RGL S14 Advanced Power Rankings - Week 1
1) XIAO - aimer, Yi-ge, sakura, yosh1, manacute, yuice
Despite making some noise in the invite qualifiers, XIAO find themselves in advanced. Although there may have been a gap season or two taken by most of these players, their level of talent is more than enough for the top of advanced. By default it is safe to put the invite qualifier team at the top of advanced, so that is where I will settle for now.
2) g*ming - AvrilLavigneFan95 (?), Scream, Pinaepple, Krispy Kreme 2012 (?), GMK, apathy
Obviously, I do not know the aliases of some of the players on this rosters. However, the ones I do know are very good TF2 players. Starting off the season with a convincing win over the 2nd place div 1 team from last season makes me think this will be one of the top teams in the division. Judging from a tftv post, this is a match only/low scrim team so who knows where this team will end up.
3) SuperZAZA Bomb - Slicerogue, Fireball, Holly, Dogdayboy, skull, mono
SuperZAZA Bomb is back again with most of the same roster that earned them 3rd place in div 1 last season, and the same core of Fireball, Dogdayboy, and Holly that have been together for around 5 seasons now. This rendition of the roster looks to be the strongest to date, and they are off to a great start with a victory over THE GOBLIN ZONE. I expect another good placement and playoff run from this team this season, and possibly going even further this time around.
4) THE GOBLIN ZONE - tomato tom, HEDGEHOG HERO, saam, bear, yosh, arcadia
This is a hard team to rank, because I have no idea how hard they will actually try. On paper, this team looks like they should undoubtedly be competing for 1st place with the amount of invite experience on this roster. Fortunately for me, I made these rankings late and get to see they dropped their first match in a nail biter to SuperZAZA Bomb, so I will put them at #4 for now.
5) Grantus Vincere - Wild_Rumpus, Math, raven, TIGER BALM, bane, Macron
It feels weird putting this team down here at #5, as I feel like they can achieve much higher if the teams above them are not at the top of their game. Even if they are, Grantus Vincere looks like they could beat just about anybody in the division. When I first starting writing this up I actually put them at #2, but with the teams above them being of similar strength, Grantus Vincere is drawing the short end of the stick for now.
6) The Village - Taylor, tacocat, Rapscallion, denisavich, starka, nikola tesla (?)
Depsite what I just said about Grantus Vincere, this ranking probably makes the least amount of sense. This same roster got 2nd place in div 1 last season yet here they are at #6. A big reason for that is I believe advanced is stronger than div 1 was last season. I am excited to see where these teams that did not play div 1 together last season compare to this team.
7) Tripping Hazard - bones, Tec, reverie, Michaelpc1, Grnny, mur
This is the team I probably know the least about. Aside from Tec and bones time together on WANG GANG, it seems this team does not have much experience playing together, at least on official RGL teams. That being said, they are currently 1-0 with a win against refugees, so this team could be a lot better than where I am ranking them now. Maybe I just don't know ball.
8) refugees - nomad, Mobe, taiko, earl, monkey, draco
I want to rank this team higher, but after dropping that first match to Tripping Hazard, it is hard to. I know these players are capable of beating almost any team in this division on any given night, but they may need some time to get on the same page. Also, adding draco to the roster certainly isn't helping anything.
BONUS NOTES:
- If I put a (?) next to someone's name, it is because I do not know their actual alias or if that is their real alias. I don't know why players in this game never use their normal alias.
- Some of these teams were very hard to rank and I do not expect this to be accurate at all as time goes on. I felt like I kept hinting at "I don't really know what I'm talking about" because I mostly don't. This will be a lot easier once I see some more match results.