Hello everyone! This is Elena from Gaia Storm TCG and welcome to another article here at CCG Castle. I have to admit that when I first saw the starter Pokémon from Sword and Shield I was not particularly excited about the new grass evolution line but when Rillaboom was released to the TCG I immediately felt in love with its design and versatility. In fact, Rillaboom is the best starter Pokémon card in a while and has the potential to build a deck around it. So, today, we are going to be looking at Rillaboom Box and how it is played in the current formats!

Just for those of you that might be not so familiar with the TCG jargon, a “toolbox” deck is one that has a lot of possible combinations and attackers so, depending on the situation, you can easily adapt your strategy. And yes, Rillaboom can definitely run a multiplicity of attackers that benefit a lot from its ability, Voltage Beat. Once this stage 2 has hit the field, Voltage Beats allows you to choose up to two grass energies from the deck and attack them to one of your Pokémon. This type of ability is not new: if you take a look at the Sun and Moon format, Vikavolt was a very popular strategy in combination with big basic Pokémon like Tapu Bulu at the beginning and Rayquaza GX afterwards. That being said, it is no surprise that Rillaboom is worth running in pure grass strategies.

As I often say, a card is as good as the format it lives and, for the case of Rillaboom, this implies mixed things. On the one hand, the deck is as consistent as a Stage 2 one can ever get. Thanks to the inclusion of Exeggutor & Rowlet Tag Team, the deck doesn’t even need to run rare candies and can get Rillaboom in the second turn. On the other hand, however, the list of attackers that are often paired with Rillaboom are solid, yes, but not broken… which in a format where we have cards with monstrous HP like ADP, Eternatus, Centiskorch and such, it makes it difficult to get the desired one hit KO.

I mentioned earlier that Rillaboom can be considered a toolbox because it has many different options to attack. Exeggutor Rowlet will always be the leading Pokémon but, apart from that, the deck also runs Zarude V to provide a much welcome healing effect, Dubwool V for some late game retaliation damage and even Rillaboom VMAX to match other popular VMAX strategies. And also, there are some slightly different builds that opt to run Mew & Mewtwo Tag Team to centralize almost all attacks and copy other GX and Tag Teams in the discard pile.

Last but not least, Rillaboom is also used in expanded in combination with one of the most hated cards on the TCG history, which is Vileplume with the item lock ability. The idea of the this nightmare from expanded is as easy as using Exeggutor Tag Team to first evolve Vileplume on the bench and then do the same with your Grookey and start exerting a pressure that is very difficult to overcome. 

Even if I am not a big fan of grass-type Pokémon, what I like about Rillaboom is how consistent it feels and the fact that is relatively simple to build. And let’s not forget how great it is to use Exeggutor’s GX attack move and getting rid of all energies in the field! Thanks for reading.