Looking at the pots and rules a bit more, there's a couple key inflection points that I can see. The most obvious is getting drawn with an AFC team(63% chance), especially if you can do so in Pot 1 or 3(50%). The other is if you can get drawn with one of the weak CAF teams in Pot 3, Tunisia or Morocco(25%). Neither of those 2 had to beat anyone of any quality to qualify, and aside from Tunisia slipping past underachieving Nigeria 1-0 it didn't happen in AFCON either. That would make the shoot the moon outcome a group like Qatar, Morocco, Wales. The other key is quite frankly, avoiding Senegal in Pot 3. The other 7 are either the above AFC and CAF teams or they're Euro teams which makes Qatar or a truly weak Pot 4 draw like Saudi Arabia more likely. Senegal is the best Pot 3 team, doesn't keep you from 2 additional Euro teams and makes it very likely you're not getting an AFC team, so it's the land mine. On a similar note, it's very funny to see that those things above are the key to Canada avoiding some really insane groups of death. Running the simulator a few times I see groups like Spain/Croatia/Senegal/Canada or Brazil/Switzerland/Poland/Canada, which would be absolute bloodbaths.