Highlander Season 9 playoffs powered by marketplace.tf!
December 21, 2015
*Edit* We changed around the matches a bit due to a initial miscalculation with the Sonneborn-Berger Score. The current ones are correct and will stay. If you have any questions feel free to contact us.
Welcome everyone to the conclusion of the 9th season of ETF2L Highlander.
We hope you enjoyed the matches, and for the teams that made it through, congratulations. Here is where the poor and Irish get separated from the Gentle Mannes.
All divisions will have playoffs, all playoff matches will be using the Map Elimination system. Note that all dates are estimates and teams are able to negotiate other days by scheduling with their opponents.
Starting off, we’ll have our top 4 teams in Premiership battle it out, here is how it goes:
Currently the ranking is as following:
The first day of playoffs is January 10th, where we have the quarter final match:
Feila eSports finanzieren durch takes on 
Highpander©.
Semi Final
The winner of that match will face Strong Opinions on January 17th.
The date for the grand finals is currently set to January 24th, where Tourettes Chessclub will defend their title.
High
High has four teams, where we will have not one, but two Team Colonslash squads making it to playoffs.
Semi-Finals
January 10th – January 15th
Semi Final 1: 
UKIP vs The Bureau
Semi Final 2: Team Colonslash: Ambition vs Team Colonslash: Express
Finals: January 17th – January 22nd SF1 winner vs SF2 winner
The winner of this match will get an automatic seed to the Season 10 Premiership division.
The loser of this match will face 
Stacked on January 27th in the relegation match. Winner of that match gets a Season 10 Premiership seed as well.
Mid
The teams making it into Mid playoffs are:
- Bad Lads
Team Niveous
Budget Toucans
Schnitzel e-sports- Lesk
- Team Colonslash: Frosties
Latency Issues
Saukot
Quarter Finals
January 3rd – January 8th
Match A: Bad Lads vs Saukot
Match B: Team Niveous vs Latency Issues
Match C: Budget Toucans vs Team Colonslash: Frosties
Match D: Schnitzel e-sports vs Lesk
Semi-Finals
January 10th – January 15th
Semi-Final 1: [Winner A] vs [Winner D]
Semi-Final 2: [Winner B] vs [Winner C]
Finals
January 17th – January 22nd Semi Final 1 winner vs Semi Final 2 winner
Open
Open looks rather interesting this season, having 4 teams tied for the first place. After calculations the teams are seeded in the following order:
- Lead Lining Lineup
Hearts eSport
Brigshaw's English Club- TwisteD eSports
- open_squad powered by ZfG
- ★ Alle Neune
That's a Bingo!- Awesome Comrade Elite
Quarter Finals
January 3rd – January 8th
Match A: Lead Lining Lineup vs Awesome Comrade Elite
Match B: Hearts eSport vs That's a Bingo!
Match C: Brigshaw's English Club vs ★ Alle Neune
Match D: TwisteD eSports vs open_squad powered by ZfG
Semi-Finals
January 10th – January 15th
Semi-Final 1: [Winner A] vs [Winner D]
Semi-Final 2: [Winner B] vs [Winner C]
Finals:
January 17th – January 22nd Semi Final 1 winner vs Semi Final 2 winner
Tough Break changes
Introduction
Just as we were getting ready for the Christmas holiday break, the Tough Break Update hit. The admin team had been discussing the various weapon tweaks introduced by Valve. In this post, we will briefly discuss the reasons we have for making changes to our ruleset, in hopes of increasing transparency and granting our user base a greater understanding of the weapon banning process.
Highlander Season 9
We strongly believe in the idea of Competitive Consistency – for that reason, we aim to minimize the effect of balance changes on ongoing seasons.
Valve introduced a new feature, namely player outlines for respawning players, visible when using DirectX 9. As this feature was not available during the majority of Season 9, it will be disabled for the remainder of the competition. We will discuss how this feature affects the game at a later date and whether it is worth keeping in our league, but for now it will be disabled using the server cvar tf_spawn_glows_duration 0. We are also forcing tf_preround_push_from_damage_enable 1. For the same reason, we will not be changing the current HL whitelist, with the exception of The Phlogistinator. We feel the weapon will have a much bigger impact on games after its change, compared to before the update. As such, it will be banned with immediate effect from all our HL configs. It may or may not be banned in future seasons, and that will be put to further discussion as players have more of a chance to get accustomed to the changes.
We would love to hear your feedback about the usefulness of this type of news post as we head closer towards 6v6 Season 23.
Posted by 
content rss
don’t ban phlog just ban ceejaey >:(
http://puu.sh/m43a6/48e3ca817a.png
PREMIERSHIP FINALS on THE 10th OF JANUARY THANKS KKALTUU
THANK YOU KKALTUU
Pls no phlog. How am i meant to win now?
if you like consistency so much how about keeping the playoff rules consistent, or, if you decide to change them, at least put them in the rules?
kkaltuu rage quits pickups cause of phlog, now it’s banned! smh D:::
Why is prem playoffs different to high playoffs? Why not make both same format when 4 teams make it into playoffs?
how are they different
Because there are actual prizes for Premiership placements instead of High?
@quintosh premplayoffs have “quarterfinals” with 1st seed playing only once, while in high first seed plays twice.
Atzebumm in this case it’s a “why yes” rather than a “why not” question :) Prem playoffs have historically always been like that and it seems to work for the players. Its probably worth it to ask for the players opinions on how they would prefer the playoffs to be handled in future seasons, though.In my personal opinion, as there’s much less teams in high it makes sense to reward the team that scores the most point. In season 9, chess did much better than the rest in the regular season, so putting them in the finals right off the bat seems justified. And this coming from a player who will have to be facing off against them in the finals.
Quintosh, the rules are an iterative process and we’re always looking to improve them. We’ll try to resolve as many of the issues as we can, but that will have to wait until after the current season ends.
I think it’s a very good idea that you went back to allowing the 4th seed to play in the playoffs. I remember season 5 that happened with iag vs daroutoto bo3. (they were 4th seed). Last season we only had the top 3 competing after regular season and it’s just less interesting imo. It gives teams in prem more motivation during the regular season as the 4th position is often highly contested and out of the top 3 prem cirklejerk.
tbf I love circlejerking
I’d have liked to not play until the final tbh
WTF do you all have down’s syndrome? :DD
“Premiership finals on the 10th of january”
ok that means we can go and do stuff after that
“ROFL fucking pranked guys xDDDDD we moved it two weeks because I thought my shitty team had a chance of getting in playoffs. Sucks to be you lmao” -kkaltuu
Changes 3 team playoff to 4 team playoff(I know he was hoping for Fe to get into playoffs but that’s not gonna happen, ever. :D).
Changes the map pick system for playoffs(Im p sure it was losers pick and not the map elimination system).
Changes Date of the Grand Final(Grand final was meant to be played on 10th of january now it’s on 24th).
Must be Kkaltuu EleGiggle.
http://imgur.com/woPNbYt
We feel the weapon will have a much bigger impact on games after its change, compared to before the update. As such, it will be banned with immediate effect from all our HL configs. It may or may not be banned in future seasons, and that will be put to further discussion as players have more of a chance to get accustomed to the changes.
Let me translate:
Kkaltuu feels the weapon will have a much bigger impact on games after he got wreckd from it in a pickup because he doesnt know how to counter W+M1….It may or may not be banned in future seasons, this depends on kkaltuu if he dies to it again
The Phlog didn’t even get buffed, why are you banning it? You already had 75% damage resistance whiel taunting, all the ‘buff’ does is stop you from capping while taunting, which was really the only reason the Phlog saw play at all.
http://imgur.com/wgFvkG8
Why doe only Kkaltuu get credit for killing tf2? The hole league admin staff is conspiring to achieve the goal our mentor, leader and spirit animal Permzilla left us because he just didn’t succeed in all those years…
C’mon guys, that’s just not fair (enough).
Yes, kKaltuu is a conspiracy enthusiast with nothing else to do rather than come up with master plans to push his “shitty team” into playoffs.
Let’s just forget that a 4-team playoff format was rumored even before the beginning of the season and was even mentioned in a pre-season banter show.
I understand people’s distress about the date of the finals being pushed back but don’t use our team as a device to strengthen your argument, we have zero impact on what admins’ team does in this league, nor do we want to have any.
Honestly don’t care why he did it, the point is that he did it even though it said multiple places that the finals were supposed to be played on the 10th, so we planned stuff for that, and wont be able to field a good roster now. Epic admining
Nobody has said anything about me yet about my team getting into playoffs instead of FE :>
But tbf, if Highpander wants to, we’re all fine to play the first game way before 10th to keep the schedule similar to how it has been for this season.
would be highly appreciated if we could work something out like that
god bless the usa
that drama isn’t prem level HL
step it up bois
Why are we returning to the excruciating three week playoffs process where pcws are impossible to find? So dumb.
We tried to make it fit as well as possible, and hope that UGC’s Season 18 keeps the teams active enough to fill in the gaps during playoffs.
@stevepander I was rather asking why high doesnt get same playoffstyle like prem, because thats kinda preferred by me (at least from a spectator perspective).
I’d like what Atzebumm suggests too :)
Why’d you switch the High playoff brackets? I mean at least they make sense now. Mistake or someone whined?
@JustJosh We changed around the matches a bit due to a initial miscalculation with the Sonneborn-Berger Score. The current ones are correct and will stay. If you have any questions feel free to contact us.
hello aoshi, what can you tell about the high-playoffs of last season?
ambition got all upset and ran complaining to admins B)
@.zero https://i.imgur.com/ck2opaj.gif
hey can we swap to same playoff system that high uses for prem so that teams can actually find pcws during the playoffs against teams who care?
it would also make the playoffs a week shorter since this seems to be a dank meme within the admin team, as seen by the 6v6 playoffs lasting for a whopping 3 hours
why dont we actually swap to that one? i like the idea of having a season that spans over 3 months and the most important part of the season spans over the course of 3 hours with no incentive for anyone to pcw the #1 seed cause nobody wants to play this game for fun and enjoyment anyway
“In season 9, chess did much better than the rest in the regular season, so putting them in the finals right off the bat seems justified. And this coming from a player who will have to be facing off against them in the finals.”
Oh don’t worry Steve, you won’t have to face off against chess 8-)
Fair to say the scheduling this season around playoffs has been unusually and drastically poor, not like I expect from ETF2L in Highlander, something somewhere he gone wrong and I can tell Kkaltuu is taking the flak for something that he isn’t entirely responsible for.
Scheduling is one of the most important aspects of the season and I am not surprised there are so many complaints.
Scissors, you may hope you don’t need more than 1 merc against Strong Opinions bud…
unless something is done about this disaster, we’ll 100% need more than that lol
real talk though can we get the bracket for mid fixed
why both the second seed and the first seed are on the same half of the bracket is beyond me
There is nothing wrong with the mid brackets, not sure what you are on about.
@draltoady the bracket is okay, your opponents for the semi will get set manually to the right one once the time comes. No need to worry ;)
Btw all you prem ppl who’re complaining in here and want a different schedule. We can see how we can help but keeping on ranting about it in the comments of a news post wont help. Contact us over on the irc with a proposal as to how we can fix this or whatnot and we’ll see how we can help. I wont promise anything yet though.
I dont know why switch to a retarded 4 team playoff system instead of going for the 1 day 3 playoff teams system from 6s
Because then you have 2 good matches on one day where you just need to hype up 1 day
and you also just waste 1 day for the prem teams :>
Can you imagine how long playing two Bo3 matches (of which many of the maps could be Bo3 themselves) would take? Compare that with 6s for your answer.
Playoffs for prem should have been 3 teams to keep things consistent with last season, given that nothing was announced before the season started. From personal experience I would say that playing fewer games/playing games within a shorter period of time is best for all teams involved.