The Pokémon Card With the Highest HP (And How HP Has Grown Over the Years)

One of the aspect I always loved the most about Pokémon the Trading Card Game is the amazing variety of spectacular and powerful creatures you can summon in your decks. Depending on your playing style you can pick some with powerful abilities, others with powerful attacks or even some that can boost you other Pokémon or search for the cards you need in order to win. Whatever role you want your Pokémon to play, however, their aim will always be to reduce your opponent Pokémon to knock them out and win a prize card.

In this sense, the Hit Points (HP) of your Pokémon is one of the most critical aspect to determine if they will be able to stay on the field long enough to unleash their full potential or if they will hit the dust too early to be effective. In fact, there are also some Pokémon that are designed to take multiple hits to buy enough time for other ones to unleash their abilities. Among them Mega Venusaur ex that will be featured in the recent Pokémon set “Mega Evolution” is set to break all records and become THE Pokémon with the highest HP ever released. How this will affect the gameplay and what can we expect in future set?

Why HP matters in the Pokémon TCG

Pokémon cards HP essentially determines how much damage it can take before fainting. In general, HP determines therefore how long your Pokémon can stay on the active spot but, in fact, it has many more implications in terms in Gameplay.

First and foremost, the HP of a Pokémon is not an absolute as it is strongly influenced by Strengths and Weaknesses. In the Pokémon TCG, a Pokémon with a Weakness (found at the bottom of their card) takes double damage from attacks of that Weakness type. At the same time, damage of a certain type may be reduced if that Pokémon has a resistance against that Attack type. While it is obvious that the more HP, the more damage a Pokémon can handle, choosing Pokémon with a resistance (or at least not a Weakness) against some of the most used Pokémon may provide Players with additional advantages.

In addition, it should also be remembered that Pokémon with low HP can be buffed up using certain Items in order to increase their HP and their ability to stay on the field longer.

Another aspect to consider is that HP often affects some moves and abilities. Certain moves (recoil attack) and abilities in Pokémon TCG for example can deal damages also to your own Pokémon. This type of effects can either be a way to balance the power of your Pokémon or part of some mechanic aimed to make them more effective (for example increasing the damage of their next moves). In both cases, exploiting these abilities or attacks requires a careful management of the Pokémon HP in order to make sure the Active Pokémon survives long enough.

In order to improve the longevity of your team members, Items and abilities can also be used. This strategies proved very efficient in particular when different effects can be stacked or triggered sequentially. The ability of Garganacl (Paldea Evolved) for example can be exploited to heal 20 damage from each of the Player Pokémon while Mantyke (Paradox Rift) can perform a zero cost attack to Heal up to 120 damages to a Pokémon to than swap for it for no cost.

Pokémon HP through the years

Different eras of Pokémon TCG have been characterized by the introduction of new mechanics and card types that increasingly pushed the game's limits often leading to a need to have cards with higher HP. As a result, the maximum HP values in the game has constantly increased over the years leading to a phenomenon knows as "power creep".

In the early days of the game (1999-2003), both Chansey and Charizard had an HP of 120 that was the highest in the game. To give perspective, one of the stronger attacker in the game at the time, Hitmonchan, was able to deal 20 or 40 damage max at a cost of three Energy, thus taking several turns to KO Chansey and Charizard.

When the ex Pokémon were introduced in Ruby & Sapphire, it was pretty common to see cards with 150-160 HP culminating with the super resilient Wailord ex that topped the era with his 200 HP. When the EX Pokémon were reintroduced again as Basic Pokémon in 2012, it was pretty common for them to have 170-180 HP but we had to wait for the introduction of Mega Evolution in Pokémon XY for the HP to go over 200. The king of this era was Wailord that also took the crown of the Pokémon with the highest HP in 2019 when Magikarp & Wailord-GX was released together with the Tag Team mechanic and its terrifying 300 HP.

The maximum HP kept increasing through the Sword and Shield era and the most recent Scarlet and Violet to settle to the 340 HP of Eternatus VMAX released in the Darkness Ablaze set. While this value seemed a record-breaking at the time, we just saw we are going to raise the bar even higher when the new Mega Evolution set releases bringing us Mega Venusaur ex (380 HP) and Mega Gardevoir ex (360 HP). This is surely a massive increase considering it all started with the 120 HP of Charizard!

Playing and Collecting high-HP cards: key considerations

One of the key aspects that catches the eye when reviewing how Pokémon TCG changed through the years is how the HP of a Pokémon is now tightly interlinked to damage dealt by its attack and abilities. When the game released, the 120HP felt quite high in comparison to the ability to deal damage of your average Pokémon but when the EX basic Pokémon were released it was already quite common to be able to KO active Pokémons in one turn even if their HP was over 200.

In today metagame, this trend will continue and the release of the new Mega Pokémon will keep pushing towards Pokémon with very strong attacks and very high HP.

With this in mind, it is important to consider that neither high HP nor high damage is inherently superior when thinking of which Pokémon to have in your decks. In fact, the best strategy is usually a combination of good stats, abilities and Item cards that can synergize all together. Good balanced Pokémon that can win the prize trade are usually preferred as most powerful high-HP Pokémon can be very risky considering their high prize value. However, even the best strategy may take some time to be set in motion thus you may still need to consider having a very resilient Pokémon in the front lines to buy you the needed time.

In these cases where you need a very specialized Pokémon, Magic Madhouse resources and single cards can come extremely in handy. Magic Madhouse blog can help players reviewing the trends within the competitive community in order to tailor their decks to face different match-ups. In addition, players can get any card they need quickly from Magic Madhouse by browsing their single cards offers.