Due to technical difficulties out of our control, we have been forced to abandon all of the Round 2 & 3 fixtures. This means fixtures from Round 2 and 3 of the group stages will be moved to a different day/time, which will be announced at a later time. At this stage I would like to offer our apologies to all of the participants, we did not forsee such problems, we feel we cannot continue tonight without solving them properly.

Schedule

Sunday 11th January

• Group stage round 1 — Today  – cp_badlands

Sometime in the near future.

• Group stage round 2 — 20.30 CET to 21.30 CET — cp_process_final
• Group stage round 3 — 21.30 CET to 22.30 CET — cp_granary

Stream

Head on over to see coverage of the Archimedes Cup on TeamFortress.TV stream as Admirable and Sideshow will be bringing live coverage of the event! There are still some games going on now!

The 2015 boat has arrived with CeeJaey & Bulow as your brilliant casting duo on BlackOut TV and hidden inside is the Highlander playoff stage! First head to head is PremTech vs Stacked. The journey to tonight’s game hasn’t been the smoothest season possible with PremTech gaining losses at either end of the season inflicted by Highpander© & Tourettes Chessclub. However Stacked‘s ship didnt escape the choppy waters with a couple wins here and a couple losses there, quite possibly the more unpredictable team of this season. But will that uncertainty prove to be a benefit for Stacked and propel them to the semi-final face-off with Highpander© or will  PremTech come back at  Stacked for a second time with a victory? Tune in at 21 CET to find out!

Read the rest of this entry »

With the Archimedes Cup signups closed, we have over 160 signups and more than 128 teams ready to participate in the tournament! However we still have teams that are not eligible to play as we notice they have more than 1 player on their roster who does not fit the experience criteria for the tournament. For those still unsure about the criteria, please look at this previous NEWSPOST.

Ineligible Teams

For those teams who possess more than one player with too much experience to participate, we have listed you below:

• This Statement Is False
• 17th Legion
• Sprinkler Kids
• Peddlers Squad
• Team Cutted
• Enemies of War
• Full Metal Fish
• !bcheck !brekt
• Frog Village
• fetissiSQUAD e-Sports
• The Agency
• Synergy Gaming #FUN
• Under the Pub
• :)
• Aeria Gloris
• Gorilla's Vieze Harry [Archimedes Cup]
• Leaf Bird
• Bingo Mango Pomelo :3
• dream team
• KrkClan
• gamburgers
• Jona Lewie
• help ive fallen and cant get out of open
• our demo is main engie
• Salty Lemon Fun
• Jona Lewie
• Super Smash Brothers
• EzPez
• Paraolimpiada

Members of these teams must review their roster and our rules, removing the ineligible players by 17 CET.

Also please note WE CANNOT GUARANTEE your team a spot, teams who meet the requirements will be considered first. However there is always a chance a team will not show up for their matches, so you may get a last minute place in the tournament.

Buddies

Furthermore we must remind teams to set their selected Buddy with the appropriate player role. This will avoid confusion and potentially prevent you fielding an ineligible player on the wrong class during the tournament. To do this, please go to HERE and then “Manage Teams” then select “Edit Roster” and then select “Edit Role” from the drop down menu of your selected team Buddy.

Prizes + Incentive for Season 20

To remind teams, the €1,000 prize pool we have donated generously from Scrap.tf will be converted into Euros and allocated as so to the top 3 teams:

• 1st place – €500
• 2nd place – €350
• 3rd place – €150

As a special incentive for those teams participating in the Archimedes Cup to sign up for Season 20, we are offering every team that completes both the Archimedes Cup and Season 20 a chance to enter a raffle to win €200 as part of the money donated from Scrap.tf. The rules to enter are simple: If you participate in both the Archimedes Cup and Season 20 and complete all of your matches, you will automatically be entered into a raffle contest to win the €200 prize. What are you waiting for? To sign up for Season 20 – GO HERE!

Please note the winning team must not have accumulated any minor warnings and the team must posses at least 3 of the original roster from the Archimedes Cup by the time Season 20 is completed.

For those who cannot participate in the cup but wish to watch the tournament, there is over €400 in raffle prizes to be won throughout the tournament, over on TeamFortress.TV! 

Schedule

Remember folks this cup has a FIXED SCHEDULE and is starting at 19:00 CET on Sunday 11th January so teams do not have long to complete their roster. Signups are still open, if you do not get a place in the tournament but your team is eligible, stick around as we may be able to enter you into the tournament last minute in case teams fail to show.

Sunday 11th January

• Group stage round 1 — 19 CET to 20 CET – cp_badlands
• Group stage round 2 — 20 CET to 21 CET — cp_process_final
• Group stage round 3 — 21 CET to 22 CET — cp_granary

Sunday 18th January

• Knockout round 1 — 19 CET to 20 CET — cp_snakewater_final1
• Knockout Round 2 — 20 CET to 21 CET — cp_gullywash_final1
• Knockout Round 3 — 21 CET to 22 CET — koth_viaduct_pro_rc4

Tuesday 20th January

• Quarter Finals — 19 CET to 20 CET — cp_logjam
• Semi Finals — 20 CET — 22 CET, best of 3 maps, teams get to pick (see explanation of map elimination)

Sunday 25th January

• Grand Final — Best of 3 maps (Map elimination)

How you find your match

With help from TF2center and serveme.tf, we will automatically be providing a matchserver for you guys to play on. You will play the match through TF2center as they will be hosting a private lobby for you and your opponents to join to ensure all players are ready before participation.

At approximately 18 CET we will publish all of the links for your matches on your matchpage. To find your matchpage, go to this page and select the appropriate fixture on the list as this will take you directly to the match page enabling you to find the appropriate link.  As a team leader, you will be responsible for organizing your team and getting them into the Lobby page and ensuring they get onto the match server on time. Please remember you will have 15 minutes from the allocated start time to get ready before the other team is able to claim a default win.

If needed, you may use the TF2center mumble server if you do not have one already. Simply follow the “join mumble” link on the lobby page and you will be redirected to the mumble server (please note you will need the mumble client installed first).

If you need any help in anyway, please ask an admin on IRC – GO HERE TO ASK AN ADMIN.

The Anti-Cheat Team is stocking up again!

The remaining Anti-Cheat staff would like to take this opportunity to thank the very knowledgeable quintosh for his continued hard work and commitment over an exceptionally long Anti-Cheat career. Serving in both AC staff and head AC positions, quintosh brought drive to the team and was reliable and competent. He will be missed and we wish him well in all he does in the future.

This leaves an open position for anyone interested in working for a league free from cheaters. Anti-Cheat admins ensure fair competition in the league by analyzing submitted evidence for signs of cheats and issuing bans to confirmed cheaters. Submitted evidence is rarely clear-cut – most cases are challenging and involve a fair bit of “forensic work”.

Anti-Cheat staff need to have a good sense of trust and morality, additionally be excited by detective work and technical aspects of the source engine that come with demo viewing and cheats and such. It’s also important to have no bias and be respectful of the democratic process on voting.

Please don’t be intimidated to apply, it’s a position that you can really only improve on with real experience.

Rules update

As most of you will already be aware recently there have been a couple of exploits uncovered which allow manipulation of how your client side TF2 looks. In some cases this will give the person using it an unfair advantage and because of this the ETF2L AC team has decided to make this post in order to put any misconceptions about these exploits to rest.

If you use any of these exploits you will be issued with a ban. The ban lengths are as follows

• 3 months for removing props e.g. rocks and bushes on cp_badlands.
• 3 months for removing the scope overlay.
• 1 year for any surface texture modifications which will function like a wall hack.

Any player caught using these exploits will be banned in accordance with the information above.

banner by Yggdrasil

To kick off Season 20 we decided to host a cup totally fitting the general climate around this time of the year: The Sunshine Cup! In addition to introducing the map it will give teams new to ETF2L a chance to try out the whole ‘official match’ process and result submission before the actual season – hopefully decreasing the amount of mistakes during the actual season. We’ll be using cp_sunshine_rc4.

For this cup we will be using the Season 20 whitelist, which includes all the preliminary unlocks and the recently released demoman unlocks. Make sure to use the correct whitelist which can be found on whitelist.tf (raw)!

Depending on the number of signups there will be several brackets to accommodate different skill levels, each consisting of four groups of four teams each. This cups group stage will be played on Thursday, January 15th. The top two teams from each group will proceed into the knockout stages on Sunday, January 18th. We’ll break any ties primarily based on head-to-head match-ups and, if that’s not enough, based on round difference over the whole of the group stage. If any tiebreakers are needed after that they will be played on Friday and/or Saturday, January 16th/17th.

Both standard 6v6 and fun teams are eligible to enter the cup and can sign up here. Don’t forget that one default merc will be allowed – so your 6v6 team might just be viable after all! Both signup lists will be merged for the actual seedings, it doesn’t matter in which one you sign up.

Sign ups will close on Wednesday, January 14th at 23:59CEST or when there’s a total of 128 sign ups, whichever occurs first. Teams signing up after that deadline will be considered as replacement teams for teams dropping on short notice!

serveme.tf will provide 30 keys and one-year-donator-status for 12 players to be handed out to the glorious winners of this cup! Read the rest of this entry »