Last Wednesday saw the great Highlander Mix-Up Match between competitive players, Valve developers and players from the public community. To start off the match, two exciting rounds were played on Badwater. The second map was played on Granary, and even though there were some DOS attacks on the SourceTV’s and the connection of players, the fun could not be spoiled! Full sourceTV demos for both maps are available.

Big thanks to Fakkelbrigade and Multiplay for providing the SourceTV’s. Also a huge shoutout to  Ashkan for organizing the event with me, and Valve (especially Robin Walker) for being dedicated and getting payed to play TF2 at work.

Below, you will find a link to the SourceTV demos and the cast by Byte and Exfane. You can download the demos and audio or watch the stream (courtesy of levelup TV) in your browser.

SourceTV Demos and Shoutcast Audio Download

Stay tuned to ETF2L for STV demos and VODs!

It has been a while, but now it is finally time to bring you the event you have all been waiting for. The ETF2L Highlander Community Challenge which tries to find the best community team of TF2 has seen over a thousand signups and an exciting group stage. The tournament is now down to 256 teams who will face off in a straight knock-out cup. The perfect time for one of the most the most unique all-star matches in the history of competitive TF2. Ashkan and ETF2L will be bringing you a 9v9 highlander match that defines the good relations between the public and competitive communities, and the TF2 developers. In this match, experienced competitive players, Pubbers and Valve Employees will be pitted into two groups and fight for eternal glory and your pleasure.

Besides watching the game through SourceTV you can tune in to our live coverage of the event by ETF2L Radio & lvl^up tv. For those of you who are at work or looking for an easier way to follow this match, they will be providing a live video-stream as well. Casting for you will be none other then Byte, highlander hero And then, without warning, and Exfane . In addition to that our German followers can check out tfportal.de for a cast in their native language. While fans of   A_spec can travel to H2Ktv for their live streaming dose. Be sure to check back on the Wednesday the 24th for further details on what will be a great and hopefully undisturbed spectacle of Team Fortress 2.

Again a  big thanks to Larolaro for creating this awesome poster!

The Fancy Details:

The lineups:

Team Kicasso

• Scout: Dignitas\ Darn
• Soldier: [Valve] Robin Walker
• Pyro: madmattd
• Demoman: Epsilon Sneis
• Heavy: [Valve] Dave Kircher
• Engineer: Bombski
• Medic: Blight | Mvp
• Sniper: [Valve] Bank Charnchaichujit
• Spy: Jared Sol

Team Shakespearicles

• Scout: Pro ViQun
• Soldier: My NaMe Is YuKaRi
• Pyro: Simple
• Demoman: Refuse! Xzar
• Heavy: [Valve] Corey Peters
• Engineer: Kershbob
• Medic: [FB] Arie
• Sniper: [Valve] Derrick Gennrich
• Spy: [Valve] Blake Reinhart

Be sure to give your feedback: here

The brackets for the second Experimental Ordnance Cup have been generated and we are ready to go live!

High Bracket: Click here
Low Bracket: Click here

Round 1: 20:00 CET (granary)
Quarter Final: 20:45 CET (gullywash)
Semi Final: 21:30 CET (granary)
Final: 22:15 CET (gullywash)

Spectating!

Be sure to watch some of these exciting games live, we will try to have sourceTV info available every round, on this page. In addition to that, TF2TV will be casting this cup live. Be sure to check out their stream, or listen through mumble while spectating through sourceTV.

Some reminders:

Please contact your opponents in #etf2l on IRC, so ensure at least one of your team is in there at all times. If you have any problems with contacting your opponents, please talk to an Admin. There will be servers with sourceTV’s (hosted by Multiplay) available for you to play on, request them by talking to an admin.

• All teams must have 1 player ready on #etf2l (quakenet) to find their opponent and schedule the match.
• When your match starts more than 10 minutes late, please reduce the map time to 15-25 minutes, depending on how long you have left before the next round starts. Bear in mind that if the map finishes in a draw, there will be a golden cap period to follow.
• If your match finishes in a draw, you must play a golden cap round to decide the winner. Please reset the config and play a 5 minute golden cap round. The first team to cap in this round, wins. If neither team caps within 5 minutes, the team that holds cp3 at the end of the 5 minute period wins.
• All polycount (stat) hats and Natasha are banned, heavy is limited to 1. All other weapons are allowed
• You will have to use 2 of the following 6 options: Vita-saw, Buff banner, Battalion’s backup, Mad milk, Pyro, Heavy.

After weeks of running around with the new unlocks on publics it is finally time to see how they fare in competitive play. The Experimental Ordnance Cup #2 will try to explore the strengths and weaknesses of new unlocks and strategies. Are they good? Are they balanced? Are they fun? Play it and prove it.

>>> Signup Now <<<

Unlock Rules & Minimum Requirements

In this cup all weapons will be allowed except for a few modifications. Because of their obvious availability issues set hats will remain banned. To focus on testing the new GRU Heavy we will use the setup with Heavy limit 1 and Natasha banned. To make things even more interesting each team must use at least two of the following during each game:

• Vita-saw
• Buff banner
• Battalion’s backup
• Mad milk
• Pyro
• Heavy

Note: You have to run 2 unique options, that means 2 mad milk is not enough.

Map List and Seedings

Providing we get enough signups, we will have a high and low cup running together. When signing up, you will be placed on the waiting list at first and seeded into the correct group afterwards.

• First Round – cp_granary
• Second Round – cp_gullywash_imp3
• Semis – cp_granary
• Final – cp_gullywash_imp3

Special Merc Rule

Up to a maximum of three mercs may be used without permission from your opponent, providing they are from the same division or lower as the main team. This is because we recognize that not all teams will have a full roster willing to parcipate in this competition, but we still want to get as much feedback as possible, particularly from the higher divisions.

Signups and Cup Schedule

Signups will open on Tuesday evening at 20:00 CET and close on Wednesday at 17:30 CET. The draw will be held at 18:00CET in #etf2l and the cup will begin at 20:00 CET on Wednesday evening.

As a community, Team Fortress 2 prides itself on its together-ness. After being sidelined by other more popular games for so long, competitive Team Fortress 2 has finally started to be respected for what it is. However respect is a two way exchange. We need to recognise that we can work together with other parts of the online gaming world with one such example being the i-series lan and Multiplay. After the success of i40, the low turnout for i41 may not have been unexpected by some, but not being there doesn’t mean we can’t still be taking part and thanking Multiplay for the support that they’re continuing to give us. Coverage of i41 is as follows –

Starting at 14:00CET today is the Multiplay i41 Team Fortress 2 tournament. The following teams are taking part for the chance to win £1750 in prizes –

• MM
• .:ne:.
• Racked.eu
• [SAS]
• Team Coconut
• TwistedPlay
• TwistedPlay Circlejerk

The Grand final will take place tomorrow at 17:00CET with the stream available here

So even though i42 will be much better (don’t forget the early bird discount will start shortly after i41!), it doesn’t mean we should ignore the dedication and support that i41 brings us. Good luck and have fun everyone!