pokemon platinum member card TCG: Player's Guide: 9781604380859: Nintendo USA: Books 32 on my Top 100

The wild and wacky casual answer

He comes with some built-in removal, which is always a big plus

Pumping your Merfolk creatures a bit and granting them a very powerful form of evasion with islandwalk means you are free to keep attacking so long as your opponent controls an island

Luckily, despite their high costs in near-mint (NM) condition, you can find much better deals if you look at lightly played (LP), moderately played (MP) or heavily played (HP) copies of these Dragonite cards

Compare that with the $1.50 price tag they carry now, or the $0.20 price of the Battle for Zendikar full arts, and youll start to question how we survived back then

They also only count cards in the graveyard