Highlander Season 4 powered by Blackout Gaming – Wrap-up
May 19, 2013
Premiership Wrap-up
All great things must come to an end, and the reign of 
SNSD in European Highlander came to an end this season with a shocking final loss to 
DAROUTOUTOU, losing both Badwater and Upward’s to the Frenchies as legendary heavy weapons guy 
Alx announced his retirement from the game.
SNSD‘s ETF2L record is second to none – in the two years since the revival of the Highlander scene, they have reaching an astonishing streak of 44 consecutive wins across all ETF2L Highlander competitions, without losing a map. For the longest time, SNSD towered like a giant over the European Highlander scene, swatting away any challengers with ease, until Season 4’s Grand Final at last saw them toppled by DAROUTOUTOU.
This also marks the pinnacle of an incredible journey for DAROUTOUTOU. They started their Highlander careers in Division 3, earning their promotion to Division 2, then 1, and Premiership at last. Despite being newcomers in Premiership, their only loss this season was to SNSD in the Week 1 match on Gravel Pit – a loss they have avenged by taking the Premiership crown for themselves.
Parrot Gapers have managed a third place finish, barely losing out to DAROUTOUTOU in the semi-final playoff after an intense 3 map showdown.
colony have achieved their best finish since Season 1, securing 4th place and avoiding the dreaded relegation playoff match.
5th placed le leglesslegolegolas xD had to face off against Division 1 runners-up Kill Switch – despite losing Barnblitz, le leglesslegolegolas xD managed to come back and dominate the next two maps, securing their Premiership spot.
After returning from a Season-long hiatus, 
27 sadly could not repeat their outstanding Season 2 performance and succumbed to last place finish, confirming their relegation.
Here are the names of the champions:
- Plapla (Scout)
- T-Mac (Soldier)
- DeGuN (Pyro)
- Exon. (Demoman)
- Tek (Heavy)
- Mista (Engineer)
- kustom3 (Medic)
- Flippy (Sniper)
- Daff (Spy)
Congratulations to the winners:
DAROUTOUTOU – Winning 500 Euros
SNSD – Winning 350 Euros
Parrot Gapers – Winning 150 Euros
The VODs from the Final can be viewed here:
Who won YOUR division?
Regardless of which division you play in, winning the group is an impressive achievement. While DAROUTOUTOU may now sit firmly on the throne of European Highlander, we would also like to congratulate those bested their peers and came ahead in their respective groups. Here is a full list of champions of all Season 4 divisions:
- Division 1: #SDW
- Division 2A: Easy Going
- Division 2B: hePPa
- Division 3A: 9 Fishies
- Division 3B:
LAILA TOV BaR o/o/o/o/ - Division 3C:
cLanda - Division 4A:
Padre Kamil - Division 4B:
Team Team Mate - Division 4C: Team Colonslash: Crash
- Division 4D: House Full of Funk
- Division 5A:
BAGET delivery - Division 5B:
Crusaders - Division 5C:
Facepunch UK - Division 5D: OverCharge
- Division 5E: Nine Horsemen of the Apocalypse
- Division 5F: 50 Shades of Nipps
- Division 6A:
Mad Men - Division 6B:
seriousname - Division 6C: Unpoppable
- Division 6D:
TWERKIN CREW 69 - Division 6E:
Brotherhood - Division 6F: Blistered Shiver
- Division 6G:
Skjálfti - Division 6H:
Rambase.ro Community Team - Division 6I: Viscous and Delicious
- Division 6J: Gentlemen Team
- Division 6K: Handsome Rogues
- Division 6L: Ununited Engie Cows
- Division 6M: Rossies Angels
- Division 6N: _noaim Highlander
- Division 6O: Super Secret Monkey Mafia
Pixel trophies have been given out, and in-game medals will be awarded to winners and participants once they are added to the item schema. Medals will be issued to players who were on team rosters at the time of the roster lock , hence you may alter your roster as you see fit.
Posted by ETF2L Staff in Highlander, League
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P.S. Bans will be in a separate newspost.
maybe next time you should have a proper grand final instead of 2 best of ones which lasted around 40 minutes in total
WE WANT BANS!
Sure Muuki, lets make each map a bo3. Then you can play 3 rounds of badwater, 3 rounds of upward, and another 3 rounds of barnblitz. How does that sound?
Anyway, I’d like to make a special mention to BlackOut Gaming TV for casting a lot of Highlander games this season, after bigger casting organistations failed to deliver their promises for the season. (Sorry for seeming a bit bitter)
BANS BANS BANS!!!
Wtf is wrong with the teams link
Also BAN PLEASE
WE WANT MEDALS!
Well, it’s a grand final, why shouldn’t it be long?
no bans = bad newspost WE WANT DRAMA
permzilla ugc finals are played in each map’s full length too
Omnio, its fixed, blame emb!
Linus; What I suggested could easily bring in a 3 hour game depending on the cap times. While it might be fun to play for that long (I wouldn’t find it much fun), you have to consider the people casting it, and also the people watching it. If I was watching a match and it was lasting that long, I’d probably get pretty bored. That’s the general reasoning anyway.
Your scenario, if comes true, means that the game is incredibly close and good, which means it’s exciting and memorable.
A 40 min game won’t be memorable, to be honest. Not to mention that it’s the playoffs, it SHOULD be different and higher profile than a normal leauge game.
A close game is memorable irrelevant of the length. In my opinion anyway.
It is different and higher profile, it’s played as a best of 3 maps.
No offense intended. But how is casters supposed to play a role in how a fair, exciting grand final should be played? A longer game, which follows the format that has been played the entire has consistency.
If played Bo3 is how a normal game is played, I also reckon the rounds itself should be Bo3. Just because that’s how the maps are played during the season. It’s to promote not only the ability to play your best the best 30 minutes in a match, but also have a good Stamina, to be able to keep it up for longer periods of time.
If the casters is an issue, then have different caster-couples cast the different maps, and problem solved.
ugc finals > etf2l finals
Permzilla, this is the way UGC’s gran finals are being played.
It makes the final more intense for both specs and players.
SNSD vs DAROUTOUTOU was completely fair and yet still exciting. Not sure how that follows the format thats been played the entire season since it is bo3.
You’re contradicting yourself a bit JoakimMos, first you say the grand final should be played similar to the regular season, and then you say how it should promote stamina. A game during the season will usually only take about an hour max. The current final is actually similar to the regular season if you think about it (a single round played as a bo3).
And yes I know this is how UGC is played, but that doesn’t mean it is the only way it can be done, or the correct way it can be done. ETF2L is different to UGC in many ways.
Why aren’t 6v6 grand finals played 3 maps with shorter timelimit? the 6v6 grand finals, if taken to 3 maps, can last 2+ hours with pauses, map changes, golden caps et cetera. Surely this must be a burden for the casters to use 2 hours of their day to cast a video game, and the players who have to play 2 hours + pcws beforehand.
I suggest we use the system in highlander, and play best of 3 maps with timelimit 15 to warrant the game not going on for too long. 15 minutes should be plenty of time to decide who is the worthy bearer of the championship title, just as best of 1 payload is.
Bo1 is absolutely horrible. Our game wasn’t the closest ever, but it definitely wasn’t one sided yet still had a total of about 35 minutes playtime. That’s pretty ridiculous, not to mention the fact that a large part of TF2 is adapting to your opponents as rounds go by. Playing 1 round means you only see each scenario one time, it makes for a pretty shallow experience.
I’m all for constructive feedback, but I can’t really take that post seriously Muuki.
That’s a fair point kaidus, however you did pick 3 payload maps. Koth maps and 5cp maps are played the same as during the season, where you can adapt. (I’m not saying that you should have picked a koth or 5cp map, just making a point for this particular case)
Anyway, it looks like quite a few of you are for increasing the length of the grand final, would this also include the premiership playoffs? How about tiebreakers for other divisions? Curious for some feedback.
yep it should be bo3.
Honestly, as kaidus said adapting is one of the key things to competitive tf2 and bo1 really takes that away since you only get one shot at both defense and attack. Also stamina and not crumbling under pressure is something quite cool about bo3 payload, and that’s also almost completely taken out. I know personally that when you win the first round it’s really hard to keep the same amount of focus. And if you lose the first round, then you get a huge boost trying even harder.
Not to mention that it’s basically for money at that point, so ye it should be a long, back and forth intense final (ideally!)
same should go for tiebreakers – i see no reason to break consistency.
Hoping that next season there’ll be more high profile casts. I think if anything there’s a lot of untapped potential in eu highlander (just look at the americans, and it’s not like they have more teams or anything) But ye kudos to blackoutgaming for savin the day.
Mad because you lost? ;) Just kidding :D
Yeah everything you say are good points, in fact we were already discussing this exact topic recently. I guess you’ll find out what we decide in Season 5.
One thing: DA!2stronk
“Not to mention that it’s basically for money at that point, […]”
I’m sorry but every other DAROUTOUTOU player I’ve spoke to shared my point of view regarding the fact that we came to try to surpass ourselves and earn the ingame gold medal, not to settle which team would get 50ish or 40ish euros per player.
Money is more than welcome of course, but the title and the medal are worth way more imho. On behalf of the DAROUTOUTOU team, I’d like to thank the BlackOut “family” (gaming and tv) and the ETF2L staff for their support for our community.
About the rules and the game duration, while it’s true that the game was short, I don’t know about the audience but it still was intense from our side and felt like way more than 40 minutes. That being said, if the ETF2L decides to have longer games and multiple bo3 maps per game, we don’t really care. Just don’t call nine whine whine when one of your playoff games lasts 4 hours because of an intense game of 3 bo3 maps with 18 players is disturbed by comp crashes and net losses.
Cheers and gg everyone.
That doesn’t really change the point i was trying to make. The playoffs are to decide the who gets which medal and who gets how much prize money. That’s why it’s the most intense and best part of the season.