Discussion Will Hippopotas be a very good card in Expanded?

[jessalakasam]

The title is pretty self-explanatory. Here's what the card does:

Hippopotas – Fighting – HP90
Basic Pokemon
[F][C][C] Eleventh Hour Tackle: 50+ damage. If you have 3 or fewer cards left in your deck, this attack does 130 more damage.
Weakness: Grass (x2)
Resistance: none
Retreat: 3


I made a list on a thread in the deck garage. My record is 29/6 currently. I run it with Zoroark, Eggs, and Archen (PLB).

Do you think this deck could be a meta deck?

 

[Kietharr]

Yeah, it's pretty good in expanded, in standard it's kind of limited to a tech in Zoroark/Lycanrock because Buzzwole decks can't really run through their deck fast enough, but in expanded you can put all of your deck in discard by turn 3 or 4 and this thing is excellent at closing games.

I'd hesitate to say it can be meta as an archetype in and of itself though, it has low HP for the cost of its attack (vulnerable to being Guzma'd before its ready), which needs DCE that you have to share with Zoroark, who is the natural partner for this card since it depends on racing to the bottom of your deck. Recovering/recycling resources is also kind of a pain when your deck is that small, and if you race ahead in prizes an N can force you to discard a ton of resources just to get back down to the 3 card mark.

There are more efficient one prize attackers with less onerous requirements to activate in expanded. But of course, Lysandre Prism Star comes next set which is going to be pretty disruptive to the format, particularly Night March which is what I see as the main competition for a deck like this in terms of how quickly/efficiently it can reach big numbers.