After months of planning and waiting, our friends from across the pond over at Community Fortress have announced their very own Highlander tournament! This time, everyone is invited, pubbers and pros alike! There will even be separate conferences for European and American teams, meaning, we won’t be forced to wake up in the middle of the night to stomp on American gunboat soldiers.

Alright, let’s skip to the details:

• Sign-ups close on Saturday the 16th of April. Matches can start being played on the following day.
• Open to everyone regardless of division and experience. Everyone will play in the same bracket and the seeding will be completely random.
• There will be a North American conference and a European conference. They will stay separated throughout the entire tournament. This is done to avoid the ping issues that occur when playing between continents.
• It will be a double elimination tournament.
• Teams will play on servers provided through Community Fortress.

Be sure to check out the rule page for a full set of rules, maps and unlocks.

American matches will be casted by the guys over at eXtv, while TF2TV will be taking care of the European match-ups.

The maps will be played on a ‘1 map per week’ basis with a double elimination format, meaning that teams with a busy schedule should still find the time to participate. This also means that all teams will get to play at least two matches in total, since they will be moved to the loser’s bracket if they lose their first match.

But what would highlander be without prizes?! Our friends at Valve will be kind enough to provide the top 3 teams of each conference with some signed TF2 swag!

If you want a chance at winning these prizes or if you just want to play some highlander, head on over to the sign-up thread and join in on the fun!

In the build-up to the i42 LAN, ETF2L partners Multiplay have announced that they are running an online qualifier tournament. This will give teams the chance to win free tickets to i42, which runs from the 22nd to the 25th of April. Sign-ups are open now, if you have any questions or problems, please go to #insomnia-tf2 on QuakeNet.

Rules

Matches will be played on one map per round in the Vanilla+med format, until the grand finals where the winner will be decided in a Best of Three maps contest.

Sign-ups will be open until 2 hours prior to each competition’s start time.

UPDATE! Due to technical problems, the i42 Online Qualifier Tournament will be held one day later, on Wednesday! The sign-ups will close at 18:00 CEST on Wednesday. If everything goes as planned, the tournament will be finished at Wednesday, so it is shortened to a One-Day-Tournament! Optional, the remaining matches can still be played at the next day.

The new schedule is as follows:

Wednesday 6th of April:

Round 1: 20:00 CEST
Round 2: 21:00 CEST
Round 3: 22:00 CEST

Grand Finals: Decided by finalists (can be played at 23:00 CEST but is Best of Three, so the option to re-schedule is available)

For more details and to sign up, please see the Multiplay Website. Remember that there are limited spaces available so get signed up as soon as possible!

The Divisions are finally final!

>>> Season 9 Tables <<<

We have tried to accommodate every team as best as we can. If you still disagree with where your team has been placed, the best course for you to take is to prove us wrong with your results from this season. Teams that haven’’t yet signed up but are still interested can join the waiting list. If for any reason there is room in a division, due to for example drops, we try to fill the gaps with teams from the waiting list.

Week 1 starts this coming Monday, so start talking to your week 1 opponents now! This is only Schedule Week 1 – on Monday the 28th, we will move into Match Week 1/Schedule Week 2. At this point, all unscheduled Week 1 matches will receive a Default Date. During the week starting the 28th, you should play your week 1 match AND schedule your week 2 match. More on that can be found in the General Rules.

Reminders

• Please note that warnings will be given out this season if a match has not been played after the match deadline, unless an admin has been consulted and an extension of the match deadline has been granted.
• As a general reminder we like to note that match comments should be used to record any agreements between two teams regarding the use of mercs, servers or other issues. This way you can ensure easy processing of results, as well as avoiding problems when a dispute arises.
• Try not to use the chat function during a match to comment on anything unless it’s in a positive manner. Chat abuse or racist names/avatars will not be tolerated (this includes binds!).

Another great LAN event will take place next weekend  between the 18th and 20th of March, at Epinal (in the East of France, not too far for Germany). Maxlan is a big E-sports event in France, featuring a lot of different games including:

• TF2
• CS 1.6
• COD4
• CSS
• Starcraft 2
• Trackmania

At the moment, thirteen teams are signed up. While three or four teams will definitely pay in the upcoming days, TF2 is still far from the ultimate goal of twenty-four teams. There is still time to sign up and form a (mix)team! Who could refuse spending a wonderful weekend in France, playing TF2 while eating frog legs and drinking wine? It will only cost you €42 (and you’ll get €5 offered for beers!).

Top European teams including the likes of  Button Bashers and Epsilon eSports will also be attending the event. And people will be able to watch awesome frags and keep up with the competiton results with TF2TV, HiscoreTV(French), Cadred and esportfrance covering the event live. So make sure you leave room in your schedule to follow this event when it happens!

Official site

General information
Mix/Merc
Attending Teams

If you have any queries get in touch with Keyro or Drosophile

As of yesterday, the sign-up stage for The ETF2L SteelSeries Season 9 has ended, over 365 teams have signed up in just one week. Teams that haven’t signed up but are interested can still sign up to the waiting list in case there is room in a division, due to for example drops.

ETF2L would once again like to give a huge thanks to SteelSeries who have been generous enough to put forward the following prizes for Season 9:

Premier Division :

Premier Division Winners – SteelSeries Siberia v2 (White) Headset

Premier Division 2nd Place – SteelSeries Xai Mice

Premier Division 3rd Place – SteelSeries 4H

Division 1 :

Division 1 Winners – SteelSeries 9HD

Everyone :

In the style of Season 8 and in partnership with Valve, all participants of Season 9 will receive an in-game medal to show off their efforts! Coming first, second or third in your division will earn you a gold, silver or bronze medal respectively. We haven’t forgotten about the medals promised to you in Season 8 either; the technology required to give them out will be released by Valve soon.

And more :

Three sets of posters signed by Valve staff will be up for grabs for 3 teams that prove themselves to be awesome in season 9. The requirements for qualifying as awesome, and hopefully winning the posters, will be published soon.

Finally, we officially announce that BuffaloBill has departed from the admin team. Many thanks for the time and effort you put into the league and helping us out, Bill. We wish you all the best.