I guess I'll help getting things started this time around. It's only fair (I guess) after I promised I'd share my thoughts during Snake just to bail out every single time the thought of posting crossed my mind.
Overall, I feel like the UU pool for this tournament is about as strong as Snake Draft's pool (probably weaker since it's missing The Superstar :eyes:). We most likely won't be receiving visits from seasoned veterans like McMeghan or Tesung this time around, but I'd say that all of the newcomers have very high skill ceilings by our playerbase's standards, while the guys who were less hot the last time around (looking mostly at HT and my son Pak) are definitely not to be discredited, as their ability to play past UU metagames definitely shows that they can put up solid records when they're in the mood. Anyway, this is more or less how I'd rank teams this SPL as far as their UU depth goes (excluding my own team to keep the bias as low as possible):
1. The Stark Sharks - dodmen
While there are some other guys on the team (Tricking, Teddeh, Feen) who could possibly take over this slot in order to let dodmen play a different SM tier, I feel like that won't be the case until very late into the season if something elsewhere goes wrong. This is, IMO, the highlight of SPL's UU pool compared to Snake Draft's, as dod was managing in the latter. It's pretty hard to write a description about dodmen's approach to UU without making it seem like I'm riding him hard, but to put it simply, he is one of the tier's freshest minds and is always down to give uncommon Pokemon/strategies a shot (Mega Banette in ORAS, Silvally during UUPL, BARBARACLE). That coupled with his aggressive playstyle makes him the most entertaining UU player to watch (as well as one of the most successful), and his results in tournaments this year back this up nicely (excellent UUPL, excellent Grand Slam and some wins in other tours here and there)
2. Congregation of the Necks Classiest - Sacri'
First of all, I'd like to congratulate my good buddy Sacri for being both the first nomination of the whole draft and one of the most expensive UU picks alongside dod himself. That said, I feel like spending as much as this team's managers did in UU is very likely to be pay off in this case, as Sacri's consistency throughout SM UU has been nothing short of phenomenal. Good UUPL? Check. Good UU Open? Check. Good UU Majors? I honestly don't remember LOL sorry. Good Snake Draft? Sure thing! Good UU Championship? Probably not, but you can't blame him for going down early in a tour filled with so many behemoths. Anyway, as much as I have criticized Sacri in the past (still can't deny he's the ORAS WOAT tbh), he is on his way to solidify his place as one of the most consistent people to play this tier at this point in time. And if this isn't enough, he's also backed up by Pohjis, who is probably one of the best team players I've gotten to know on Smogon, and I'm sure he'll go out of his way to make sure his teammates won't be lacking in the scouting department. As far as drawbacks go, I personally feel like the Frenchman tends to get a tad too repetitive when it comes to building teams, often resorting to trends (Empoleon. Gliscor too but he's probably moving up to OU at some point in the tournament) that can be exploited with ease by his opponents, provided they do their homework, but this is still not enough to discredit Sacri's ability to pilot said teams in a solid way. Plus, I've heard somewhere that he gets a little sad inside every time I say things like this about his teams, and actually tries to use different stuff, but I wouldn't know!
note: Ranks 3-4 are more or less even in my opinion. You can swap them around if it makes you feel more comfortable!
3. The Indie Scooters - Lycans
The first retain on the list, and for a good reason too, as he provides pretty good odds of giving his team a solid UU record for about 10k less than the two guys above him. Although you could say that dodmen was a big reason behind Lycans' success during Smogon Snake Draft, the truth is that he's still able to build his own teams relatively well. Plus, I'm pretty sure obii will be there to back him up as well if it's ever required. Aside from that, I don't think there's much else to be said here. Good Snake Draft + Good WCoP + Passable results in other smaller UU tours (as well as OU and other lower tiers) = High likelihood of shaping up to be a solid SPL starter. I'd write more about Lycans' own playstyle, but I don't really think there's anything that immediately catches my attention. I guess he's like dod in the sense that he can pilot pretty much any sort of team to a good level, but less flashy in the sense that he rarely resorts to less common techs/Pokemon (aside from that one time when Conversion Porygon2 was utilized). I could be wrong in this regard though!
4. The Dragonspiral Tyrants - Christo
The second and last retain on the list (unless you count ict as a UU retain, but I honestly don't think we'll see him around these parts this season). Similarly to Sacri, Christo is (or rather, used to be) known for his rather one-dimensional teambuilding style. However, I think he has an easier time branching out in SM UU, especially considering that he is playing under Hogg, who usually has a lot of fresh ideas to work with. That aside, this guy is the 1 person who beat me last UUPL so he's clearly a god Christo has been a mainstay in the UU community for a long time now, and while his results might not be as impressive as those of the people above him, Christo still got carried to a trophy by virtue of being in the right place of the world at the right time he's still had some success in the aforementioned UUPL and UU Majors, as well as a major supportive role in the success of Manipulative during Snake Draft. With all of this in mind, I don't think anyone would be surprised to see this man put up a solid record this tournament.
note: Once again, the upcoming two guys are more or less equal in my own rankings, so you can just swap them around if you think it's fit
5. The Ever Grande BIGs - Manipulative
Christo drone #1 (for real though, rumor has it that Christo is the man who taught Manipulative about the existence of Steel-type Pokemon). Coming off a decent Snake Draft showing, Manipulative is back for yet another round of Smogon's most prestigious team tournaments. Although I have a lot of complaints about his team choices when Christo wasn't around to give his two cents, the truth is that Manipulative never truly misplayed throughout his run during SSD. If he manages to solidify his teambuilding/team selection abilities, he has potential to surpass his 5-4 record from Snake Draft. If this doesn't turn out to be the case, however, he could find himself having issues against the rest of the pool.
6. The Alpha Ruiners - Bushtush
Christo drone #2 (jk, I know you're great). Bushtush has been putting up some pretty impressive results in the latter half of 2017, demolishing me in UU majors and then going on to win the whole thing. while also being a pretty handy guy to have around due to his ability to play every tier at a decent level (and also for being one of the most passionate chat presences in the entirety of Smogon). However, the biggest concern here will definitely be his ability to remain self-sufficient when his #1 team provider is on a different team. If he's able to get past this handicap and actually manages to cook up some cool teams of his own, then I wouldn't be surprised to see his name near the top of the UU player records. However, if this isn't the case, things could very easily go south for the Tush and his team, as their UU depth is pretty lacking for the most part (they do, however, have some spare cash to solve this during midseason if it turns out to be an issue, but I'm personally hoping Bushtush comes through here)
7. The Cryonicles - HT
Despite the awful Snake Draft run, the legendary Hairy Toenail is back to prove the non-believers wrong. As I said before, I find it hard to believe that someone with so much success in the ORAS metagame will turn out to be a disappointment for two tournaments in a row. Things could be rough though, as his team's UU helpers are only ict (who hasn't really paid much attention to the state of the tier since last UUPL) and teal six (who is a competent player but tends to make some questionable moves in the teambuilder. Besides that, he has openly claimed that he doesn't really care much about the tier anymore many times before. Maybe one day we'll see the return of UU king teal in all of his greatness as Spoofy the messiah once preached). Anyway, I'm placing HT here due to his lack of success in SM compared to the guys above him but above the 2 remaining competitors because unlike them, HT already has some team tournament experience under his belt and could bounce back pretty easily if he goes back to the roots and cooks up some hot squads like he used to do once upon a time.
note: Same as the last two cases where the players were more or less even. Please note that I don't rate these two lowly; it's just that neither is as accomplished as the players above them. They still have decent odds of taking games from the everyone else.
8. The Circus Maximum Tigers - A Hero's Destiny
The Tigers seem to have taken a pretty unique approach to their UU draft, banking on the Brazilian wonder A Hero's Destiny, who had a pretty fulfilling UU Open run this year, as well as a brief showing in UU Championship Playoffs. I personally feel like he could very much be this pool's dark horse, as even though some claim that he needed a decent amount of luck to go as far as he did, he still seems to be fundamentally solid as far as the technical aspects of the game go. Not to mention that he has what is easily 1 of the best pool of helpers in the whole tournament, with fellow Brazilian god Nintendi having acquired some tier knowledge for himself thanks to Grand Slam and also McMeghan, who played the tier as a starter during Snake Draft and is known to be one of the most solid players to ever touch the game. I'm ranking him near the bottom because he's barely involved with the community, which means that he might be lacking in connections and tier knowledge. Besides that, this is his first big team tournament experience, and those have a lot of potential to go south, but he should be able to hold the UU slot on his own if he gets past these two roadblocks.
9. The Wifi Wolfpack - Cynde
Last (but hopefully not least) we have the Wifi Wolfpack, who decided to pick up Cynde to fight off against the competition. I personally don't know much about him aside from the fact that he's Shiba's right arm in the fight against the corrupt jerk (this spot was previously held by my son Pak, so I know from there that Cynde has what it takes to accomplish great things) and that he had a pretty convincing run in UU Majors. Besides that, I've seen some of his teams and can safely say that if I had to rank the pool based on their ability to make teams for the tier alone, this guy would be at least top 2 by a long shot. That aside, he's also supported by chessmaster Tony Flygon, who is probably one of the best people to ever open up the Stats folder on Pokemon Showdown's teambuilder, so even if the games don't play out as they are supposed to, we're sure to see some amazing conglomerations of Pokemon from these two. As far as playing goes, I haven't really seen much from Cynde, but my personal record against him in recent times is somewhere between 0-2 and 0-5, so he's not even bad in that regard. The two issues here is that he's unproven and this is his first big team tournament experience, so if things start out poorly it could become pretty complicated for him to pull back. I'll probably be rooting for him to succeed if his teams are as great as I'm expecting them to be.
To close this off, I'd just like to say that I'm pretty sad to see my boy Eyan sit this one out. I'll admit that the Raiders had you in the draft plan as a cheap UUer in case we failed to get any of our desired UU picks, but I don't think that's a good way to console somebody at all. That aside, I'm happy for everyone who got drafted and am hoping to see some great UU matches between all of the competitors.