Best friends and VGC pros Wolfe “Wolfey” Glick and Markus Stadter both brought out unusual Paradox Pokémon in two different Regional tournaments. Their strange selection worked, with the pair mopping up the competition at both events—Markus winning the Bochum Regional while Wolfe snagged a top-eight finish in the Knoxville Regional.
It was a busy weekend for the competitive community of Pokémon, with two different Regional tournaments taking place simultaneously in different parts of the world: the Bochum Regional in Germany and the Knoxville Regional in North America.
Fortunately for both Glick and Stadter, these two regionals happened to be in both of their home grounds, with Wolfe heading to the Knoxville Regional, while Markus set his eyes on the trophy for the Bochum Regional.
Wolfe was coming off of a big win in the Orlando Regional—the last Regional held in North America—putting a lot of expectations on the former World Champion’s shoulders, while Markus was yet to make his mark on the 2023 circuit for Pokémon VGC.
Fast forward to the end of the weekend, and Wolfe came away with an impressive top-eight finish in Knoxville while Markus defended his title as Bochum Regional Champion by winning the tournament.
And these top-tier results were brought to you by none other than Iron Jugulis—and its teammates, of course.
Both these tournaments were operating under the Series Two rulesets for VGC, which now allow Paradox Pokémon into the fray of legal ‘mons that can be used in battle.
While all of these Pokémon are threatening in their own right due to their high base stats, some of them do seem to be more popular than the rest, and one of the most underappreciated Paradox Pokémon—Iron Jugulis—is exactly what Wolfe and Markus decided to use to stomp the competition with.
The two best friends actually built the team together and used the exact same teams in their Regionals to bring home fantastic finishes.
Markus was awarded 200 CP and $3000 for winning Bochum Regional while Wolfe was awarded 100 CP and $500 for finishing in the top eight in the Knoxville Regional.
At this point, Wolfe has already crossed the 300 CP requirement needed to secure a Day One invite for the World Championships, and is only fighting for a Day Two invite right now. This regional win for Markus should get him very close to earning a spot for Day One at Worlds.
Related: Star in the making: Pokémon VGC player wins regional tournament on debut
If these two powerhouses continue to dominate the competition with unorthodox picks like this, we will be sure to see a diverse, constantly-evolving, fun metagame for Scarlet and Violet VGC.
Now, let us take a look at Wolfe and Markus’ Iron Jugulis team and what exactly made it click.
Wolfe Glick and Markus Stadter’s Iron Jugulis team sheet and team breakdown
KAITO KID (Gholdengo) @ Choice Specs
Ability: Good as Gold
Level: 50
Tera Type: Steel
Modest Nature
- Make It Rain
- Shadow Ball
- Trick
- Power Gem
MIWAKO SATO (Gothitelle) @ Leftovers
Ability: Shadow Tag
Level: 50
Tera Type: Steel
Calm Nature
- Protect
- Psychic
- Trick Room
- Charm
GENTA KOJIMA (Iron Hands) @ Assault Vest
Ability: Quark Drive
Level: 50
Tera Type: Grass
Adamant Nature
- Fake Out
- Close Combat
- Drain Punch
- Wild Charge
ANOKATA (Iron Jugulis) @ Booster Energy
Ability: Quark Drive
Level: 50
Tera Type: Steel
Timid Nature
- Snarl
- Air Slash
- Tailwind
- Protect
AI HAIBARA (Iron Bundle) @ Focus Sash
Ability: Quark Drive
Level: 50
Tera Type: Flying
Timid Nature
- Protect
- Icy wind
- Freeze Dry
- Encore
JUZO MEGURE (Great Tusk) @ Life Orb
Ability: Protosynthesis
Level: 50
Tera Type: Ground
Adamant Nature
- Protect
- Headlong Rush
- Earthquake
- Close Combat
Let us firstly talk about the star of the show: Iron Jugulis. Even though this underrepresented Paradox ‘mon is the standout pick of this team, it really isn’t here on this composition to make flashy moves in a match, but rather to be a dedicated support Pokémon.
If you analyze the rest of this team composition, you will learn that one of the more poor matchups for this team is Psyspam. If you aren’t familiar with the Psyspam team archetype, it basically revolves around spamming strong Psychic moves with powerful Psychic Pokémon, an archetype that has turned even more viable ever since the introduction of Psychic Terrain and Expanding Force in Gen VIII.
Expanding Force’s distribution has been severely cut down in Scarlet and Violet, however, with Armarouge being the only Pokémon that is still able to learn the move. And if you haven’t guessed already, Armarouge is one of the main components for Gen IX’s Series 2 Psyspam core, the other Pokémon being Indeedee.
And one Pokémon that matches up extremely well against this archetype is—that’s right—Iron Jugulis.
Every Pokémon on this team falls to Armarouge’s strong attacks, whether that is Psychic Terrain-boosted Expanding Force or its Fire-type moves like Armor Cannon or Heat Wave, the two types having great synergy with each other.
Iron Jugulis, however, is a Dark-type, making it immune to Psychic-moves like Expanding Force, letting this futuristic Hydreigon comfortably switch into Indeedee and Armarouge and then proceed to spam Snarl, a Dark-type move that targets both opposing targets to deal super-effective damage to Indeedee and Armarouge and proceeds to lower their Special Attack stat by one stage, a perfect counter to the Psyspam archetype.
Apart from Snarl, their Iron Jugulis also shows off other cool techs like Tailwind combined with its item, Booster Energy. With its EV spread, this Iron Jugulis is guaranteed a Speed boost from its Booster Energy, letting it fire off incredibly fast Tailwinds to double the speed of all Pokémon on its side of the field, tremendously helping out its partners.
The rest of its move slots are filled out with Air Slash for consistent STAB damage with a good chance to flinch the opponent—especially useful since this Iron Jugulis is so fast—and the good ol’ VGC classic: Protect.
As we’ve mentioned, Iron Jugulis is only here to enable the rest of its team that is here to do the meat of the work. The Iron Bundle on this composition is especially interesting since it doesn’t run one of its most common moves in Hydro Pump, instead slotting in the support move Encore.
Given how fast Bundle is, Encore is a perfect move for it to punish and trap a Pokémon on the opposing side into an unfavorable move such as Fake Out, or a setup move like Dragon Dance.
Another Pokémon sporting an unusual set is the Gothitelle. One of Gothitelle’s biggest selling points—apart from Shadow Tag—is its access to the move Fake Out, but we can see that it is definitely not present on this one. Instead, it opts to run the moves Charm for damage mitigation, Psychic for consistent damage, Trick Room for Speed control, and Protect.
The four moves on this Gothitelle are pretty useful, and it has probably dropped Fake Out due to there already being a Fake Out user on this team: Iron Hands.
Iron Hands dons a pretty standard Tera Grass Assault Vest set, but instead of a pivot move like Volt Switch or a coverage move like Heavy Slam, it decides to run Close Combat, in conjunction with Drain Punch, giving it two options for Fighting-type moves, and letting it be flexible on whether it wants to deal more damage and drop its defenses or keep itself healthy and heal up.
Then comes the final standout set on this team, and it belongs to the most infamous new Pokémon from Gen IX: Gholdengo. This Gholdengo has foregone its meta, bulky-Nasty Plot set, and is instead running a Choice Specs set. It runs the standard moves of Make It Rain and Shadow Ball, with the final two moves being Power Gem and the rare Trick.
Power Gem is a good tool to snipe Volcarona and the different Fire and Flying-types in the metagame, while Trick can lock in an opposing Pokémon into one move that definitely wants to be making use of its entire moveset while on the field. Tera Steel in combination with Choice Specs makes string cheese man deal disastrous amounts of damage to the point where it can almost not care about the Special Attack drops it sustains from Make It Rain.
Finally, we have the most standard pick set from them all, Life Orb-Great Tusk. This Pokémon only has one thing on its mind: do unfathomable amounts of damage. Without the safety net that a Focus Sash would provide, constantly lowering its defenses through Close Combat and Headlong Rush along with Life Orb’s recoil remove any ounce of survivability this ancient Donphan has.
But Great Tusk doesn’t need to be worried about surviving when it can hit extremely hard and fast with the help of Iron Jugulus’ Tailwind, especially when it can Terastallize into the Ground type and delete anything that doesn’t resist Ground-type moves with a single Headlong Rush.
All in all, the team does a fantastic job at being a balance-offense team with the perfect tools to work either under Tailwind or Trick Room, letting the pilot control the battlefield with various modes of Speed Control and Shadow Tag while dishing out tremendous amounts of damage.
