1. Infect Family: This is my tribe so I guess there's always a bit of bias with that. Working in our favor, we seem to have the best statistics (been #1 a long time in PPP and in ODA). So, I think its extremely clear that we have some of the world's best players. However, I do think we are under-tested as we have unfortunately not yet been in a competitive war. The closest thing probably being the war with DSy4 which was quite unfair and one-sided because of the gangbang against them. I hope we get the chance to see what we're made of in the future. I am not a huge fan of the fact that we are a family as i think it is a way around the member limit- albeit not at all the same type of situation or magnitude as with the smoke family as it is just one group of 18. I don't particularly agree with the way we've done some things, but i really do enjoy playing alongside the awesome group of people we have here and think we can make a good run at the world. Positionally we seem to be looking fairly solid with the majority of the southern half of the map in our hands (excluding the Ronin territory) which has been a rather recent development with the addition of some ex-TT members that were brought in.
2. Smoke family: I'll try to say this in the nicest way possible, I find the smoke family completely deplorable. In my opinion they pretty much stand for everything that is dishonorable and shameful about tribal wars. They completely dodge the member limit by housing a considerable number of full family tribes which they use as meat shields and an endless source of internals. It seems that realizing they are unable to compete in quality, they appealed to raw quantity as their hope of survival- constantly recruiting and constantly eating their own players. They also seem to have a nasty habit of shifting players around to patch war stats and climb the rankings. On top of this, rather than hiding their heads in shame, a few of them shockingly come onto the forums boasting about beating DSy4 and all sorts of other nonsense. They do have several top players points wise but pretty much all of them in the top 20 have ODA rankings significantly under their points ranking. As a disclaimer i don't think every player in the smoke family is bad, nor do i dislike them all. But as a group they are unbelievably abhorrent in my opinion. In terms of position, the Smoke family does have near-complete control of the northwest, boarding Infect, DSy4 (whom they are warring), and CDC family behind them and seems to be a contender in the world order.
3. DSy4: Located up in the northeast, this group has had to deal with fighting uphill most of the last 2 months because of the numbers deficit against their opponents as they were in too many wars as a result of what i believe to be poor diplomacy. They have lost some ground and have had a very hard time in terms of growth or any expansion. They have dropped several members and had their front pushed back a bit. That said, I think they have shown a great deal of resilience in taking their licks but not giving up but instead fighting on, which honestly doesn't come as a surprise to me but it's something i really do respect. This is a group that seems to have a lot of tribal pride in what they do and some solid players. With the recent return of the original leaders I think everyone is looking forward to seeing how they fair. They are a solid tribe and I think it would be very foolish for anyone to count them out.
4. Ronin: I don't know too much about Ronin, but i can say i liked their declaration on TT as that was a nice and bold move. Whether or not Ronin is to be credited for it (which i know was earlier a subject of debate), TT got their Jenga on and crumbled hard... so they're declaration seeemed to pay off. Barring a declaration against Infect, I would imagine this tribe will now look to expand to the rim and clean up the rim tribes down there to have their back secure.
5. -LGN- I haven't seen much of LGN in game, but i do think their position is interesting considering their diplomacy. They are a bit enclosed against the rim by DSy4 (who was some time in the recent past their ally, and still could be... I'm just not sure), making it hard for them to do much expansion of note geographically besides narrowly expanding on the rim. As I mentioned earlier i haven't seen much of them ingame, but some of their players seem pretty good and I'm looking forward to see what their next move is.