Season 24 powered by Tt eSPORTS: Award Polls

Shortly after the Highlander Season 10 Award Polls it is also time to decide the Season 24 awards.

Best Player of the Season has been decided already as, besides our winner, no other candidate managed to reach the minimum amount of nominations to even be considered for this award. The winner will be revealed in the Season 24 Awards Show.

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Will this be the first time since Season 15, when ThePledge won over the most decorated caster to this point Admirable that we are going to see someone else as Caster of the Season than our bald Irish caster extraordinaire or  Sideshow? Both only covered just enough games to be considered for this season’s awards. Opening the door for new and upcoming casters to show their talent by casting a lot of matches in an attempt to win this prestigious trophy. It is in your hands…

The knockout phase is well and truly underway, we have already seen England, Denmark,  Czech Republic and Germany book their Quarter Final places and tonight we have a contest between Poland and Finland, casted live by CeeJaey and Beater, with Jon on the camera.

Poland scraped through the group stages, needing to win a tiebreaker versus Norway book their spot, having already been declared out in a previous ETF2L newspost, the Polish side have fought back from the dead and are still fighting for their lives. Still, with captain Graba leading the charge, anything is possible!

Finland meanwhile registered a fairly comfortable top seed finish, a 100% record and they will be expecting to continue that tonight. The star studded side has bags of experience and talent in their ranks, but will the infamous Finnish curse of recent nations cups strike again?

Tune in at 21:15 CEST – On BlackOut TV, with the winner facing off against Germany in the last 8.

Are you letting patriotism get in the way of just enjoying TF2. With people competing over the internet as well as in Rio. Maybe you want something where Nations are not fighting for supremacy. Maybe you want a showmatch! Well as you most likely already figured out, you clever rascal you, there is one tonight. Two of the top teams in all of Europe are battling to raise awareness of the upcoming Insomnia 58 LAN event. Yeah, the big one! Se7en and Full Tilt face each other for your enjoyment and to raise funds for Full Tilt. You can find out more and donate here. Casters are CommanderX, Bren and DavidTheWin handling production. Oh and while you’re here, how about scrolling down a bit and voting in the Awards polls.

The Highlander Open #2 Powered by Essentials.tf and Whitelist.tf: Playoffs

Banner made by Yggdrasil

The playoff fixtures for The Highlander Open #2 Powered by Essentials.tf and Whitelist.tf are now out, the bracket can be found here, or under the competition tab. The playoffs will proceed as bo3 single elimination however please remember that stopwatch maps are to be played as bo1 for that map, for more information see the FAQ.

All matches during the playoffs will have a default date of either a Tuesday or a Saturday however the teams have a few days of flexibility for each round. A change to the date must be agreed by both team leaders, if a reschedule cannot be agreed then the default date is to be used.

The maps for each round of the playoffs are to be decided by map elimination, all teams are considered of equal seed for the map elimination process. A full explanation of how this is to be carried out can be found on our general rules page. Once the maps have been decided post the decision on the match page along with any agreed mercs, please add your opposing teams leaders asap.

The map pool for the competition is as follows

• Badwater (pl_badwater)
• Upward (pl_upward)
• Lakeside (koth_lakeside_final)
• Borneo (pl_borneo)
• Viaduct (koth_product_rc8)
• Gullywash (cp_gullywash_final1)
• Process (cp_process_final)

If you have any questions please contact an admin on IRC.

Nations Cup #6 powered by Tt eSPORTS: A look back and ahead

As we finally enter the Round of 16 of the Nations Cup, here is a look back at the history of the matchups coming up in the Round of 16, a recap of the Group Stage and a look ahead.

 England vs Wales

* The United Kingdom participated in the first Nations Cup. From my understanding most or all of the team members at the time were English, therefore the result counts towards England.

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A look back

This will be the second time these two neighbours meet in an ETF2L Nations Cup in this grudge match. The first time was in the 2nd Nations Cup, when England beat Wales 5-0 on cp_granary and a whopping 23-5 on ctf_turbine. The English lineup was comprised of the best England had to offer at the time. Names like numlocked, Shintaz, dunc, Evil, AcidReniX and Fisshu went on to later win several trophies with their teams as well as individually. Yet, in the 2nd Nations Cup, they ended up losing in the Semi finals to one of the two dominating nations at the time, an even more stacked Swedish team (who would then lose to Finland in the final). Wales on the other hand would have been rated as a solid Division 2-3 team at the time, with their standout players probably being Dave and Santa.

Group Stage Performance

England‘s run through the group stage so far has been a fairly easy one, going by their results. Out of their three matches, they only dropped 2 rounds against the  Slovak Republic. Often they would even off-class to the point where almost everyone in the team played several classes in a match.

Wales came in second of their group by being a single point ahead of Hungary and Lithuania. With Mike not playing in their first two matches, they seem to have had a tougher time than most might have expected. But eventually advanced thanks to a convincing victory (with Mike) over Hungary in their last match and a single Golden Cap point from their match against Portugal.

Worth mentioning

Anderson from Wales already played in the previously mentioned match against England in Nations Cup #2 almost 7 years ago.

Starkie is the last active player of the team that won Nations Cup #3, almost 4 years ago.

A look ahead

You would expect this match to go in England‘s favour, as they seem to be the team most people would bet their hats on to go through and win the whole cup, which would be their 2nd (after Nations Cup #3). Yet if Wales are able to bring their A-team, England may have to play half-serious for once, with at least 3 of their players on their main classes.

England 90:10 Wales

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