Former Pokémon World Champion and VGC extraordinaire, Wolfe “Wolfey” Glick took home the crown of 2023 Orlando Regional Champion over the weekend—a VGC tournament that was the biggest in the game’s history with 780 players competing in the event.
Wolfe started with an 8-2 run in Swiss followed by an absolutely dominant day-two run, winning the tournament and adding another shiny notch under this highly accomplished player’s belt.
These accomplishments for Wolfe Glick include his 2016 Worlds win, two National wins, the Players Cup II win, and now seven whole Regional wins including 2023 Orlando, among the plethora of impressive top cut results, boasting an unprecedented collection of high-level results for this North American VGC pro.
This win netted Wolfe $3,000 in prize money along with 200 CP to make his journey to the 2023 Pokémon World Championships just a little easier.
The team Wolfe used to win the tournament is based around an archetype that he is known to be the master of: Perish Trap.
Perish Trap is a team archetype that involves the use of Perish Song along with means to trap an enemy on the battlefield and prevent them from switching, the most common one being the Ability Shadow Tag, which was Wolfe’s preferred method of trapping.
Once the opposing Pokémon are trapped on the field, Perish Song will make sure the opposing Pokémon faint at the end of the three-turn timer while the user’s Pokémon that heard the song switch out on the final turn—in an ideal world—to avoid being knocked out themselves.
While this strategy may come off as cheesy or degenerate on a surface level, Perish Trap is probably the hardest team archetype to pilot and has an incredibly high skill ceiling, which is precisely why no one other than Wolfe has gotten high-level results with such a team since he knows the inner-workings and the basic blueprint of how such a team should function.
While in the past, you would have users like Politoed or Mismagius as your Perish Song users with Mega Gengar as your Shadow Tag trapper, times and metagames have changed over the years, leading to Wolfe running Scream Tail and Flutter Mane for that deathly Perish Song, with Gothitelle for the crippling Shadow Tag ability.
Perish Trap had actually been picking up steam right before the Orlando Regional on various online grassroots tournaments with teams that did commonly feature Gothitelle and Flutter Mane but not the unique pick in Scream Tail.
The lack of a bulky Perish Song user on these pre-Orlando Perish Trap teams made it so that these players could not commit to a hard-Perish Trap playstyle, and built the rest of their team to comfortably play out non-Perish Trap gameplans as well.
The decision that Wolfe took of adding a second Perish Song user in the bulky Scream Tail meant that he was committing harder to this controversial archetype that most players would never dare to do.
He also had some other interesting picks along with the Perish Trap core to round out his team and give him enough flexibility to not instantly drop to a tough matchup. Let’s take a look at Wolfe’s team sheet and break down what all of his ‘mons exactly do.
Wolfe Glick’s Orlando Regional-winning team sheet and team breakdown
Scream Tail @ Booster Energy
Ability: Protosynthesis
Level: 50
Tera Type: Steel
Jolly Nature
– Protect
– Play Rough
– Disable
– Perish Song
Flutter Mane @ Focus Sash
Ability: Protosynthesis
Level: 50
Tera Type: Grass
Timid Nature
– Protect
– Moonblast
– Shadow Ball
– Perish Song
Gothitelle @ Sitrus Berry
Ability: Shadow Tag
Level: 50
Tera Type: Water
Calm Nature
– Protect
– Fake Out
– Psychic
– Heal Pulse
Arcanine @ Safety Goggles
Ability: Intimidate
Level: 50
Tera Type: Water
Jolly Nature
– Protect
– Flare Blitz
– Extreme Speed
– Will-O-Wisp
Amoonguss @ Mental Herb
Ability: Regenerator
Level: 50
Tera Type: Dark
Sassy Nature
– Protect
– Spore
– Rage Powder
– Pollen Puff
Palafin @ Mystic Water
Ability: Zero to Hero
Level: 50
Tera Type: Water
Adamant Nature
– Protect
– Jet Punch
– Wave Crash
– Close Combat
While every single Pokémon on this team composition puts in essential work to keep the Perish Trap win-con chugging ahead at full steam, the heart and soul of this game plan consists of Scream Tail, Flutter Mane, and Gothitelle.
Scream Tail and Flutter Mane provide a similar role: being incredibly fast Perish Song users that can click the game-winning move before the other Pokémon can knock it out.
Scream Tail is the more reliable Perish Song user, being able to use the move and then comfortably sit on the field and take hits, stall with Protect, and prevent the opposing Pokémon from using the move they need to by clicking Disable. Play Rough can also do a good job at picking off frail Pokémon weak to Fairy moves and possibly dropping the opponents’ Attack. Steel also acts as an amazing defensive Tera option for Scream Tail.
Flutter Mane is not only another Perish Song user for this team but is also one of the most dominant Pokémon in the Series Two metagame, which means that it does general Flutter Mane things like spreading large amounts of damage very quickly if needed, rather than just be a Perish Song bot for the team. Tera Grass is a unique pick by Wolfe for this ‘mon to ignore the omnipresent Rage Powder and Spore from Amoonguss—and now—Brute Bonnet.
And then comes the glue that holds this whole archetype together: Gothitelle. Its Ability Shadow Tag asserts a chokehold on the opposing Pokémon who are forced to go on the extreme offensive and make reads with surgical precision while Gothitelle decides on the myriad ways in which it wants to stall the three-turn death counter set by its Perish Song partner, which includes Fake Out, Protect, and Heal Pulse.
Wolfe’s Gothitelle ran Psychic for its last move so that it can deal at least a bit of damage when it needs to on the turns it isn’t going for defensive plays, with Tera Water to give him a generally solid defensive Tera type, and perhaps a better matchup into Dondozo and Tatsugiri.
Then comes the hero of the team and a ‘mon that could be the honorary fourth member of the Perish Trap core, Palafin. This timid little Dolphin was led by Wolfe on most games so that he could switch it out and bring it in when it bulked out in Hero form, but he wasn’t afraid to just leave it in and let it go for weak Jet Punches to break Focus Sashes and the like.
Palafin’s main role was, however, to switch out before it takes too much damage and remain in the back while the Perish Trap ‘mons took out the bulk of the opposing team only to come back out in the endgame and clean up the opponent’s remaining ‘mons with strong, Tera Water-boosted Wave Crashes and Jet Punches.
The final two Pokémon on the squad were support Pokémon in Arcanine and Amoonguss that rounded off the team and gave it enough flexibility for Wolfe to navigate his way to a win through a variety of difficult matchups.
Amoonguss just did Amoonguss things but had a unique item choice and Tera type in Mental Herb and Tera Dark, respectively, that gave it extra insurance against Prankster and regular ‘mons that wanted to Taunt it while also removing its weakness to Psychic. It was a crucial instrument in letting the Perish Trap core do their thing more effectively as it redirected attacks and put opponents to sleep.
Wolfe’s Arcanine was a surprisingly ‘offensive’ defensive piece, which was trained with max Attack according to Wolfe to let it OHKO a bulky Gholdengo with Flare Blitz, an EV spread choice that was absolutely crucial in getting the renowned player the big win in the finals of the tournament.
Will-O-Wisp lets Arcanine cripple Physical Attackers while Tera Water lets it live opposing Water hits easily, with Extreme Speed making sure that this good doggo can pick up the knockout on opposing Pokémon that manage to live on small amounts of health.
While it is inevitable that players are going to flood the online ladder with this Perish Trap team, Wolfe Glick himself warned players in jest, saying “Don’t try this at home; do not try this at home.”
As we mentioned, a Perish Trap team—especially one as hardcore as this—takes a lot of experience, skill, and deep understanding of the team to pilot, which makes it tough to simply pick up and use to climb on the online ranked battles.
After being pointed out that players are going to use his team anyways, Wolfe said that he was sorry for the players. “I’m going to apologize now, because it’s not gonna make much sense is my guess.”
The Orlando Regional was the first-ever VGC 2023 Series Two Pokémon Scarlet and Violet Regional Championship, with the next big official events being the Oceania Internationals (OCIC) in Melbourne, Australia from Feb. 17 through Feb. 19, and the Knoxville Regionals in North America from Feb. 25 through Feb. 26.
