Today's Pokémon Card:

Base Set Ivysaur

"When the bulb on its back grows large, the Pokémon seems

to lose the ability to stand on its hind legs."

Total Overview:

The Pokémon card I'm going to review today is this Ivysaur from the Base Set. Ivysaur is a stage 1 Pokémon, which means that it's an evolution of another Pokémon, in this case, the basic Pokémon is Bulbasaur, which evolves into Ivysaur.

Ivysaur is a grass type Pokémon, and it has an HP of 60. It has 2 attacks which both needs 3 energy cards, the first attack is Vine Whip which requires 1 grass type energy card and 2 colorless energy cards (cards of your own choice!). This attack deals 30 damage to the opponent. The other attack is Poisonpowder which requires 3 grass type energy cards and deals an amount of 20 damage AND poisons your opponent at the same time even without having to flip a coin!

Ivysaur's weakness is fire like many other grass type Pokémon, it has no resistance and it only costs 1 colorless energy to retreat the Pokémon.

Since Ivysaur is a stage 1 Pokémon, it means you need to have Bulbasaur as your active Pokémon, before you can evolve it into Ivysaur. I would not recommend using this Pokémon card in a battle because it needs 3 energy cards attached to it, before you can use any of its attacks. It has 60 HP, which is ok, but not too good for a stage 1 Pokémon. You can of course keep it on your bench to wait and see if you could pull a Venusaur from your deck (if you have it in your deck of course..). The rarity of Ivysaur is uncommon, which can be told by the black diamond in the bottom right corner of the card.

Personal Opinion:

I'm going to say that the rating of this card will be 3/5. Though this is a stage 1 Pokémon, it comes with an (almost) fair amount of HP, but the fact that you have to use 3 energy cards to use both of this Pokémon's attacks draws the rating down a bit..

A bit about the artwork:

The artwork is ok, but it's not a card you stop and stare at, because of its beauty. The Pokémon in itself is really well made, there are a lot of details to it, but the position just seems so "regular" which unfortunately is common for a lot of these old cards. The background is unfortunately very boring to me, with its dark colours and almost no pattern. I hadn't really noticed before, that the area around the Ivysaur is smudged, but I guess that's just one you the things you finally get to notice when you do reviews of Pokémon cards that are usually just hidden away in boxes and binders ;)

Next Card Review:

The next card I will be reviewing is the Base Set Venusaur, and after having done the final evolution to Bulbasaur, I will journey on to other, newer cards! I'm looking forward to it, and I really hope you are too. Hope you enjoyed reading what I had to say about this card :)

Check out my channel on YouTube to see some card openings, and stay tuned for the next Pokémon card review!