Hey PoJo.  Nice site!

At the risk of sounding really stupid... here goes.  While I love Scyther
and think he is indeed a great basic pokemon and should be in any good
haymaker deck, I have never understood why everyone thinks his Sword's Dance
attack is so cool.  I find it a waste of time.

Here's what I mean.  Scyther's other attack (slash)deals out 30 damage for
three colorless energy - nice attack.  Sword's Dance requires only one grass
energy but does the following:
"Swords Dance: During your next turn, Scyther's Slash attack's base damage
is 60 instead of 30."  COOL!! everyone says, right?  NO! Not right! See here
is the problem with this attack.  It counts as an attack, so for one turn
you do no damage, right?  Well who cares if it does 60 damage on the next
turn?  If I use slash two turns in a row I do 60 damage too!  If the
defending pokemon has a weakness to grass pokemon, Scyther does 60 damage
each time I use slash or 120 damage if I do sword's dance and then slash
(hello!  120 = 120 no matter how you add it up)

It works out exactly the same, except if I do slash two turns in a row, at
least I have done some damage on the first turn after which scyther might
get killed, gusted, whirlwinded, hurricaned, etc.  If I wait a turn to do 60
damage while swinging his swords around, and then get killed before I can
attack, I have done nothing to the defending pokemon.  A WASTE!!

Read the card carefully, it does not say that Slash does 60 damage on every
subsequent attack (after you do Sword's Dance once), it says does 60 damage
ON THE NEXT TURN.  The way I read that it means that in order to make slash
do 60 damage, I have to do Sword's dance on the preceding turn EVERY TIME.

Scyther is a great pokemon card.  Sword's Dance is a waste.

Am I wrong?  Any referee's or master's out there care to comment?

Todd Knudsen
dacbr219@hotmail.com

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