Challengers Cup hosted by teamfortress.tv

If you haven’t signed up for the Challengers Cup yet, you absolutely should! If you’re a Prem team, a High team, or even a Mid team you’re in with a shot at the prize on offer! With a $1500 prizepool, a schedule designed to sync exactly with pcw times, and an open tournament for 32 teams so that everyone gets a good game or two, there is no reason not to sign up for this cup. In addition, we need this support to prove that European TF2 can fill a tournament! Help support the game, have a good time, and challenge yourself and others by signing up for the Challengers Cup before the 24th of September.

See below for the TFTV article which has all the details you need! If you have any questions, ask them in the ETF2L or TFTV thread! Let teams know you’re signing up and spread the word to help competitive TF2 and up your game!

SIGN UP YOU FILTHY SWINES

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Season 22 powered by saloon.tf: Pre-Season Premiership Playoffs

After all the schedule allowed to include top5rocket into the Pre-Season Premiership Playoffs. The schedule looks as follows:

Tuesday 22nd, 21:15CEST: Round 1

top5rocket vs Planet Express

Wednesday 23rd, 21:15CEST: Round 2

LEGO vs Danger Dogs

Animate vs Round 1 Winner

Thursday 24th, 20:00CEST: Round 3

Round 2 Loser 1 vs Round 2 Loser 2

All playoff matches will be played as a best of 3 series. More information can be found on the respective match pages.

Thursday 24th is using 20:00CEST over 21:15CEST to allow team to participate in the Challenger Cup, if both teams will not play in the Challenger Cup the time may be adjusted.

The fourth Highlander Nations Cup reaches its dramatic conclusion this Sunday evening! Join CeeJaey, sigafoo & Jon on BlackOut TV to see Sweden and Ukraine duke it out in a best-of-three on Upward, Steel and Badwater!

Sweden come into this clash as defending champions having dispatched England in last year’s Grand Final. The Swedes have looked strong throughout the competition, taking down the fearsome Russia in their semi-final tie in a thrilling three-map match. Boasting big names both 6v6 and Highlander fans will recognise, the likes of Zebbosai, Villdjack and Ascendary will make Sweden firm favourites for this fixture. With over 80% of bets on saloon.tf going in their favour expectations are high for this team. We spoke to leader and Heavy nijoonen to get his thoughts on the final.

Congratulations on making it to the Grand Final! Were you expecting to meet Ukraine at this stage or have they surprised you?

nijoonen: I casted Lithuania vs Germany early in the tournament with Ceejaey and when he asked what nation I thought could make an upset my answer was Ukraine, but if I thought they’d reach the finals, not at all.

Are you happier facing them than one of the previous favourites, or have they scared you with the upsets?

It’s hard to answer this without sounding cocky but much rather Ukraine than USA and France. I don’t think we would have beaten France in a final, USA would have been close but I’d say we have a rather big chance against Ukraine.

Which roster are you planning to use? There have been quite a few different Swedish teams turned out throughout the cup.

The hard part has been Sniper, obviously Inso left a rather huge pair of shoes to fill so I basically had to find a talent, since all of the good Swedish snipers are out of the game (TviQ, jukebox, BeaverN). Twisted is a sniper main but he was the best medic option at the time and none of the other medics we tried really worked out well enough. However ondkaja stepped up and decided he was up for playing Medic. The rest should remain as it has been for most of the cup with Herr_P, Zebbosai, Ascendary, alle, me, Mint and Villdjack.

Who do you think will be the player to watch in the final? Anyone in particular who’s key to your game plan?

Our teams are built up somewhat the same, having big names on sort of the same classes and somewhat weaker players on other classes. The big players are the Snipers, Demos and Scouts. Kensi / Abra vs Herr_P will be interesting, alle vs Death important and the really key battle is to see how well Twisted, who haven’t played even close to Prem, will do against Nesh who is really experienced and proven. So the key is really to deny Death from stickyjumping away and steal the throphy from in front of our eyes!

How have you found the addition of weapon pickups in a Highlander setting? Would you like to see it allowed in future 9v9 seasons?

It’s always bad when you have to make the difference between “regular” TF2 and competetive bigger, but on the other hand it really makes the game less interesting. Essentially an uber force is better than getting a uber drop, and few things are so loaded and hyped up as medic dropping in a keysituation. That being said I don’t really mind that you get another thing to keep in mind whilst playing. Counting ubers gets harder, guarding dropped mediguns is another thing to keep in mind and so on. I think Valve need to re-think the idea before it could be allowed in future HL seasons, making it more like the Vita saw or something, that you just keep 40-50% of the ubercharge or along those lines.

Thanks for taking the time to talk to us! Any shoutouts?

Any time! Shoutout for TLR letting me have Herr_P playing Highlander, Ceejaey’s fans and to the guys behind DeutschLAN, I’ve seen nothing but nice things being said about it! Thanks for the interview! q:-)

Sweden
Scout: Herr_P
Soldier: Zebbosai
Pyro: Ascendary
Demo: alle
Heavy: nijoonen
Engineer: it's Mint
Medic: ondkaja
Sniper: Twisted
Spy: Villdjack

Ukraine have turned out to be the surprise package of this Nations Cup, dispatching heavyweight opponents United States of America, France and Denmark during the knockout stages despite being underdogs in every fixture. Nesh has been doing some serious work on Sniper, with Death pumping out huge amounts of damage for the talented flank of arty and lippy to clean up on. Leader and Medic Klefsas took some time out from drilling his troops to answer a few questions for us.

Congratulations on making it to the Grand Final! Did you expect to make it this far at the start of the Cup?

Klefsas: At the beginning of the Cup we only had a good roster and a strong desire to win. We did not look that far ahead, the main task was to set up a good teamand take 1st or 2nd place in our group. So maybe no, I didn`t even think I could be playing in the final.

Which roster will you be playing with for the Grand Final?

We will play with Arty on Scout, lippy on Solly, food ration on Pyro, Death on Demo, Gunrox on Heavy, Ihor on Engie, me on Medic, Nesh on Sniper and detoed on Spy.

Which players should we look out for in the match?

Lippy and detoed are realy strong players. Sometimes we win rounds just cos of lippy’s sick jumps and great picks. Detoed has good gamesense, he saps every time when we need him to, giving alot of info and hunting medics like old school predator. Our flank players have less highlights but sometimes they make crazy plays like 4 kills in a few seconds from food ration or big damage output from Ihor and Arty witch makes a game for the team. And our big star, Gunrox – is a big boy with minigun, sick aim, and tasty sandwiches. He is definetly best heavy EU ;-). I can definitely say that Death and Nesh will show strong play because they have a lot of experience in HL and sick aim. These two guys will make a lot of problems for the enemy team as long as they have an opportunity to take a shot.

Finally, what are your opinions on weapon pickups in Highlander? Should they be allowed in future Highlander seasons?

I think this is a great innovation in the game, and it has both positive and negative sides. How much this innovation will affect the game is also very dependent on the map. For example, on pl_ maps drops from the BLU medic only means that the attack from BLU will start a bit later. From the other side if RED have UBER and a good situation on flank, they can push with uber and take the enemy’s medigun. The main negative aspect is that medics can`t properly count an enemy uber and spies need to check it more often, cos you can`t be sure if the enemy medic picked up someone’s medigun or not. Uber management is fucked cos of this new feature. And the second bad thing is drops. If medic drops he not only wastes his uber, he is now giving it to the enemy team and this is really painful for teams with dead medics. But in another side, drops from aggressive plays are now paying out if your team has enough resourses to push the enemy line and take their uber. And playing medic is now more interesting. You can drop RED medic on pl_badwater and just rush his corpse with your uber, and then continue with his own ;) I don`t think that this innovation makes game harder or easier for medic. And I can`t say that this is 100% bad or good. It just changes the game and I think that there is nothing critical about it. I think ETF2L should keep it.

Thanks to Klefsas for taking the time to talk to us!

Ukraine:
Scout: arty
Soldier: lippy
Pyro: food ration
Demo: Death
Heavy: GunroX
Engineer: Ihor
Medic: Klefsas
Sniper: Nesh
Spy: Detoed.

Announcing Season 22 powered by saloon.tf

After wrapping Season 21 powered by Tt eSPORTS up and crowning Se7en as champions, we are happy to announce our next 6v6 Season. All the information regarding the coming Season can either be found in this newspost, or will be announced in the future!

>>> Sign up now! <<<

Sign-up process

Make sure to choose your desired tier when signing up. If you created a new team, feel free to apply for the tier you believe you deserve you should be in. To prove you are capable of the tier you applied for, we require you to submit screenshots of results from your recent practice matches or tournaments where you scored decent results against teams that play on the level you aim for. The quantity is not the most important factor in this case, it’s more of a helpful measure for us to figure out if your team will be able to keep up with the pace. There is no magical, minimum or maximum number of screenshots that you have to submit.

Sending links to logs on logs.tf or similar are fine if you include a short explanatory comment for each linked log, e.g. who your opponents are supposed to be and where they played last seaseon. We will not accept plain lists of logs without any comments!

If you want to be more specific about a tier you request, send an application to staff@etf2l.org (details listed below) with a suitable subject. Emails with subjects like “Hello”, “Hi” or anything else that cannot be identified as a team applying for a tier by mail may be ignored.

Additionally since it happens time and time again, you do not sign up by mail, you sign up on the site and apply by mail if you are a newly formed team playing in anything higher than Open.

Please note that the success of your request also strongly depends on the free slots in the tier you aim for. Established teams will be favoured over new teams or teams that request to jump a tier. The screenshots have to be uploaded to an online image storage service (for example, you can use imgur or Dropbox). Keep in mind that if you opt for a zipped archives with tons of pictures attached to an e-mail, your application will be ignored. Keep it clean.

Also helpful for us, but not a must however, is adding who the opposing team is in each screenshot (and maybe even the division they played in the last time). That makes it easier for us, because sometimes it can be quite hard (especially in the lower tiers) to figure out who the teams in the screenshots are.

If you are applying for Open (which is our entry division), you do not have to provide any proof that you are capable of playing at that level.

Please send your application to staff@etf2l.org. The tier assignment request has to include the following information in order to be considered. Incomplete applications will be ignored!

• Do not use HTML in your e-mail. If you want to add a link, just paste the link in the e-mail as you would enter it in your browser.
• Team name
• Team link on ETF2L.org
• Tier/Division you apply for
• Link to the online photo album
• Reasons why your team deserves to be placed in the tier you applied for (optional)

Season 21 Promotions/Demotions

All Open and Mid playoff teams will receive a promotion to the next highest tier, unless their starting roster changed by more than half of their players. Hello Kitteh Ninjas! will be promoted to the Premier Division after winning the High Tier in Season 21.

Additionally the bottom 20% of the remaining teams in the High and Mid Tier will not have a guarantee to stay in their respective Tier. This affects the places 25-30 in the High Tier and the places 41 – 49 in the Mid Tier. The Open Tier does not have demotions.

Season Schedule

• Signups: September 6 – September 20
• Publishing of Provisional: September 20
• Publishing of Final: September 21
• Schedule Deadline: September 25
• Main Season: September 27 – November 12 (7 Weeks)
• High/Mid/Open Playoffs: November 15 – November 29
• Premiership Playoffs: November 22

Premiership Playoffs

We’ve received a couple of improvement suggestions for the Premiership Playoffs, none of which really convinced us. If you have any concrete suggestions to improve the system any further, please do let us know. Until then the full schedule for the playoffs will remain as follows:

November 22nd

19:00 CEST – 3rd vs 2nd

21:15 CEST – Winner vs 1st

The day of the finals is set to Sunday November 22nd. This day may be changed to a day before Sunday November 22nd if all 3 teams agree.

Unlocks

We have released a provisional whitelist for testing within TF2Pickup.net. This whitelist is not final and is subject to change before the season starts. Please provide any feedback to the new weapons allowed in this feedback thread. The whitelist can be found here.

In addition, we are planning to prohibit picking up any weapons including mediguns.

Maps, Prizes & other changes

Everything else will be announced in the future, we just wanted the schedule and the signups to be available to you all as early as possible.

VODs of all matches are available here!

It’s been months in the making but DeutschLAN 2015 is now upon us! This article is your guide for all the coverage gossip!

BlackOut TV will be covering every stage of the event from 20:00 CEST tonight when Round 1 begins of the Group Stage. You can find the full casting schedule below!

Friday

• 20:00 CEST: Round 1 (koth_lakeside_final) – Clark &  Atomicus
  • The German Intuition vs. Doctors Of Mediocrity
• 21:30 CEST: Round 2 (pl_badwater_pro_v8) – sigafoo & Atomicus
  • LANpander vs. ME!ME!MEMES!
• 23:00 CEST: Round 3 (cp_gullywash_final1) – sigafoo & Atomicus
  • checkers vs. LIFE IS BALLS

Saturday

• 10:00 CEST: Round 4 (pl_barnblitz_pro6) – foungi & Simba
  • checkers vs. LANpander
• 11:30 CEST: Round 5 (koth_product_rc8) – CeeJaey &  quintosh
  • Here for the Beer vs. The German Intuition
• 14:00 CEST:  Round 6 (cp_steel) – Insomniuhh & Atomicus
  • ME!ME!MEMES! vs. The German Intuition
• 15:30 CEST: Round 7 (cp_process_final) – Insomniuhh & Atomicus
  • Here for the Beer vs. RIP Harambe
• 17:00 CEST: Round 8 (pl_upward) – Asaaj &  unu
  • Fair Enough vs. LANpander
• 19:30 CEST: Round 9 (koth_warmtic_b6) – Hildreth &  Steve!
  • Fair Enough vs. checkers

The Semi Final match will take place at 21:00 CEST on Saturday evening, this will be played best of 3 maps.

The Grand Final will be played on Sunday from 10:00 CEST, also played best of 3 maps.