for the same shell with three or four Mew ex built in. Mew ex's Memory Helix Ability lets it use the attacks of any of your Benched Pokémon, as long as it has the Energy. Since 30th Celebration became tournament-legal on September 25, per The Pokémon Company's TCG Live notice, it has had 54 players across five Regionals, 18 of them in Day 2 (33.3%), with a 250-206-51 record (52.7%). Forty-seven of the 54 lists ran three Mew ex, and only 8 kept Teal Mask Ogerpon ex. Sawyer Melban's 8th place in Louisville is still its best finish, and the Louisville recap has his list. Fifty-four players is too few to call it better or worse than the main build.

Delta Reign arrives next. The Pokémon Company's Delta Reign rule changes announcement, posted October 22, makes no changes to the Standard or Expanded banned card lists and gives an effective date of November 20, the date our Delta Reign guide works out for the set's tournament legality. Nothing in this deck is leaving. Two cards from Storm Emeralda, the Japanese set Delta Reign is built from, read directly on it:

• Legendary Lava Cave, on the Japanese card, takes away every Ability of every Evolution Pokémon in play, on both sides. Basic Box has no Evolution Pokémon for it to hit. N's Zoroark ex's Trade and Alakazam's Psychic Draw are both Abilities on Evolution Pokémon.
• Mega Malamar ex's Psychic Marionette, on its Japanese card, does 70 damage for each of the opponent's Benched Pokémon. Against an eight-Pokémon Area Zero Bench that is 560.

Both are Japanese card text. We found no English reveal of Lava Cave as of October 23, and English wording can differ, so treat this as a list of things to check on November 6, not a reason to change your 60 now. Puebla (October 24-25) and Gdańsk (October 31-November 1) are the next two Regionals, and both are played before Delta Reign is legal.

Quick Action Checklist

• Basic Box has won two of the season's six Regionals, level with pure Dragapult ex: Dylan Kasturi in Baltimore and Luc Gantner in Nice (15-1-2, 2,336 Masters). It made Day 2 at 23.9% across 830 players, against 18.3% for the field.
• Lillie's Clefairy ex is the Dragapult card. Fairy Zone makes Dragon Pokémon weak to Psychic, so Latias ex's Eon Blade does 400 to a 320 HP Dragapult ex. Across 1,373 matches Basic Box went 52.3% against pure Dragapult ex.
• Latias ex gives every Pokémon in the deck free retreat, which is what lets Mega Kangaskhan ex draw 2 with Run Errand in the Active Spot and then step aside.
• Twenty-one card names are in at least 90% of lists: 4 Kangaskhan, 3 Meowth ex, 2 Latias ex, 2 Clefairy ex, the Ogerpon pair, 4 Ultra Ball, 4 Energy Switch, 4 Crispin and 3-4 Area Zero among them. Four-Area-Zero lists made Day 2 at 28.4%, three-or-fewer at 20.9%.
• The flex slots moved toward Fighting. Passimian rose from 16% of Baltimore lists to 40% of Nice lists and Koraidon ex from 10% to 31%, as the mirror grew. Jamming Tower fell from 37% to 16% and came with worse Day 2 results.
• The Prism Energy build, with no Crispin, made Day 2 at 38.0% (19 of 50 lists). Small sample, worth testing.
• Respect the bad matchups: Ogerpon/Meganium/Hydrapple (32.2%), Alakazam/Dusknoir (33.8%), Rocket's Honchkrow (36.6%) and Crustle (41.7%), whose Ability blocks damage from Pokémon ex attacks.
• Delta Reign brings no bans (effective November 20), and the Japanese Lava Cave only hits Evolution Pokémon. Mega Malamar ex punishes a full Area Zero Bench.