xTacio’s “blessed run” to Lille’s Best Of Rek’Sai leaves hunger for top 8 success
After taking home Best Of Sivir in Bologna, xTacio navigated the Void Burrower to her best finish yet at Riftbound Regional Qualifier Lille, placing 34th and taking home the Best Of Rek’Sai.
Ducky·April 22, 2026·8 min read
Jose, better known as xTacio, already had one Best Of card burning in his pocket heading into Lille. He had secured top honors with Sivir at Riftbound Regional Qualifier Bologna, placing 10th just outside the top 8.
That left him with a burning desire to take it one step further in Lille.
“My goal for Bologna was Best Of, and in Lille it was top 8 and Best Of,” he told Piltover Archive. “While Best Of is very good, for me right now where I’m in my most competitive phase, I want to have my shot at winning the tournament.”
But instead of turning towards some of the meta favorites like Irelia, Draven or Kai’Sa, he swapped off his Battle Mistress and took on the challenge with Rek’Sai.
It might seem like an outside choice on the surface. Rek’Sai hadn’t posted particularly impressive results in any Regional Qualifier yet for Spiritforged — her best placement was 49th in Vegas — nor did she make a splash in China. There were still some questions around the best way to build Rek’Sai between the Swarm and Phoenix variants.
However, for the combo player at heart, xTacio found a way to bring consistency to the Void Burrower, piloting a Swarm variant to 34th in Lille with a 10-3 record.
“Sivir got a few cards banned that changed the way she played,” he said. “Not even Called Shot, mainly Fight or Flight.
“I wanted to try something else and have fun. I’m not interested in playing the best deck in the game, I want to play something I’ll have fun with and believe is good. In my case, that was Rek’Sai.
“The legend effect is very fun, it makes every game very different. It’s quite good after the bans because Draven is not as good after bans and Irelia is popular, which is one of my best matchups.”
That passion for combo comes from Jose’s background in Legends of Runeterra. A well-known player from the Spanish scene, he picked up Riot’s digital card game in the League of Legends universe during the COVID years. It scratched the itch like Yu-Gi-Oh used to in his younger years, but with a much lower barrier to entry.
“I’ve been playing card games for a very long time, but never competitively. I started playing Yu-Gi-Oh when I was young, but I couldn’t afford the top decks so I never really took it seriously.
“In Spain, there was a competitive circuit for Runeterra. Riot hosted a Legends of Runeterra championship with qualifiers [on LAN] and I came second, and that was my first experience playing in person and I loved it. I didn’t think I’d be that good in paper TCGs because my experience with Yu-Gi-Oh was playing bad decks.
“In Runeterra I used to play a lot of fun decks, and the play pattern was very different, so I learned to adapt to the different play patterns. My criteria for choosing a deck are having fun and making it consistent. From there, I just have to jam games.”
This made the swap from the slower ramp style of Aurora to the Swarm rush of Rek’Sai easier.
“Sivir Aurora wasn’t a luck based deck unlike Miss Fortune Aurora, because I could build it in a way where I could win without Aurora.
“Rek’Sai, although there’s the high roll of some cards like Undertitan, the deck is specifically built so most of the things I can get from the legend are very cheap to play. I don’t rely on the highrolls, but I love when that happens — it’s such a rush, and that’s what makes the deck fun.”
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After some internal testing, it was a “no-brainer” to bring the Void Burrower to Lille.
xTacio got through Day 1 mostly unscathed, beating Alex Shans’ Irelia in Round 7 before taking his first loss against eventual winner Pedro ‘Squirtle’ Bañeres. Another wobble against Daniel ‘DZiden’ Zidenberg’s Draven put him out of top cut contention at 9-2, but he had still done enough to secure the Best Of while facing three of the eventual top 8.
This included beating two other Rek’Sais on the journey there.
“I had a blessed run,” he said. “The Rek’Sais that I played, I beat them because my deck was more consistent than theirs. One was playing Phoenix, the other was Swarm but using Seals but I don’t like that because it can brick your hand easily.
“Swarm has a good matchup against Phoenix. Against Seals, if they don’t draw the Seals, we are playing a very similar deck, but I have cards like Darius and Blood Rush to give me an edge.”
“[But] in Lille, there were around 1950 people. Out of those, there are 600 people who are very f**king good and could make the top 8. Luck is needed in any TCG.”
On the meta call, xTacio emphasised the importance of consistency, somewhat ironic given her Legend ability inherently gambles what’s on the top 2 cards of your Main Deck at any time. He built the deck in such a way where no matter what his rune state was, he likely had a good play off the top with low-cost units, easy accelerates from Darius and extra energy from Undertitan.
This, partnered with the Void Hatchling to filter his top card with every conquer, helped him keep up the tempo.
That consistency was key in contrast to the “very inconsistent” Immortal Phoenix build designed around reviving your Phoenixes from trash.
“For small events, Phoenix can be better. It’s maybe more fun with the removal, but it’s very inconsistent. You can’t play an inconsistent deck in a tournament with 13 rounds. You will win a lot of matches, but the moment you lose two, you’re dead. I can’t bring a deck which has those issues at all.”
It wasn’t just Rek’Sai as a legend making her impact known in Lille though. Rek’Sai Breacher, a staple in the chosen champion slot, suddenly found its way into Draven and Annie decklists across the weekend.
“Most of the decks playing Red Rek’Sai are Draven, but they’re doing so because it’s a great accelerator,” he explained. “Kai’Sa is 5 energy one power which can sometimes be expensive, but Rek’Sai is the same might attacking for one less energy.
“You might not get the draw, but you do get the draw from Draven legend so it still feels okay. It’s a good unit overall — 3/3 with no power cost. If you add the accelerate, it’s crazy.”
But all of this would not have been possible with the ban list. The general success of Order decks — capped off with Azir winning the event — comes from Chaos decks losing their Fight or Flights, as well as Draven Vanquisher being vanquished from the meta.
“Azir is way better right now because of the absence of Fight or Flight — that countered all the equipment decks,” xTacio said. “If you Rebuke the unit with equipment you can just reattach, but Fight or Flight made it much harder.
“Yellow became so much better because they were gatekept by Draven, especially Miracle. Draven is still a bad matchup but it’s at least playable. With Kai’Sa and Irelia going up, and Yellow decks can destroy those two legends. They have a good matchup spread overall.”
However after abandoning Sivir for Rek’Sai in Lille, old habits die hard for Jose. With Unleashed around the corner in early May, he has already started cooking up his next Best Of experiment, and it involves the Battle Mistress once again.
“I’m going back to Aurora next set, they printed some very good cards and powerful spells which makes Sivir playable again, so I want to try it out.
“There’s the 1 Energy gear which is a Stacked Deck [Scryer’s Bloom], Heedless Resurrection — a lot of good cards. Lunar Boom — discard 1, draw 2 — is especially good because you can just discard the units you draw that you don’t want and then resurrect them with The Harrowing or Heedless Resurrection. It has good synergy, it has good draw to replace Called Shot, so it’ll be quite good.”
If all else fails, he will resort to the fun strategies: “I like Ivern a lot — I don’t know how good he will be, but he’s fun. Rek’Sai is also getting a lot of good support so I might give it a shot, but she’ll be a meta call.”
