Esports Heaven Velociraptor Challenge

The Velociraptor Challenge, hosted at Esports Heaven and sponsored by Western Digital, will kick off on Monday, April 16. All teams are welcome to play, the maximum signup number is 64. Currently only 14 teams have signed up which makes the scene look pretty bad and decreases the likeliness for sponsored TF2 cups on Esports Heaven in the future.

To all teams that already signed up but do not appear in the team list: Please make sure all of your players have entered a valid Steam ID. If they have not, they can do so here (you need to be logged in on the Esports Heaven website).

If we reach a signup number of more than 32 teams, the schedule is shown below. In case this number is not reached, an updated schedule will be published on Monday.

Week 1: Monday 16/04:

20:00 CEST UB Round 1 (cp_granary)
20:45 CEST UB Round 2 + LB Round 1 (cp_snakewater)
21:30 CEST UB Round 3 + LB Round 2 (cp_gravelpit)

Week 2: Monday 23/04:

20:00 CEST LB Round 3 (cp_granary)
20:45 CEST LB Round 4 + UB Round 4 (cp_badlands)
21:30 CEST LB Round 5 + UB Round 5 (cp_gullywash_final1)

Week 3: Monday 30/04:

20:00 CEST LB Round 6 (cp_snakewater)
20:45 CEST LB Round 7 (cp_gravelpit)
21:30 CEST LB Round 8 (cp_badlands)
21:00 CEST UB final (Best of 3) (teams pick maps)

Week 4: Monday 07/05:

20:00 CEST LB Round 9 (cp_gullywash_final1)
21:15 CEST LB Final (Best of 3) (teams pick maps)

Week 5: Monday 14/05:

21:15 CEST Grand Final (1-2 maps, team from UB can lose 1 map, team from LB can’t) (teams pick maps, team from LB can choose to pick first)

Bans

The following players are found guilty in account sharing during an ETF2L match and recieve a one-year ban from all ETF2L competitions:

• Marcu – Account sharing – 1 Year ban
• :blind.pt – Account sharing – 1 Year ban

The following players are found guilty in supporting the above players’ account sharing and are banned for one season from all ETF2L competitions:

• HurricaneR – supporting account sharing – 1 season ban
• Duff – supporting account sharing – 1 season ban
• Kiler4fun – supporting account sharing – 1 season ban
• Lil Brotha – supporting account sharing – 1 season ban
• Kalhó – supporting account sharing – 1 season ban

All matches except the first round match (which was a noshow default win) of the team batdog in the Saffron Cup have been removed or changed to a default loss. The following default dates apply for replaying the affected matches. The teams can agree to play earlier. If neither team can play at the default date, the result will be decided with a coinflip.

• The Enigma Zone Crew versus Aftershock Gaming: Tuesday, April 17, 21:00 CEST (Result: 1-6)
  
• Aftershock Gaming versus Perilous Gaming: Sunday, April 22, 21:00 CEST

Obviously, this causes some delay. The deadlines for the semi-finals and the final will be moved.

• Semi-finals: Wednesday, April 25
• Final: Sunday, April 29

Season 12 Map Polls

Over the past four days we have given everyone the chance to nominate their favourite maps for the Season 12 map pool – here are the top 5 maps you nominated.

You can either vote 1 or 2 maps on this poll. The poll will be open until Sunday April 15, after which the map pool for the ETF2L Season 12 will be announced.

You can sign up for Season 12 here!

Season 11 Awards

You voted – here are the results! Congratulations to all winners:

• Scout of the Season: Schocky
• Soldier of the Season: Mike
• Demoman of the Season: numlocked
• Medic of the Season: F2
• Off-classer of the Season: TviQ
• MVP of the Season: Schocky
• Best Premier Division Debut of the Season: TviQ
• Surprisingly Good Team of the Season: uV Gaming
• Upcoming Talent of the Season: Mr. G – String
• Fairplay Award: Team Colonslash: Reditio
• People’s Choice Award: Angel

Ooops!

There was a … let’s call it “error in our database” due to which we lost the Season 12 waiting list. Luckily we had a backup and readded the teams. If your team signed up on Monday or Tuesday, you should check if you are still signed up in case we missed your team and re-sign up if we did. We apologise for the inconvenience caused.

Brackets and Scheduling

The one night only Saffron Cup starts today so good luck to all teams participating! Matches should be played as the schedule indicates. Please be on time to your matches so you are ready to play the next round at the appropriate time.

The brackets are available here!

Reminder of Rules:

• ETF2L Season 11 rules apply (apart from the unlock ruleset)
• Setup – Cup of 2^n
• Merc rules – 2 mercs allowed by default if they are presented on the match page (experience requirements still apply)

Schedule:

• 20.00 CEST, Round of 64: cp_snakewater
• 20:45 CEST, Round of 32: cp_granary
• 21:30 CEST, Round of 16: cp_gullywash_final1
• 22:15 CEST, Quarter Finals: cp_badlands
• The semi-finals and the final are played “best of three” with map elimination (map pool + gravelpit) and are scheduled by the participating teams
• Deadline for the semi-finals: Sunday, April 15
• Deadline for the final: Thursday, April 19.

Removal of Teams

We have had to remove some teams that did not meet the entry requirements and had too many players with experience from division 2 or higher. Please remember for future cups, if you wish to compete you must read and comply with all entry requirements!

We appreciate, however, that so many teams want to take part and many new teams have been created just for this cup. Some of these teams will have unverified players when the tournament starts so we are allowing all unverified players that were added to the team before 19.00 CEST today! Repeat: These players will not count as mercs.

Prizes!

Remember that you are playing for some amazing prizes that have been generously donated by Tt eSPORTS and the Season 11 winners Team Infused! The winning team will recieve 6 Tt eSPORTS MEKA G-UNIT Keyboards and the runners up will win 6 Tt eSPORTS Battle Dragon Bags.

SNSD vs Colony

After keeping everyone waiting for 2 weeks in true Team Fortress fashion, top highlander teams  SNSD and colony are set to go head-to-head tonight at 21:00 CEST! The match will be covered live by VanillaTV with Hildreth.

This is probably the most “classic” matchup in competitive TF2, with the first issue going back to a ladder game in August 2010, which finished in a close draw. It is interesting to note that colony have changed only 2 players since then, while only 3 remain from SNSD’s first roster. These teams have developed a habit of meeting each other in finals, with SNSD coming up on top and colony developing a forever-second-syndrome.

Some players to watch will be

• furbo of colony, known for his sneaky scouting
• kaidus of SNSD, who is making his Highlander debut
• SabaSaba to make  TheSucker drop über (again)
• Linus and zoob, arguably the best soldiers in the Highlander scene

To mark the first clash of these 2 titans in Season 2, there will be a competition for the stream viewers to compete in! The goal is to guess how far each team gets in their first attacking round, and how long it took them (MM:SS). A whopping £25 prize will go to the viewer who submits the closest time for both teams. To enter, just comment on this post on VanillaTF2. You can also PM a caster in IRC on the night of the cast, so make sure you tune in for your chance to win!

Season 12! Map Information!

Season 12 is on its way! Please take note of the following information:

• Signups are open NOW
• Seeding starts on Wednesday April 18
• Divisions should be announced on Sunday April 22
• Week 1 will start on Sunday April 29 (default dates will be set on Friday April 27, as usual)

Like last season, we will hold polls to determine the map pool. The approach is a bit different from last season:

The top 4 maps from the last poll are set.

• cp_badlands
• cp_gullywash_final1
• cp_granary
• cp_snakewater

The last two maps will be decided with a poll between five maps. These five maps are nominated by YOU from now until April 12 after which the polls will be created. Please nominate your favourite two maps that are not in the map pool yet in this thread.

Since Season 12 is so close to Season 11, the placements from the last season will obviously be the most important factor to seed the teams into their divisions. If you created a new team or feel you can jump a division anyway, feel free to apply for the desired division. To prove you are capable of said division, we require you to submit screenshots of recent practice wars or tournaments where you scored decent results against teams that play on the level you aim for. The screenshots have to be uploaded to an online photo album (for example you can use imgur or Dropbox), zipped archives with tons of pictures attached to an email will not be considered. Please send your application to staff@etf2l.org.

The email has to contain the following:

• Team name
• Link to the team profile on ETF2L.org
• Link to the online photo album
• The division you applied for
• Further information why your team should be seeded into the desired division

New website feature

We have received numerous complaints from players about randomly being added to teams they never knew existed. Unfortunately, this was a side-effect of our efforts to make running a team simple and easy; team leaders had been able to add whoever they wanted to their team roster. Due to the many cases of abuse though, we have decided to put an end to this by introducing a new feature – Team Invitations.

Every player will have a new page on the Team Admin area of the website, called Invitations. Here you can see what teams have invited you to join and there will be buttons there to either Accept or Reject their invitations:

Once an invitation is accepted, the player is added to the team’s roster immediately and all other invitations from teams of the same type will be removed.
Rejecting an invitation will simply remove the invitation from the list.

Ignored invitations are automatically removed after 7 days.

A massive thanks to Spike Himself for putting in the time and effort to add this feature!

Season 11 Award Polls

Thanks to everyone who participated in the nominations for the Season 11 awards. Unfortunately, we are under the impression that some people did not really take the awards seriously (SHOCK! HORROR!). As a result we have decided that these will be the last awards where the winners are nominated by the public – maybe the last awards ever.

Enough of this now, here are the polls:

One Night Cup: Saffron Unlocks – Moved

The one-night cup will be moved from tonight to Tuesday April 10, due to the original schedule clashing with Angel’s Cup at Esports Heaven. We apologise for the short notice announcement but we believe this is for the better because all teams should have a chance to play in both tournaments.

But there is more news on this cup! Newly crowned Season 11 champions  Team Infused will generously sponsor their prizes to the finalists of this cup, which means that the winning team will receive six Tt eSPORTS MEKA G-UNIT Keyboards, and the second placed team wins six Tt eSPORTS Battle Dragon Bags!

This could have been the second chance for Season 11 runner-up  Epsilon eSports to grab the keyboards BUT there is another change to the ruleset of this tournament! All participating teams must not play with more than 3 players with division 2 (or higher) experience in ETF2L Seasons 10! or 11 (or respectively other leagues) and the cups are no longer separated into brackets of 16.

Currently there are about 40 teams on the waiting list so we expect a turnout of at least 64 slots. Teams that already signed up stay signed up (please check if you meet the new requirements). If you can not play at the new date please let an admin know on IRC. Grab yourself the upcoming talents and win some gaming gear!

Rules overview:

• ETF2L Season 11 rules apply (apart from the unlock ruleset)
• Setup – Cup of 2^n
• Merc rules – 2 mercs allowed by default if they are presented on the match page (experience requirements still apply)
• Bracket draw – Tuesday, April 10 at 19:00 CEST in #etf2l
• Sign-ups open – Now

Schedule for 64 or less teams:

• 20.00 CEST, Round of 64: cp_snakewater
• 20:45 CEST, Round of 32: cp_granary
• 21:30 CEST, Round of 16: cp_gullywash_final1
• 22:15 CEST, Quarter Finals: cp_badlands
• The semi-finals and the final are played “best of three” with map elimination (map pool + gravelpit) and are scheduled by the participating teams
• Deadline for the semi-finals: Sunday, April 15
• Deadline for the final: Thursday, April 19.

Season 11 Award Nominations

Season 11 is now over with the last match being played last night. As after every season, it is now time for the award nominations! Please visit the listed forums to nominate your favourite player/team/thing until April 9, the polls will follow shortly after in another newspost.

The following categories are listed in the nomination forum:

• Scout of the Season
• Soldier of the Season
• Demoman of the Season
• Medic of the Season
• Off-Classer of the Season
• Surprisingly Good Team of the Season
• Most Valuable Player of the Season
• Best Premiership Debut of the Season
• Upcoming Talent of the Season
• Fairplay Award
• People’s Choice Award