This is what all of you have been waiting for: The Sunshine Cup Knock-out Stages!
The part where the teams will give each other a run for their prizes!

Each bracket has its own ‘mini-tournament’, starting at Sunday 18th of January 19:30CET with the round of 8. The semi-finals are going to be played at 20:30CET, leaving the grand finals to be played at 21:30CET.

The schedule is rather tight, so please submit your match results as soon as you’re done with a match! Matches without results will be decided by coin flip at the start of the next round.

Just a quick reminder for every team (especially the newer ones):

We encourage using the match comments to keep in touch with an opponent. Any agreement between two teams regarding the use of mercs or servers must be recorded on the relevant match page.
If anything requires verification it MUST be documented either by a screenshot of the original conversation or by leaders from both teams providing confirmation in the match comments (the latter is more optimal because screenshots can easily be faked).

The tournament trees for various brackets aswell as prizes and casts can be looked up below.

These brackets will also be listed in the Sunshine Cup powered by serveme.tf Home hubpage

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Mad-man  quintosh & Irish lad Bulow on BlackOut TV are your hosts for the penultimate game of Season 7! PremTech are now taking on the big boys from Highpander© for the one final spot in the Grand Final. Morale will be running high for PremTech after they snagged a victory battling  Stacked last Sunday in the first playoff but will their brilliance continue to shine through and carry them to the final or will Highpander© be determined to get the chance at a season win for the second time in a row? Whatever the result tonight, no-one will be walking away with nothing, the losing squad winding up with 3rd place while the winner moves forward for a chance at the 1st place spot next week against  Tourettes Chessclub. Be there at 21 CET for all the frags and gore!

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Due to the technical issues that hit last Sundays Archimedes Cup group stages, we have revised the schedule. The play days will remain the same with the exception of the final, which will be extended to be played within the space of a week from the 26th January to the 1st of February. The full schedule is below:

Sunday 18th 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

* Teams that have replaced dropped teams will play Round 1 again, otherwise all results stand including defaulted matches.

Tuesday 20th 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

Sunday 25th 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)

Deadline: Sunday 1st February

Grand Final — Best of 3 maps (Map elimination)

Changes to setup

Due to the whole host of problems caused by last weekends setup, we have now fully automated the process of connecting to the match server. Team leaders will be advised by either an admin or on the match page of a private TF2center hosted lobby page they need to do join, once their team is ready on the lobby page, they will automatically join a server without the need to have a server reserved in advanced. This will be done using a simple queuing system linked to serveme.tf, meaning that in the event of one match server going offline, you will simply be given another one instantly. No more fussing around because your server’s broken! Just let the system do it all for you.

Please note this does mean that players will need to login via TF2center, meaning those with current bans on the website should seek advice from TF2center admins (by visiting their forums) about getting unbanned for the tournament. Please note, there is no guarantee you will be unbanned, this is purely down to the discretion of the TF2center admins.

Results Submissions

Upon the completion of a match, the winning team leader will be allowed to submit the results either by using the classic method of taking screenshots or by posting the logs.tf matchlogs, which will include the links to the SteamID’s and the scores for the match. All serveme.tf servers will automatically generate logs, you can find them by visiting logs.tf, logging in and searching your recent matches. Please note, if the logs fail to upload or are not uploaded correctly, you will still be required to submit a status screenshot.

The cup’s hub page has been released  and all relevant details can be found there.

The groups have been released and all matches have been set to the respective times. Make sure to play them on time. If you have a dropped team in your group, just disregard all matches against that team. We’re looking to fill all gaps with waiting teams, but there’s only so much we can do. Sorry. Make sure to check shortly before the appointed match time, if any dropped teams have been replaced! We will not replace any dropped teams after 19:00CEST . If you want to be on the waiting list, just sign up – you’ll be put on it automatically.

Due to limited signups two groups are short one team, and have a placeholder team in their group. All matches with that placeholder team will be defaulted. We also have one bracket of half size which will play only two knockout rounds on Sunday.

>>> GROUPS <<<

To guarantee a smooth cup , everyone on your team has to have cp_sunshine_rc4 downloaded  and ready to use. Your server needs to have the correct map and s20 configs too, which you can find on our League Configs page (the correct map has been uploaded to the serveme.tf servers, too).

Each team should have at least one representative in #etf2l on IRC at all times to contact your opponents; if you don’t usually have an IRC client running, you can use our webchat plugin.

Up to two mercs may be used, even if the opposing team would allow more. One of those mercs may be a default merc, which need to be presented to the opponents beforehand, but cannot be disallowed by  the opponents unless he is more experienced than the team he’s supposed to play for. The other merc may be disallowed without giving any reason.

Please forward all map related feedback towards the feedback thread.

Make sure to verify your match results swiftly, before the end of the night, so we can move on to the Knockout Stages smoothly. Remember that a match which has no results submitted before the respective deadline (Friday 15.01.15 23:59 CET) will be nullified.

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!