Experimental Highlander Cup #2

With the Highlander season over, the 6v6 season in full flow and the Nations Cups appearing on the horizon, it seemed only suitable that our usual “First Thursday of the Month” cup would be our second foray into experimental Highlander play.

Standard Highlander teams and National teams can sign up for this cup and have an early taste of what the summer ahead will hold. UPDATE: We also added the option for fun teams to sign up!

Please note that we will divide team types into separate brackets unless we don’t gain enough signups to do so. Also, players may not play for more than one team in this cup!

Schedule & Maps

As usual with our Thursday cups, the majority of the tournament will be held over one night, with the final held on a separate night, within a week of the tournament.

The first map of the night will be koth_ashville_rc1, which is making an impact as a new map in other leagues. Made by  Mackey the ex-Quantic roamer, it is fairly simple to play.

The next map, pl_waste_v2, will be familiar to the wizened veterans of Highlander Cup #2. It’s a payload map with a twist – both teams push the cart at the same time, trying to get it to the enemy base in order to win the round.

The final map will be ctf_converge_b3, a capture the flag map with yet another twist – there is only one briefcase, spawning in the middle of the map; both teams must try and carry it to the enemies’ base in order to capture the point.

Feedback on the maps is of course strongly encouraged – check out the discussion thread in the feedback forums.

The schedule for the evening of Thursday 7^th June will be as followed:

• 19:00 CEST – Signups close & teams split into brackets.
• 19:30 CEST  – Draw will be made and the matches posted.
• 20:00 CEST  – Round 1 begins, on koth_ashville_rc1
• 20:45 CEST  – Round 2 begins, on pl_waste_v2
• 21:30 CEST  – Round 3 begins, on ctf_converge_b3

The final will consist of a best of 3 map series, with pl_waste_v2 and ctf_converge_b3 as the first two maps and koth_ashville_rc1 being the decider if necessary.

Rules & Setup

For this tournament the usual 9v9 Highlander rules will apply, you can find them linked here.

• pl_waste will be played with mp_winlimit 5 and mp_timelimit 30. If it is a tie after 30 minutes, the team holding the middle point will win the map
• ctf_converge will be played as 1 Round of 20 minutes, first to 7 caps (mp_timelimit 20, mp_winlimit 7, tf_flag_caps_per_round 1).
  • In case of a tie, teams will play a Golden cap round with a 5 minute timelimit (mp_timelimit 5, mp_winlimit 1).
  • If it still remains a tie (and to prevent stalemates), reset the config and timelimit.
• koth_ashville will be played first to 3 rounds (mp_timelimit 0, mp_winlimit 3).
• Maximum waiting time of 10 minutes then teams not ready will have to ready up.
• Minimum of 8 players needed to start a match.

Signups are open NOW – remember to make sure your team has at least 9 players on the roster with each member’s Steam ID filled in correctly.

Please remember to make sure your server has the correct ETF2L config installed on the server and executed for the match. You can find a list of all the configs here.

Excello presents: ZOWIE TF2 Challenge IV

Our friends from Excello are back after a short break with a new ZOWIE TF2 Challenge IV tournament!

The ZOWIE TF2 Challenge IV will be the seventh sponsored Team Fortress 2 tournament at Excello. ZOWIE Gear provides 6 ZOWIE Swift mousepads for the winning team.

The signups for the open tournament, held on Tuesday, June 5, are open from now on until the check-in starts. The maximum slots are 32.

For more info, head over to the VanillaTF2 article or the original article at excello.net.

Highlander Season 2 finally closed!

The completion of the final few play-off matches marks the end of another great Highlander season. We hope you enjoyed the season no matter where you finished in your division. A massive congratulations are in order for  SNSD who won the season without dropping a single map (again)! The top 3 are as follows:

1. SNSD
2.  27
3. May Contain Nuts

Not only do the top 2 teams get some snazzy pixel trophies, as well as the glory of being the best highlander teams in Europe, they also get cash prizes!  SNSD will receive a whopping £500 and 27 will receive £250!

The winners of each division can be found in the the Highlander Season 2 Hall of Fame. We have also added the pixel trophies to all teams that finished in the top 3 of their division, enjoy!

And finally we wish to give a huge thank you to all the players, team leaders and admins that made this season such a huge success, we’ll see you in Season 3!