1.) Alumni- Not much to say here. Still maintain the strongest core 5, I don't really think anyone has a team of 5 that amounts to the total body of skill that they have.

2/3.) Silver Lion- New team full of old players(mostly). Clops and James are very strong in general, I'm not sure of their core exactly but they have one of the better new age players in Exalt, and both Anthony and Relic have gotten a lot better recently due to practice. I know they have other options on the roster but that's my guess as to the core.

2/3.) Blackout- Once again we don't have our 5 completely decided, so it will probably be a last minute 5th man just like last GST, but even so we have enough to get us a hat I'd say.

Honorable Mention:
Gteam- They would probably still be strong if they had their full lineup. But I haven't seen Maxy. I doubt they could get past a team w/ me and brett or james and clops though, maybe they luck out and miss the bracket with Alumni and Blackout in it again.

Apostles- Any team with PT and Jack is usually competitive, and this time they are adding in Tykian which I think will work well. Don't know much about Doll but I've heard he's pretty good. As for their 5th I'll just speculate, Wick could be one possibility, always a solid sparrer, I'm assuming a pretty good hit ratio in GS since his style is pretty safe. Could be iHerc I suppose but with his inactivity I'm not sure how good of a choice that would be. They have a few others on their roster that I'd say could be placed in core 5, but most are inactive/ just coming back from a long inactivity. Unless they put together their best possible team I'd say same issue as stated for Gteam, I don't think they will best the competition.