It’s been several months since we last saw Highlander played in ETF2L. The highly successful Community Challenge saw thousands of players getting a fresh taste of competitive TF2, and concluded with our pub heroes  SNSD taking the crown. With such great success and so many new players getting into TF2, we couldn’t resist giving the community a new challenge and opportunity to play competitive TF2. Therefore, we are happy to announce the opening of our inaugural ETF2L Highlander season!

Prizes

Alright, we might as well get this out of the way…… Yes, there will be in-game items awarded to all participants to finish their season, courtesy of Valve! More details will be provided at a later date.

Dates and Setup

Sign-ups are currently open and will close on October 30th, with week 1 starting on Sunday November 6th. We aim for a short and sweet five-week regular season with a promotion/relegation system and play-offs to resolve ties.

As mentioned before, everyone is welcome to take part. The ETF2L veterans (who might still remember the 2009 Highlander cups) are as welcome as the new Free-2-Play folks. We will seed teams into different groups and divisions based on their experience.

North Americans and other non-European teams are welcome to participate, providing they are willing to play during European times and on European servers if necessary. We will group regions together as much as possible in order to ease scheduling and avoid server problems.

How To Sign Up

To sign up to the league, you first need to be part of a Highlander (9v9) team with a minimum of 10 players and a maximum of 20 players on the roster. You can find or form a team in the Highlander recruitment forum. Once you are in a team, your leader or deputy can sign your team up to the competition here.

Your team can request a division and skill bracket when signing up. Division 5 and 6 are the best choices for most teams who are starting out with competitive TF2. Division 4 is good for those who already have experience with Highlander, while division 3 is best for trained Highlander teams and those with 6v6 experience. Divisions 1-2 are meant for the top teams, so don’t sign up to those unless you are very confident in your team. Teams can send result screenshots from Highlander matches to [email protected], to prove that they belong in the requested division. Please do so before sign-ups close on the 30th of October.

For detailed information on how to create an ETF2L account, create a team and add players to the roster, please visit the FAQ page.

Map Schedule

Due to the length of the season, we have decided to only include some of the most familiar and widely liked maps, although in the future we would like to experiment with newer maps and add them to the map pool.

• Week 1: Badwater – Viaduct
• Week 2: Viaduct – Upward
• Week 3: Upward – Gravel Pit
• Week 4: Gravel Pit – Steel
• Week 5: Steel – Badwater

Due to a recent bug relating to overtime capping on the maps Gravel Pit and Steel, we cannot guarantee that (the official versions of) Gravel Pit and Steel will remain in the map pool. We are hoping for an official fix before the maps are to be played.

Unlocks

• All weapons allowed.
• Set hats banned. These are the affected hats: [picture]
• Any weapons released after this announcement will be banned until the season ends.

Additional Info

You can find all the relevant info and rules for Highlander on this rule page, and the general league rules can be found here. Make sure you read it through! An updated Highlander config to be used for all matches will be released soon.

If you are looking to learn more about competitive TF2 (especially 6on6), you can find valuable information in the Training & Tactics forum. Be sure to check out the player guide and the new team leader guide.

If you have any questions, don’t hesitate to contact an admin.

Feedback

As always, we encourage the community to give feedback to us, especially with the Highlander scene being relatively new and experimental. Please take the time to visit the links below and share your thoughts on the topics presented.

• Unlocks: [thread]
• Maps: [thread]
• Rules: [thread]

If you wish to give feedback on anything other than what has been suggested by us, feel free to create a new thread. Your feedback is very much appreciated and necessary for making the league better.

Good luck to all teams that sign up, we hope to meet you on the battlefield in a few weeks!

This week and last week, you are supposed to be playing cp_gravelpit. We have noticed this map can provide results that one would not expect, due to some sort of map bug. While the bug exists, we will allow the following:

• If both teams agree, they may replace cp_gravelpit with another map from the map pool.
• If teams cannot agree on which map to play, but don’t want to play cp_gravelpit, they should use the Map Elimination system to choose a replacement map.
• Matches in which cp_gravelpit has already been played can be replayed on another map if both teams agree. Proof of the agreement is required.*
• Teams are still welcome to play on cp_gravelpit if they wish.

*This applies to all maps and matches during the season – if both teams agree, they can be replayed.

Admin Updates

We are delighted to welcome back Spike Himself to the admin team. Spike will be helping out wherever he can, particularly on the coding side of things such as the Ladder Beta (see below).

<3 We’d also like to congratulate him on becoming engaged! <3

Additionally,  octochris has become part of the AC team for the past few weeks. It is fair to say the AC team is short-staffed at the moment, but we hope to have some new arrivals once we have fully rolled out the planned changes to our AC system.

Ladder Beta

Spike Himself has returned eager to continue his work on the Ladder, so we will be opening an invite-only ladder soon. More details here.

***Final Note!***

According to the calendar there are 37 matches scheduled for tonight. Please bear in mind that there is a massive TF2 update due out tonight! Chances are, it will arrive right in the middle of the average match time of 20:00-22:00 CEST because of the timezone difference. Be prepared to reschedule any matches set for tonight, in case everything breaks.

UPDATE, Thursday 02:00 CEST – Brackets are up here. A team with fewer games played got the better position if on equal points, since that means they were likely to do better. This was the case in group 8, 9, 10, 14 (M+M were in the group!). Also, default dates will be added when I get back tomorrow.

While the deadline for all matches was set to be the end of today, there is a sufficiently large amount of games unplayed that it makes more sense to extend the deadline. This will be until Wednesday, 12th October 23:59 CEST. That is the final deadline. Any teams which have not played a game by that point will not get the chance to do so – it will be ignored, counting as 0 points for both teams. All the more incentive for both teams to play the game!

In terms of how the playoffs will run, it will be 32 teams. A team which qualified in first place will play another team who came 2nd in a different group, and vice versa. It will also be seeded (the groups all contained 1 seed – these seeds correspond to the position in the knockouts) accordingly. Once again, then – it is important to play your matches to get an advantage in the later stages.

The playoffs themselves will be played in two parts. The first 2 rounds, the round of 32 and 16, will be played on Sunday, 16th October at 20:00 and 21:00 CEST. Teams have the option to play their game before this time, up until Sunday at 23:59 CEST, in case they have other commitments. These times will be the default and teams will face a default loss should they not be able to play at that time and not played it before. These games will be one best-of-five. We encourage teams to try and be as useful as considerate as possible to each other when scheduling these games though.

After these first 2 rounds we will try to get the remaining 3 rounds to be played in one night, with all teams agreeing on a certain date. This means the Quarter Final and Semi Final will (probably) be one best-of-three. The final itself will remain best-of-five. More information (i.e. dates) will be given when decided.

So, a recap of the schedule:

• Groups finish on Wednesday, 12th October 23:59 CEST.
• Playoff rounds (best-of-five) 1 & 2/round of 32 & 16 to be played by Sunday 16th October 23:59 CEST, with default dates at 20:00 CEST and 21:00 CEST on Sunday.
• Quarter Final, Semi Final and Final to be played on the same day.

A final thing is a couple of clarifications with the rules, as follows:

• Mercs are allowed in the group stages, if the opponent agrees, but the same 2 people must play every knockout game.
• No class switching is allowed during a round, as it may give a slight advantage. Players are allowed to swap at the end of the round.
• The 3rd round of a map, if it gets to it, counts as a golden cap. This means a 2-1 victory means 2-1 in terms of points. This is only relevant for the group stages.
• Remember that matches are two best-of-threes, not one!

If there are any other rules that need clarifying, please feel free to contact an admin or post in the comments.

With week 2 commencing, we felt that some teams could need a little reminder on the gravelpit rules as well as on some other rules.

Gravelpit Reminders

The following is a full quote from the general rules page.

4.4 Gravelpit and Gorge: 2-3 Rounds using ABBA format

cp_gravelpit and cp_gorge have to be played with 2-3 rounds (possible overall results: 2:0, 0:2, 1:2, 2:1). In the first 2 rounds the ABBA format will be used.

In the case of both teams taking one round (1:1) there will be a decider round. In the first 2 rounds the teams should note the final cap time of the first team attacking. The team that has the best cap time (or more caps in the case a team did not cap all points) can choose if they want to attack or defend first in the 3rd round. Remember to reload the config between rounds, so teams can be switched.

Example: Team A attacks and sets a time of 4:56. Team B then attacks and caps the last point faster then Team A did, setting the score 1:0. Next team B attacks first and sets a time of 5:28, team A then attacks and caps faster. The score is then 1:1 and a decider round will need to be played. Since Team A’s attack time of 4:56 was faster then team B’s 5:28 they can choose who attacks first.

Golden Cap rules do NOT apply to cp_gravelpit. Whichever team wins the map will receive 3 points in the League standings.

• On gravelpit, you will have to upload at least 2 screenshots of the scores at the end. If you play a decider round, you need to upload 3 screenshots. For an example how the screenshots have to look like, see this match page.
• If you forgot to upload all screenshots, you can still add them through the “Add Screenshots” page.

Other Rule Reminders

• All players are required to record Point-of-View demos during all matches. Failure to provide a requested demo will be punished with a minor warning per player whose demo is missing.
• If you ever wondered why an admin set a default date for one of your matches, the schedule deadline has been exceeded. You can see all deadlines on this or this page.
• None of our admins is a master in mind reading. We can only know what is written on the match page. For some useful tips on how to get a convenient default date, check out this thread.
• Did you know that wildcarded matches get a default date 7 days after the wildcard was used?
• To reschedule a match you do not necessarily have to use a wildcard. If both teams agree, you can simply propose a different date and ask your opponent to accept the new schedule. In case he does not agree, you can use a wildcard up to 15 minutes before the scheduled time. It is polite to inform your opponent of the use of a wildcard in advance.

AC Updates

The ETF2L Anti-Cheat IRC bot has a new AC command. The old command, !acrequest, will not work anymore. From now on if you want to talk to an AC admin type !acadmin in #etf2l.

Excello and Albert’s Bball cup!

In other news, on Wednesday, 5th October, Albert and Forsak3n will host the first TF2 2on2 BBall tournament over at our friends of Excello. If you have not signed up yet do not waste any time and create a team on Excello.net. You can sign up on this page. Please be aware that you are required to check in from 19.30 CEST to 20.00 CEST. The first round will start right after the check in at 20.00 CEST. For more information please see the original newspost.

Update 19:00 CEST: Groups are up here! Play your games as soon as you can – week 1 does not have to be played first! Top two from the groups go through, a team in first will play a team in second from another group (hence different colours).

After it became clear that Sunday is too problematic during the season, we’ve decided to give all teams 1 week to play all their matches. You can play as many, or as few, matches as you like in one night, as long as you complete them by Sunday 9th October, 23:59 CEST. That gives you a week – and a day – to play all your matches.

Given, though, that you may only play 1 ultiduo in a night it wouldn’t be worth all the effort for scheduling for a best-of-one, or even a best-of-three since it could be as little as 10 minutes. This means that we’ve decided to make each match two best-of-threes. It is effectively 2 maps, and you can win each map. If it is 1-1, that is the same as the 6v6 league; it counts as a golden cap (played as a normal round). This means the scores can be 6-0, 5-1, 4-2, 3-3. The top two will advance from the bracket, probably meaning that there will be 16 groups and 32 teams in the knockout stage (cannot be certain!).

There will also be no check-in, since you do not have to play on sunday. Therefore, there’s no need to make sure you’re here on the Sunday. So a schedule:

• Signups close: Sunday 2nd October, 17:00 CEST
• Groups up: Approximately 19:30 CEST
• Groups finish: Sunday, 9th October 23:59 CEST

Ultiduo Servers 24/7 located in London, UK:

• connect 94.76.215.25
• connect 94.76.215.26; password mission

Good luck to all teams!