I’m the one and only Parker Simmons, and I placed 4th in the 2024 Louisville Regional Championships!

I started playing Pokemon at it’s inception during the Red and Blue era. Like most people, I didn’t come out of the gate ready to compete. I didn’t even learn what an EV was until Diamond and Pearl! Until Sword and Shield came out, I only played singles casually. I eventually went through a COVID lockdown power-up and started playing VGC in a Discord server weekly. Now I host tournaments every Thursday! I used to be an elementary school teacher, but I quit my job to become a motion designer/editor. I even worked for Wolfe Glick for a while! This team was originally conceptualized by Len and Bravado VGC, but I made the change to include Exeggutor!

Previous results

Milwaukee 2023
- 113th
- 6-3 with a Qwilfish team
- I was known as the Qwilfish guy for a little while, but it was perfect for setting up Annhilape.

NAIC

4-5 Qwilfish was cooked

Peoria 2023

11th
10-4 with an Annihilape team

Toronto 2023

44th
8-6 Same Annihilape Team

Louisville 2023

4th
9-2 Exeggutor

Click Here for the Teampaste with EV's

Team Goals

The whole point of this team is to blow things up with high damage spread moves and to secure the game using intentional pivots because you are a Trick Room team you never have to worry about losing control of the weather on lead which means you can threaten massive damage right away.

I started Reg H by building an Overqwil Annihilape team and I realized that so many other mons were threatening massive damage. So teams built around a “protect the king” archetype that was probably not worth it. Especially because Haze and Clear Smog were extremely common in testing.

I decided to lean into my next most comfortable archetype hard Trick Room. I played a lot of Iron Crown psyspam with Ursaluna so when I saw Len and Bravado VGC had built onto the original Indeedee/Armarouge hard Trick Room by using a Hisuian-Zoroark and I had to give it a try. The team felt good but it had some areas I wanted to try and find solutions for.

The Problems

A Tera-Dragon Dragapult and Sneasler can always take a KO turn, making it so that you are always down a mon. The team’s non-Trick Room mode was entirely left on the shoulders of Hisuian-Zoroark, a Pokemon I don’t like counting on to handle every match up.

There were a lot of Pokemon weak to Water, and I didn’t like having to Tera every single time a Primarina threw out a throat spray boosted Hyper Voice, even under sun.

The only Pokemon that could avoid spores from Amoongus without Tera was Ursaluna, and that was only if you positioned it correctly.

For a "hard” Trick Room team to function well, you need multiple ways of getting Trick Room set.

The Solutions

One of the solutions for these problems lies with Exeggutor. With the sun, psychic terrain, and a Tera, it can threaten Snealer/Dragapult by outspeeding them by one point, assuming they are both modest nature and max speed. As a result, Exeggutor offers a fast mode for the team. In sun, it eats up Primarina’s Hyper Voice like Reese’s Puffs.

We don’t even have to worry about Spore switch-ins, but Pollen Puff is another story. Exeggutor also acts as an additional Trick Room setter and a fast Chlorophyll sweeper. It also gives me a fast option to use Sleep Powder in a pinch.

Plus, Exeggutor is cool, so bonus points for that!

The Matchups

Dragpult/Sneasler
Tera Psychic Exeggutor clicking Expanding Force in sun lets you OHKO both of them, unless they have a focus sash, of course. Either way, it’s a very positive trade in your favor. If they have Rillaboom, lead Torkoal. If they have a rain lead, Indeedee covers for both of them.
Dondozo/Tatsugiri
Setting up sun cuts Wave Crash’s power, then use clear smog on Torkoal to disable stat boosts. Sacred Sword takes chunks out of Dondozo, and Expanding Force can hit them hard as well.
Garchomp/Dragonite
Tera Stellar Zoroark-Hisui clicking Hyper Voice picks up and chomps! They don’t want to Protect and risk letting Trick Room go up. If you go the Trick Room route, you can pick things up with the Trick Room mons. If you want to take KOs, you can just send in Exeggutor as the revenge kill spot and then pivot into Torkoal to blow things up!
Archaludon/Basculegion in Rain
The slower weather always wins! Torkoal should be able to override the rain here. A max defensive bulk Tera Grass Indeedee gives you some options around Basculegion. Gallade and Ursaluna threaten some big damage into Archaludon without defensive stacks. Zoroark offers Body Press, and Electro Shot mind games when it’s disguised as Ursaluna. Exeggutor also has Trick Room so he can set it up for Torkoal too. I didn’t have to worry much about Wide Guard as its been trending downward. I was hoping not to fight it, and I ended up not having to.
Magmar/Electabuzz redirection
This one is pretty simple: Get Trick Room up and let Ursaluna and the other oppressive spread moves take care of the follow me spam.
Imprison/Trick Room Delphox
A turn 1 50/50 Tera Helping Hand/Hyper Voice from Zoroark-Hisui usually KO’s Delphox and brings Indeedee down to chip range. If they attack with Indeedee, it puts you pretty far behind as they burn your Tera and take a KO n exchange for a “non-Tera KO”. Using Gallade’s Wide Guard helps in this match up.

the pokemon

Gallade

The surgical knife of the team meant to cut out all of the Incineror and Kingambit.
Wide Guard makes it so Ursaluna can always enter the field unthreatened by Gholdengo.
Sacred Sword helps with the Archaludon matchup.
Tera Fire helps deal with strong fairies, and Primarina can’t break the wide guard quickly with only Moon Blast.

Ursaluna

Physical bulk allows it to live Sneasler Jolly Close Combat + Burn chip most of the time
Special Bulk allows it to survive Specs H-Typhlosion Overheat outside of sun most of the time, as well as making ATK boost 52+ Porygon2 Ice Beam a 2HKO most of the time
Using Earthquake to KO your own mons for better positioning is a good thing. If Trick Room is expiring, it might be a good call to knock out your Torkoal so your opponents have to deal with both a fast and slow threat at the same time that deal massive damage and it allows you to optimize your terrain/sun turns.

Indeedee-F

Full physical bulk so that Kingambit needs to have Black Glasses OR commit Tera Dark to have a favorable kill to OHKO
I decided not to invest 20 SpD EVs for the Tera Normal Blood Moon calc, because I wasn't concerned with it due to the rise of AV Blood Moon
I may have hit this Pokemon with my Ursaluna as much as my opponents did. Getting full health Torkoal in safely and early within Trick Room is extremely powerful.
Psychic Seed weakens Knock Off damage and makes it so support Pokemon can’t chip you.
Dazzling Gleam over Psychic is so you can do better damage with terrain boosts and so you can hit Wide Guard mons.

Torkoal

IF YOU GET INDEEDEE AND HEALTHY TORKOAL ON THE FIELD AT THE SAME TIME WITH SUN SECURED ALWAYS CLICK HELPING HAND + TERA FIRE ERUPTION. The damage is too silly not to take advantage of.

Tera Fire Eruption go brr.
Tera Fire Weather Ball go brr.
You can condition your opponent to think you are going to swap or Protect Torkoal and just click Sleep Powder + Eruption and if you get this read right, you might just win the game on turn 1.
You can use Clear Smog into your Ursaluna under Trick Room to punish your opponents for Intimidate cycling you.

Zoroark-Hisui

This Pokemon causes so much panic and it doesn’t even have to join the battle! It essentially makes your opponent play closed team sheet.

I had games where they scouted with a double protect and I got Trick Room off for free
As far as I can remember, only one of my opponents clicked fake out
We decided to go with stellar tera because we wanted to do big Tera normal damage but wanted to keep the Ghost immunities. It really helps into most of the support Sneasel matchups.

Tera blast exists to be a damage that allows you to hit with Normal type stab but gives you the option to threaten Ghost switch ins so they don’t get to pin you for free.
I think the potential this Pokemon has with other Pokemon on different teams is so high and really should be explored. Blasting things for missing a Fake Out goes hard.
Indeedee, Torkoal and Gallade can all be scouted out on turn 1 and revealed to be “not Zoroark,” so Zoroark’s only “perfect partners” are Exeggutor and Ursaluna. But due to no Protect and no matching moves, your opponent only has to get through 1 turn to reveal the imposter.

Exeggutor

“The Eggs”

The star of the show, backstage Joe, asked me if I used the Eggs at all to which I said imagine playing Liligant/Torkoal but the Liligant can also click Eruption.

Realistically, its not as strong as Eruption but you can just click Trick Room so your opponent doesn’t really get to scout for free.

This is the core of the team and what makes it so oppressive. Almost everyone on the team can output insane spread damage and/or set Trick Room.
Exeggutor modest max speed out speeds Dragapult by one point. So you are not outspeeding things like Choice Scarf Annhilape or other mons.
Due to Egg’s low base speed, he also functions well in Trick Room. So you can have him be your Trick Room sweeper until Torkoal is in position, and then afterwards he can threaten massive damage into the mons targeting Torkoal or be put in reserve to be your sweeper for after Trick Room expires, because usually sun lasts for an additional turn or two after your Trick Room ends.

Why the suit?

I was on stream at Peoria, and I didn’t love the way I looked. It was kind of the straw that broke the camel’s back and started my health journey, so I started working out and lost 45 pounds with the hope that if I got on stream again I would look fantastic. I also was told by the backstage crew that I’d make a great caster and I should give them my email. I gave them my email, but I accidentally made a typo! I was bummed that what might have been my one opportunity was squandered, so I told myself if I ever made day 2, I was going to bring my absolute best and show that I had the charisma to cast!

Thanks for checking out my team! You can watch a video that covers it over on my YouTube! I also have a Twitter!

Disclaimer: The opinions/stories expressed in the blog post are those of the author's and not necessarily reflective of the platform or its affiliates.

Parker Simmons’ Louisville Team Report