Tera Box Deck List and Guide
Tera Box may just be the strongest Pokemon deck post 2025 rotation, and that’s thanks to a plethora of attackers it has access to. In this deck guide, we’re going to be looking at the deck Tord Reklev took with him all the way to the Champion’s League in Japan to land an extraordinary eleventh place in a 5000 player tournament.
11th by Tord Reklev, Champions League Fukuoka
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Tera Box Deck list
Pokémon: 22
3 Hoothoot SCR 114
1 Hoothoot PRE 77
4 Noctowl SCR 115
2 Teal Mask Ogerpon ex TWM 25
2 Wellspring Mask Ogerpon ex TWM 64
2 Fan Rotom SCR 118
1 Pikachu ex SSP 57
1 Mew ex MEW 151
1 Lillie's Clefairy ex SV9 33
1 Latias ex SSP 76
1 Fezandipiti ex SFA 38
1 Ditto MEW 132
1 Terapagos ex SCR 128
1 Bloodmoon Ursaluna ex TWM 141
Trainer: 28
3 Crispin SCR 133
2 Professor's Research SVI 189
2 Boss's Orders PAL 172
1 Iono PAL 185
1 Professor Turo's Scenario PAR 171
4 Nest Ball SVI 181
4 Ultra Ball SVI 196
3 Energy Switch SVI 173
2 Night Stretcher SFA 61
1 Earthen Vessel PAR 163
1 Counter Catcher PAR 160
1 Sparkling Crystal SCR 142
3 Area Zero Underdepths SCR 131
Energy: 10
5 Grass Energy SVE 9
2 Psychic Energy SVE 13
1 Water Energy SVE 11
1 Metal Energy SVE 16
1 Lightning Energy SVE 12
Key cards to the Tera strategy
Tera Pokemon have been a fundamental element of the Pokemon TCG ever since Scarlet and Violet debuted. That being said, they didn’t really start coming into their own until Stellar Crown. It was in this often underrated set that a real advantage to fielding Tera Type Pokemon came about.
Indeed, Tera Pokemon as a classification has evolved now into something of an advantage in the game: a Pokemon TCG that will only continue to grow more tribal as special Trainer’s Pokemon hit the field in Journey Together, as well as new Team Rocket’s Pokemon that promise to deliver their own, powerful abilities within a closed box, so to speak.
To understand the efficacy of Tera Pokemon, let’s distill the strongest Tera-boosting cards and how it is they make this solid Tera Box deck not only strong, but potentially the very strongest deck post rotation.
Area Zero Underdepths
The card we should start with is Area Zero Underdepths. I think it was with this card that players began to see the real potential of Tera Types. With Area Zero, suddenly players could gain access to a much broader pool of Pokemon on their bench. It’s something of a one-way advantage as well, as only decks that run Tera Pokemon will be able to leverage the bench expansion to eight Pokemon.
While at first bolstering the bench may not feel like a big deal, in reality, it gains you a huge advantage in regards to resources. Suddenly you can take advantage of way more supporting Pokemon abilities to let you draw more cards, search for trainers you need, reduce retreat costs and much more.
Noctowl
The second most important card to the Tera strategy is Noctowl. Also hailing from Stellar Crown, Noctowl’s Jewel Seeker afford a massive advantage to Tera decks, letting you suss out any two trainer cards from your deck. This is a massive differentiator for Tera decks giving them easy and consistent card search each turn.
Sparkling Crystal
Third we have Sparkling Crystal. This pretty insane ACE SPEC card reduces the energy cost of any Tera Pokemon by one. While that’s strong regardless of the Pokemon it is attached to, it’s sort of a game changer when applied to Stellar Tera Pokemon – or Pokemon with multiple different energy types. In a box deck like this one, suddenly hard to reach and powerful situational attacks become relatively easy to use, as long as you’re wise enough to know when and where to use them.
Crispin
Lastly there’s Crispin. While Crispin isn’t explicitly a Tera-focused Supporter, he works best paired with Stellar Tera Pokemon who use different kinds of energy. Using Crispin you can quickly accelerate energy from your deck, making it much, much easier to get attacks off.
Tera Box has an attacker for every occasion
Toolbox decks always seem to be present in the Pokemon TCG meta partly because of the way weaknesses work. If you can strike at your foe with a type advantage, you will have a significant advantage. Of course, with any toolbox deck comes an inherent disadvantage: by making your deck as flexible as possible to accomodates as many different kind of attackers as possible, you lose some consistency, as well as a powerful end game closing move that other more streamlined decks are often capable of.
Still, in the post rotation meta, a toolbox deck has a decent leg up on the competition. Below, let’s look at each one of your various attackers and how they can help you win the game.
Lillie’s Clefairy ex
The first attacker we should look at is also the newest one to join the Tera Box strategy, and part of the reason why this deck archetype has come into its own. Interestingly enough, it’s also not a Stellar Tera type or even a Tera Type at all! However, you’ll see in a moment just why it works so well in this deck and the primary advantage is its insane Fairy Zone ability.
With Fairy Zone, Clefairy ex is the first Pokemon in recent memory capable of hitting for weakness against powerful Dragon type Pokemon. Meanwhile, Full Moon Rondo pairs perfectly with Area Zero Underdepths, boosting damage for each benched Pokemon in play. Clefairy ex is a powerful attacker more than capable of toppling even a Pokemon as strong as Dragapult ex in one blow.
Wellspring Mask Ogerpon ex
Post Rotation, Manaphy won’t be around anymore, and neither will its bench sniping protecting ability. For a while at least, cards that can attack both the bench and the active will be insanely strong. To that end, Wellspring Max Ogerpon ex stands out as one of the strongest, capable of dishing out 100 damage to the active another 120 damage to the bench.
Decks that can leverage attackers like this one will be really well off post rotation, especially without Greninja’s one-size-fits-all Moonlight Shuriken attack around to use.
Terapagos ex
While it’s been a while since Terapagos ex has been the sole backbone of a deck, it’s still a strong attacker in your retinue. Unified Beatdown remains a powerful opening attack, and its typing fits the deck’s strengths (of course). In this build, Terapagos ex is also able to leverage it’s second and less used attack, Crown Opal. This can be a solid way to edge out opposing decks running nothing but basic Pokemon.
Bloodmoon Ursaluna ex
Bloodmoon Ursaluna ex is a tried-and-true secondary attacker in a majority of decks. It doesn’t fit in particularly strongly in this deck for any other reason than it is a heavy hitter capable of closing out games without the need to attach energy. That’s a good thing in this deck because by the end of the game you may just have exhausted all of your means to accelerate energy anyways.
Supporting Pokemon and how they help
A toolbox deck like this one finds its main stars in the form of its retinue of solid attackers. However, because of your Area Zero Underdepths, you can run a surprisingly large number of supporting Pokemon to help you reach your goals.
We’ve already talked about Noctowl and how it boosts your Tera strategy, but here are are each of the other supporting Pokemon and how they aid you:
Ditto is an ingenious starter in this deck, letting you swap it out for whatever Pokemon is more advantageous in a given matchup.
Mew ex offers incremental draw. You can potentially attack with its Genome Hacking given you have three Energy Switch, but you have so many other attackers you won’t need to.
Teal Mask Ogerpon ex can double as an attacker but will mostly be here for Teal Dance, letting you draw additional cards, accelerate energy, and then swap those energy around to your stronger attackers via Energy Switch.
Fezandipiti because it is the most broken card draw Pokemon in the game.
Latias ex to grant free retreat to all of your basic attackers.
And Fan Rotom to fill your bench with Hoothoot.
Tera Box matchups to watch
Tera Box has a solid matchup spread post rotation. Against decks that run beefy dragon attackers like Dragapult ex and Raging Bolt ex, you have an unprecedented advantage thanks to Lillie’s Clefairy ex.
Meanwhile, losing bench protection from attacks isn’t really an issue at all for this deck. After all, Tera type Pokemon don’t take damage from attacks on the bench, and your Pokemon are tough enough that minor damage from Phantom Dive or the like won’t add up to too much.
In fact, Tera Box has a solid matchup against just about every deck out there and would probably be a tier zero deck if it weren’t for one deck that’s gained huge momentum already in Japan’s post rotation format: Milotic ex Stall.
Milotic ex Stall is an absolute killer against your deck, capable of preventing damage via multiple attackers. If you’re unlucky enough to face this deck down, just hope you have enough gust handy to switch in attackers you actually can KO.
Post Rotation Tera Box has a huge opportunity to dominate the meta. As long as it can dodge or punch its way through the stall wall game which will be strong, it could end up taking the crown as best deck in format!
