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Red Gyarados (HGSS)
Woo hoo! A new set to review, and not a moment too soon.
We really were scraping the bottom of the Arceus barrel
last week.
New set reviews are exciting but tough, as it is hard to
always predict the impact of an untested card on the
format, and easy to miss combos and possibilities. These
cards are not going to see any play until States, but
hopefully there will be plenty in the set to inspire you
with your deckbuilding.
We kick off with a review of the Secret Rare Red
Gyarados. I got one of these at a prerelease and it
brought back memories of catching one in Pokémon Silver,
thanks to the wise advice of Lance. Am I going to be
putting it in a deck, or using it for binder bling,
though?
Red Gyarados (not its official name, but that’s what I’m
calling it), has a huge 130 HP (great), a double
Weakness to Luxray (errr . . . I mean Lightning . . .
either way, that’s not good), and a handy Fighting
Resistance. The atrocious Pokémon also has a retreat
cost of three which is . . . well . . . atrocious.
Red Gyarados’s first attack, Thrash has a nice base
damage of 30 for the cheap cost of [C]. There is a big
risk/reward payoff with this attack though: you flip a
coin and, if heads you do and extra 20 damage (50 for
one = nice!), but if you flip tails, Gyarados will do 20
damage to itself. You could always make the most of the
self-damage by attaching a Memory Berry and using
Magikarp MT’s Flail attack, though if you are going to
do that, why not just use Gyarados MT and do even more
damagewithout the need for a Tool? The second attack,
Heavy Storm, sends all Spell and Trap cards to the
Graveyard (yes, I just made a Yu Gi Oh joke) . . .
no, really, it just does an overcosted 70 damage for
four Energy . . . sorry.
Well, the good news is that you won’t need to hunt down
multiple copies of this rare card for your deck because,
quite honestly, it is easily outclassed by Gyarados SF,
which can actually take a hit from Luxray thanks to its
+30 Weakness, and do more damage for no Energy cost. The
MT Gyarados is better than Red Gyarados too. Heck, even
the Rare Holo from HGSS is more playable than this (and
it isn’t playable at all).
Looks like my Red Gyarados will be staying in mint,
never-played condition!
Rating
Modified: 1.5 (nostalgic binder candy)
Limited: 2 (big HP is sometimes good enough here, though
the X2 Weakness hurts)
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