This is probably going to be an es=xtremely broad question but just wondering what should black be trying to do when he plays a hippo against a setup with pawns on e4, d4 c4.

It's very surprising but as far as I know of, there have been at least 6 books on the hippo and not one answers the question of white playing with the e4, d4, c4 setup so if you know any books against this structure please post.

Oh and the hippo I'm talking about is the one's where black eventually get's his pawns on h6 g6, e6 d6, b6 a6, knights on e7 and d7 and bishops on b7 and g7.

Blacks idea is to position the bishops on the long diagnols and then attack white's center forcing white to open one or the other diagnol. Now you have a bishop that's better then it's counterpart. Now figure out where a good weak square is and maneuver a knight to that square. Reinforce it and you have an outpost. When all of your pieces are better then their counter-parts you are winning.

Um could you be a bit more specific?

He means that you play slowly, building up and playing more positionally. White can't commit to a pawn storm - you will come out on top of that with a safe king against White's exposed centre. As White expands, his pawns leave weak squares behind and to the sides, so as Black playing a hypermodern defense, your objective is to advance slowly and consolidate.

A big pawn center has a drawback - it can easily become a target - the whole point of hypermodern defences is to strike back at the centre, where White has to expend resources to keep or defend it. I play KID sometimes, and find that when White overextends, his kingside-castled king is very open - all it takes is a good pawn break.

Only played the hippo as a newbie, thought it up, and thought that it was a good safe set-up, since my granddad was at the time one hell of an attacker, and loved hypermodern stuff...anyway, could you give us a certain set up please? White must've wasted some tempo to give Black enough time to set it up...