Gyarados -- Burning Shadows Pokemon Card Review

Pokemon Card Overview:
Today's Pokemon Card Review is of Gyarados from the Burning Shadows Pokemon Card Set.  Gyarados is a Stage 1, Water type Pokemon card, with a HP of 150. It has a x2 weakness to Lightning type Pokemon, no resistance type, and a four Colorless Energy card retreat cost.  This card does not have an Ability but it does have two moves.  The first move on this card is called Venting Anger, for two Colorless Energy cards, this move does 50 damage times the number of Magikarp cards in your discard pile.  Gyarados' second move is called Splash Burn, for four Energy cards, two each of Water and Colorless, this move does 160 damage, however the move also does 30 damage to each of your Benched Pokemon

Pokemon Card Strategy:
So as far as strategy goes, since Gyardaos is a Stage 1 Pokemon card, you'll first have to get Magikarp into play (I reviewed Magikarp from this set yesterday) and then evolve Magikarp into Gyarados.  If you read yesterday's review of Magikarp, you'll know that I thought it was an average card overall and easily one of the best Magikarp cards out there, since it could for sure do 10 damage every turn plus it gave you a chance at enduring more than a turn in the Active Pokemon spot if you flipped a heads when attacking, preventing all effects of attacks by your opponent's Pokemon during their next turn.  Knowing this about Magikarp and looking at this Gyarados card, if you are okay with including 4 Magikarp cards in your deck, then this card can do up to 150 damage per turn for only 1 Double Colorless Energy card, if you're using Venting Anger and you have 3 Magikarp in your discard pile, if you use enough Ultra Ball Trainer cards, you can easily have Magikarp in your discard pile.  This strategy takes up too many spots in a deck to be effective, but if you want to do 160 damage per turn for three Energy cards, this card works well, plus you can use it every turn, since Splash Burn doesn't require Gyarados to discard any Energy, but you either may want to have limited Pokemon on your Bench, or have a Pokemon that either heals all damage at once, or has an increased attack if your Benched Pokemon have damage on them.  No matter the strategy you take with this card, it will require time to set up and it does have a very high retreat cost, requiring lots of resources to retreat it.

Pokemon Card Rating:
I would give this card a 3 out of 5 rating.  In my opinion, this is an average Stage 1 Pokemon card from the Burning Shadows set.  Like I mentioned above, this card definitely has some possibilities when in a deck, it can do major damage when using either of its moves, however it is slow to set up these moves and it has a high retreat cost, so while it may be powerful, I probably wouldn't use this line in a deck, even though both Magikarp and Gyarados received 3 out of 5 ratings from me, the same rating I would give both Pokemon together.

Tomorrow's Pokemon Card:
So thanks for reading today's Pokemon card review of Gyarados from the Burning Shadows set, stay tuned for tomorrow's card review of Marill, which is from this same set.  Make sure to check below for the Free Pokemon TCG Online Codes!

Free Pokemon TCG Online Code Cards:
Today's Quiz for a Pokemon TCG Online Code Card --
True or False? Gyarados was the first Pokemon card I ever had in my collection.
Please respond with the correct answer and a link to your YouTube channel. 24 hours from now I will be randomly selecting a correct response to my question and sending a private message to this person with a free code on YouTube.