Alola-raticate gx´s chuck away attack

[Woingenau]

My friend and I had a match where he played one of his alola-raticate gx. He used the energy-free attack "chuck away" which says:

"Chuck Away: 40×
Discard up to 2 cards from your hand. This attack does 40 damage for each card you discarded in this way."

Then we wondered if the damage would increase each turn, because the second time he used it, he would have discarded a total of 4 cards (2 from the previous turn and 2 from the current turn), dealing a total of 160 damage.

I´ve looked up a match in the online-tcg, where it dealt a constant 80 damage each turn as long as you discard 2 cards. With it being a free-energy attack it woul be too overpowered, but does anybody know an actual rule which prevents this? Because the way the attack´s effect is described makes it very confusing.

 

[bulbasnore]

The max damage is 80 for Chuck Away and doesn't include cards previously chucked away into the discard pile.

Explanation: The words "each card you discarded in this way" is the count of cards discarded in the current attack. The past tense refers to the fact you must have completed the action to get the damage boost and is simply part of the English (and perhaps German? other languages?) template wording for attacks of this type.

You can see the same template wording with Necrozma GX' Prismatic Burst attack:

Discard all (Psychic) Energy from this Pokémon. This attack does 60 more damage for each card you discarded in
this way.​

The same wording is applied to Whiscash' Land Slip damage and Mantine's Healing Wave healing amount calculation. So, you can see that this is not some new wording for which the true mechanic has not been yet noticed.

An overpowered Raticate would be fun, though, but not this one, alas. Thanks for asking!