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According to
The Charizard Lounge
one
Eduordo
Gonzalez managed an 8th place finish at the Idaho State
Championship with a deck featuring Hippowdon (XY:
Primal Clash 88/160)... so let’s get the dirt on
this Pokémon!
…
Come back: I don’t think I have time for anymore puns so
it should be safe! Onto the card, Hippowdon is a
Fighting-Type which might be as good as it gets right
now; Weakness is found on most Darkness-Types, most
Lightning-Types and quite a bit of Colorless-Types while
the Type enjoys a great deal of direct and indirect
support. Fighting Resistance is one of the most common
forms of Resistance but no Resistance is several times
more common so it isn’t a huge knock and the few
anti-Fighting-Type cards see so little play almost
forgot about them. Being a Stage 1 is not good, but its
overall hasn’t been bad either; this might be the new
“neutral” (at least if we take an optimistic view of the
format). Hippowdon has 130 HP; this is pretty
far from the maximum HP we’ve seen on a Stage 1 Pokémon:
Wailord (BW: Dragons Exalted 26/124) with
its 200 HP and the handful of exceptions with 140/150
don’t see much competitive play, but they do exist.
This is a format where OHKOs can happen to anything:
130 HP being more likely to survive a hit (especially
early game or when a deck’s set-up isn’t fully
established) than be OHKOed is good.
Grass Weakness both is and isn’t good; thanks to a few
cards (like Seismitoad-EX) there is a big
incentive to exploit that Weakness for the average deck
(the bad) but the good (for Hippowdon - not sure
about the game as a whole) is that it isn’t that easy to
exploit for the average deck. You’ll feel it when you
do slam into a VirGen deck. You won’t feel any
Resistance though; even though it is a Ground-Type in
the video games and totally immune to Electric
(Lightning) moves there, for some reason the designers
seem to be facing out Lightning Resistance. Wouldn’t
have made a huge difference though and this just puts
Hippowdon on part with the majority of Pokémon (whom
also lack Resistance). The superchunky Retreat Cost of
[CCCC] is flat out bad, but with a silver-lining in
Expanded where it makes the card a legal target for
Heavy Ball. Otherwise this is so heavy you either need
to pack something to lower it or bypass manually
retreating entirely (perhaps both are in order) or build
the deck so that you’re comfortable leaving a stranded
Hippowdon up front.
Hippowdon
doesn’t do anything fancy like have an Ability or
Ancient Trait, bringing two attacks to the table
instead. The first is Resistance Desert for [FCC]; it
hits for 60 and prevents all effects of attacks,
including damage, done to Hippowdon during the
next turn by Pokémon-EX. Like (nearly?) all such
attacks, this can be reset if Hippowdon is forced
to the Bench, though without being able to force it back
up front again or hit the Bench that won’t do much good
for targeting it directly (other Pokémon on the other
hand…). It also won’t block effects that aren’t being
done to Hippowdon; sounds obvious but there are
effects done to the player like that of Quaking Punch,
and I’ve seen it confuse even some veteran players. The
second attack is Double Edge for [FFCC] and good for 100
damage to the opponent’s Active… and 20 to Hippowdon
itself. So how do the attacks stack up? Both are
pricey so you’ll probably need Energy acceleration to
get them going. Both can make use of Double
Colorless Energy (plus other non-Type specific
Energy acceleration) which is good. Both attacks hit a
bit low for the Energy invested in them, which is bad
but not by much; the effect of Desert Resistance is very
potent and if it doesn’t justify only doing 60 for three
it comes close. Double Edge seems like it should do
another 20-50 damage to be competitive but 100 is still
a solid enough foundation to be useful in competitive
play, mostly for a finishing blow when you can afford to
drop the lock.
Hippowdon
Evolves from Hippopotas; looks like there are
only two options for Expanded - BW: Next Destinies
65/99 and XY: Primal Clash 87/160 - while only
the latter is Standard legal. Both are Basic
Fighting-Types with 90 HP, no Abilities or Ancient
Traits but two attacks. BW: Next Destinies 65/99
is Water Weak, Lightning Resistant, has a Retreat Cost
of [CCCC] and for [F] it can hit one of your opponent’s
Benched Pokémon for 20 damage (no Weakness or Resistance
is applied) while for [FCC] it can Bite for 30 damage
(no additional effects). XY: Primal Clash 87/160
has Grass Weakness, no Resistance, a Retreat Cost of
[CCC], Tackle for 20 at a cost of [CC] and Rolling
Attack for 50 at a cost of [FFC]. This might be more of
a metagame call as none of the attacks are really good
enough to decide it; pick whichever one has the safer
Weakness unless Lightning Resistance is useful.
There is also another Hippowdon legal for
Expanded - HW: Next Destinies 66/99 - which was I
am a little surprised didn’t at least get a filler
review. The difference between it and today’s
Hippowdon are Water Weakness instead of Grass,
Lightning Resistance instead of no Resistance, the
damage and the effects of the attacks. That’s right,
even the Energy costs of the attacks are the same: [FCC]
for the first and [FFCC] for the second! Said first
attack is Sand Bazooka and it does 70 with the option of
moving a Basic Energy from Hippowdon itself to
one of your Benched Pokémon; it is nice that it is
optional but bad that it can’t move Special Energies.
The 70 damage is a bit low too. Its big attack is Rock
Tumble and it does 90 without applying Resistance. That
means it does 20 less damage to itself than Rock Tumble
but also 10 less damage to the Defending Pokémon (except
against Resistance, where it does 10 more). This is bad
and probably why we haven’t heard from this card. Skip
it and focus on today’s.
I don’t know what else was in the winning decklist apart
from “Fighting support”, so let’s run through the
options we have for that right now. For direct
Fighting support (the stuff that only works for
Fighting-Types) we’ve got. Fighting Stadium is
almost guaranteed to have been in the deck, knocking out
other problematic Stadiums and boosting your damage
against the Pokémon you can also wall… though maxing it
out might not be good since it is only good when facing
something that you already have an edge against. Focus
Sash is tempting but there are so many conditions
that even if it isn’t discarded it probably won’t make a
difference, plus you have so many other Pokémon Tools to
consider. Korrina seems like a given as the deck
will likely have a lot of Fighting-Type Pokémon and a
lot of Items to snag. Machamp (BW: Plasma
Blast 49/101) is just a lamer version of Machamp
(XY: Furious Fists 46/111, XY: Black Star
Promos XY13), so if one of them is worth using, go
with the latter for +20 against everything instead of
just an effective +20 against the Fighting Resistant by
the former (since it cancels out Resistance). Maxie’s
Hidden Ball Trick is how you’d most likely get a
Machamp out, and can be used to skip directly to
Hippowdon as well. Strong Energy is probably
the most iconic option with its +20 damage per copy
attached; besides not using Double Edge that often,
Strong Energy is thankfully worded so it doesn’t
bump up self-damage.
Indirect Fighting-Type support basically includes
anything that is a Fighting-Type so I won’t be going
through it all, but highlights are Hawlucha,
Landorus (XY: Furious Fists 58/111),
Landorus-EX and Lucario-EX. From there it’s
mostly figuring out its better to focus on
a) beefing up your own attackers
b) disrupting your opponent’s attackers
c) shoring the deck up against non-Pokémon-EX
d) piling it on against Pokémon-EX
e) some combination of two or more of the above
with the remaining space you have left. I tried
building a deck around Hippowdon and Fighting
support myself on the PTCGO. I only had time for about
10 games and some of those ended due abnormal
circumstances (odd times to concede or the opponent
being idle to long). I didn’t think I had enough room
for a “jack of all trades” approach and went with
stacking damage bonuses with some being Pokémon-EX
specific (Fighting Stadium and Silver Bangle)
while others were general (Machamp with Fighting
Fury, Muscle Band, Strong Energy). I am
uncertain if it was the best strategy, but most games
Desert Resistance was good for at least a 2HKO, a
fantastic set-up would have enabled a OHKO (came close
one game) and the supporting cast of Pokémon I went with
(Hawlucha, Landorus, Landorus-EX
and Lucario-EX) were able to hit hard enough to
buy time for setting up and handle things when Desert
Resistance was pointless. Well, not games I lost,
obviously. I did notice that the deck does need at
least periodic OHKO capacity; plenty of Max Potion,
Super Scoop Up, etc. going around.
For Expanded play, this deck gains Heavy Ball but
I’m not sure if that even matters given Korrina
or what else helps it: maybe the presence of
Eelektrik (BW: Noble Victories 40/101) decks?
The increased diversity may hurt it a little but I’m
not sure; even when facing decks in Standard that didn’t
rely too much on Pokémon-EX, my build (for better or
worse) could fall back on other stuff for decent damage
so even such decks here might be a negligible change. I
do know that in both Standard and Expanded, I got the
feeling that I might as well be trying for a Primal
Groudon-EX deck. For Limited, this looks like a
really good pull but as much for being a Stage 1 that
can attack for decent damage but isn’t too terrible to
splash as what you hope can be a clutch anti-Pokémnon-EX
card.
Ratings
Standard:
3/5
Expanded:
3/5
Limited:
4/5
Summary:
Tham Kennard piloted a Quad Sigilyph deck, built around
Sigilyph (BW: Dragons Exalted 52/124;
BW: Plasma Freeze
118/116; BW: Legendary Treasures 66/113), the well known Safeguard
Pokémon to first place at the 2012 Southeast Asia
Regional Championship (held in Singapore). He wrote a
wonderful tournament report you can read
here
on the matter and I bring it up because in that report
he is honest; he gets credit not only for the win and
for reading the metagame, playing and building the deck
well but for his honesty and accuracy as he acknowledges
that his match-ups were important as well. He didn’t
face the decks that focused heavily on non-Pokémon-EX
attackers and some of the countermeasures against
Safeguard the Pokémon-EX heavy decks ran ended up
Prized.
The
relevance to Hippowdon is that
Hippowdon
is definitely a metagame sensitive choice; I don’t know
how many people used it for State Championships, but it
only had that one Top 8 finish that I could find. Time
it right and I think it could carry you all the way to a
first place finish, but if enough people are prepared
for it (which can be as simple as knowing how to play
what you are already running when you encounter it) I
think you’re in serious trouble. As if this summary
isn’t long enough, I do wonder about running it as a 2-2
or even 1-1 or 0-1 (the latter only if Maxie’s Hidden
Ball Trick is present) in other Fighting-Type decks,
instead of making it the focus.
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