I just wanted to post my view on the highly overrated Dark Gyarados line,
introduced in the Team Rocket expansion. We'll take a look at these cards.

Magikarp
Basic Water Pokémon
30 HP
[1] Flop  10
[WWW] Rapid Evolution Search your deck for an Evolution card named Gyarados
or Dark Gyarados and put it on Magikarp (this counts as evolving Magikarp).
Shuffle your deck afterward.
Weakness: L
Resistance: None
Retreat Cost: 1
#47/82 U

As good as Rapid Evolution may sound, this card is very weak. The HP are
awful, and Flop is very weak. Rapid Evolution only really works well when you
have Blastoise out already. Otherwise, you'll need to keep out Magikarp at
least three turns while building it up with Water energy. And three turns in
play with such low HP make it the perfect Gust of Wind target. Plus, Rapid
Evolution counts as your attack for the turn.
Now, here's its evolved form...

Dark Gyarados
Stage 1 Water Pokémon (evolves from Gyarados)
70 HP
Pokémon Power: Final Beam When Dark Gyarados is Knocked Out by an attack,
flip a coin. If heads, this power does 20 damage for each Water energy
attached to Dark Gyarados to the Pokémon that Knocked Out Dark Gyarados.
Apply Weakness/Resistance. This power doesn't work if Dark Gyarados is
Asleep, Confused, or Paralyzed.
[WWW] Ice Beam 30 Flip a coin. If heads, the defending Pokémon is now
Paralyzed.
Weakness: G
Resistance: F
Retreat Cost: 2
#8/82 RH

This card is far overrated, and rarely is as helpful as people think.
Although many people love Final Beam, it's not very good. First, there's only
ONE coin flip, not one for each energy. Second, it may seem enticing to
attach tons of Water energy to Dark Gyarados and wait for the opponent to
knock it out. But this can fail miserably. Your opponent will either not
attack (so Final Beam can't be used), or use an attack that puts Gyarados to
Sleep, or confuses or paralyzes it. A Pokémon's attack that has a damaging
auto Status effect besides poison (most common is sleep) will shut down Final
Beam. Think about it: Anything that damages with auto Sleep that Knocks Out
this card makes Final Beam useless, because it puts this card to Sleep when
it's knocked out. Then, there's that awful coin flip to see if it even does
anything. Tails means that all of the extra Water energy on it was useless.
Not so good now, is it?  Most Dark Gyarados articles praise this card, but
it's just not worth it at all.

Questions? Comments? E-mail me at Raiden9984@aol.com.

-Will
(Raiden9984@aol.com)