“I was flying by the seat of my pants” Wolfe Glick talks EUIC challenges and his biggest fear ahead of Worlds

As part of Pokemon EUIC 2024, we sat down with previous Pokemon VGC World Champion Wolfe Glick and spoke about his reasons for heading to EUIC, what he wants from the game in 2024, and how he keeps winning.

Nestled between two curtains in a busy conference hall at the London Excel, we recently got the chance to speak to previous Pokemon VGC World Champion Wolfe Glick, in between some of his matches at this year’s tournament.

Wolfe made the trip from the US to compete in EUIC, much to the surprise of many European players, and just a few short months after his victory at the Pokemon VGC Charlotte Regionals 2024.

When discussing making the trip over to London for the tournament, it seems for Wolfe it was purely a chance to test himself against more players and get ready for Worlds.

A performance to be proud of

When talking about the challenge, Glick explains, “Europe has such strong Pokemon players. I was really just trying to come and prove that I could compete with some of the best in the world. I wanted to put on a performance I could be proud of.”

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As a game with so many characters to choose from, it can be surprising just how strict the top choices in the meta become, with certain Pokemon often dominating competitive play.

Glick touches on this, adding, “Pokemon is a game where there is some standardization. There tends to be 10/20/25 Pokemon that make up the majority of the Pokemon you play against.”

This, however, can cause difficulty when knowing who to practice against. “For whatever reason, this tournament, I played against so many niche Pokemon that in my probably 2000 practice games, some of them, I hadn’t seen a single time.”

Glick further explains how difficult that can make battles, saying, “I was kind of flying by the seat of my pants for a lot of this”.

Flying by the seat of my pants

Thankfully, a lot of good planning can prepare you for most challenges, and it seems Glick was prepared to take on almost any threat in this tournament. 

When asked if he had any aims with his team for EUI, he explained, “I wanted to build a team that would allow me to focus on my playing rather than my team match up. So, I focused on using some of the strongest Pokemon, that in theory, would do well even against Pokemon that I hadn’t seen before.”

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“Because, often when using more niche Pokemon, you’re trying to gain a specific advantage over more popular threats, rather than getting general strength. This was a team kind of just comprised of a ton of general strength tools that I could use against everything”. 

Another major issue for competitive Pokemon players can be coming up against opponents with a similar team, or for people at the top like Wolfe Glick, teams based entirely on their own. This is where competitive play is so important, and choices make all the difference. 

Time, work, and intentionality

According to Glick, when he brings a team to a tournament, what sets him apart is “time, work, and intentionality”. According to Glick, he was “doing really well” online before the tournament, but then a lot of other players saw his team and “started using it for themselves”.

“They couldn’t figure out how to use it, because they hadn’t built the team. So they didn’t understand what the intention was behind all of the little decisions, right?” 

As Glick carries on to explain, he thought he had planned a team that could “beat everything,” so when he ran into any players that could outplay him, he said he “[doesn’t] think the team is the problem”. 

This isn’t the only time other players have copied Wolfe’s team, as happened recently after he began testing Farigiraf before the Charlotte regionals. Glick says this is something he should “pay a little more attention” to in the future.

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But, explaining why he hasn’t so far, it’s apparently because he assumes other people won’t just lift a team wholesale in the hopes of winning. 

“It’s so important to me not only to win but to win in the right way. I have really strong feelings about what is the right way and what is the wrong way. If you lose to somebody on the ladder you shouldn’t rip their team exactly and start using it yourself.” 

Glick then continued, saying he “should be more careful” in the future when preparing and testing teams.  He says, “I should probably look worse during testing, but it kind of goes against my nature”. 

Naturally, teams aren’t everything, and every player brings their own attitude and style to the competitive format. For Wolfe, his main attribute is that he’s “very flexible,” and while some players focus on making “hard reads” or “specific strategies”, Glick instead likes to mix things up. 

Only using Pokemon proven to be good

“I’m kind of looking at what’s working, what’s not working, and letting everything go and then taking everything up again. You know, I played very differently in Charlotte”. 
One thing Glick has become known for is not only being flexible but often forcing a team around his favorite picks, such as recently including Exeggutor in a team.

We asked Glick if there are any other Pokemon he’d love to see rise up the ranks, and he reapplied, saying, “With the current format, it’s kind of hard to say. There are a lot of Pokemon that I’ve tried out that haven’t been very good, but this season, I’m only really using Pokemon that are proven to be good.” 

He carries on, saying, “Right now, I actually think that I don’t really know the answer because I’m only using Pokemon that are proven to be the strongest”. 

Another big focus right now is Pokemon World’s later this year, which will also be right after another change to the Pokemon Scarlet & Violet regulations, and Wolfe hopes to see some big changes before Legendary Pokemon dominate the format. 

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Discussing what the incoming changes will mean for Worlds, Glick says he’d “like to see a metagame with enough centralization” to make sure battles don’t just turn into “match-up roulette”. 

The upcoming format allows players to include one Legendary in their team, and as Glick explains, this can be dangerous because “it becomes this rock, paper, scissors web where Groudon beats Kyogre, which beats Zacian, etc.”. 

Glick continues, “I’m really hopeful that the format will have the tools that allow people to build good teams that don’t just get determined by, ‘oh, I ran into a Ho-Oh, and I lost,’ you know.”

Looking ahead to Worlds 2024, it seems that one Pokemon is currently keeping Wolfe Glick up at night, and that’s Calyrex Shadow. 

When asked which Pokemon players will have to be afraid of later this year, Glick explains, “Calyrex Shadow’s entire —- in my opinion —- weakness is the fact it has a quadruple weakness to dark and ghost. And with Terastallization, it’s able to turn this off, and it has just so many powerful moves that it can use.” 

The Pokemon World Championships have been announced to be taking place in Honolulu later this year, and fans can start to play with the new Regulation Set G set to take effect very soon. It might be worth planning for Calyrex Shadow now.