Highlander Season 9 powered by marketplace.tf Premiership Qualifiers: The Contenders & Casts

Welcome ladies and gentlemen to Highlander Season 9! We have 6 teams returning to the Premiership division from last season: Tourettes Chessclub, Highpander©, WASP, Unpoppable, Stacked and Fair Enough. With High division winners SUPER MEGA ICE SKATERS FROM HELL KILLERS folding, we have two spots open in the top tier of European Highlander! We’ve been speaking to the five teams competing in the Pre-Season playoffs for those all important Premiership places.

These playoff games will of course be casted by BlackOut TV, with Lotus Munching Angels vs Danger Gummi Bears kicking off at 20CET with sigafoo and Hildreth casting & Jon working the camera. If Danger Gummi Bears triumph, their match with Feila eSports finanzieren durch will follow immediately with the same casting team. Should Lotus Munching Angels win, they will face Feila eSports finanzieren durch on Saturday (casting details tbc).

On BlackOut TV 2 at 21 CET you can catch Team Colonslash: Express vs Strong Opinions with MARS^ & DCS casting with  Arjax on camera.

With all the important details out of the way, let’s get into those interviews!

Team Colonslash: Express

Representing Team Colonslash, these guys are old hands of the ETF2L community and have been playing together for quite some time after the merging of two older TC Highlander teams last year. Leader and Pyro Useless was kind enough to answer a few questions for us on the eve of their epic clash with Strong Opinions.

First off, can you confirm your roster for us?

Useless: For the game tonight:

Scout: senzeN
Soldier: JustJosh
Pyro: Useless
Demoman: .zero
Heavy: Simba
Engineer: Munky
Medic: haiku
Sniper: FrostByte
Spy: Spyro

Mora is main engineer and Munky main scout, Mora simply can’t play tonight so Munky is moving over to engineer with senzeN on scout.

How do you rate your chances of taking down Strong Opinions? Are there any players you consider key to your chances of victory?

We are staying as optimistic as we can be, they are the considered strongest team out of the prem play-off teams by the community. We are intending to bring them our best performance no matter what. I’d say our combo would be the key to our success, we just gotta make sure to stay as a unit and not roam around like we have done during some scrims. Our combo is the strongest key when we stick together.

How do you think the other side of the playoffs will turn out?

I would say Lotus Munching Angels will defeat Danger Gummi Bears simply on the basis that Lotus have practised as a unit and the maps they picked are more highlander oriented rather than 6s. Feila eSports finanzieren durch should hold a stronger edge over Lotus and Gummi aswell, JoeN has kept the team practising for quite some time now with their current line-up.

Thanks for the interview! Any shoutouts before we leave you to your preparations for the big game?

Of course, shoutout to Spike Himself for sponsoring us with both ingame and Mumble servers. Shoutout to Oxy for providing a nice foundation to build this team upon. Also a big shoutout to everyone that is rooting for us :D

Strong Opinions

Squaring up to TC tonight are this all-singing, all-dancing team with a revamped roster after their third-place finish in High last season. Undoubtedly the favourites in these playoffs, CeeJaey and the boys will be feeling confident. We spoke to cloudy to see how his team are faring before the big game.

Can you tell us your roster for tonight’s playoffs?

cloudy: Tonight’s roster will be all main! So:

Scout: Thalash
Soldier: Raptor
Pyro: Steve!
Demoman: Korv
Heavy: EmilioEstevez
Engineer: Seal
Medic: CeeJaey
Sniper: cloudy
Spy: Toast

How do you rate your chances of success in the playoffs, and if you make it through, in the Premiership season to come?

Well in the playoffs I have pretty good expectations for us, we’ve practiced a lot and I think we’ve gelled well together as a team over the months, even though I don’t know too much about our opponents, I’m fairly confident we’re gonna come out in force tonight. As for the regular season well, many teams have had alterations to their rosters and have been practicing with many different setups, so it has been really difficult to judge how well we’re gonna compete. However we have been having a lot of success in our practice games.

Who are you tipping to win the other bracket and potentially join you or TC in Prem?

I’m gonna say Feila eSports finanzieren durch, their experience as a team outweighs the other teams’ experience put together, so on that alone I’d say they’d be able to take their bracket with some ease.

Thanks for the interview! Any shoutouts?

Just that Toast is bad, cheers.

Lotus Munching Angels

On the other side of the playoff bracket we have this international squadron boasting a host of EU and NA talent within their ranks. With a healthy mix of established talent and keen High division moveups, we spoke to team leader and superstar manager 80x to get the lowdown on the cross-continent clan.

Hi there! First off, can we ask you to confirm the roster you’ll be using to try and win yourself a spot in the elusive Premiership division?

80x: For tonight’s game:

Scout: Kissakala
Soldier: kryma
Pyro: Jedi(fla)master
Demoman: Kaylus
Heavy: X-Wing
Engineer: BAAM
Medic: Arcades
Sniper: thaZu
Spy: ElazulTF2

For the season, Blues on scout and SharpshotMcgee on heavy.

How do you rate your chances of coming out on top in these qualifiers? Who do you think will pose the biggest threat to you?

Well, we’re very lucky that we didn’t get seeded with Strong Opinions. I think that most people are expecting us to beat Danger Gummi Bears, but I think it’ll be a close game. So right now, I’m trying not to think about what happens after, more the game we have at hand. I will say that Feila eSports finanzieren durch are obviously the favourites in our bracket. They’re an established team with very good players.

How do you think having NA players on the main roster will affect you throughout the season? We’ve seen individual players achieve great things over here, but also The Electric Temptations getting crushed in season 6 which was a bit of a letdown. Will you guys be able to fully commit to slumming it with the Euros and our gimmick weapons?

The commitment issue is the one I’m dealing with, because both our scouts are only able to commit at weekends. Hence the reason Kissakala agreed to merc tonight. Gimmick weapon wise, I’m pretty sure both will do fine.

Thanks for speaking to us! Any shoutouts?

Shoutouts to X-Wing and Kissakala for agreeing to help us out in playoffs, iamzhevor for being a good friend before getting banned and everyone who has helped me: Chronos, ArchAngel and MIGHTY BURGER ツ.

Danger Gummi Bears

Facing Lotus Munching Angels for the right to play Feila eSports finanzieren durch are this newly-formed team led by 6v6 canine enthusiast .kr4tos. Boasting a mix of seasoned 6v6 players moving over to Highlander and some 9v9 veterans, this team is something of an unknown quantity due to forming late and a lack of scrims. We spoke to the man himself to find out if these new kids on the block can slip into the Premiership division!

First things first, can you confirm your roster for us?

.kr4tos:

Scout: wonder
Soldier: qnx
Pyro: Henghast
Demoman: .kr4tos
Heavy: Qnai
Engineer: san alex
Medic: Honey Badger
Sniper: Maxi
Spy: Tseini

Toba is our main Heavy and Qnai is stepping in to merc for tonight.

How do you rate your chances of qualifying for Prem and who will be the toughest team to take down along the way?

We are not sure where we stand compared to the other potential prem teams, that’s why we asked for an additional match in the playoffs. I dont know a lot about the lineups of the other teams either, without disrespecting anyone… I did hear about thaZu, who is meant to be a very good sniper, and a sniper can really change the game, I noticed that from playing against Tseini at DeutschLAN… but for these playoff games, we are just focusing our own game, give our best and act dynamic, think about a counter, while we are playing.

Thanks for the interview! Any shoutouts you’d like to give?

http://TF2Pickup.net and Hildreth for getting me into the lolhl scene, and to my team ofc.

Feila eSports finanzieren durch

Awaiting the winners of the first playoff tie are this well-established team, the artists formerly known as Feila. Despite some turbulent roster changes between seasons, the original Highlander Power Couple Leila and JoeN have built themselves a strong team to fight for their right to party play Prem. We spoke to Joe to see how things are looking in their camp.

Hi Joe, first off can you tell us your roster for these playoff games and the Season ahead?

JoeN:

Scout: Bloodis
Soldier: Kaneco
Pyro: EksDi
Demoman: JoeN
Heavy: roban
Engineer: calle cool
Medic: Leila
Sniper: Der_Milchmann
Spy: chooper

This is our main roster, but we may have to use a merc engineer for the playoffs.

How do you rate your chances of victory? Are you confident of beating the other teams in your bracket?

We are more confident that since we’re a more established team that we would win them, since they have only been around for like a month now. We have been around a lot longer than both teams in the playoffs. Me and Leila have been around for year along with new people, and it’s been seen already how teams who don’t scrim don’t get good scores in their games even with good players, like The Electric Temptations or WHEREISKAIDO. I think the same will happen for Danger Gummi Bears. Lotus Munching Angels though, they don’t have all leaders of the team even playing, it’s more of a mix team which won’t really find a proper future if they just play games without leaders actually knowing how the players feel, it’s like as if you would spec all our games as well and just think that how do we win instead of what’s going on with the combo or flank for example.

If you do make it through the playoffs and into Prem, what will your goal for the season be? Do you think you have a shot at finishing top 3 in Prem, or will survival be your aim?

We would like to at least have like 5th place. We will try our best of course to play in all of our matches, surely there are stronger teams there as well but we have managed to damage them in scrims before the season so we’re not too worried about them, if however we manage to survive the season and even finish mid Prem, that would be enough good for us. Just so we wouldn’t need to play the relegation match with the 2nd placed High team.

Thanks for taking the time to talk to us! Finally, any shoutouts?

Shoutout to my team, my Fanboys, roban for best heavy of season, and asadawarf for being a superstar pornstar with the award winning anal.

That’s all folks! Remember to tune in to the streams and keep your eyes on ETF2L for more Highlander content to come.