The Elven Death Dancer is a very unusual card. For a Summoning Cost of 5 Mana, it has pretty weak stats – 3HP and 1 Attack Power can easily be matched by cards costing 2 or 3 Mana. However, the Dancer has a unique ability – it switches places with any creature that it damages with its Magic Attack, regardless or what field they are on. So in addition to being able to move anywhere on the board that it chooses, it can move enemies out of extremely defensive positions and make them vulnerable to attack. For example, an enemy Biolith Ninja is occupying the middle Biolith field, so it has Perfect Dodge. The centre tile is Biolith on both sides so a Fieldquake won’t help you. The Elven Death Dancer can hit that ninja through its Perfect Dodge, dealing damage to it, and moving it off of that Biolith tile so that it loses its dodge powers. Extremely useful indeed.

The bonuses don’t stop there however. Any enemy creature on a field next to a Death Dancer adds 3 to their Activation Cost. This is a significant penalty for your enemy, especially since using its switching power, you can put the Dancer next to any of your enemies cards currently in play. Vastly increasing your enemy’s activation costs like this will severely hamper his ability to break out of Check, and will also help keep your own cards alive for longer.

Of course, no card is perfect, and this one is no exception. With a Summoning Cost of 5, this is a pretty expensive card, and with an Activation Cost of 4, it’s quite unlikely that you’ll be using it again once it is on the board unless you are running a high Mana-income deck. Low HP also means that this card is going to be difficult to keep alive, and low Attack Power is going to make it difficult for this card to break you out of a bad situation.

When facing an enemy Dancer, these things all work to your advantage however. Its low HP means that even weak Magic Attacking creatures like the Flame Magus can take it out without too much trouble, and a Novogus Catapult hitting its Blind Spot will kill it in a single hit (unless it is on a Wood Field). Don’t drive yourself nuts trying to kill this though, unless your enemy has a lot of Mana coming in, as once it is in play it’s quite unlikely he’ll use it again. Just make sure you don’t forget about the huge activation cost penalty to adjacent cards, and accidentally blow all your Mana trying to kill it.

If you have your Elven Death Dancer in your hand, don’t play it just because you can. For its high Mana cost, you want to save it for the most tactically useful situation you can – you don’t want to waste it doing something simple like dropping an Tritonan Ice Guard onto a Fire field.
Ideally, your target should be surrounded on all sides by other enemy cards – this will make it extremely difficult for your opponent to kill it, and will also make it harder for him to damage the rest of your cards thanks to the huge activation penalty. You should also be wary that moving it onto an Earth field will leave it with only 1HP, making it even easier to destroy, so be mindful of what fields your targets are on before attacking.

Ultimately the value of this card comes down to need. If you aren’t in a situation where this card will cause your enemy a lot of problems, it’s not really worth it, but if you happen to find some way of using this card, you’ll be happy to pay the 5 Mana.

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This card has two uses as I see it get it in a corner with enemies surrounding it and to get out of a hard check position to put your opponent in check, but it's not often you actually are in that position with 5 mana to use, I can't find any other means of using it other than that and in my opinion Dancing Temptress is a better card.

yea i dont have this card,i need to get it.i also would like to see the dancing temptress spotlighed

this card is a must online for dealing with great minos of sciondar and juno tree haunt as well as all gods and most fortresses

Very expensive for what it does, but also very effective in the right situation. The essence of a utility card.

to costly for what it can do almost never in a position to use it. So I never put it in my deck

I've used this in combination with a sleep trap and was surprised and delighted at the outcome. the mana cost of all adjacent enemy creatures was so high they became useless place holders. I really enjoy this card.

Wanting one for my deck.... Raising the cost of a 1 mana creature to 4, can't get much better. Like Junotree said- coupled with Sleeptrap, this is one card to watch! It's just a shame about such a high cost, although nothing a green cubic can't fix... If only her activation was one less- this card really would be decent with LOTS of potential!

Turns out I managed to get one of these yesterday, which is a shame, cause I've changed my deck and no longer have a place for her *sniff*. Oh well, one less card to get for the set, hey! Just a heap of ultra rares, the phantoms, couple of rares and Lesser Grevonoa to go...

It's been showing more promise, especially seeing some of its uses actually in the game. This card takes down a lot of trouble cards with ease. Especially creatures that rely on being on a specific spot. Minos and Juno come to mind. I may put one my deck if I can find room.

Just a post-thought: IF you can manage to get her out, and IF you use Healing Shower, she becomes a lot more promising. I'd like to see a card that reduces cost in the future expansions- would be awesome to reduce her cost- even if by only one or 2!

good ability but not woth 5 Mana in my opinion cost is to high when you can field quake for 2, as for the activation cost effets, you have the same problem with this card anyhow because costing 4 Mana to er-attack makes chances of re-using this card slim. It its favor its a good "get out of check card" but at a high price

It looks just great, but it can only be good for the first time you summon it really. The mana increse is useful and is a rather good effect. 4 stars.

Great card, can completly destroy your opponent's plan in a single sweep.

A bit too expensive for frequent use; sometimes the Biolith Stiger is better used.