Hi, my name is SK Assasin, also known by some as Off Meta Gamer.
I am a Galio mid main and have peaked Silver 3 in EUW ranked soloq. I've always felt bound by meta and so, I've tried out a lot of crazy picks, which include, but are not limited to: Talon Support, AD Bruiser Galio and last, but certainly not least - Rell Top Lane.
This pick is something, I fell in love with, the moment, I've first tried it out and in this guide, I'm aming to show you, how I play it and how you can pick it up too.

Rell is a Tank Support, focusing on providing CC and frontline to your team.

Rell's passive, Break the Mold is useless. I'm not gonna sugercoat it, although it's a very cool passive, it's just very unnoticeable. Basically, when Rell hits and enemy with a basic attack or an ability, she steals 2% of their armor and magic resist, stackng up to 5 times (10% of resists stolen at max stacks). Break the Mold can be aplied to multiple targets at the same time.

Rell's Q, Shattering Strike deals some damage in a line in front of her, breaks shields and stuns enemies hit for 0,75s. This ability is pretty good to negate enemies' shields during fights in lane and/or to disengage the fights.

The main strength of Rell top lane is, that with the higher level and gold income, you come out of laning phase much stronger, then you ever could as support. You pay for this though, by picking a tank with probably THE lowest possible damage in the game.

As Rell Top, you are not really aiming to win the lane, but to survive it. As a tank, you will be very usefull through out the mid to late game teamfights. You maybe won't be dealing much damage to your enemies with this pick, but after you get some items, neither will they.

During laning phase, you'll mainly try to survive, bleed farm, if needed and stay in the XP range if possible (minion XP range visualized in the image bellow).

Rell has very slow attack speed, so I'd recommend taking her into practice mode game for at least 10 minutes and just farm and last hit. Good advice for farming under the tower is remembering, that melee minions take 2 tower shots and 1 AA to kill and ranged creeps take 1 tower shot and 2 AA.

Your first real powerspike comes with buying Bami's Cinder, giving you better wave clear and an actual damage source for fights. You should rush this item, finishing it into either Sunfire Aegis or Hollow Radiance, based on your lane oponents' damage type.

The only real exception is when laning against a Blade of the Ruined King user like Yasuo, Yone or Irelia. In those matchups, you go Thornmail first, along with Plated Steelcaps, after which, feel free to grab a Bami's Cinder item.

If there is a single magic damage threat in the enemy team, or they have pretty mixed damage, Kaenic Rookern by itself should suffice for the most scenarios.

After second item, a good strategy often is just component maxxing. This is a strategy of filling every free slot in your inventory with a resist item component like Chain Vest or Negatron Cloak and finishing them into actual items later on. The idea behind this is that after 1-2 'core' items, you don't really need the fancy passives of full items, but rather just the raw resistances. Example of component maxxing: Thebausffs on Rammus.

A very good third/fourth item on Rell is Jak'Sho, The Protean, as it not only provides a solid ammount of both health, armor AND magic resist, it also greatly synergizes with Break the Mold. You should build this item whenever you get a chance to.