Gyarados -- Evolutions Pokemon Card Review

Pokemon Card Overview:
Today's Pokemon Card Review is of Gyarados from the XY Evolutions Pokemon Card Set.  Gyarados is a Stage 1, water type Pokemon card, with a HP of 130. It has a x2 weakness to lightning type Pokemon, no resistance type, and a three colorless energy card retreat cost.  Gyarados does not have an Ability but it does have two moves.  The first move that this card has is called Bubble Beam, for three water energy cards this move does 50 damage, plus paralyzes the defending Pokemon if you get a heads when flipping a coin.  Gyarados' second move is called Dragon Rage and for four water type energy cards this move does 180 damage, however you must flip 2 coins when using this move, if either coin is tails, the move does nothing.

Pokemon Card Strategy:
So as far as strategy goes, since Gyarados 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, even though I thought it was one of the better Magikarp cards out there, it was still extremely poor overall, with a very low HP and a move that is very restricted in when it can actually do damage.  So knowing how bad Magikarp is and looking at this Gyarados card, there is really no way in my opinion I can recommend playing this line in a deck, specifically using these two Pokemon from the Evolutions set.  Of course if you were playing this line you would want to evolve Magikarp into Gyarados on the bench and then get the energy onto Gyarados so you could move it into the active Pokemon spot right away and start attacking.  The problem with this strategy is that even though Gyarados has two moves, both are really slow on the attack, Gyarados' first move Bubble Beam does below average damage, and its second move, Dragon Rage, can potentially do well above average damage, but there is a high likelihood of not being able to do damage at all when using it.  I guess if you have to use this card in your deck, try and use a Trick Coin trainer card with Gyarados to give you a better shot at doing damage with Dragon Rage.

Pokemon Card Rating:
I would give this card a 2 out of 5 rating.  In my opinion, this is a below average Stage 1 Pokemon card from the XY Evolutions set.  Even though Gyarados has a strong HP and two moves, with one move being able to do major damage, this card is just too slow on the attack and too risky when attacking to merit use in a deck.  Combine it with the perpetually weak Magikarp and this line gets a 1 out of 5 rating from me.

Tomorrow's Pokemon Card:
So thanks for reading today's Pokemon card review of Gyarados from the XY Evolutions set, stay tuned for tomorrow's card review of Pikachu, 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 --
At what level does Magikarp evolve into Gyarados?
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.