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Surprisingly well considering we were banned

missed the sign ups by 5 mins so we missed it out :<

Quoted from kaidus

Crzfst carries.

What else is new?

Quoted from randa

Oh and arx your predictions are TERRIBLE :D:D ahah

bills predictions are the worst :DDD

But we need to beat you on gravel so as to restore our shattered egos :(

played along side with smack met our expectations and we went out with a bang fun times.

After 8 official ETF2L matches and over 420 PCW maps, countless training montages including pre-match pressups and pre-match pump-up playlists, and a work related team management course causing a minor existentialist crisis about my role in the team as leader and as a pocket, 9 Men’s season draws to a close. Once again we missed out on promotion by the smallest of margins, riding the typical ETF2L emotional rollercoaster through all the peaks and troughs. Here’s what happened.

Before the season started, we had two squads. However as summer inactivity took its toll, we found ourselves regularly mixing the two teams up in order to get a full team to play each evening. Therefore, I decided to combine the two teams to guarantee us a full team when we needed it, as well as hopefully giving everyone more experience in playing Division 5 skill level games.

The best laid plans rarely go tits up quite so quickly, with pretty much everyone in our roster being available to play the very day after we combined the teams, but I (hopefully!) managed to get everyone as much playtime as I could. We even managed a few 9m v 9m internals, something I’ve not done since the days of Q3F. However as the season continued, we did end up saying goodbye to Satako and Hertzsprung, who went almost entirely inactive for real life (TM).

With this large roster change I decided it wasn’t worth applying for Division 4, so we’d stick in Division 5 and try our best to get promoted. So it was with some trepidation (and a bit of quiet confidence) that we awaited the announcement of divisions, so we could see what we were up against.

Swedish ‘new’ team Knö i Hörn were our first opponents. After failing to ilicit any useful information from Gryzor about his old Excello teammates, I was unsure what we would be facing. I knew Inco was good after mercing for a few of his previous teams, but the other swedes were old TF2 players from pre-season 1 (it wasn’t until afterwards that Dr. Phil told me one of them was in the Swedish national Q3 CTF team). Ten minutes into the first map granary and we were 4-0 down and in serious danger of a 5-0 rout. Thankfully we sorted our mid battles and held out for a 3-7 loss, minorly missing out on a double scout mid backcap on one round (YOU COULD HAVE DONE IT SCOUTS!). We also lost badlands 2-3, so overall the result was nice and close and I felt satisfied with the way we’d played.

After this game we ended up recruiting ANOTHER player, Nymthae’s meatshield “Firestorm”. This was such a bad idea (another soldier when we already had 4 in the team? ANOTHER PERSON CALLED MATT?????? FFFFFFFUUUUUUUUUUU-) that I should have vetoed it, but I’m glad I didn’t. Firestorm proved a great help this season and an awesome addition to the 9m family. Around this time I also fell victim to the deadly snu-flu (aka man-flu), forcing me to battle for my life both on and off the computer ;(

The second match was against yet more swedes, the always friendly Fader clan. Two 5-0 wins was just what we needed to get back on track after losing our first game. After some re-scheduling, our next match to be played was actually week 4’s game against Exterminans, featuring gravelpit. Always the bane of any season, gravelpit results in weeks of complaining about playing it and ultimate frustration when things go badly. Maybe one day I’ll figure out how to get a team playing this map; don’t forget we’ll need to play it again in Season 9 guys! It got so bad that we ended up swapping out our regular medic and playing with a different lineup, thankfully a luxury we can afford with our large roster. Still, we won the two maps comfortably.

Next up were Immortals, who proved a close adversary. A bad call by myself caused us to lose a round on obscure, winning only 4-2, then gullywash went right down to the wire with us defending our last point to the final seconds at 2-1 up. Unlucky guys! Your soldiers are airshotting bosses with 100+ pings too!

By now we had some idea of what the final tables would look like, with Knö i Hörn and french team SexyGamers winning all their games so far. This meant our Week 5 game against the french team would probably be our only shot at getting a promotion or playoff spot. After going ahead briefly on freight, we ended up losing because I didn’t react fast enough to their soldiers bombing our medic on mid. Consequently, we needed to take a map off them on gravelpit. It started off well enough, with us almost rolling B straight away, but we pushed onto A slightly too early and ended up failing to capture both points. After that it all went wrong, typical gravelpit :(

This meant it was now going to be pretty much impossible for us to finish first or second, so we just plowed through the rest of the games with the only major excitement coming from our newest recruit – the joke filled Maltesers Christmas Advent Calendar! LOLS WERE HAD BY ALL! We ended up finishing third.

Shout outs to 9 Men Scandinavia, Sdx98, T4F, Fragmented (who ended up mercing for what seemed like every team we played against for a week) and Byte for a bit of mentoring. Finally, shout out to the mysterious idk? steve who joined up and subbed when one of our players dropped on a badlands pcw even though he wasn’t on the server before then and we weren’t playing anyone from his clan. He used in game comms and played perfectly, before leaving just after our player was able to rejoin like a true gentleman, never to be seen or heard of again.

I salute you sir!