[Dom] Yo whats good fellas! Dom here, and it’s currently about 24 hours until we will be playing in the Orlando regional championships. This is the second major of our Temporal Forces metagame and will be my first post rotation event. After extensive testing I’ve decided to play Lost Zone Raging Bolt ex. Overall the deck feels really solid into a large portion of the metagame. In this article I’ll be going into some detail about some of the matchups I am expecting to see in Orlando.
Before going into the matchups, here’s the list I will be running to the event.
I’ve landed on this 60 through a lot of testing and personal preference. I was debating heavily between cutting water energy or cutting Sableye and psychic. Ultimately I chose to cut the waters as more people are playing Manaphy compared to Jirachi. I also feel like Sableye has a ton of synergy with both Iron Hands ex and Raging Bolt ex. These interactions are niche and somewhat rare but they factor in to me choosing to keep Sableye. These interactions will be brought up in the in-depth portion below. Let’s jump into the matchups.
Charizard/Pidgeot ex
This matchup on paper seems fairly tough, I feel like lost zone decks in general tend to struggle with charizard however Lost Zone Raging Bolt is not one of those decks. The deck has about a 65/35 matchup with the most ideal prize map is 2-2-2. This prize map can be achieved in many ways, but often goes something like this.
In this matchup we are fine to go either first or second, the game plan stays relatively the same. Turn 2 Amp you very much into a single prizer, preferably a Pidgey, however Pidgey often has evolved by now so were likely amping a Charmander or Manaphy/Jirachi.
Our Iron Hands will more than likely be return KO’d by our opponent so the prize trade will likely be back to even.
This next turn is a very important one for us. Charizard has 330HP so it requires 5 energy discarded off a Raging Bolt in order to swing for the knockout. This seems like a large ask, especially because we will have wasted at least 1 mirage gate to attack with iron hands. However we have many ways to get 5 energy into play very efficiently, the most common way is as follows.
Use Sandy Shock ex’s ability Magnetic Absorption to accelerate one fighting energy from the discard.
Next we need to mirage gate 2 energy onto our board, these attachments are likely going to be discarded so where we attach them doesn’t matter too much. We do however like to make sure our Raging Bolt gets at least one fighting or electric energy so that our next move guarantees a knockout.
The next step is to use Professor Sada’s Vitality to accelerate at least 1 energy from our discard pile onto our Raging bolt. This means we have guaranteed at least 4 attached energies, and if we accelerate 2 from Sada that guarantees 5.
If we only have 1 energy available to accelerate via Sad’s Vitality we can also attach an energy from our hand in order to knock out our opponent's active Charizard ex.
Once again, our pokemon will likely be knocked out, so we have to get ready to finish the game during the next turn.
This last turn is pivotal, we either win here or lose, and obviously we want to win. We have 3 gust cards in Boss’s Orders, Counter Catcher, and Prime Catcher. These cards will be used to help us knockout Pidgeot this turn. Pidgeot’s 280 hp is the perfect amount to swing with a Raging bolt. Ideally we just rinse and repeat the last turn in order to get either 4 energy and knock out Pidgeot, or 5 energy to knock out Charizard. Then we win the game.
There are other routes in the matchup such as utilizing Sableye on some of the earlier turns to set up large prize turns to prevent things such as Roxanne and Iono from hurting us as much. However, I have found the 2-2-2 line is the most straightforward and ideal way to play the matchup.
2. Chien-Pao ex
Chien-Pao ex is one of the trickier matchups for our deck. Both Chien-Pao and Baxcalibur have awkward amounts of HP for Raging Bolt and Sableye. However we ideally want to take the same 2-2-2 line we previously discussed with the Charizard matchup. This is a matchup that feels much better going second. Turn 1 can be a pivotal turn, if we can potentially knock out stuff like our opponents lone Frigibax we can definitely take a very early lead in the game. But normally the matchup consists of utilizing Iron Hands on a Bibarel, and using Raging Bolt on 2 Chien-Pao ex’s. The matchup rests at about 45-55 in favor of Chien-Pao and Baxcalibur. So not ideal but 100% not unwinnable.
3. Turbo Iron Hands
Turbo Iron hands is another match that on paper seems very unfavoured. However we can force a very awkward prize map for our opponent which will allow us to take a large advantage in the game. This matchup is another 65/35 matchup in favor of Lost Zone Raging Bolt. Going first feels honestly pretty solid in this matchup, however there are forsure benefits into going both first and second. The largest benefit to going first is preventing our opponent from evolving
before we gain access to our Iron hands ex. A turn 2 Iron hands onto a single prizer after going first can be incredibly powerful in this matchup and we want to increase our odds of achieving this as easily as we can. Besides that the game plan is very simple, swing for 2 prizes with Iron Hands, and then Swing for 2 prizes back to back with Raging Bolt. Besides that the gameplay tends to be pretty linear, our opponent can utilize Radiant Greninja’s Moonlight Shuriken attack so we do want to have a Manaphy on our bench, but other than that the gameplay is very simple.
4. Lugia Vstar
Lugia is a very very solid matchup for us. Being able to amp a Lugia V or a Cincinno is incredibly powerful, and the explosive ability to surprise amp an Archaeops is often devastating. Besides using Iron Hands ex we really want to utilize our Sableye and cramorant to maintain the prize lead in this matchup. Going second definitely feels really good in this matchup, swinging with a Cramorant into our opponents Lugia V means we are able to use Iron hands ex to swing Lugia for 3 prizes on our next turn. After our Iron Hands gets knocked out we want to play the one prize game as much as we can. Other than that the matchup feels pretty solid, snorlax can be an issue however Raging bolt is able to take care of the Snorlax very easily. This matchup is roughly 60/40 in favor of Lost Zone Bolt.
5. Ancient Box
Ancient box is by far our worst matchup. We predict this matchup to be roughly 20/80 in favor of ancient box for many factors. This matchup is very difficult as many of the pokemon have very awkward HP amounts for us, Sableye and Cramorant both cannot deal enough damage to knock out our opponents pokemon in one hit, and Raging Bolt is very inefficient at swinging single prizers. This matchup is likely only winnable if our opponent bricks. Cards like Flutter Mane also make this matchup very difficult.
So there we have it, matchup ideas for arguably the 5 most popular decks. I think Lost Zone bolt is overall a really great deck for our current meta and I cannot wait to test it out this weekend! Until next time, I’ll catch you guys late!
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Dom Ritchie
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