The Highlander Open #2 Powered by Essentials.tf and Whitelist.tf: Playoffs

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The playoff fixtures for The Highlander Open #2 Powered by Essentials.tf and Whitelist.tf are now out, the bracket can be found here, or under the competition tab. The playoffs will proceed as bo3 single elimination however please remember that stopwatch maps are to be played as bo1 for that map, for more information see the FAQ.

All matches during the playoffs will have a default date of either a Tuesday or a Saturday however the teams have a few days of flexibility for each round. A change to the date must be agreed by both team leaders, if a reschedule cannot be agreed then the default date is to be used.

The maps for each round of the playoffs are to be decided by map elimination, all teams are considered of equal seed for the map elimination process. A full explanation of how this is to be carried out can be found on our general rules page. Once the maps have been decided post the decision on the match page along with any agreed mercs, please add your opposing teams leaders asap.

The map pool for the competition is as follows

• Badwater (pl_badwater)
• Upward (pl_upward)
• Lakeside (koth_lakeside_final)
• Borneo (pl_borneo)
• Viaduct (koth_product_rc8)
• Gullywash (cp_gullywash_final1)
• Process (cp_process_final)

If you have any questions please contact an admin on IRC.

Nations Cup #6 powered by Tt eSPORTS: A look back and ahead

As we finally enter the Round of 16 of the Nations Cup, here is a look back at the history of the matchups coming up in the Round of 16, a recap of the Group Stage and a look ahead.

 England vs Wales

* The United Kingdom participated in the first Nations Cup. From my understanding most or all of the team members at the time were English, therefore the result counts towards England.

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A look back

This will be the second time these two neighbours meet in an ETF2L Nations Cup in this grudge match. The first time was in the 2nd Nations Cup, when England beat Wales 5-0 on cp_granary and a whopping 23-5 on ctf_turbine. The English lineup was comprised of the best England had to offer at the time. Names like numlocked, Shintaz, dunc, Evil, AcidReniX and Fisshu went on to later win several trophies with their teams as well as individually. Yet, in the 2nd Nations Cup, they ended up losing in the Semi finals to one of the two dominating nations at the time, an even more stacked Swedish team (who would then lose to Finland in the final). Wales on the other hand would have been rated as a solid Division 2-3 team at the time, with their standout players probably being Dave and Santa.

Group Stage Performance

England‘s run through the group stage so far has been a fairly easy one, going by their results. Out of their three matches, they only dropped 2 rounds against the  Slovak Republic. Often they would even off-class to the point where almost everyone in the team played several classes in a match.

Wales came in second of their group by being a single point ahead of Hungary and Lithuania. With Mike not playing in their first two matches, they seem to have had a tougher time than most might have expected. But eventually advanced thanks to a convincing victory (with Mike) over Hungary in their last match and a single Golden Cap point from their match against Portugal.

Worth mentioning

Anderson from Wales already played in the previously mentioned match against England in Nations Cup #2 almost 7 years ago.

Starkie is the last active player of the team that won Nations Cup #3, almost 4 years ago.

A look ahead

You would expect this match to go in England‘s favour, as they seem to be the team most people would bet their hats on to go through and win the whole cup, which would be their 2nd (after Nations Cup #3). Yet if Wales are able to bring their A-team, England may have to play half-serious for once, with at least 3 of their players on their main classes.

England 90:10 Wales

Read the rest of this entry »

It hasn’t been too long, but the we’ve reached the concluding chapter of the group stages in our Nations Cup #6 story. In Group G, that is the situation as Austria and Spain have been despatched by both Netherlands and Finland respectively, leaving the Netherlands and the Suomi army to battle it out for top spot and a more favourable draw (in theory). Netherlands boast the experienced Soldier duo of kaptain and damneasy, leading their relatively inexperienced teammates in a battle against the might of Finland, with every member of the Finnish roster being a former or current Premiership level player, well except Cauthon, who’s 5 seasons of High will be dragging the team down no doubt! Not since Nations Cup #1 have these two nations met, where Finland won both maps, including a 12-0 victory on Granary! Netherlands have yet to get to the Last 8 of the tournament, whilst Finland won the first two Nations Cups, but since them have come up short, their best placement being a 3rd place finish.

Netherlands are expected to lose, but they may be able to pull off a surprise, like last Nations Cup #5 where Lithuania surprisingly beat the old school Finns and condemned them to the history books. The game will be streamed live tonight at 21:15 CEST by BlackOut TV, streamed by the legend Jon and casted by the ever present CeeJaey and moviemaker Beater, who will be out to spot some huge plays for his Nations Cup fragmovie.

Scotland vs Ukraine

As we continue the daily coverage of the Highlander Nations Cup, we have reached the last playday for round 2 of the group stages, where already we see a host of nations able to book their last 16 place. Tonight we bring you the key clash in Group F between Scotland and Ukraine, with both sides desperately needing the points to go further.

Scotland‘s opening round loss to Israel was a fairly competitive fixture but leaves them with 0 points whilst Ukraine were able to outclass Switzerland and put themselves in prime position to qualify. Another performance tonight will give Ukraine guaranteed progression to the knockout rounds whilst Scotland know another defeat and an Israel win will see them almost certainly knocked out at the group stages again. Look out for key players Sheepy and Kensi for each sides, bringing huge experience and talent to what should be an evenly matched contest.

BlackOut TV will be bringing you a 100% (un)BIASED commentary from two Englishmen, Honey Badger and Hildreth, with another on the camera with Jon.

This newspost is targeted at developers that are interested in a coding project that would lead to them being part of the ETF2L staff. Are you not a coder but still have some ideas that we could look at? Then leave them in this forum thread. Keep in mind this is meant for changes to currently existing features.

So as some of you have may noticed the development of the beta design has been halted for quite some time now. This mainly being due to the core of the site's problems not being the layout but rather the backend. Over the numerous years that its been around a bunch of different people have helped out in coding the site. But due to this the coding itself has become quite a bit of a mess.
With this we'll be trying to change that. We would be aiming to make the site in Python & Django in a group of around 5 people. Seeing that the site is quite complex this wont happen in a day of course and we would be looking at doing so across a rather large time scale. The coders that would be coming from the community would be with the idea that they can stick around after the site is remade to make new features that go with it or just help with management.

So all in all we'll mainly be using Git, MySQL, Bootstrap, HTML, Python and Django. If you aren't familiar with one of them but want to learn quickly you're more then welcome to apply as well. So if you want to join send an email to staff@etf2l.org with an appropriate subject like "ETF2L Coding Project Application" and with the following information:

• Name
• ETF2L profile link
• Country of residence
• Age
• Previous experience
• Aspects of the site or new features you are particularly interested in working on

Staff Changes

Over the past couple of months we've had quite a few people leaving our staff. So here is a thanks to stuntz, Yggdrasil and Morphine for all the work that they've done for ETF2L.

With those leaves we had some fresh meat hop on in with that being fantastictobey as a Media Producer and Crasp returning to ETF2L as League Admin.