It already feels like so long ago when the Season 16 finals concluded, leaving mTs with a first place finish and .knd unable to complete the three-peat. Already prophesies of doom swirled around the future, as fearful eyes looked ahead to the upcoming "casual season." Teams began shuttering their windows and closing up shop, not interested in putting effort into a season with no playoffs and perhaps strange maps. Some even called it the end (artwork credit to Grizz). Over the offseason though, Platinum began to look better and better. Teams began forming with powerful rosters, the map pool was released to only 70% of the usual complaints, and the banlist seemed reasonable. Given previous estimates, a surprising amount of rosters from last season readied up once again, albeit most under different names and only having a few players in common with old versions of the team.

To wrap up the changes, the players say goodbye to the Loch-N-Load, Loose Cannon, Sandman, and Diamondback, while welcoming back the Bazaar Bargain, Syndey Sleeper, and the Dalokohs Bar/Fishcake. The maplist consists of Borneo, Process, Product, Upward, Steel, Warmtic, Badwater Pro, and Vanguard, in that order. There are no playoffs this season.

The Teams

What is a season without teams to play through it? Fourteen teams have lined up at the gate, ready to charge down the racetrack towards that First Place finish. With no playoffs to speak of, it's first past the post, meaning whatever method gets you that first seed is all that matters. No playoff matches to worry about, no double elimination Thursday game nonsense, just pure skill and abuse of the seeding system.

'92 Dream Team

'92 Dream Team is a team that's not new to Platinum, and their roster shows it. All of their players have some form of Platinum experience, with the exception of Saam and Vanilla Love. There's a splattering of high and low Plat players, though, with players like Skye! and Ibby having enjoyed playing on a high Plat team in the past, while others like Kairu and LittleDeath having only ever been on low Platinum teams. Regardless, the roster is very solid overall, and should have little trouble keeping their head above water.

Ban Paals

While their Scout is only around for the first week, and their Sniper is just unknown, the roster is plenty scary even with them factored out. Metawe, arch, and Yipyapper are the only ones returning from the previous version of bp when they were offclassing in Gold, yet nobody on the roster this time around (Josh excluded) is offclassing. This should give their prospects at an illustrious finish a better chance, especially with the pickups they did get. While Melon and pete haven't played recently and will have a coat of rust, Interests and Mafio are skilled at their classes and should fit in just well with the rest of their team. While their future Scout and Sniper pickups will mean a lot for their upcoming matches, assuming they pick up someone their skill level, they'll find themselves in a very comfortable position.

Burnham & Root

A roster of high level talent from a variety of backgrounds, Burnham & Root is ready to foreclose on the dreams of teams and build up a strong assortment of wins on their way to the top. There's nobody on the team who hasn't made a name for themselves in either HL or 6s, and with few exceptions, all have played Highlander at the top level recently. A few interesting offclasses in Rainy and Shrugger may be their undoing, but at that high of a level, a player can play just about every class to an acceptable standard even with little experience in the past on it. B&R are easily one of the scarier teams to watch out for, but may find themselves struggling to establish their foundation if the amount of 'care about Highlander' is equivalent to what a glance at their roster would entail.

Chill Penguins

The chilliest of penguins have returned, gathering plenty of friends and new faces as they attempt to continue the team's legacy from seasons past. There's a strong core of previous Bvers on the team, CHIEF, monkey66, IssGonnRain and Danish as some. Johnny, SilentDom, bff and GammaOrionis join them from various places. The only hole in their roster is a lack of an Engineer, but with an apparent Bye in Week 1, they should have the leeway necessary to find someone. Wartortle Warriors were moved to Platinum after the schedules were released, so if you're reading this, then they were apparently not matched up with Bv for Week 1.

Corn Ducks

The fourth place team in Gold moves up, the highest team from Gold to ready up in Platinum. With them a roster of nine players (almost) entirely new to Platinum. Interestingly enough, their Medic, brulèe, entirely skipped Gold, joining straight from a Silver team into Platinum. Their Platinum seniors are chris and hungry, both from Buffalo buffalo buffalo Buff. Rue had touched Plat last season in Week 1 with IFA, but that barely counts. Hopefully the cohesion and comradery that exists within the Corn Ducks has held over for this season, because otherwise they may find themselves struggling to gain footing. With Rightjustify's computer apparently out of action, Xen will likely Demoman for them and substitute Han will take his place on Sniper for the first week, or until Rightjustify can return.

Curse of Knowledge

Karl has pulled together a mish-mash of players from the top three teams (+some), renamed the dK roster to another ominously relevant name, and is ready to win. There's nobody on this team that would feel out of place on a winning team, with the possible exception of Paals, who has no experience at the top of Plat. He should be fine with the combo he's given, even if Jarrett is just Week 1. slemnish spent last season with .buffalo, but should be able to play on a top Plat team easily.

Dedoris

Dedoris has opened the door of Platinum, allowing Alto to finally taint the final pure division. He brings with him a lot of Door people, as well as some outliers like Shoe and Aus. With so many of these players being very close to the Dedoris group, rarely branching out and making waves elsewhere, it's hard to predict how well they'll do from roster alone. Most of their scrims have been against GLORY and the ultralords, with them performing well against the former, not so much against the latter. While sheen and the ultralords are admittedly a large wildcard, it doesn't bode too well for the long term plans of Dedoris.

Memento Mori

In seemingly similar fashion to the .$$ of last season, Triton has pulled together a group of Gold-level players ready to jump into Plat. With Eerie Person being the sole one between them with any Platinum experience, aside subs, this team may find it a bit difficult to pull wins against anyone not in a similar position as them. On the other hand, .$$ did find themselves in a comfortable 5th place, so there exists precedent for a fantastic secret.

Secret team

As much as I want to just put a bunch of blacked out lines here for their write-up, they aren't a team to easily ignore. While some players like Lennon, Evan (not the Evan of Wartortle Warriors), and finndy haven't seen Platinum in a while, and others like Eviil and Dogfloaties in similar situations, the team is still fairly strong. While it's yet to be seen if the ones coming out of retirement are as good as they used to be, and the Gold moveups like Deejay and Willamatic can compete with their opponents, the team should be able to give a fair bit of fight, especially when the rust is gone.

sheen and the ultra lords

After finishing just outside of playoffs in their first season, Invader and co. have taken to offclassing and twisting the meta, intending on running "pocket soldier, demoknight, and flank heavy." While their roster is certainly powerful enough to get away with it, especially against lower level teams, it's possible they may break formation and adhere to the meta when they find themselves being systematically shut down by some of the more experienced teams. Even with the unique strategies, some of the unmentioned classes, such as Odb on Scout, Coldster on Medic and Angryofficer on Sniper should provide enough of a backbone for the team to enjoy themselves without having to struggle for wins.

The One Moment

After losing an incredible amount of players in the offseason, Digresser has renamed and reformed ·aMw · under a new banner, yet another OK Go reference, and one of the last signups for the season. Sources say that this roster may/will change (dramatically) after Week 1, but their roster does look powerful enough for the time being. While some factors, like Kresnik playing Spy and a mostly unknown Vlad playing Sniper may greatly affect how moment. plays down the line, there should be enough talent spread around the team to give them a fair chance of causing some ruckus in the higher levels of Platinum, if not finding themselves in it instead.

The Pyongyang Pyonggang

An old name with a new face, The Pyongyang Pyonggang is host to a whole slew of people from different backgrounds, with players like Justin Time and Jewfro coming from higher level teams, spring rolls and LazyDane from Gold, and then everything in between. There's enough potential on this roster to protect it from falling flat on its face, especially on the flank. But in the end, there have been teams with powerful looking rosters that couldn't hack it come match night, and there are just enough cracks in North Korea's armor for the more experienced teams to hand down a beat down, if they aren’t patched up.

Warmtic is bad

Even with mere hours before the season begins and two of the most important classes unaccounted for, Warmtic is bad looks downright terrifying. Giraffe, muma, and Acooma all hop from the docked ship of mTs to whine loudly and publically about Warmtic, and they've grouped up a team of skilled dudes to join their protest. While Fox and chimp feet haven't seen play recently, they're no doubt still excellent players. When surrounded by the skill that players like Fathom and Sigafoo bring, they should be able to unrust fairly quickly, especially when Fox never really stopped playing TF2. Should they pick up a Scout and Medic to the level that the rest of the team play on, Warmtic is bad just might be the first place team this season.

Wartortle Warriors

After the untimely redeath of Tree Forest, it seemed that Platinum was going to stall out at 13 teams. At the last minute, however, Gamemaster snuck in a team, Wartortle Warriors, and set themselves up in Platinum. With a mashup of Tree Forest folk and players yet to make an impact in Platinum, this team could end up in very many places at the end of the season. One one hand, they're an incredibly recent team, meaning aside whatever comradery between the Tree Forest folk, they're unlikely to have much experience interacting and playing with one another. On the other hand, most if not all of these players are all skilled, with Serious seemingly popping out of nowhere, similar to moment.'s Vlad. If they can get their marbles aligned, and Serious proves to be a Heavy prodigy, this team will go places. Otherwise, an early defeat or two will never let this team get the right foot down, and they'll slowly slip more and more behind.

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Instead of discussing matchups for Week 1, where teams are largely unproven, I'll be discussing the change that no playoffs will have. Without playoffs, the seeding (based off of MP) will decide the winners and final placement on the season (there are no placement medals, however). In any season, an 8-0 team will amass 40 Match Points. Losing rounds but still winning does not matter, as a victory will grant you full match points, aside any FFWs. However, winning rounds in a lost game will give you match points, allowing for a far more intricate points system than a yes/no binary system.

Historically, the top Plat teams generally find themselves without one completely dominant team, the last of them to happen in recent memory was 20b in Season 11, or perhaps The Syndicate all the way back in Season 8. Last season, the top three teams – mTs, .knd, and dK – all went 1-1 amongst their peers. So it's highly unlikely that any one team will find themselves 8-0 at the end of the season.

Since most teams have yet to prove themselves, or let down potential fans, there are a fair bit of teams who have the potential to be among those 30-40% of teams able to realistically compete for the 'placement' positions. With no penalization for dropping rounds, the rest of Platinum features very little in this area, outside of upsets. However, it does matter an incredible amount between those teams, as a single round or two won against a top team is something your competition is unlikely to be able to brag about. It doesn't matter for the winning (top Plat) teams though, if you win 3-4, you still get 5 Match Points, meaning no worries for you.

While it's easy to point to three to five teams as the likely competitors for the top three spots, and it's hard to see other teams wiggling their way in, an upset or two could be enough to shut down a team's dream of placement. With every match mattering, especially between the expected top teams, even small things like a missed scrim, a roster change, or someone just being offline Monday could snowball into ending a seed or two lower than where they could've been potentially.