Gyarados
Other versions of this card
Other cards of Gyarados
About Gyarados — Weaknesses
- Hyper Beam deals 100 damage for 4 energy (25.0 damage/energy) — about 16% below the average for Stage 1 cards, needs extra support to pull its weight.
- Retreat cost is 4 energy — fairly high, easy to get stuck Active under pressure.
- Must evolve from Magikarp before it can attack — slower than a Basic but usually stronger.
- Weak to Lightning (+20 damage) — avoid facing that type's decks.
Gyarados is a Rare card from the Genetic Apex set. Check its attacks, retreat cost and which pack it drops from below.
Attacks
Discard a random Energy from your opponent's Active Pokémon.
Pokédex entry
Once it appears, it goes on a rampage. It remains enraged until it demolishes everything around it.
Which pack does this card drop from?
Three ways to get this card
Odds recalculated from the official per-slot pull-rate table for pack Pikachu: the chance of this rarity in each slot divided by the 14 cards of this rarity in that pack.
Want to know exactly how many packs you need to open to get Gyarados?
Same evolution line
Cards stacked in the same column are PARALLEL evolutions from the same parent card — they do not evolve one into the next.
Is Gyarados played in any meta deck?
Gyarados is not a core card in any of the 50 meta decks currently tracked. It is a filler card: Pack Points cost only 150, so do not burn packs hunting it — open packs for the rare slots and this one arrives on its own.
Same type in this set
Card name by language
Reading Gyarados's stat block
Gyarados is a Rare Stage 1 card from the Genetic Apex set with 150 HP. Every STAT on this page comes straight from the card record; the expected pack count further down is a statistical estimate recomputed from the pull table, not a promise.
Its weakness is Lightning, which is the fastest way for an opponent to remove it in a straight trade, and its retreat cost is 4 — that is what you pay in energy to swap it out mid-turn, and it is the number people forget until the card is stranded in the active spot.
Its attacks:
- Hyper Beam — 100 damage · cost Water + Water + Water + Water — Discard a random Energy from your opponent's Active Pokémon.
Read the energy costs together, not just the damage. A card with two attacks usually trades a cheap, weak opener for a pricier attack that does the real work, and the question that decides whether it belongs in a deck is whether you can actually pay for the big one on curve.
Which pack actually drops it
Rare cards are not spread evenly across a set. Each one is locked to specific packs, and opening the wrong pack from the right set means this card never shows up no matter how many you buy. Gyarados drops from Pikachu.
Odds are set per slot, not per card — and the slot layout differs from one pack type to another, so never carry one pack's formula over to another. The Pikachu pack gives 5 cards per opening — slot 1 is always Common · slot 2 is always Common · slot 3 is always Common · slot 4: 90.00% is Uncommon · slot 5: 60.00% is Uncommon. For Gyarados that works out to 0.36% in slot 4 · 1.43% in slot 5, which is 1.78% for any single pack, or about 56 packs before you can expect to see one.
Three ways to own it
Pulling is only the first path, and it is the one that can betray you: 1.78% per pack means the expected 56 packs is an average, not a promise.
The second path removes luck entirely. Every pack you open awards 5 Pack Points (an official in-game mechanic, not part of the drop-rate table) regardless of what comes out of it, and those points accumulate until you can redeem this exact card outright. Gyarados costs 150 PP — no pulls, no gambling, just the count.
The third path is trading, which spends Shinedust rather than Pack Points, and whether it is open to you depends entirely on the card's rarity. For Gyarados: It can be traded for 1,200 Shinedust.
Evolution line and other printings
Gyarados evolves from Magikarp. The full line is: Magikarp → Gyarados · Gyarados ex · Mega Gyarados ex.
Some Pokémon are also printed more than once — across different sets or promo drops, with different art, different rarity, and sometimes different attacks under the same name. Where other printings of this card exist, they are linked on this page, because the stats can differ even when the name matches.
Where this card stands on the ladder
Gyarados is not a core card in any of the 50 meta decks currently tracked. It is a filler card: Pack Points cost only 150, so do not burn packs hunting it — open packs for the rare slots and this one arrives on its own.
The meta deck table is recomputed from tournament data (play rate plus win/loss/tie record), not from anyone's opinion. A card missing from that table can still be beautiful and still be expensive to trade for, but it will not win games on its own — those are two different questions and this page answers them separately.
Frequently asked questions
Which pack should I open to get Gyarados?
Gyarados drops from Pikachu. Opening a different pack from the same set will not produce it, because pack variants inside one set carry completely different rare-card pools.
Roughly how many packs does it take to pull Gyarados?
About 56 packs on average. That comes from the per-slot pull table rather than a single blended number: 0.36% in slot 4 · 1.43% in slot 5, which is 1.78% for any one pack. It is an expected value — a statistical estimate, not a guarantee: half of all players will need more.
Can I trade for Gyarados instead of pulling it?
It can be traded for 1,200 Shinedust. Trading uses Shinedust, and whether a card is tradeable at all is fixed by its rarity tier — Immersive Rare and Crown Rare cards can never be traded under any circumstance, so for those two tiers Pack Points or a direct pull are the only ways in.