Highlander Nations Cup

Most of us may still be stuck in the magical rainbow land from the Pyromania patch, but here on ETF2L we are proud to announce the beginning of a summer of sizzling international TF2 action as the Highlander Nations cup begins with the first game of the group stage starting this Sunday. Team leaders can see their matches by visiting their My Matches page, please start scheduling your week 1 and 2 matches as soon as possible as the games will come thick and fast in order to avoid a massive scheduling overlap with the 6v6 Nations Cup. All group stage games must be completed by Sunday 15th July, all games left unplayed will be nullified and all tiebreakers must be completed by Wednesday 18th July before the knockout phase of the tournament begins.

Groups & Schedule

The groups have been seeded and drawn, with 6 groups of four teams and 2 groups of three teams with the winners and runners-up from each group proceeding to the knockout stage of the cup. You can find the full group listings HERE. The schedule for the tournament is as follows:

Group Stage:

• Round 1: Played between  Sunday 1st July – Tuesday 10th(same as Round 2)
• Round 2: Played between Friday 6th – Tuesday 10th
• Round 3: Played between Wednesday 11th – Sunday 15th
• Tiebreakers: Played between Monday 16th – Wednesday 18th

Teams should note that you may play these matches early and in any order, but no later than their round deadline – you will not be allowed to schedule Round 1/2 matches during the Round 3 timeframe or later.

Knockout Stage:

• Round of 16: Played by Tuesday 24th July
• Quarter-finals: Played by Tuesday 31st July
• Semi-final: Played by August 7th
• Final & 3rd place match: Before i46 (Thursday 23rd August)

Rules & Setup

The full Highlander Nations Cup rules are now live. Some of the most important rules are listed below but make sure to check all of them out.

• Teams must have a minimum of 12 players on their roster and a maximum of 20 players.
• Rosters will be locked during Playoffs.
• There will be no mercs allowed.
• There will be no wildcards.
• Teams with 2 default losses will be expelled from the cup.
• Dropped teams results will be removed from the Group Stages unless they have played all Group Stage matches.

Boneyard Productions Movie Competition

In other news, the world reknown video editor and international man of mistery  BoneS has announced a movie making competition sponsored by Tt eSports. You can find all the information you need to know about the competition in this forum thread, or alternatively check out the promotional video below.

 Vaskie left us with some information on the ESEA LAN TF2 finals this weekend.

ESEA Season 11 Lan is here and for anyone that is up to pair with the latest news on the American Scene this is the most exciting LAN to be had, by far!  Mihaly’s Flow,  Leviathan Gaming (Ex-Quantic Legacy),  Classic Mixup, and  Srsly Br0 are going to be brawling against each other to see who comes out of the Lan with the first prize being $4,800. But that’s not all, the second place will be taking home $2,400, the third $1,680 and the fourth $1,200, but the big question is who is gonna steal the trophy this time…

The rosters and seeds for this Lan will be:

1.  Mihalys Flow (harbleu, ww-, PYYYOUR, soup, Ruwin, Shrugger)
2.  Srsly br0 (boomer, blaze, mesr, dummy, oPlaiD, Yz50)
3.  Classic Mixup (Platinum, lansky, kbk-, smaka, mo0se, enigma)
4.  Leviathan Gaming (enoryT, Dave__AC, shade, b4nny, cyzer, clockwork)

With i46 happening in August, this is a great chance for Europeans to see how the Americans go at the game, and understand whats the reality of Team Fortress 2 on the other side of the ocean.
With all of the competition in Invite being so damn strong, this is looking to be the best season of Lan yet, and none should lose the opportunity to watch the greatest American players going agains’t eachother.

You can watch the stream right underneath. Vaskie provided a viewing guide that will be updated as often as possible.  Our favourite Romanian Canadian Alfa will keep this thread updated with STV and Mumble cast information for everybody who wants to be his own director but we really recommend you to support TF2 and ESEA by watching the stream as this is what counts for the sponsors!

Watch live video from ESEA LIVE S10 LAN Finals in Dallas! on pt.twitch.tv

Season 12 powered by Tt eSPORTS: Playoffs

Today is the last day you can/could play your matches. Where necessary, the tie-breaker matches have been created. The first premiership playoff, TCM Gaming vs. Punchline, has even already been scheduled for Thursday, June 28! Please start scheduling and playing now, below is the full list of all playoffs and tie-breakers.

Premiership Playoffs

• TCM Gaming vs  Punchline – Overall 2-1
•  TCM Gaming vs  Team Infused
• Winner vs  Epsilon eSports

Premiership Relegation

Tie-Breakers

The playoffs and tie-breakers are played “best of three” with map elimination. Because the map elimination does only work with an uneven number of maps, cp_obscure_final is removed from the playoff map pool. The playoff map pool consists of:

• cp_badlands
• cp_granary
• cp_gullywash
• cp_snakewater
• cp_gravelpit

The premiership playoffs always have to be played until the next Saturday, all tie-breakers have to be played in a period of three weeks (until July 14).

Highlander Nations Cup Information

As one major international tournament starts to reach its closing stages, we are just about to kick off our first ever Highlander Nations cup! The signups to the Nations cup are still open and will close cup at Midnight CEST on Wednesday, June 27. If you have not signed up yet, you can do still do so. The draw will be held the following day, with the teams seeded into pools to ensure we get the best games possible during the latter stages of the tournament. Team captains are reminded that the minimum roster size is 12 players and the maximum is 20, if your team fails to meet these requirements you will not be allowed to participate. Please contact the admin staff if you are a team captain and have problems to fulfill these requirements.

With this in mind, we have allowed team captains to contribute to the setup of the tournament in the Captains Forum, where we have decided on preliminary map pool and schedule.  Captains are encouraged to review the preliminary schedule and suggest any last-minute changes.

Got a Match?

Got a Match? is an initiative to raise awareness for bone marrow donation, ran by one of our Dutch users, CapTVK. Many people need a bone marrow transplant each year, for example leukemia patients. Finding a matching donor is not always easy, the matching is a much more complicated process than for example matching a blood type. More donors are needed all the time. The Dutch highlander team will try to raise awareness of this fact during its matches. If you are interested in becoming a donor, which is an extremely easy process, Dutch people can go to visit the homepage of europdonor.nl to read all about it and sign up. It’s amazing how such a simple act can potentially save a life.

Note that europdonor.nl is only for Dutch residents. Players from other countries can find their national donor registry at the BMDW website.

Just a quick heads up to tell you all about our friends across the pond at eXtv are trying to bring 2 top class North American sides over to this summer’s highly anticipated Multiplay insomnia-46 LAN event. The top 4 teams from the continent have announced their intentions to attend the event, meaning that the winners of an eXtv arranged tournament will be sponsored to fly to LAN and settle the age old argument of “America versus Europe”.

The awesome people at eXtv have set up a donation drive, the link you can find HERE or chip in right below. If you have any spare change please chip in towards the cause and help make i46 the most spectacular LAN in TF2 so far!

Highlander Nations Cup Signups

Signups for the Highlander Nations Cup are now open! Please ensure you have the minimum of 12 required players registered on your team before signing up for the cup! The deadline for signups is June 27 and the first week will start on July 1. More information on the schedule will follow soon / later.

>>Signup here<<

Free Mumble Server

The kind folks over at Multiplay have given us a 1000 slot mumble server to use as the official ETF2L mumble server a while ago. We now decided to put it to good use. All players registered at ETF2L are welcome! The details for the mumble server are as follows

• IP Address – 85.236.100.59
• Port Number – 6687

There are no requirements for your own channel other than not to use racist or offensive channel names, descriptions or nick names. To request your very own channel please contact an admin on IRC (or message LManiac or CanFo directly).

Epsilon’s next matches

There are quite a lot of promising high level TF2 matches coming up next week, most of them featuring Epsilon eSports and many featuring  Team Infused. Do not miss them out and check out the broadcasting info on the VanillaTV homepage.

• June 19, 21:10 CEST:  Epsilon eSports vs.  TCM Gaming
• June 19, 21:15 CEST:  Punchline vs.  Team Decerto
• June 20, 20:00 CEST:  Epsilon eSports vs.  Team Infused
• June 20, 21:15 CEST:  Epsilon eSports vs.  Team Infused
• June 21, 21:15 CEST:  Epsilon eSports vs.  Team Infused
• June 24, 21:10 CEST:  Epsilon eSports vs. Team Infused

Also remember to play all of your remaining matches until Sunday, June 24!