Pokemon Card of the Day: Hippowdon Lv. X (Rising Rivals)

Today's Pokemon Card of the Day is Hippowdon Lv. X from the Rising Rivals set. This is a stage 2 Lv. X card and it has 130 hp which is just below average for this type of Lv. X card. But still 130 hp is pretty good. A x2 weakness to Water type Pokemon might make that 130 hp seem like a little less, but Hippowdon Lv. X does have a resistance to Electric type Pokemon of -20 so it will be more successful against those Luxray GL Lv. X cards out there. A 4 colorless energy retreat cost is very expensive and if you retreat Hippowdon Lv. X it won't be worth it to use it again since it will take along time to get another 4 energy cards on it. I would actually let this card get knocked out before I would retreat it, and it will be hard to retreat especially if you use its only move which makes you discard 2 energy cards when you do it so it will be hard for Hippowdon Lv. X to even keep four energy cards on it. Hippowdon Lv. X's Poke-Power is called Sand Reset and it says that before your attack both you and your opponent should shuffle all your cards in play, excluding Pokemon and supporter cards, back into your deck. You can only use this Poke-Power once per game. But it could be very vital to your team's success if your opponent begins to stack up their bench Pokemon with energy cards, you can then have them shuffle those energy cards back into their deck and this also affects their active Pokemon, so I would especially use this Poke-Power when your opponent has a powerful attacking Pokemon out there which needs a lot of energy cards to attack, just before they get enough energy to attack I would use Sand Reset, because if a Pokemon needs lets say 5 energy cards to do 100 hp then you can make them wait another 5 turns at the most to do that move again if you use Sand Reset. Hippowdon Lv. X's only move on this card, you can always use the moves from the card you evolved Hippowdon Lv. X from, is called Double Shoot and takes 4 energy cards, 2 Fighting and 2 colorless. This move does 40 hp to two of your opponent's bench Pokemon, but when you use this move you have to discard two Fighting energy cards. As far as strategy goes, I would either use Double Shoot twice and try and knock out some basic Pokemon on my opponent's bench, but this would mean somehow getting two energy cards on Hippowdon Lv. X fast since you have to discard the two energy cards when you use Double Shoot the first time, or if I want to be more of an attacker every turn I would rely on a regular Hippowdon card for my moves. Like I was saying earlier I would use Hippowdon Lv. X's Poke-Power to combat my opponent's most powerful Pokemon, making them completely reattach all the necessary energy cards to their most powerful Pokemon. I would wait until my opponent is almost ready to use this card and then use Sand Reset so they have to do it all over again. But once again, thanks for reading this review and stay tuned for tomorrow's review of Gallade 4 Lv. X from the Rising Rivals set as well.