Hippopotas – Ultra Prism – Pokemon Card Review – COTD

Vince

Hippopotas from SM Ultra Prism has one feature that’s worth a look. A Basic Fighting Type with 90 HP, weak to grass, and a retreat cost of three, it has only one attack. Eleventh Hour Tackle costs FCC and does 50 damage, plus 130 more (yes, one hundred and thirty more if your eyes are starting to hallucinate) if you have 3 or fewer cards in you deck. With 180 damage, that’s enough to OHKO a good chunk of EX/GX Pokemon. With Choice Band, Strong Energy, and Diancie Prism Star, that becomes 250!

Of course, there are some factors to try and maintain such an awesome attack:

1. You can deal 180 damage four times at best. That’s because you have three cards left in your deck. Assuming you don’t draw any more cards besides the moment where you must draw a card when your turn begins, that’s how many times you can do, even the one turn where you have zero cards left. However, you can extend the longevity with Super Rod, Special Charge, and others as long as you don’t exceed three cards from your deck.

2. You have a way to quickly burn through your deck from 46 cards down to 3 cards in few turns. Sycamore, Shaymin-EX, and roller skates can help with the speeding process. If luck and hand control is in your favor (highly unlikely but doable), you would play Sycamore for 7 cards, 4 separate occasions of Shaymin-EX for 24 cards for all four occasions where your hand is empty, and 4 successful coin flips of Roller Skates which nets you a total of 12 cards. With 43 cards drawn, you’re down to exactly 3 cards left, enough to pull this attack in one turn!

3. Hippopotas is susceptible of being KOed back due to its 90 HP.

Therefore, Hippopotas is a risky Pokemon to capitalize. It does have the tools to pull off such a feat, like Max Elixir accelerating energy and cards that boost damage output. Even without the bonus, the 50 base damage, plus Choice Band, Strong Energy, and Diancie Prism Star makes the damage output become 120, which is still good despite the amount of investment needed. It is highly unlikely to pull this off in Limited, since there isn’t much cards that can burn through your deck down to three cards. One can try Lillie or Cynthia when their hand is empty, but outside of that…….I’m drawing a blank picture

Standard: 3/5
Expanded: 3/5
Limited: 1.5/5

Conclusion: Hippopotas is a evolving Basic that hits ridiculously hard, but has a ridiculous requirement to achieve. I may experiment this card at some point; Seems like a fun Pokemon to use. If there are any worthwhile Hippowdon cards to use, one can simply add Shining Celebi to the mix.

21times
PokeDeck
Central

Hippopotas (UP 68) trundles its way into the meta from the Ultra Prism expansion set.  It has a single, one of a kind attack: for a Fighting and two Colorless attachments, Eleventh Hour Tackle does 50 damage… unless you have three or fewer cards left in your deck.  Then it does an explosive 130 more damage for a minimum of 180 damage.

I know one youtuber did a video on this and loved it and said it should be a one of in every Fighting deck.  Well, you know me trust no one question everything.  I played ten games and didn’t even get close to 3 cards left in my deck in any match.  I went 6 W 4 L with what’s basically my Buzzodor deck, I just took out the Mewtwo since it seems like I never play it anyways.  

And here may be the difference between PTCGO and IRL: in IRL you’re a lot more likely to face meta decks and more competitive games, whereas I’m only seeing meta decks 38% of the time on PTCGO this month.  More competitive matches have more chance to go longer, so maybe you would get a chance to use Hippopotas more IRL.  And I wasn’t actively trying to use the attack – I was focused on winning (or hoping not to lose) as quickly as possible.  There was one game when I could probably have gone specifically for the attack, but I knew I had a win in a turn or two for certain by following a more conservative, reliable approach.  I knew I had a clear path to victory, I didn’t really want to risk it for the sake of maybe getting to use a gimmicky attack one time.

Rating

Standard: 1.5 out  of 5

Conclusion

For me Hippopotas is a pass.  I just don’t think it really does much to help you win.