was the balancer high?

3 blue stars vs 0 blue stars. that's quite relieable statement about the experience. other colours are more or less random, depending on the player and/or map.

I think that the rating of a player is a pretty good guide to their average skill level.

I am far less sure that the average rating of a team is a good guide to how skillfully it will play. WHR is a system that was designed for a 1v1 setting, and has mathematical guarantees only within that setting. In teams games many of the guarantees go out the window, and using average-WHR to balance games is essentially no more than a reasonable guess.

Aggravating conditions for this game in particular include the map (Tabula strongly favours a team which can distribute at least one strong player to each front) and the odd number of players.

I think the biggest factor is that some players are the "mass 10k worth of metal of whatever AND THEN do something with it" type, and if you have all of them on your side, you lose and there isn't much you can do about it.