Rahul Reddy
Author Archive
Bio: Top 16 North American Player, I started playing in 2011 casually and chased my first World’s Invite in 2015 (I didn’t get it). Since then I’ve been working hard to become better at the game every day and be as candid as I can be with my opinions. I also enjoy watching Anime, the NFL and just relaxing a bunch.
4× Worlds Invites
14× Regional Top 8s
1× IC Top 8
Five Things I’ve Learned About the UPR–RCL Metagame, Format Favs (Fire Box, Mewtwo Welder, Inteleon VMAX/Frosmoth), the Players Cup, Playtesting, and Record Keeping “During this time, a lot of the community has come together to organize some of the best-run online events I’ve ever seen, including the Limitless Online Series. With the fourth and final qualifier this coming weekend, we have no idea what the meta will hold and who will be the final twelve competitors that advance into the Invitational tournament itself. Qualifier #3 showed us some interesting decks emerge with it being the first major event with Rebel Clash legal. What have we learned about the format so far? PikaRom is one of the most dominant decks in the format with the…
How I’m Dealing w/ Being Stuck Inside, Myriad Online Tournaments, and Introducing Project Old Decks “As many of you know, there are online tournaments and circuits popping up left and right. The abrupt cancelation of the season seems to have finally gotten the community to make the push toward holding online tournaments. There isn’t the same level of prestige as in-person tournaments, but for the situation this is an incredible collective effort. I’m hoping that this gives TPCi the push they need to improve the online client because of how many players are finally using it. What kinds of online tournaments are there? Limitless Online Series UPR–SSH Pods BLW–SSH Pods PokéStats Old Formats Tournaments I’ll…
My OCIC Zacian/ADP, 5-4/What Went Wrong, and Galarian Obstagoon’s Matchup Spread “The first thing that went wrong was the mentality I had approaching the event. My motivation wasn’t to win the entire event, which is okay, but that clouded my judgement when selecting decks. The Top 16 race for this year has become quite crowded in the bottom half and I found myself in a position to be knocked out of Top 16 if I didn’t earn Points. I began convincing myself that Championship Points were all I needed; I just needed to walk away with 100 CP if I could, and nothing else mattered. This put me in a negative…
Dallas Recap w/ Shock Lock, Sword & Shield Top 5 (for Standard), and Electrocharger PikaRom for OCIC “Heading to Dallas, I had been joking around with a few friends about playing Shock Lock for the event. As the week progressed, my friends kept getting more and more hyped about the idea. We decided on somewhat of a pact that if all six of us played it we would, but if even one person backed out we would get to play whatever we wanted. I had mentally prepared myself to play Vespiquen for the umpteenth time in my life because this Shock Lock expedition required me to gather 24 copies of Tropical Beach…in English. I began my quest…
Marathon Watching, Expanded in Five Points, Lucario-GX, and Obligatory Bees “Going into Dallas Regionals, we’re playing the only major Expanded event of the BLW–CEC block, and what makes it even more peculiar is that this will be the first major since the recent ban list has taken effect. For the first time since City Championships were removed from the tournament circuit in favor of League Cups, we saw Marathons this holiday season. Places like Florida, Georgia, Illinois, Iowa, New Jersey, Oklahoma, and more hosted consecutive days of League Cups, mostly keeping to a single format. As fellow writer Alex Schemanske talked about in his article, we saw rapidly evolving metagames…
While it’s engaged in battle, its mountain of coal will burn bright red, sending off sparks that scorch the surrounding area. (Coalossal)
Daytona Beach and San Diego Regionals Recaps with a Detailed Breakdown of Garchomp & Giratina-GX/Mismagius “As many of you know by now, myself and Xander Pero piloted his ADPero creation revolutionized by the addition of Rosa to the deck. What many don’t know is that until after the tournament I was unaware that Rosa could grab any Trainer card (and not just Items). Would this have made a difference in any of my games? I hope it didn’t, but there’s no way to tell. You guys have seen this list broken down by the creator and innovator himself, but allow me to explain what drew me into this choice over playing Mewtwo once again. Reading…
A Thorough Top 32 LAIC Recap w/ Mew Box and Just-Maybe GardEon for Daytona Beach “Heading into LAIC, we were introduced to a brand new set (Cosmic Eclipse), as has become tradition with International Championships lately, and at first glance there appeared to be a handful of game-changing cards and cards that gave a few old decks slight power spikes. I wrote about my Top 5 cards from Cosmic Eclipse in my last article. I was far off with Reshiram & Zekrom-GX and Mimikyu CEC 97, but the other three cards that I listed made an instant impact at LAIC. Great Catcher proved itself to be the best card from the set, but I overlooked…
My Top 2 Decks for Richmond and Top 5 Cards from Cosmic Eclipse “I recently attended an Expanded Cup with Turbo Dark (my top choice for Expanded, at the time), but after a disappointing 2-3 finish I had to reevaluate what went wrong. My losses did not come down to my own mistakes but the limitations of what I could do with my deck, which unfortunately was not much considering the one-dimensionality of Turbo Dark. Here is the list that I (1) had been working on until this past weekend and (2) have chosen to shelve for something more my style. R1: Green’s Blacephalon … W R2: Night March … L R3: Mew…
Another Take on Mew Box/Jirachi and a Bold Blacephalon-GX/Naganadel for Knoxville “As you may know, I competed in the Atlantic City Regional Championships and stuck to the deck that has brought me so much success at local Cups and Challenges, Mew Box. Here’s how my tournament went. Day 1 R1: Dark Box … LWW … 1-0-0 R2: NagQuag … WW … 2-0-0 R3: Blacephalon-GX … WW … 3-0-0 R4: Ability ReshiZard … LWL … 3-1-0 R5: Mirror … WW … 4-1-0 R6: PikaRom … WLW … 5-1-0 R7: Mirror w/ Jirachi … LWL … 5-2-0 R8: Green’s ReshiZard … WW … 6-2-0 R9: Blacephalon-GX … ID … 6-2-1 Day 2 R10:…
Green’s Dojo ReshiZard and Reset Stamp PikaRom for Atlantic City/Cologne/São Paulo “As the format has settled I’ve noticed that Green’s ReshiZard has fallen by the wayside in favor of more aggressive options for the Best-of-1 League Cup/Challenge format. In the Best-of-1 format, matches are often decided by the initial coin flip and the first couple of turns, so playing the most aggressive, board-controlling deck is correct. But the Best-of-3 format introduces another level of skill and deck building, which is where my favorite deck in this Standard format shines. Green’s ReshiZard placed Top 8 at Sheffield, proving that it has potential, but few have faith in its power after seeing it…
If a job requires serious strength, this Pokémon will excel at it. Its copper body tarnishes in the rain, turning a vibrant green color. (Cufant)
Five Final Tips, GG Malamar’s Matchups, and An Attempt at Stabilizing Dark Box “1. Test everything. In your mind you may have deemed that Malamar is bad after listening to what I have to say, or you’ve decided that Blacephalon-GX cannot be a real deck because Tapu Fini UNM autowins the matchup, but you have to actually play out those matchups to understand the game plans from both sides of the table. I try to test every Tier 1 and Tier 2 deck to understand how they function and what their win conditions are at separate points of the game. Doing this will help you play around certain cards and anticipate plays your…
Testing Lessons, Green’s ReshiZard, and Beheeyem for the World Championships/DC Open “Lists are all wildly different for any deck. This is a lesson that needs to be taken into account because while two people could be playing PikaRom, one list could be Jirachi-based and one could be Turbo. One list could be playing heavy Lillie, whereas another could be playing 0 Lillie. It’s important to take notes on what version of a deck and what techs it sports in your testing and try a bunch of stuff out. Even content creators on YouTube have wildly differing lists and they’re pretty different from my lists that I’ve been using in my testing…
Unified Minds: Top 10 Impact Cards and UPR-on PikaRom v1.10 “At first glance this card seems underwhelming with a net gain of 2 only cards, but you see 6 cards from your deck and get rid of 4 cards that may or may not be useful later on. Thinning your deck without Ultra Ball is more of a hassle than I previously thought, and Reset Stamp exists, which makes deck-thinning important. Granted, an early-game Hapu is risky because you can get rid of important cards. Decks like Dark Toolbox and Mewtwo & Mew-GX Toolbox should both be playing high counts of Hapu because their strategies revolve around their discard pile.…
An NAIC Recap, What Made 1st–3rd Unique, My Own Tournament Report, and Reflections on Losing Your Head “At the Origins Special Event I chose to try and refine an idea that seemed particularly good at the time, Zoroark-GX paired with Silvally-GX and Persian-GX. I had done minimal testing with the deck besides the Thursday night before the event and I tweaked a few card counts to my liking, such as 2 Judge in the list. The event concluded with my final record being 4-2-1 after losing two sets to unfortunate prizing, but I still netted a Top 32 finish. I decided that the Silvally-GX build of Zoroark-GX might not be the best one over the course of…
A Santa Clara Tournament Report with the 1st Place ReshiZard, What I Learned From My Losses, the PikaRom I Didn’t Play, and Oh Yeah Madison “I’ll be the first to admit that I was ill-prepared for the inaugural tournament with Unbroken Bonds and hoping for some last-minute miracle of a deck to fall into my lap as I boarded my flight to Santa Clara. I was dead set on playing PikaRom or a Mill list similar to the one that Peter Kica wrote about in his article last week. I had found so much success with PikaRom in the past and the deck was testing well online, but at the final hour its flaws began to unravel themselves. Before I go into what went wrong…
In times past, it worked together with a king of the people to save the Galar region. It absorbs metal that it then uses in battle. (Zamazenta)