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We know you are eagerly awaiting the start of the next season, but since we are delaying Highlander Season 36 a tiny, whiny bit, we have decided to host a fast-paced summer fun cup to have some old waterpark fun!

Grab your sunglasses, your Hawaiian shirts, and a group of friends—we are excited to announce the ETF2L High-Tide Highlander One-Night-Cup!

Crack open those apple ciders (or other (non-)alcoholic beverages of your choice) and have a night of summer fun with 8 of your mates! This one-night tournament is all about good vibes and competitive banter, featuring an exclusively basegame, summer-themed map pool and a special long asked for Payload Race finale. Check out all the details, rules, and schedule below.

Schedule

• Signups: OPEN NOW – July 24th 18:00 CEST
• Final Tiers: July 24th (Roster lock will enable on publication if final tiers)
• Matchday: Saturday July 25th:
  • Round 1: 19:00 CEST (ctf_applejack)
  • Round 2: 20:00 CEST (pl_aquarius)
  • Round 3: 20:45 CEST (koth_sharkbay)
  • Grand Finals & 3rd Place: 21:30 CEST (plr_bananabay)

Map Pool & Map Rotation

For this cup, we’ll be running the following 3 rounds of round robin, groups of 4, on stock valve maps followed by a finals/3rd place decider:

• Round 1: 19:00 CEST (ctf_applejack)
• Round 2: 20:00 CEST (pl_aquarius)
• Round 3: 20:45 CEST (koth_sharkbay)
• Grand Finals & 3rd Place: 21:30 CEST (plr_bananabay)

Format & Whitelist

To ensure tight, competitive matches without a massive time commitment, we will be using a self-contained pool system for this cup.

• Division Structure: Teams will be placed into Pools of 4 (e.g., Premiership, High, Mid, Low, Open A, Open B, etc.).
• Winners: Winners are crowned per individual pool—so if you are in Open B, you are fighting to be the official Open B Champion!
• Whitelist: Standard ETF2L 9v9 Whitelist applies across all matches.

Special Game Mode Rules & Configs

Because we are playing some alternative game modes to keep the summer vibes flowing, please take note of the specific configs and rulesets for Round 1 and the Grand Finals!

Be advised, loading up the maps with the soap-dm plugin enabled will cause you to spawn outside of the map on 3 out of the 4 maps in this cup. Feel free to take a swim if you keep it enabled. We recommend disabling plugins whilst reserving a server on Serveme.

Capture the Flag (ctf_applejack)

Games are played using the etf2l_9v9_ctf.cfg configuration.

For those who don’t remember the win conditions of capture the flag from 2014 (or were barely born) they are as follows:

• Win Condition: First team to 10 total caps OR the highest score after 2 halves wins.
• Halves: Each half has a cap limit of 7 (mp_winlimit 7) and a time limit of 20 minutes (mp_timelimit 20).
• Overtime: Intelligence may be carried and captured past the time limit during overtime.
• Golden Cap: If the score is tied after both halves, standard Golden Cap rules apply:
  • 10-minute time limit (mp_timelimit 10), win limit of 1 round (mp_winlimit 1).
  • If neither team wins within the 10 minutes, a second Golden Cap round is played where whoever picks up the opponent’s intelligence first is instantly declared the winner.

Payload (pl_aquarius)

Games are played using standard stopwatch ruleset and config etf2l_9v9_stopwatch.cfg

KOTH (koth_sharkbay)

Games are played using the standard bo5 ruleset etf2l_9v9_koth.cfg.

Note that on the scorereport page & map page the map icon will appear twice. Just fill in the same score and log on both maps.
You are only supposed to play ONE standard BO5 KOTH map (Do not play the KOTH map twice!).

On the backend every map icon is worth 3 points. So to ensure that round 1, 2 and 3 are all worth 6 points we have to put the map icon on the matchpage twice.

Payload Race (plr_bananabay) – Ruleset

Payload Race can notoriously take ages, so for the Grand Final on Banana Bay, we will be using a Payload Race ruleset via the etf2l_9v9_plr.cfg configuration.

There is no time limit. A win limit of 2 rounds (mp_winlimit 2) is set. The first team to win two rounds in the map wins.

Please note that matches have the potential to last for some time with mp_winlimit 2. For this reason we will allow either team to call for one free shared additional 5 minute pause per match after playtime exceeds 45 minutes

Sign-up Process

First and foremost, you must sign your team up here:

Then, if you are applying for Division 6/Open tier (which is our entry division), you do not have to provide any proof that you are capable of playing at that level.

Otherwise, we encourage you to send in an application through the ticket system in our Discord or by directly contacting a league admin, with the following information:

– Team name, Division you apply for and ETF2L team link
– Roster
– Recent results and logs associated to them
– Reasons why your team deserves to be placed in the tier you applied for (optional)

e.g.
– Team BIG EXPLOSION, Premiership, https://etf2l.org/teams/1/
announce the roster with the classes
– 5-2 vs Team Aoshi’s All Stars (Prem) : https://logs.tf/012345

Teams that do not send an email or contact the admins risk losing their spot in the division they are asking for.

Please note that the success of your request also strongly depends on the free slots in the tier you aim.

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