POWER RANKINGS. my own team will be excluded of course. these are all also just my opinions, prove me wrong!
1. - Geosenge Gogoats
I was pretty certain we would end up in this situation. Burns opened up pretty heavily, with his first four picks including two tournament champions in Liakos and Wilfire10, the 10-0 Smogon Major Munkey, and Deishu, one of the hottest builders around right now. I would expect all of these guys to be on the starting roster. Sudoku Masta, who was fanagled from a trade from Zelda, open tour winner, and gen 7 enthusiast can play any of the Alola slots pretty well, and with Spurrific himself, Play on Birds, Footstool, and no one interesting, (and of course emilio support) this looks like one of the best oldgens lineups in the field. I think the last few 21 slots are a little iffy, I'm not sure if Jin has a major tournament result (hell of a guy though) and known dynamax hater umbry is yet to prove herself in any sort of VGC environment.
2. - Eggseter Elekids
Ding opened up SWINGING to start out this draft, grabbing both 2018 NAIC Champ Serapis and up and coming raisedintyo towards the start. Mudhiman as a player needs no introduction I'm sure, regional champion and one of the most well renown builders in the community. If Raghav cares to do well, he'll do well. Radium and TTT444 are solid gen 7 players with numerous top cuts a piece and I'm sure they won't disappoint. I played NPA with kimnaise, the guy's a hard worker and very competent. US West's Vaboh and TJ are making their VGC debuts here, but I'm pretty sure I've seen both of them pick up various tiers in PLs across the site, I'm quite interested (and optimistic) to see if they'll make the adjustment to VGC. Their backhand of the draft is admittedly a little less well known, since Ding had to pick up all 5 of his last players for 3K only, but if they focus on bringing out all the top heavy power of their team I'm sure we'll be seeing numerous 5-3 and 6-2 wins.
3. - Hau'oli City Ohana
The Ohana opted not to draft a manager this year, freeing them to draft the number 1 player in North America, JoeUX9. Joe is a strong force in both 2021 and 2019, and is supported in the latter by Gramgus, who got top 8 at 2019 worlds. Mr.GX rounds out this draft's "big three", a well known ladder player who can take his trusty Suicune to scarily high ladder rankings. Biosci, JeanMarc, GalacticVGC stand out as the other gen 7 talent on this team, with Bio getting top 8* at 2018 NAIC, JeanMarc being a know community member throughout all of gen 7, and Quentin top cutting more regionals than I have snapchat contacts. The rest of the 2021 talent isn't exactly shabby either, frog! is coming off of a top cut at Australia Players Cup, I've seen PasDer regarded as a strong builder, and players such as ZekromZeke, Raineko, Jomatoes, and Ink have been known presences in community side tournaments. Sadly don't know a lot about Smeg or SeaSoil but I think the existing talent has spoken for itself.
4. - Seven Island Stoutlands
I'm not sure if Sam is purposefully setting up some sort of villain arc this tour but it the people that I've seen comment on the draft pointed that out. Sam and Luke's roster could either pop off or flop really hard, which is exactly why I've placed them in the middle. Asuya had a solid NPA, ChosenFuture is one of Australia's finest, top 4'ing two straight Oceania ICs, and Redsilver is a regional champion. PrimitiveVGC has come back from a bit of a hiatus and has been running a really interesting blog while getting some strong results in Mt. Silver tournaments. Memoric is a DOU main who dabbles in VGC from time to time, I watch the guy play frequently enough to know he's got the fundamentals so it all comes down to whether he can grasp the meta. Eeveon7 and Oriol Plaza are newer names to me but I've seen them around in the community enough to know they're probably decent in gen 8 and can adequately start or support. Helios of Sun and Evelyie are new, unproven, and ambitious forces that have been around SmogonVGC for the past few months, I'm very interested to see how they'll do. JagSamurott is one of the most successful unconventional builders which makes him a huge threat in a team tour. The villains round out their list with LC tier leader Coconut, who told me they have some VGC experience, and mystery man SlushiW. Should be an interesting tour for the doggs.
5. - Lumiose Luxray
Let's get the elephant out of the room: the 34.5k on Namuko Pro was a bit ridiculous. Even with some good regional finishes in gen 6 and the more recent Players Cup dominance, that was 9k more than Agati, the next expensive player. Borghi and Aldrich then held on to just Namuko for a while, having everyone real curious what they were saving up for... only for it to be... DarkJorch? Yeah I'm really confused. Smogon players xtra and soulgazer were on Borghi's mind pretty early, but admittedly they're still mostly unproven besides some rumblings I hear on the ladder. PinkSylvie is the biggest name to follow Namuko Pro on this draft: she's very talented but there will be a lot of pressure on her to consistently perform, and probably assist the gen 7 slots too since she's been around. From here the Luxray are pretty much rounding out with decent to above average players in both gen 7 and gen 8, so it really to me feels like their run is dependent on some of these guys overperforming.
6. - Pacifidlog Politoeds
I was so excited to see Melvin and Mattadome manage, and I still think they did an okay job. The main problem is that after Melvin himself, there's a lot of players that haven't really done anything in a while, like TextFont and Void, ones that are complete variables, namely Brady1225 and the chaotic evil flyingfalcons7. Big problem after that is that I just don't know a lot of these guys. If Melvin and Matthias can wrangle this team together, they'll be in decent shape.
7. - Motostoke Eiscues
When your starting three is Human, Agati, and Sohaib, you're off to a really great start. The problem afterwards was that Enosh and ABlast committed mostly to drafting more well known smogoners less proven in VGC, either from the dou sphere like emma/Shadowmonstr7/Paraplegic/Sunrose or from the tournaments sphere, namely Tony and shiloh. 2 months ago I would've thrown z0mOG in this list but he's been doing well in VGC grassroots tours and we practice often so I think he rightfully deserves to be respected as an up and coming VGCer here. Atmosphere's been around for ages now, I'm sure he'll be useful no matter what slot he's put in. The main problem with this draft is just that VGC is uncharted territory for the majority of it, so they'll have to either adapt or die.
Nothing personal in these rankings, and I don't think the teams are too far apart. If you have a few players overperform you're going to be way higher and if just a few underperform you're probably going to hurt. I was gonna do 2019 power rankings too but I don't know who all is playing 2019 yet so maybe I'll be back with those in week 1.
