To hell with winning 1st place in your local GNW.
Your goal should be to gather more players, no matter their powers, as long as they complete daily task points in the Daily Practice checklist.
You just have to aim to qualify during each GNW, and try to be within top 3 of the resulting GNW.
Try to merge with the other group who has lesser members than those who are at the top.
This is why you shouldn't kick people early in game, especially if those people are logging in daily.
Open your recruitment settings now, gather more members, ask for a group merge (the group with least members among others).
It will mostly be unfair in terms of the battles but look at the bigger picture: your goal is to be within top 3 so your group won't go home empty-handed.
If the other groups talk *, block those people. * to your goals. Your power lies in your hands in how you manage your resources.
The GNW packs only provide you an opportunity to gain access to more powerful ninja.

Anyway, just speaking by experience. I tend to be cunning at times, and my enemies hate me so much for it.
I turn a hopeless group in the first month into a dominating one up until now (with the help of my dear group mates who stayed and played).
I may be a fool to leave our group with open recruitment, but even spies have given up on life and stopped.
Never lost since then. I thank my leader for listening. To further increase my chances of winning, I had to think abstractly to a point that our enemies just can't tell what our next strat will be. Mind games, in a gruesome way. With such successive wins, we tend to entice newer players to join us.
Helped most of them with TI/SA and more, whenever I can, while banning most of them from seeing our GNW positions.
What do you know? — the once 3rd rate group now leads the server.
Anyway, even if we lost, I'd still keep going. My goal is to qualify in GNW tournaments, better get something even if it's not the best than just giving up and taking nothing.