Upgrade Your Hydrapple ex deck with Yanmega ex
I love Hydrapple ex. Ever since I got to test the deck out in the Stellar Crown prerelease I’ve been hooked. However, the deck just got a huge upgrade in Destined Rivals thanks to the new Yanmega ex card – adding a powerful backup attacker and energy accelerator into the fold that really makes the strategy feel stronger and more consistent.
Below, we’ll be looking at my custom Hydrapple/Yanmega ex build for the Destined Rivals format of the Pokemon TCG. If you’ve already built my Hydrapple ex deck, you’ll be happy to know that that version of the deck has a lot in common with this one, and can easily be upgraded with just a few additional cards from Destined Rivals, as well as from staples you likely have lying around your collection.
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Pokémon: 12
3 Hydrapple ex SCR 14
4 Teal Mask Ogerpon ex TWM 211
3 Dipplin TWM 18
3 Yanmega ex DRI 3
1 Budew PRE 4 PH
1 Mew ex MEW 151
1 Fezandipiti ex SFA 38
3 Yanma DRI 2
3 Applin TWM 17
Trainer: 14
1 Black Belt's Training JTG 143
1 Surfer SSP 187 PH
3 Buddy-Buddy Poffin TEF 144
1 Grand Tree SCR 136
1 Lacey SCR 139
1 Lana's Aid TWM 219
2 Super Rod PAL 188
3 Iono PAF 80
2 Ultra Ball CRZ 146
2 Nest Ball PAF 84
1 Festival Grounds TWM 149 PH
4 Bug Catching Set TWM 143
2 Boss's Orders PAL 172
2 Festival Grounds TWM 149
Energy: 2
11 Basic {G} Energy Energy 1
1 Jet Energy PAL 190
Total Cards: 60
Even though Yanmega is featured pretty prominently in this deck list, it’s still more of a Hydrapple ex deck, built around the powerful Festival Grounds/Festival Lead combo and the synergies that are unlocked by loading up your board with Grass Energy. Yanmega ex feels like an excellent secondary attacker to pair with Hydrapple ex, as combined the two offer one another something that they wouldn’t have on their own.
For example, Hydrapple ex suffers from not having access to a reliable secondary attacker to take big KOs early game. In my previous build, you had to rely solely on the Dipplin/Festival Grounds combo to do a lot of damage early in the game. However, that’s a lot of moving pieces, and even required a vitality band to hit the hardest when needed.
Yanmega is a powerful attacker for Hydrapple ex
With Yanmega, however, you can easily take big KOs with relatively few pieces. Just retreat into it with one energy attached and it’s swinging for 210 after accelerating three energy from your deck onto itself. What’s really great about this strategy is that you don’t risk losing out on energy too much after it attacks, as three of those energies on its body are going to be moved to another Pokemon. This combo is an ideal way to accelerate a ton of energy from your deck onto your board to take more advantage of Hydrapple ex’s powerful Syrup Storm attack, which does additional damage for each grass energy on your board.
Festival Lead is still one of Hydrapple ex’s strongest plays
For the most part, Yamega ex is taking over as your bigger, two-prize attacker – meaning he’s your most solid bet for taking KOs early in the game against the likes of Fezandipiti, Mew ex and the like. However, Festival Lead remains one of this deck’s most disarming, offensive abilities. Using it, you can take multiple knockouts in a single turn, or even bigger KOs against lower HP two-prize Pokemon.
Ever since Festival Lead debuted in Twilight Masquerade, I’ve been amazed by players’ inability to remember what this ability does, and to this day I’ll still find my opponent’s blanking and offering up key targets to be taken down by a double attack via Dipplin.
Indeed, the most effective use for this attack is when your opponent’s board is filled with under 100 HP Pokemon. In this case, look to evolve your Dipplin, play Festival Grounds, and get a guaranteed two-prize turn.
This is especially handy if your opponent’s board state is in a situation where losing two of these smaller HP Pokemon is disastrous for their strategy – like when they only have two Charmander in the Charizard ex matchup or two Dreepy in Dragapult ex etc.
While it’s not a combo that’s going to be used to the utmost effect every game, thanks to now having Yanmega in your lineup it’s not necessarily one that you’re always going to need. Yanmega’s pivot to attack for 210 is the more reliable play, and brings incredible consistency to a deck that previously struggled in that one key area.
Ideal board set up first turn
I recently did a battle where I had just about the ideal early game set up. Going second, this is essentially what you want your board to look like. You can see here that I’ve managed to play out my entire hand, with still a draw supporter left to play, thereby ensuring I can refill my hand. I also have a Mew ex in play, meaning I can use Restart to see even more cards before playing Lacey to reshuffle my hand into my deck and draw another four cards.
Having two Teal Mask Ogerpon ex on the field is about right, ensuring I have additional draw support while also leaving room for my Applin and Yanma which I can evolve the following turn depending on the scenario. I also have Budew poised and ready to go for the attack.
Stack up your board with tons of grass energy
Hydrapple ex is a behemoth of an attacker, but the main problem with him is that it takes quite some time to build up the energies onto your board that you’ll need to hit ideal damage output numbers with it’s powerful Syrup Storm attack. However, this deck has no shortage of early game plays between Yanmega’s “Jet Cyclone,” Dipplin’s “Do the Wave,” and even Teal Mask Ogerpon ex’s “Myriad Leaf Shower,” when you’re in a tight spot.
However, the real benefit of pairing all of these cards together into a grassy-box deck is the ultimate payoff of Syrup Storm. Get enough grass energy on board and you’re knocking out just about whatever you want. Additionally, thanks to Hydrapple ex’s high amounts of HP and self-healing/energy accelerating ability, it has a ton of stickiness, meaning it is likely to stick around for a few turns without being knocked out.
Here’s an example of what a fully stacked board of energies can look like with Hydrapple ex. Granted, I didn’t really need all of this additional damage lying around given I was just facing down an Ethan’s Typhlosion single prize deck, but it’s still an accurate depiction of how built this strategy can get even when facing down a single prize deck with type advantage.
Grand Tree and zero Rare Candy
One of the things I’m not such a big fan of with Stage 2 Pokemon decks is the typical overreliance on Rare Candy. While that’s generally gotten better in the Pokemon TCG standard format with more Stage 2 decks running at least a few Stage 1 Pokemon and not relying solely on Rare Candy, most still have to run it just to ensure that quick jump to their Stage 2 attacker. However, more than ever Hydrapple ex really doesn’t feel like a Stage 2 deck that needs Rare Candy.
You have so many other ways to do damage early game and to accelerate energy that Hydrapple really doesn’t need to come into play until your board has mostly been built up. Then it can be an incredibly strong closer.
However, my build that I’ve been playing and grinding to Arceus on Pokemon TCG Live does run the Grand Tree ACE SPEC stadium card. I’ve found this useful in the past with my original Hydrapple ex build, but admit with all the new support for this deck you could feasibly run a different ACE SPEC if you wanted to.
Supporter lineup
Of course, supporters are a powerful card type in the Pokemon TCG, and you’ll want to think carefully about which ones you include in your Hydrapple ex/Yanmega ex deck strategy in order to optimize your options in battle. Below, we’ll look at the supporters I’ve chosen for my deck strategy and why:
Surfer is one of the new supporter choices I’ve included in my upgraded Hydrapple/Yanmega deck largely because of Yanmega. While most of the time you can get away with retreating into Yanmega to take advantage of Buzzing Boost, sometimes the Switch can be helpful. Drawing cards off of it doesn’t hurt, either.
The other new supporter is Black Belt Training. While you certainly won’t get this card off each every time you play, it can be a handy tech to close out many games.
Lacey is my preferred late game supporter, letting me replenish my hand with eight cards as long as my opponent has three prizes or less remaining.
Lana’s Aid can be handy for bringing the energies you need back to your hand to then accelerate them via your many abilites.
And of course I’m running the somewhat staple three Iono and Boss’s Orders to help disrupt my opponent’s hand and board to be more advantageous to me.
Hydrapple ex/Yanmega ex notable matchups
Hydrapple ex has fairly strong matchups in the Pokemon TCG Live meta right now, with a few exceptions. Let’s look at the most interesting/relevant matchups to watch for and how to handle them.
Versus Marnie’s Grimmsnarl ex
Grimmsnarl ex is hugely popular on Pokemon TCG Live right now, taking down big tournaments and doing very well against some of the biggest baddest decks in the game. However, you have an inherent advantage against Grimmsnarl ex thanks to its weakness to grass. Exploit this weakness and heal excess damage via Ripening Charge whenever you can and you should be good to go.
Versus Dragapult ex
One of the reasons it used to be hard to play Hydrapple ex is that it had a horrendous matchup versus Dragapult ex. However, thanks to less reliance on small HP Pokemon, the gap has closed, and there are reliable ways to deal with Dragapult ex. First of all, you can essentially just use Yanmega to gain the upper-hand in the matchup – attacking for 210 damage each time, and keeping your bench filled with Ogerpon ex and other Yanmega instead of a bunch of the low HP guys.
It’s not a foolproof strategy but it’s certainly less vulnerable than it used to be.
Versus Charizard ex
Charizard ex is a very fun matchup for this deck because of the ease in which you can KO Charizard ex, effectively nullifying that deck’s advantage. You shouldn’t have much of an issue here as you have so many tools capable of OHKO a Charizard ex.
Versus Joltik Box
An interesting matchup I’ve come across when playing online is against Joltik Box. This new Hydrapple/Yanmega ex focused build goes strangely well into Joltik box, using Dipplin’s Festival Lead as a workaround to OHKO the Tera Pikachu. The only main weakness here is going to be Yanmega’s weakness to Lightning, making it an easy target for Iron Hands ex. Maybe just don’t use that particular combo in this matchup and you should come out on top.
