Welcome to
Part 1 of the LCWL Power Rankings! Writing this is a much bigger challenge than the LCPL rankings, as more people are able to volunteer their time for writing and editing during the summer. This project does not have as long of a contributor list as usual as people are understandably busy, but I'd like to think those that did take time out of their day to go through my writing:
ashelyDeluxe and
wesh papillon
We have a whole lot of newcomers this year, and while that's a great thing, it does mean that my rankings are not going to be touching extensively on every single player. If you're new and you only see a sentence or so for yourself, I hope you stick around so I can say more about you in a future ranking!
Without further ado, here are the rankings compiled from a manager poll:
1. It is Summer Sunkerns - 1.333
2. Turn Down for Wattrels - 3
3. Pokebro Piplups - 4
4. Smoliv Garden - 4.4
4. Blue Eyes White Bagons - 4.4
6. Zigzagoon Platoon - 5
6. Cauchemarcacrins Des Enfers - 5
8. Ashely Quaxely
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1. It is Summer Sunkerns - 1.333
Trades: TJ, Togkey, Dragonitenb and Eeveeto for Luthier and babyboyblues
Days of bitching on end about his price (and a healthy dose of shady trades) has apparently yielded Ninja the strongest team on paper by a considerable margin. Representing the time-honored strategy of shunning mainers in favor of tournament players well, if ninjadog can clean up his less experienced slots he might be nigh unstoppable. Their loss in the first week, however, clearly shows that they aren’t quite coordinated yet: their established LCers (along with rising star aleaniled) were each able to pull out strong wins, but each of their tournament mainstays faltered. The team's largest concern is their most expensive player. Ninja went to great lengths to acquire Luthier, but if his first game is any sign he has some practice ahead of him if he wants to regain his virtuoso status - hopefully we don’t get another scorched earth policy review post when this is all over.
If the Luthier trade doesn’t work out Ninjadog may come to regret it, as TJ, dragonitenb and Togkey would likely have been good additions to his current lineup. Drafting cheap tournament players with limited investment in LC has strong upsides given that they usually have very strong fundamentals, but each player is going to adapt to LC slightly differently. Unfortunately for Ninjadog, if week 1 is any indication his players have some adaptation left to go: Damien has yet to show his genius in this tier, his self-proclaimed unluckiest player of all time may tilt out before tour’s end, and snaga and DugZa haven’t put great records in LC team tours yet. Still, given the strength of his most expensive slots, all ninja really needs to breeze into playoffs is for his tour player slots to go around even. This team is ranked 1st for a reason given the strength of its names, but it won't be a free path to playoffs by any means. I can definitely see a crash and burn here if the dropoff between the top three and bottom five slots continues to be so steep.
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2. Turn Down for Wattrels - 3
Trades: bb skarm for yellowfin
The greatest discord and circuit mains of 2022 have come together to draft an undeniably strong—if a bit weird—team. They boast what is easily the strongest building core of the tournament in Drifting, Door Money, goldenghost and collette, along with a solid supporting cast of LC up-and-comers. Despite their impressive victory in week 1 against the highest ranking team, they can’t completely rest on their laurels. Many of their most expensive slots are unproven in the team tournament format, and their more established slots have occasionally seemed to be struggling to adjust to the new generation. DOOR MONEY and Collette have not been able to replicate the command of the metagame they had in late SS, where they seemed to have an uncanny ability to nail their opponents in the most unholy matchup fishes I’ve ever seen. I don’t think that Collette has quite been able to replicate the affronts to nature she was capable of last generation, but hopefully for the Wattrels she isn’t far off. Goldenghost seems uninspired by SV thus far and has been unable to put up a strong result since his namesake was not yet a Nazi, though perhaps his name change can take him off that arc.
Their supporting cast is promising: Raj.shoot and Shou Dui have put up solid performances in the past that suggest solid potential, the latter in particular showing off his new gen chops well in teamballo. I couldn’t have told you who Dj Breloominati is before last week (I would have assumed he was around 1100 on the ladder based on his username), but he was able to pull out a commanding win last week, so his managers can’t be too worried about his slot at this point. Their last slot is where I see them running into problems, with no obvious player as solid as the other slots. Lady Writer threw what was likely a guaranteed win (bar protect shellder) against bbb last week. Yellowfin, while promising, is relatively unproven. Coconut was a solid pick up for her managing expertise (no small consideration for brand new managers) and building, but her Sheet™ record casts doubt on her ability to start. The Wattrels have enough depth to their lineup to cycle until they find a one that works, but the journey there might be rocky.
Heading this cast of up-and-comers along with the aforementioned DOOR MONEY is Drifting, who is probably one of the most dedicated managers in the tournament. He’ll have a big task ahead of him in coordinating a team full of builders, and needs to worry about his own results on top of that. He managed a deep run in LC open a couple months ago, but hasn’t been able to replicate that results since. He has to be hungry for his own big result, a desire he must balance with helping his team. Despite the Wattrels' lack of the consistent results teams with more established players like the Sunkerns have, Drifting and DOOR MONEY have drafted a team reflective of their own high potential as players, and are certainly the team to beat at the moment given their week 1 victory over the Sunkerns.
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3. Pokebro Piplups - 4
The Piplups sport a diverse and very international cast of LC mainstays, tournament players and up-and-comers. However, they may have some work to do before they can build up the synergy to compete with already collaborative lineups like the Wattrels and the Cauchemarcacrins (my anglophone ass cannot be bothered to keep looking up the name every time I want to mention this team, calling them the frenchies henceforth). This doesn't mean the team doesn't have the ingredients for success! Éric has been near SCL level for a while now, and though I would have questioned Gorex’s ability to transfer his DPP skills to SV if I was writing these rankings before the tournament began, his win over Laroxyl and success in teamballo shows that he is quite comfortable in this pool. Mendeez should serve as their third solid slot: his meteoric rise early last year shows no signs of stopping, and his ability to put up consistently strong results is impressive.
The Piplups are actually in a very similar position to the Sunkerns when it comes to the strength of their slots. They have three solid slots that look like they will almost certainly go positive, but still lost week 1 because the rest of their team needs a bit more work. While the Sunkerns drop off mostly has to do with inexperience, the Piplups mostly drafted players with substantial—or some, at the very least—experience in LC. They may need to raise some of those experienced members that lost last week out of slumps if they want to win it all. This may be a tall order in some cases - robjr, for example, is certainly a fantastic player (he was instrumental to my own LCPL win) but will undoubtedly and understandably be prioritizing other tournaments. Shrug in particular would have been a star player for the Piplups 2-3 years ago, but has wisely deprioritized Pokemon in favor of school. This is nothing new, but I've noticed that recently school has been eating even his cherished shitposting time—that’s how you
know it’s bad. Even if the Piplups get lucky and Shrug gets a brief respite from work in the coming weeks, he has a lot of pent up energy he would need to release on Discord before he can ever start playing the game. Shrug will always have incredible potential, but I wouldn’t be surprised if his most consistent obstacle this tournament is the activity call.
The Piplups' remaining lineup is a bit odd and difficult to place. Some players like avarice and Kipkluif have results in DPP and LC UU respectively, but have not yet transferred those skills to SV LC as their manager gorex has. The Piplups' subs last week, FP and Mom Lover, don’t have any results and are still waiting for their chance in the spotlight. ojr is probably their best hope for the breakout performance they need to win this tournament considering his good record in Teamballo, but even that is a shaky bet at best. Teamballo was not taken very seriously by its players and was a very raw metagame, making it not very representative of the current meta. What’s more, ojr lost his game last week and has a negative overall record in LC team tours to overcome. His potential has been recognized for a while now, but the Piplups need him to start realizing it now if they have any hopes of picking up some wins. The Piplups have markedly more problems than the teams above them, but strong management should give them a decent shot.
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4. Smoliv Garden - 4.4
The Smoliv Garden managers are probably the duo I am most excited about seeing this tournament. gali is one of the few LC players that is even crustier than I am, and I’ve respected her novel (and sometimes diabolical) team ideas from the beginning. califlour has been on the radar of every LCPL manager on the hunt for a future SCL-level player at a bargain. I look forward to seeing what she can do with her own team. That team, however, is about as all-over-the-place as its namesake’s menu. The players gali and cali drafted are individually good, but come from just about every category you can imagine: rising stars, tournament players, veterans, ladder heroes and scouted newcomers are all represented. The incredible variety and depth of their team may give the Smolives more potential than even some of the teams above them, but their 2-6 defeat last week indicates much work to do on fulfilling it.
Acehunter1 is the obvious star player of the team, and will have to pull off quite the tournament run if he wants his team to go far. He’s certainly capable, but is going to have to be more self-sufficient than he has ever been before. He is used to prepping with friends that are now on other teams (like wesh papillon) who know when to reign in his less good ideas. Luckily for gali and cali, Wimpod isn’t available this generation, so he can only go so wrong. Not only does he have to prep without his usual support — he has to help multiple inexperienced players at the same time. If he is extremely motivated through the entire tournament this is possible, but it's a lot to ask, even of a top player.
The Smolivs also need Heysup, just about the only LC player gali could have drafted to make herself feel young, to pull off a good performance. Heysup certainly has the talent to do so, and his creativity is unrivaled. However, his creativity can work against him in a team setting: his teams are often too complicated for tour players to pick up and use without practicing the techs. If this metagame lends itself to Heysup’s genius the way that ORAS does, we may yet see a return to form. Conversely, if this generation becomes centralized to the extent of SS and SM, I can see Heysup's style working against him. Only time will tell how successful Heysup's unique approach to the game will be in this generation, but from a spectator point of view you just have to root for him.
The rest of the team certainly has the potential to become strong slots. The tournament players gali and cali drafted are perhaps the most promising of any team: Meru and crying went solidly positive in their last LC team tours, the latter having solidified themself as one of Smogon’s premier generalist players in the past year. Akaru Kokuyo has yet to make a significant foray into tiers outside of doubles, but has put up result after result in the past year there. Clearly gali and cali are hoping that akaru will follow in the footsteps of other doubles players like Z Strats and Paraplegic that were very successful in transferring their proficiency in doubles to the similarly fast-paced LC meta. I must admit I know next to nothing about chimp, their last tour player, but their win last week is very promising for a solid season.
Joltage rounds out their roster with significant tournament experience, but hasn’t had the chance to play current generation LC in quite a while. He has proven himself an LC UU virtuoso in LPL, but his ability to put up positive records in standard LC remains to be seen. The rest of the roster are all newcomers, likely scouts by the ambitious managers. MOHAMEDALL has made multiple decent runs in LC Circuit, and LeJames Chonk (better known as Horny Miltank) has been an LC ladder mainstay for what seems like years. NotJackewu and RDL93 are completely unknown to me, but already have a win between them. gali and cali are hoping to strike gold with some of these unknown 3k picks, an event likely necessary for them to beat out the more established teams. The smolives have more kinks to work out than most, but between their solid cast of tour players with strong fundamentals and their newcomers hungry for their first wins, they could easily coalesce into one of the strongest teams of the tournament.
Stay tuned for part 2 later this weekend!
) and unorthodox builds. The reason for Corck's low price is likely because he is more known for doing well in old generations. His strong performance against formidable opponents shows that he has transferred his overall skill to this new generation well, and if he can keep it up he may end up being the steal of the tournament. HanPyol, another cheap pick, has also been doing very well, picking up crucial wins despite their long hiatus from LC. Not all of HSOWA and jcbc's picks have gotten off to a strong start: trace certainly has the potential to transfer his consistency in ORAS to SV, but hasn’t quite figured it out yet. Prodigezz and Baloor have similar stories, both still finding themselves in this unorthodox meta.
