The Future Box Iron Hands ex deck has been gaining popularity post-rotation, seeing more play among players, and will likely remain relevant throughout the Journey Together meta.
This deck uses Future Pokemon as part of its strategy, having cards that only synergize with them, enabling you to accelerate your Energy attachment and boost up the damage of your attacks to knock out Pokemon easier.
This list has a lot of Lightning Energy to enable Iron Hands ex, but they can also be used for Miraidon, Iron Thorns ex, and Iron Crown ex. We also have 2 Psychic Energy for Miraidon and Iron Crown ex, allowing us to attack with them when needed. The Psychic Energy can still be used for Iron Hands ex or Iron Thorns ex since they have colorless-type Energy.
Future Box Deck
Pokémon: 12
4 Iron Crown ex TEF 81
2 Iron Hands ex PRE 31
2 Miraidon TEF 121
1 Iron Thorns ex PRE 32
1 Fezandipiti ex SFA 38
1 Mew ex MEW 151
1 Iron Bundle PAR 56
Trainer: 33
4 Arven OBF 186
4 Boss's Orders PAL 172
4 Professor's Research PAF 87
4 Techno Radar PRE 130
4 Electric Generator PAF 79
1 Nest Ball PAF 84
1 Night Stretcher SFA 61
1 Counter Catcher PAR 160
1 Switch SVI 194
1 Prime Catcher PRE 119
4 Future Booster Energy Capsule TEF 149
2 Heavy Baton TEF 151
2 Town Store OBF 196
Energy: 15
13 Lightning Energy SVE 12
2 Psychic Energy SVE 13How to Play
Iron Clown Damage Boost
Iron Crown ex‘s main role in this deck is to empower our other Future Pokemon. With Cobalt Command ability you can increase the damage of your Future Pokemon other than Iron Crown ex by 20. So Iron Thorns ex, Iron Hands ex, and Miraidon ex will be dealing 20 more damage if Iron Crown ex is on the Bench.
Cobalt Command also stacks, so if you have 2 Iron Crown ex on the Bench, your Future Pokemon will now deal 40 more damage, helping you one-shot a Pokemon and potentially ruin your opponent’s strategy.
Iron Crown ex can become an attack with Twin Shotels, but it’s a situational attack if there is a Pokemon on the Bench we need to snipe. Twin Shotels deals 50 damage to two of the opponent’s Pokemon, so you can target an Active and a Benched Pokemon.
We’ll attach the Future Booster Energy Capsule on a Future Pokemon, removing its retreat cost and adding 20 more damage when it attacks an Active Pokemon. So, along with Iron Crown ex, we’re now getting another damage boost for added damage, making it easier to one-shot an opponent’s Pokemon.
Future Booster Energy Capsule makes it easier to retreat certain Pokemon from the Active spot, removing them out of harm’s way and allowing an attacker to take their spot and start dealing damage.
Damage Dealers
Iron Hands ex is the main damage dealer and win condition in this list. Arm Press requires 3 Energy to activate, dealing 160 damage to the opponent’s Active Pokemon. With a damage boost from Iron Crown ex and Future Booster Energy Capsule, you can easily deal 200-220 damage per attack.
However, Iron Hands ex is winning us games thanks to Amp You Very Much attack. It deals 120 damage, so weaker than Arm Press and requires an extra Energy to activate. Amp You Very Much deals less damage, so it’ll be harder to knock out a Pokemon with it, but if you do knock out a Pokemon, you’ll get 1 more Prize Card. This makes it easier to win the game, as you’re getting an extra Prize Card to get closer to all 6, and you’re even adding more resources to your hand to get more plays on your upcoming turn. We also can’t forget that Iron Crown ex and Future Booster Energy Capsule will boost the damage out of Amp You Very Much, making it a more threatening attack.
When possible, we’ll use Amp You Very Much to knock out a Pokemon, even using one of our switch cards to pull a low HP Pokemon to the Active spot and knock it out.
When Iron Thorn ex is in the Active spot, the Initialization will shut down abilities of Pokemon with a Rule Box in play, except for Future Pokemon.
This can be a complete shutdown for many decks that heavily rely on their Pokemon’s Abilities as part of their game plan. So decks like Raging Bolt ex Ogerpon and Charizard ex will have a rough time accessing their Basic Energy, which slows down their damage dealers.
This is buying you tons of time for Iron Thorns to start damaging and knocking out their Pokemon with Volt Cyclone.
Energy Acceleration
Miraidon is great in the Active spot early into the game, activating Peak Acceleration to deal 40 damage and search your deck for 2 Basic Energy cards. You can attach those Energy cards to your Future Pokemon in any way you like.
If you have 2 Lightning and a Psychic Energy cards attached to Miraidon, you can activate Speaking Strike to deal 160 damage. Since Miraidon is a Future Pokemon, it will also benefit from the damage boost to push even more damage when it attacks.
Since the list has a lot of Lightning Energy, we have high odds of finding at least one through Electric Generator. Electric Generator lets you look at the top 5 cards of your deck and attach up to 2 Basic Lightning Energy cards you find to your Benched Lightning Pokemon.
This will help you accelerate your game plan and get your attacks ready as early as possible.
Saving Energy
Heavy Baton is a key tool in this list, which we’ll attach on a Pokemon with a Retreat Cost of 4. So, in this case, we can attach it to Iron Hands ex or Iron Thorns ex. When a Pokemon in the Active spot with Heavy Baton is knocked out, you can move up to 3 Basic Energy cards from that Pokemon to your Benched Pokemon in any way you like.
This makes sure we don’t lose our Energy cards and can set up an attacker to take the place of the knocked out Pokemon, keeping up our aggression on the upcoming turn.
Draw Pokemon
Mew ex‘s Restart ability acts as a draw engine, drawing you cards until you have 3 cards in your hand. So if you have a Mew ex on your Bench, you can use up the cards in your hand, drop to below 3 cards, and then draw extra cards to find what you need. Mew ex can also become an attacker with Genome Hacking, copying the opponent’s Active Pokemon’s attack. So this will be dependent on what the Pokemon has in the Active spot, but copying a high-damage attack can knock them out.
Mew ex has no retreat cost, so you can retreat it to the Bench whenever you want and have another Pokemon take its place.
Fezandipti ex can sit on the bench and watch over your Active Pokémon, ready to use its Flip the Script ability when one of your Pokemon is knocked out. The three cards you draw will help find the resources you need to enable your strategy. Fezandipti ex doesn’t need to be on the bench when the knockout happens—you can play it from your hand afterward and still activate Flip the Script to draw cards.
Card Draw
Arven is perfect in this list to search and draw an Iten and a Pokemon Tool card, adding more consistency to our game plan.
Professor’s Research discards all our hand to draw 7 cards, so we want to make the most out of our current hand before playing Professor’s Research to replenish our hand with better cards.
Techno Radar discards a card from your hand to search for 2 Future Pokemon and add them to your hand. It adds more consistency to the deck, helping you find the Pokemon you’re missing.
Since we run a lot of Pokemon Tools in the list, Town Store is useful to search for them and them in our hand, getting more resources and thinning our deck.
Battle Cards
You can use Boss’s Order, Counter Catcher, or Prime Catcher to move a low-health Pokemon to the Active spot, making it easier for you to get a Knock Out over a high-Pokemon, or you can knock out a win condition hiding on the Bench.
Also, these cards can move a Pokemon with a high retreat cost that doesn’t pose much of an offensive threat to the Active spot. This will slow down the opponent’s game plan and buy you enough time to go for more attacks.
Switch makes it easier to move the Pokemon you need to the Active spot. All your Pokemon have a high retreat cost, so you want to ensure you can get them out of the Active spot when needed.
As for Iron Bundle, you can force opponents to switch out their Active Pokemon, moving their win condition out and slowing them down.
