Unsurprisingly enough, it seems like Paradox Pokémon have been causing quite the stir and dominating the Orlando Regional Championship that took place over the weekend.
The top three most used Pokémon in the largest tournament in Pokémon’s history happened to be Iron Hands at first place with 51.09 percent usage across all teams, being seen 400 times; Flutter Mane at second place with 41.92 percent usage across all teams, appearing 327 times, and Iron Bundle at third place with 41.15 percent usage across all teams, being seen 321 times.
These three ‘mons were three parts of The Great Four that were expected to dominate Series Two VGC, and it seems like that’s true for the most part, but Roaring Moon, the fourth member, seemed to not garner as much faith from players in its abilities compared to its Paradox peers, being all the way down at sixth place with 28.21 percent usage, appearing 220 times across all teams.
This is not to discredit Roaring Moon—it just isn’t as splashable as the other top Paradox ‘mons, and requires a bit more specificity in teambuilding that the others don’t necessarily need. Roaring Moon was still very dominant, with Ashton Cox piloting it all the way to the finals, which is proof enough that this prehistoric Salamence can easily pull its weight.
Another pair of Paradox Pokémon that have made their mark in the Series Two VGC metagame through their omnipresence and phenomenal results in the Orlando Regional is Great Tusk and Brute Bonnet.
Great Tusk sat at eighth place in the usage rates with 16.79 percent usage, being seen 131 times across all times, while Brute Bonnet was at 15th place with 10.00 percent usage, being seen 78 times across all teams.
Both of these prehistoric ‘mons were not respected enough before going into Orlando, with people writing off Great Tusk as merely the better Paradox Donphan form of the two, and Brute Bonnet finding itself in heavy contention with Amoonguss to provide a similar role on teams.
Great Tusk did prove itself to be probably the hardest-hitting Pokémon in the tournament with its popular Tera Ground Headlong Rush decimating opponents with a single hit, also possessing a great safety net in the Focus Sash as its most successful item.
Brute Bonnet also showed why it’s worth using over Amoonguss as it possesses an incomparable offensive presence with strong moves such as Seed Bomb, Crunch, Sucker Punch, Close Combat, and even Bullet Seed in conjunction with the Loaded Dice item. With classic supportive options in the vein of its descendant such as Spore and Rage Powder, Brute Bonnet makes for a potent hybrid offensive-support ‘mon.
What is also interesting to note is that while Roaring Moon did reach all the way to the finals, it had a significant drop in appearances in the top cut as compared to its usage across the 780 teams in the tournament.
There were 20 Flutter Mane, 15 Iron Hands, and 12 Iron Bundle that earned their way into the top cut of the Orlando Regional, but only four Roaring Moon managed to get into day two of the tournament, showing a negative turnover for this angry ancient dragon.
A Paradox ‘mon that did have a positive turnover was Great Tusk, however, appearing 10 times in the top cut, sitting at the rank of seventh most popular Pokémon that made its way to day two. Have we actually gotten our replacement for Roaring Moon in the Great Four?
If you’re wondering about the source of these statistics, the good folks over at VGCPastes have compiled a document detailing these stats and so much more, just like they have been doing for previous major Pokémon tournaments.
But now, let’s take a brief look at how the Orlando Regionals unfolded over the weekend.
Orlando Regional Day One recap
The first day of the Orlando Regional kicked off and we were given a look at the immensely talented field that made up the gigantic 780-player tournament. Former World Champions such as Wolfe Glick, James Evans, Brendan Zheng, as well as current-time titans like Emilio Forbes, Chongjun Peng, and James Baek who were just some of the well-known and highly-skilled players that were all vying for the title of the 2023 Orlando Regional Champion.
The stream matches kicked off with a match between two VGC veterans with the 2020 Dallas Regional Champion Aaron Traylor against two-time Regional Champion Brady Smith. Traylor managed to navigate his slow, hard Trick Room team effectively enough against Smith’s bulky offense team to earn him a clean 2-0 set victory.
Another power-packed match was fortunate enough to make it to stream where we saw two behemoths in 2016 World Champion Wolfe Glick and 2022 SLC Regional Champion Chongjun Peng battle it out. It was a close set where Wolfe tried to pilot his hardcore Perish Trap team to the best of his ability, but Peng was one step ahead, earning him a 2-1 set win.
Speaking of close sets, the match between James Baek and Toler Webb was probably one of the most unfortunate endings we’ve seen in VGC recently. The two players took one win off of their opponent each before facing down in the third and final game, where Webb’s Iron Bundle managed to get off a clutch freeze through Freeze Dry on Baek’s Brute Bonnet, leading to a 2-1 set victory for Toler Webb.
With Day One wrapping up, the tournament was going to see strong players like Emilio Forbes who went on a 10-0 undefeated rampage in Swiss—as the player usually does—Paul Chua, Wolfe Glick, James Evans, and many more making it into Day Two.
Orlando Regional Day Two recap
Day two of the Orlando Regional kicked off with a name that has become synonymous with the Pawmot-DondoGiri core—Chuppa Cross IV—facing off against a new name in VGC but a veteran in Pokémon singles play—Bhushan Thumsi, popularly known as Freezai.
The first match resulted in a win for Cross as the audience, commentators, and players had to sit through a 20-minute mirror match of DondoGiri constantly clicking Substitute and Order Up until the match timer ran out with Thumsi having a lesser amount of Pokémon than Cross.
The second match also resulted in a win for Cross as he quickly overpowered Thumsi with his Tera Electric Pawmot and intelligent reads, leading to a 2-0 in Cross’ favor and an end to Thumsi’s exceptional first tournament run in VGC.
The Top 32 was whittled down to the Top 16, with incredibly strong talent left on the field such as Emilio Forbes, Wolfe Glick, Brendan Zheng, and James Evans.
The next match on stream featured former Seniors division World Champion Brendan Zheng up against veteran VGC pro Ashton Cox. Cox managed to win the set with a 2-0 victory by skillfully piloting his non-Order Up Dondozo to do enough damage to Zheng’s team where the rest of his ‘mons picked up the rest of the knockouts.
The following streamed match was between the undisputed Swiss king, Emilio Forbes, and the biggest name in VGC, Wolfe Glick. Unsurprisingly, Emilio went on an undefeated 10-0 run in Swiss this tournament but Wolfe managed to end this beast’s winning streak and eliminate him from the tournament by masterfully piloting his Perish Trap team to a 2-0 victory.
We eventually get to the Top Four where we have James Evans against Wolfe Glick, and Chuppa Cross IV against Ashton Cox.
Wolfe showing incredible consistency on Day Two of the tournament having not dropped a single game so far continues to go undefeated as he took another clean 2-0 victory against the reigning North American International Champion James Evans, in what was a masterclass of a set from Wolfe to piloting a Perish Trap team.
On the other side, we get a clean 2-0 from Ashton Cox as well as he sends Chuppa Cross !V home on another near-to-victory top-cut result for the promising North American VGC talent after a Dondozo mirror which Cox happened to pilot through just a little bit better.
This left Wolfe Glick and Ashton Cox in the finals of a Regional for the nth time. While these two have been no stranger to staring each other down during the final throes of a tournament, back in the 2015 Massachusetts Regional, Wolfe brought a Perish Trap team that was up against Ashton in the finals where Glick managed to take home the victory, the exact scenario seeming to repeat itself as Cox faces down Glick and his current Perish Trap team in the 2023 Orlando Finals.
And if the little history lesson wasn’t enough of a foreshadowing, Wolfe managed to beat Ashton with a 2-1 set, crowning himself as the 2023 Orlando Regional Champion. We can only imagine the flashbacks Cox must’ve had throughout the games.
Cox was the only person to make Glick lose a game on Day Two, however, after giving out an incredible run throughout both days of the tournament. Both finalists should be going home with their heads high, no matter the final outcome.
