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Is it me or is red card ACTIVELY bad for the user in most scenarios?
Energies are free.
Either you dump your basics immediately so they can start evolving and gaining energy ergo they're no longer in hand (unless you're really afraid of a Sabrina/Victreebel/Pidgeot bench snipe), or else your bench is full so they're worthless bricks.
You can't tutor evolutions, only random basics with PokeBall. So there's no use case of seeing them tutor then shuffling it before they can use it the next turn.
So every turn, a person dumps most everything playable in their hand. The only things you hold back are situational aids like Potion, X Speed, or non-oak/misty/brock supporters. And you have no assurance that their hand contained them when you red carded or won't contain them afterwards, other than it they're holding less cards.
Which means for the most part, using red card is only wheeling away your opponents bricks and giving them more gas when they were probably out of they had 4+ cards in hand. It's only useful if your opponent has had plenty of gas so far and you need to prevent them from healing, retreating, boosting damage, or switching you out.