It is just the matter of luck of your draw in first stage. Final stage is always extremely competitive, especially when KoK involves 3 stages.
For checking out on the new referral rewards feature, I have created 3 new level-1 freeloader clubs (88%, 81% & 71% at time of draw - the best 88% started on day 1 with more luck in auctions, while the other 2 started on day 5 with 71% one having no luck in getting the FT attacker yet then), on top of my current level-4 main account.
Level-4 main account with team of 119%. Drawn with 2 other 115-120% teams, 3 of 100%-106% and the rest of 90%-100%.
Competition is very fierce, with first day’s score from 9 down to 4 without any gap - which means everyone tried their best.
And yes, my team tops it with max points. Successfully defended against all challenges by similar quality opponents, which means the setup is good for those 2.
2nd team wasted 4T in losing 3 times in a row before end time.
Level-1 88% team. Very tough draw with teams of 123%, 116%, 108% & 106%, with 3x 90%+ and the rest of 80%-90%.
Top 123% team is expected. Managed to win with 88% against 108% (3rd) and also successfully defend him again with a perfect counter with very limited choice of players.
Still got 2nd for both days despite having a 20% disadvantage - this is the worst possible disadvantage an inferior team could have a consistent chance of winning.
Level-1 80% team. Also very difficult draw with 3 teams of around 100% and another 3 of 90%, with the rest around quality of my team.
Thankfully this draw’s managers are only semi-active, with 2nd team of 90% having at least challenged me 5 times but all failed.
Easy top place winnings.
Level-1 70% team. Hard draw with 3 teams of 85%-90%, with the rest mainly around 75%-80%.
Only this time that it is nearly full of totally inactive teams. Probably 70% quality implies those managers aren’t actively managing teams anyway.
When being active = win.
Obviously there are so many draws out there, though draw of quality of opponents in the first round would kind of imply how active your opponents would be, and usually the higher they are, the more active they would be. And that would make sense too as it costs more T to maintain a higher level team (tankers would disappear if they are disqualified from winning events).
Rather than worrying about what we can’t change, ie. some odd results here and there, we could train our team to be strong yet versatile enough to beat all.