I normally try to do Trainer Cards in alphabetical order, but we'll be deviating a bit this time around. The reason is that one of the main gimmicks of the gym sets was the "owner's Pokémon," which benefitted from specific synergies between themselves and their associated Trainer Cards.
While these synergies didn't always play out as the developers may have intended, it's still worth going in gym leader order so that we can discuss the intended playstyles of each leader. Note that just because a card has a gym leader's name and features that leader in the art, that doesn't necessarily mean their cards will only work for their deck. You need to read each effect carefully.
Brock just removes a damage counter from each of your 'mons. Brock's cards tend to have generically useful effects, but this one in particular is a head-scratcher since the much more powerful Pokémon Center already existed.
This card never saw serious play, but it could theoretically remove the damage after an Earthquake or a Selfdestruct. So we'll pretend it has a tiny little niche somewhere, but it's really not a very playable card.
Grade: 2/10
Brock's Protection keeps energy cards from being removed to the 'mon it's attached to, but can only be attached to a 'mon with "Brock" in the name. This may seem like a really niche effect, but Super Energy Removal was a major threat at the time.
In formats where that card is legal, it's not unusual to slap a quick Brock's Protection on Brock's Ninetales before it uses Shapeshift to become a different Evolution Card.
Grade: 7/10
Brock's Training Method can search out any Pokémon with Brock in its name and add it to your hand instantly. No coin flips or costs or gimmicks whatsoever. This is one of the best consistency boosters for any archetype in the WotC era, at least in a vacuum.
Unfortunately, the archetype it supports has very little internal synergy and the cards are usually played independently of each other.
Grade: 7/10
Pewter City Gym allows all of Brock's 'mons (and only Brock's) to attack without fear of the enemy's Resistances. This is actually really important since they're mostly Fighting-types, meaning everything with wings resists them.
This is the perfect Stadium for a Fighting-type deck, so it's unfortunate that it's restricted to just one very tiny subset of Pokémon. As a result it doesn't see play over the more universal Resistance Gym.
Grade: 5/10
Misty is an obscenely powerful Trainer and is the main reason you would even play any of the Misty's Pokémon. While the discard cost is debilitating, she can catapult an attack into one-shot range easily.
The tradition is to combine Misty with multiple Pluspowers in order to knock out the opponent instantly, hopefully winning the game before they even get to start setting up. It's an all-in hyper-offense strategy. This one card defines the whole deck.
Grade: 10/10
Misty's Duel is a gimmick, but it's not completely ineffective. Her deck is so aggressive that it's willing to do whatever it takes to draw a few more cards, so this isn't necessarily a bad deal for you.
It can also knock the opponent down to 5 cards on the first turn, so it's actually a pretty powerful counter to other deep-draw decks. Just make sure to play out your hand first so that you stand to benefit from either result.
Grade: 7/10
Misty's Tears gives Water decks some added consistency. You might initially think there's no reason to play this in a Rain Dance or Misty deck, since you could just play more Energy Cards.
But an often overlooked advantage is that it artificially expands Item Finder's capabilities when it's in your discard pile. Including one copy costs next to nothing and it can matter if you have a bad opening hand.
Grade: 6/10
Misty's Wish looks bad, then you see the phrase "draw a card," and then it looks good, until you realize that it doesn't say you "may ask" to trade for a prize...you're forced to make the trade whether it benefits you or not.
This drastically limits the usefulness of the card. You can still pull off some cute tricks by looking at your prizes first through other means, but it's a pretty questionable inclusion in most decks.
Grade: 2/10
Misty's Wrath has an insane cost, but it's a mighty card in the right decks. The original intent was likely to dig through your deck for copies of Misty, but this card is most famous for being the driving force of the Feraligatr deck that took over the Rocket-On format.
Ironically, that deck was less concerned with the card selections and more interested in using this card's "downside" to discard Energy Cards and power up Feraligatr.
Grade: 10/10
Cerulean City Gym gives the Misty deck insane mobility. This is already a good card on its own, since it basically gives the deck the same upside as Dodrio's Retreat Aid, but it's also just a good idea to have some Stadiums in your deck in general to counter the opponent's Stadiums.
It isn't strictly necessary, but it adds so much comfort and flexibility that you'd have to have a very good reason not to include it.
Grade: 8/10
Lt. Surge is basically just a glorified Switch, except that it can't target your 'mons that are already in play. You could just play the card from your hand, then play Switch. I suppose if your deck could benefit from playing 8 copies of Switch, then it can kind of do that.
It really doesn't have any practical application. Or at least none that are worth mentioning or building a deck around.
Grade: 1/10
Lt. Surge's Secret Plan is extremely convoluted, but it does have some niche applications. It could prevent your opponent from knowing what they're attacking, which can come up with certain Pokémon Powers.
Unfortunately, most cards that would benefit from being a "secret plan" are Evolution Cards, which this card is fundamentally not compatible with. I guess it can buy you a turn by turning anything in your hand into a Clefairy Doll, though.
Grade: 4/10
Lt. Surge's Treaty is actually a pretty neat card for aggressive combo decks. Your opponent either willingly lets you speed up the game or lets you draw through your deck faster.
Unfortunately, its reach doesn't extend very far past that. It isn't a mandatory inclusion in basically any deck, and the decks it can be featured in only get a minimal benefit from it. At least it is, technically, playable.
Grade: 5/10
Secret Mission's obvious application is to adjust your hand to better counter your opponent's hand, since it gives you information on the enemy. But more broadly, it's also just another way to rip through your deck.
This is applicable in decks that like discarding cards, like Feraligatr, although there are usually better options available. Still, you could theoretically benefit from this card in a wide range of situations.
Grade: 8/10
Vermillion City Gym is the only card that actually directly benefits Surge's 'mons. It does make your deck a little more aggressive than it would normally be, which can be useful in some niche situations, but overall I wouldn't consider the Surge deck to be especially powerful.
If this worked with the entire Lightning type, I still don't think it would be an excellent card. As such, I just can't be bothered to give this a very high score.
Grade: 4/10
Erika is just a draw card, ultimately. She may not seem worth it at a glance, but this card mostly sees play in aggressive decks that don't care what the opponent is drawing, or in the deadly trapper combo deck that's just going to knock their hand down to 4 with Imposter Oak's Revenge anyway.
It's funny, because in a vacuum this card should objectively be a bad card. But it just happens to fit really well with some of the deadliest combos in the game.
Grade: 9/10
Charity is almost strictly downside. It feels like this card was designed as a joke, since all it does is let you reduce the damage your own attack is doing. There are some very, very niche applications for precisely controlling your damage, like limiting the power of an opponent's Rage, for example.
But generally speaking, this is an extremely bad card that will only make your actual opponent hit themselves in confusion.
Grade: 1/10
Erika's Kindness can actually be pretty annoying for your opponent to deal with if you're playing a deck with a lot of mobility, but that's not the main application.
The main application is to use it in a Dark Weezing deck, where it can heal up all of your copies of Koffing and Dark Weezing after a Mass Explosion. That one deck is good enough to earn this card several points.
Grade: 7/10
Erika's Maids is an auto-include in decks featuring multiple Erika's Pokémon. Take note that they don't have to have different names either, so if you want to use this in a deck dedicated to Erika's Jigglypuff, that's an option.
Erika actually has some very powerful and meta-relevant Pokémon at her disposal. A search card should be judged based on the power level of what it can search for, but Erika really doesn't disappoint in that regard.
Grade: 8/10
Erika's Perfume is a lot more questionable than most of her other cards. It can be used to force your opponent to fill their bench if your deck loves spreading bench damage, sniping Babies, etc.
There are also a few cards like Jungle Wigglytuff and Neo Genesis Sneasel that love it when the bench is full. But every one of these applications is jank at best, compared to just playing a different card in that slot.
Grade: 4/10
Good Manners is one of the best search cards ever printed. The "downside" of showing your hand barely even matters and the upside of having immediate access to any Basic from your deck is insanely good.
It's a little tragic that all of the Ball cards of the time were worse searchers than this random Erika-themed card, but that's just the world we live in.
Grade: 10/10
Celadon City Gym basically makes the Erika deck immune to status ailments. Unfortunately, "the Erika deck" isn't really a thing. The best use for this is probably as an optional inclusion in decks where Erika's Victreebel or Erika's Jigglypuff is your main attacker, and only if you have no better Stadiums to play.
Not to mention that the card just doesn't do anything if your opponent isn't running any status inflictors.
Grade: 2/10
Koga just Poisons the defending Pokémon after it gets hit by one of Koga's 'mons. You'll obviously include this in a Koga deck since it's just a flat upgrade over Pluspower in most situations, but that's the extent of its application.
Koga decks aren't great in any metagame, but they also aren't completely unviable. And in the context of the deck it was meant for, this card is worth playing, at least.
Grade: 6/10
Transparent Walls has some application in decks that tend to damage their own bench, with Dark Weezing being the most prominent example. Unfortunately, it can only be used on that one turn.
This makes it mostly worse than some other less time-sensitive alternatives, like healing the damage off at any time instead. You also won't know that this is technically a Koga-themed card if you haven't played the video games.
Grade: 3/10
Koga's Ninja Trick is one of the coolest things that the Koga deck does. This is the one deck that essentially lets you decide what your opponent is going to attack, without them getting a real choice in the matter.
This can be used to run your opponent right into a 'mon with a powerful defensive ability, with the obvious example being Koga's Muk. But it can also just defend your frail attackers, since being able to switch on your opponent's turn is inherently solid.
Grade: 7/10
Fuchsia City Gym has loads of applications in a Koga deck. You can heal Koga's Arbok, refresh the Hyper Needle on your Koga's Beedrill, and combo some of your Grass-types with Base Venusaur to keep your energy in play.
But the reality is that these are all just cool gimmicks. To be fair, "cool gimmicks" is mostly what the Koga deck does, but that's exactly what keeps the deck from breaking out of its rogue-at-best status.
Grade: 6/10
Sabrina reads like a very powerful card, but the two limitations built into it hold it back. First, it can only move ALL of the energy at once. This makes it less flexible than something like Energy Switch. Second, it obviously only works on Sabrina 'mons.
Sabrina's Haunter doesn't use much energy to begin with and most of her other cards range from unplayable to optional. As a result, this card doesn't see much use.
Grade: 3/10
Sabrina's ESP would probably be broken if you could apply it to every 'mon in the game. The few that can use it absolutely do, but when I say "few" I really do mean it.
Night Spirits is basically the only deck you'll see this in, and that isn't exactly a top tier deck. Just a decently playable one. This also isn't the card that makes the deck so strong.
Grade: 6/10
Sabrina's Gaze is better than it looks. It often functions like a Professor Elm that doesn't lock you out of Trainers. The obvious downside is that you won't be able to increase your hand size off this card, but there are many, many ways to mitigate that.
It's not imperative to every draw engine, but it's actually pretty high up the list in terms of draw cards from the WotC era. It just gets overshadowed by the Professors.
Grade: 8/10
Sabrina's Psychic Control is good in a really sneaky way. While you don't get to choose what's in the opponent's deck and you're reliant on a coin flip, this card can often let you play more than 4 copies of the strongest Trainers in the game by "borrowing" extra copies from the opponent.
This is by no means an auto-include, but decks that want more of a certain staple (like Gust of Wind or Scoop Up) might benefit from using this card as a stand-in.
Grade: 6/10
Saffron City Gym is nearly useless. The most popular members of the Sabrina archetype don't directly benefit from this card. There are some minor applications, like grabbing all the energy off of a 'mon before it faints, but in general this isn't as good as other more generic Stadiums.
You could technically use Sabrina's Alakazam's Psylink to accelerate energy with Mewtwo's Energy Absorption and then return it to your hand but like...really? Just play Energy Retrieval.
Grade: 2/10
You should run Blaine in any deck that can run Blaine, since it's just free acceleration. You are technically going down a card, but the decks that use Blaine's cards tend to care more about immediate power than longevity.
Do note that you have to play EXACTLY two Fire Energy on the turn you play Blaine. You don't just "get an extra energy." You're basically locked out of Special Energy cards on that turn, though it shouldn't come up in practice.
Grade: 8/10
Blaine's Gamble is questionable on a good day. There are some super gimmicky things you can do with this card, but ultimately most of its applications can be fulfilled with Professor Oak in a way that doesn't screw you over half the time.
It's certainly an interesting design, but even the original Gambler did a better job with a similar design space. Being able to mitigate the luck by only choosing your worst cards as trade material is neat, though.
Grade: 4/10
Blaine's Last Resort is a strange card. It has terrible compatibility with anything that could be a dead card, but then again there are plenty of ways to manipulate your hand size. It seems a little silly to go out of your way to set this up, though, since these old formats have so many ways to draw cards already.
I personally don't think the effect is ever going to be worth that horrible restriction when Oak and Elm are around, but feel free to experiment.
Grade: 4/10
The Blaine's Quiz cards are some of the weirdest cards in the game's history, but I do love that they exist. This one challenges your opponent to guess a 'mons length. It's a useless little trivia challenge in the middle of a match, but at least it's cool.
The problem is that the effect is dependent on whether your opponent just randomly happens to know the answer. And maybe they do!
Grade: 2/10
This time you quiz the opponent on something they have no control over knowing or not knowing, which is more applicable to a game. Of course, you still can't control the outcome.
And drawing 2 cards is a pretty minor effect in a game where players are routinely drawing 7 cards at a time, so it's not very likely to be the card that decided the game's outcome.
Grade: 2/10
Blaine's Quiz #3 is probably the most applicable of all these cards. You could slap down something with an extremely common attack like Thundershock or Stun Spore. This could, in theory, make it easier to manipulate the outcome and actually draw 3 cards.
But most players will know that your Thundershock 'mon is probably Base Electabuzz. Or else you're playing bad cards just for a janky draw engine.
Grade: 2/10
Fervor is just a way to grab an Energy Card or two. The problem is that most decks try to minimize the number of Basic Energy cards they're playing as much as possible. As a result, this might just trash some of your cards for no benefit. Just use Energy Search instead, if you even need it.
I think it would've been good in the format that the designers "envisioned" where players didn't fill half their decks with trainers, but...you know.
Grade: 1/10
Cinnabar City Gym turns off the Weakness of most of the Blaine's Pokémon. This card, by itself, is almost enough to make me want to try out a Blaine deck. The reality is that the best deck involving Blaine's 'mons is one that just runs Blaine's Arcanine alongside Typhlosion.
If you want to use this card, you're building your whole deck around it. So now you're stronger against Water, but weaker in general. Not worth it.
Grade: 5/10
Giovanni sounds like a really powerful card, but it only really works if the evolved 'mon has cheap attacks to use. This severely limits its viability, and there aren't many situations where you'd be playing multiple Giovanni's 'mons together.
It does, objectively, have a powerful rule-breaking effect. But when you compare it to other cards that could go in that slot, it just rarely makes its way into a deck.
Grade: 3/10
Giovanni's Last Resort has a truly back-breaking cost, but it's such a powerful effect that it's still worth it. The best combo is with Giovanni's Machamp, right after it survives an attack with 10 HP due to Fortitude or a Focus Band.
It'll usually buy you enough time to draw a few more cards anyway, so it's a worthy inclusion in decks centered around one of the stronger Giovanni's 'mons.
Grade: 7/10
The problem with Viridian City Gym is that it only comes up a few times per game. How often are you really evolving, and how often is it a 'mon that already has damage on it?
You might, if you're lucky, get 40-60 HP out of it over the course of several turns. Is that really worth wasting a slot in your deck for? Generally speaking, no. There are better ways to heal and better Stadiums you could play.
Grade: 2/10
Chaos Gym is one of the most broken cards in these sets and never should've existed. The main use of it is to just put it in play after you're done with your turn so that it completely screws over your opponent's turn.
While it's theoretically symmetrical, a smart player is just going to spam all their best Trainers immediately so that they can soft-lock their opponent's Trainers without any fear of wasting their own Trainers.
Grade: 10/10
Energy Flow isn't a great card in a vacuum, but it does have one very messed up interaction. Return every Water Energy card on your side of the field to your hand when playing a Rain Dance deck, then use Pokémon Center to heal everything to full HP for free, then reattach the energy.
That's this card's purpose. You probably won't need this combo in more aggressive builds of the deck, but it's a damn scary combo to have in your back pocket.
Grade: 7/10
Master Ball is fine. It's extremely likely to get you to a Pokémon card, but you don't have a lot of control over what card it's going to get. This makes it a good antithesis to Poké Ball, which could grab any 'mon from your entire deck but only had a 50/50 chance of landing.
But neither one is really worth playing. I prefer the consistency provided by cards like Good Manners and Pokémon Trader, or just drawing more cards until I hit the target.
Grade: 5/10
Max Revive is proof that you can always make a bad card worse. The original Revive was unplayable in most decks because it didn't make sense to bring back a 'mon at half health.
This "upgraded" version does give you your 'mon back at full health...at the cost of discarding 2 Energy Cards from your hand. Not just "cards." It also had to be SPECIFICALLY the cards you would least want to waste on a niche effect like this. Wow.
Grade: 1/10
This might be THE worst card in the history of the game. It has a 75% chance of skipping the rest of your turn, including your attack. I have been convinced not to give it a 0/10 by a strange Pidgeot build, but my opinion on the card has barely changed.
In the unlikely effect that it does go off, you get to shuffle an opponent's benched 'mon back into the deck. Note that it can't target the defending 'mon.
Grade: 1/10
Narrow Gym may look weirdly specific, but it's a shockingly relevant card. It limits the max damage output of Wigglytuff in earlier formats or Sneasel in later formats. It locks Night Spirits out of their best plays.
And it restricts setup options for any deck that likes to spread its energy thin across a full party. If your deck doesn't use any other Stadium, then this is a perfectly acceptable "default" option, especially for control decks.
Grade: 8/10
No Removal Gym is a playable card in Base-Gym, but is usually opted out of in formats featuring the Neo cards since Ecogym has a more universally useful effect. It's obviously only going to be worth including in a deck that really, really hates Energy Removal.
I would recommend a few copies in Base-Gym Buzzap decks, for example. But the issue with these kinds of hard counters is that the meta tends to adapt around them.
Grade: 6/10
Recall is a very creative card, but it has less applications than you'd think. You specifically want an Evolution Card that fits better with attacks from its pre-evolutions. That's not a super common trait.
There are some very funny things you can do with it, though. Gyarados using Flail will always be comedy gold. But in reality, no one has found a Recall deck that actually sits firmly among the top spots.
Grade: 4/10
Resistance Gym is a nice generic effect. If your main attacker is a Psychic or Fighting 'mon, then you may want to splash in a copy or two of this card just in case. Keep in mind that a Stadium also always has the utility of removing the opponent's Stadium, so it will at least have that utility in every matchup.
It also becomes relevant for Grass-types after the Steel-type enters the game. Not every deck wants Resistance Gym, but it's really nice for the ones that do.
Grade: 8/10
Rocket's Minefield Gym just has a 50/50 chance of doing 20 damage when a basic 'mon enters play. The main use for this card is in Rage/Flail decks, where you benefit from damaging the opponent and taking damage.
It shouldn't be used in any other deck, but it's practically an auto-include in the decks that do care about it.
Grade: 6/10
Rocket's Secret Experiment is just a free Computer Search if you flip heads, but the downside is seriously insane. There are a handful of decks out there that can use it, specifically in situations where you're not playing a lot of Trainers to begin with.
But almost every viable deck loads up on Trainer Cards, so this is a pretty hard sell in most cases.
Grade: 5/10
The main selling point of this card is that it punishes Dodrio-centric decks heavily, along with any other pivoting cards that your opponent might have wanted to abuse. With so many free retreaters in the early formats, you'd be surprised how often this card works.
But it is ultimately fishing for the right matchups, and can end up relatively useless when you don't run into them.
Grade: 7/10
The Rocket's Trap is just bad card design. Don't get me wrong, it's a powerful card. That's the problem. The ability to rip 3 cards out of your opponent's hand before they get to play the game would have been broken even if there weren't any cards to combo it with.
But no, it also has a 3-card combo with Imposter Oak's Revenge and Rocket's Sneak Attack that can leave your opponent with zero cards. Diabolical.
Grade: 10/10
Tickling Machine is part of a very strange combo. By using this to set aside your opponent's hand and then playing Impostor Professor Oak, you can force your opponent to draw 7 cards. The short version is that you can win the game as long as your opponent has 7 or less cards in their deck.
This sounds impractical, but the old formats are so slow and grind-heavy that this ridiculous combo is actually a legitimate threat.
Grade: 7/10
Trash Exchange primarily exists to break Feraligatr wide open. Since Feraligatr shuffles all your discarded energy back into your deck when it attacks, but scales off of that discarded energy, the main job of this card is to switch it back up.
It is luck-reliant and only sees play in one deck, but that one deck is also one of the strongest decks in the entire WotC era.
Grade: 8/10
Warp Point is just a generically good card, like Switch or Gust of Wind. It can fulfill a little of each effect, and is surprisingly versatile. Whether or not you'd run it in a format where all of the Base Set Trainers is legal is up for debate, but it's a staple in the formats where it sees play.
It's unclear if it's referencing the warp panels from Saffron City or if it was just meant as another generic staple, but either way the design has aged well.
Grade: 9/10
If you haven't already realized it, the MASSIVE list of Trainers introduced in this series was the main impact it had on the game. The Stadiums, in particular, forced players to invest. Even if you didn't want to play a Stadium, you needed to have some just to remove your opponent's Stadium.
But even outside of those, cards like The Rocket's Trap and Good Manners reshaped the game overnight. This was the first time that a set of Trainers truly felt like it was almost comparable to the power level of the Base Set Trainers, for better or for worse.
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