Competitive Pokemon is serious business, and one former world champion recently devised a strategy for a tournament that was so devious that once it was in action, he could one-hit KO pretty much any opposing Pokemon in his path, even if they were in different dimensions. No, really.
Pokemon icon Wolfe "Wolfey" Glick – who was world champion in 2016, and recently won the Masters Division at the 2025 European International Championships – is a certified genius when it comes to building teams that many competitive players would never dream of. In this case, he built a team focused around the move Sheer Cold – a low-accuracy move that'll OHKO any Pokemon (apart from Ice-types) if it actually lands. The fact that it usually only hits 30% of the time means that in a high-stakes setting, it'd normally be a terrible idea to use it, but Wolfey found a way to make sure the move would never miss, with a "stupid strategy" so convoluted that it "should never work in practice, never mind in a tournament."
Basically, the whole thing revolves around getting the ability No Guard – which ensures all moves land – onto Wolfey's Sheer Cold user, Lapras. Lapras doesn't get this ability naturally, so the only way to use it is to employ the move Skill Swap to transfer it in the middle of a battle temporarily. To do so, the setup required Wolfey to use a Bronzong with the move Skill Swap to steal No Guard from a Golurk, before then Skill Swapping again with the Lapras. That's a lot of stages, and it could go wrong at any point – he knew that "getting a single win with it would probably be miraculous," but, spoiler alert, he actually ended up finishing in the top eight of the tournament.
The thing is, while hard to set up, once the strategy was in motion, it was difficult to put a stop to. Wolfey has now highlighted one of the key moments from one of his battles, when an opponent's Dragon/Ghost-type Dragapult used the two-turn attack Phantom Force to temporarily disappear from the field, seemingly out of the way of Lapras's fury while it hid in an alternate dimension. Or at least, that's what you'd think, but No Guard shows no mercy, and Wolfey was still able to target the Pokemon and knock it out, even though it wasn't even visible on the screen.
While Wolfey didn't end up winning this entire tournament, his final record was eight rounds to two, which is still really impressive. It's worth noting that he pulled off some of his infamous Perish Trap shenanigans to get him to that point, too, but hey, that still falls into the "inescapable death" category, albeit with a bit more of a wait before the inevitable doom.
Be sure to check out our roundup of the very best Pokemon games to find some of the best RPGs you can play now.
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