Dear Pojo,

I have read the strategy section of your website for the past few months
and NO ONE has written anything on these two power puncher's in quite
this way.

ALAKAZAM + TAURUS

I call it the kamikaze combo. (hey the cards did come after all, from
Japan)

Taurus is great in really any deck as it is colourless and packs quite a
punch on it's own.  With Alakazam, he can be used to do a suicide run on
the opponent's bigger guys.  It's quite simple, but most that I have
played against don't even see it coming.  Let's use an example:  Your
opponent is playing haymaker's with 70 hp and has Hitmonchan out,
powered to do 40 damage/round.  You have alakazam, taurus and others
wounded on the bench (wounded from the damage switching of alakazam)and
have fossil haunter out, but no energy attached.  Taurus has 2 double
colourless energies attached, but your opponent is paying no mind to him
because of his weakness to fighting.  Let's face it, if you play a
perfectly healthy taurus against a powered up hitmonchan, taurus is
going to be 6 feet under after one round.  BUT, let's look at taurus's
rampage attack more closely....  20 damage + 10 more for every damage
counter on taurus.  NOW you retreat haunter (you may argue that
Hitmonchan against haunter is a stalemate anyway) you then bring out a
fully healed taurus, but then transfer 5 damage counter's on taurus
while concentrating on energy removaling your opponents bench)  then
WHAMO!  70 dam and hitmonchan is a gonner!  If your opponent can't even
attack taurus next round (because he might not have enough energy) then
you can possibly get two or more for the price of one! I can't even
remember how many times I played against guys who played bench pokemon
and didn't power them up a little and if they did, I would energy
removal them so that taurus does 3 consecutive knock out's in a row!
This strategy is good when you are up in prizes, to end a stall that
would benefit your opponent greater or to simply take out one for one
but in the process, you remove 5 damage counters from the bench.

With taurus in your deck, he can add a little speed to even the stall
decks with Alakazam.

If anyone wants to disscuss this strategy, they can write to me and
share their opinions.


Don Taylor
write to: dtaylor@nas.net