Hydrapple ex is one of the newest decks in the Pokemon TCG Stellar Crown expansion. This revolves around the Grass Basic Energy, creating insane draw potential and an easy way to find all the cards you need.
The Hydrapple ex deck has shown potential in the new meta and you’ll likely face against in tournaments or on the digital client.
Decklist
Pokémon - 16
4 Applin TWM 17
4 Teal Mask Ogerpon ex TWM 25
3 Dipplin TWM 18
3 Hydrapple ex SCR 14
1 Fezandipiti ex SFA 38
1 Manaphy BRS 41
Trainer Cards - 30
3 Arven OBF 186
3 Iono PAF 80
2 Boss's Orders PAL 172
1 Professor's Research PAF 88
4 Bug Catching Set TWM 143
4 Nest Ball PAF 84
3 Buddy-Buddy Poffin TEF 144
2 Rare Candy PAF 89
1 Energy Retrieval SVI 171
1 Super Rod PAL 188
1 Maximum Belt TEF 154
1 Rescue Board TEF 159
1 Technical Machine: Evolution PAR 178
3 Festival Grounds TWM 149
Energy - 14
14 Basic Grass Energy SVE 1How to Play
This deck uses Teal Mask Ogerpon ex and Hydrapple ex as its main win conditions, attaching Basic Grass Energy to your Pokemon and start threatening to deal damage. The main damage dealer is none other than the new Hydrapple ex Pokemon, who stacks up damage the more Basic Grass Energy cards are attached to all your Pokemon.
Teal Mask Ogerpon ex plays into that game plan and can become a damage dealer itself, but won’t pose the same threat that Hydrapple ex poses.
Team Marsk Ogrepon ex is already offering card draw, but we still have cards like Fezandipiti, Iono, and Professor’s Research to find the cards we need to set up our strategy.
The carries in this deck we’ll want in play as early as possible. Teal Mask Ogrepon ex is a Basic Pokemon, so we can draw it through Nest Ball and have it in play immediately to start activating Teal Dance. The plan here is to cycle through our deck and find the cards we need to play Hydrapple ex as early as possible.
Teal Mask Ogrepon ex can also deal some damage with Myriad Leaf Shower, stacking up its damage by 30+ for each Energy attached to both Active Pokemon. So if the opponent has an Active Pokemon with multiple attached Energy, they can be vulnerable to the Myriad Leaf Shower attack.
As for Hydrapple ex, his Ripening Charge acts similarly to Teal Dance, allowing you to attach a Grass Basic Energy to one of your Pokemon and heal that Pokemon for 30 damage. So we could keep a certain Pokemon from getting Knocked out if we heal it up.
Syrup Storm though is the main damage dealing, stacking 30 damage for each Basic Grass Energy attached to all your Pokemon. So unlike Myriad Leaf Shower, we’re not forced to attach our Basic Grass Energy on one specific Pokemon to deal lots of damage, two Basic Energy on Hydrapple ex are enough and the rest can go on our Teal Mask Ogrepon ex.
We have three methods to play Hydrapple ex: Applin > Dipplin > Hydrapple ex, or Applin + Rare Candy to cheat out Hydrapple ex, or Technical Machine: Evolution. Going the Rare Candy route will let us play Hydrapple ex faster.
If we go the Dipplin route, we can still pose a threat with his Festival Lead ability and Do the Wave attack. Festival Lead requires you to have Festival Grounds in play to activate, allowing you to attack twice with Dipplin. So Do the Wave will deal 20 damage for each of your Benched Pokemon, pushing up to 100 damage. So we’re now Knocking out 200 health Pokemon or Knocking out one Pokemon and damaging the other Pokemon the opponent places in the Active spot.
Technical Machine: Evolution speeds up the level process of a benched Pokemon. We have to attach it on an Active Pokemon with a Basic Energy attached to activate Evolution, allowing us to pick two of our benched Pokemon and then search our deck for Pokemon that can evolve from them. So we’ll usually use it on the Pokemon we’re missing its Evolution, for example, if we have Applin on the bench and a Dipplin in hand, we’ll first evolve it to Dipplin and then use Evolution to search for Hydrapple ex.
Draw Cards
Multiple draw potential in this deck, Fezandipiti ex stays on the bench, watching over your Hydrapple as it fights your battle. When one of your Pokémon is knocked out, it activates Flip the Script, allowing you to draw three cards, generating resources to create more plays.
Professor’s Research discards your hand to draw 7 new cards, so it’s crucial to play the key cards before we discard our hand.
As for Iono, both players will shuffle their hand and draw cards equal to the number of Prize cards they have left. So you could ruin opponent’s plans if you shuffle important cards back into their deck. We’re also replenishing our hand, ideally, we want to play as many cards as possible before we use Iono.
Need to catch some bugs? Well, we have a Bug Catching Set ready for use! Helping you find Hydrapple and more Basic Grass Energy.
As for Energy Retrieval, we’re able to get back 2 Basic Grass Energy from the discard Pile and put them in our hand. This could be useful in the late game if we run out of Grass Basic Energy.
Maximum Belt boosts the damage of your attack by 50 if you’re attaching a Pokemon ex. This 50 damage can swing the game in your favor or even win you the game, especially if you’re relying on Teal Mask Ogerpon ex as your last attack to win.
Other Cards to Include
Grand Tree is a popular card players are taking advantage of, allowing them to speed up the Applin > Dipplin > Hydrapple ex. The fact that you can search your deck for the Pokemon you need makes it easier to get your strategy online.