Experimental Highlander Cup #2

With the Highlander season over, the 6v6 season in full flow and the Nations Cups appearing on the horizon, it seemed only suitable that our usual “First Thursday of the Month” cup would be our second foray into experimental Highlander play.

Standard Highlander teams and National teams can sign up for this cup and have an early taste of what the summer ahead will hold. UPDATE: We also added the option for fun teams to sign up!

Please note that we will divide team types into separate brackets unless we don’t gain enough signups to do so. Also, players may not play for more than one team in this cup!

Schedule & Maps

As usual with our Thursday cups, the majority of the tournament will be held over one night, with the final held on a separate night, within a week of the tournament.

The first map of the night will be koth_ashville_rc1, which is making an impact as a new map in other leagues. Made by  Mackey the ex-Quantic roamer, it is fairly simple to play.

The next map, pl_waste_v2, will be familiar to the wizened veterans of Highlander Cup #2. It’s a payload map with a twist – both teams push the cart at the same time, trying to get it to the enemy base in order to win the round.

The final map will be ctf_converge_b3, a capture the flag map with yet another twist – there is only one briefcase, spawning in the middle of the map; both teams must try and carry it to the enemies’ base in order to capture the point.

Feedback on the maps is of course strongly encouraged – check out the discussion thread in the feedback forums.

The schedule for the evening of Thursday 7^th June will be as followed:

• 19:00 CEST – Signups close & teams split into brackets.
• 19:30 CEST  – Draw will be made and the matches posted.
• 20:00 CEST  – Round 1 begins, on koth_ashville_rc1
• 20:45 CEST  – Round 2 begins, on pl_waste_v2
• 21:30 CEST  – Round 3 begins, on ctf_converge_b3

The final will consist of a best of 3 map series, with pl_waste_v2 and ctf_converge_b3 as the first two maps and koth_ashville_rc1 being the decider if necessary.

Rules & Setup

For this tournament the usual 9v9 Highlander rules will apply, you can find them linked here.

• pl_waste will be played with mp_winlimit 5 and mp_timelimit 30. If it is a tie after 30 minutes, the team holding the middle point will win the map
• ctf_converge will be played as 1 Round of 20 minutes, first to 7 caps (mp_timelimit 20, mp_winlimit 7, tf_flag_caps_per_round 1).
  • In case of a tie, teams will play a Golden cap round with a 5 minute timelimit (mp_timelimit 5, mp_winlimit 1).
  • If it still remains a tie (and to prevent stalemates), reset the config and timelimit.
• koth_ashville will be played first to 3 rounds (mp_timelimit 0, mp_winlimit 3).
• Maximum waiting time of 10 minutes then teams not ready will have to ready up.
• Minimum of 8 players needed to start a match.

Signups are open NOW – remember to make sure your team has at least 9 players on the roster with each member’s Steam ID filled in correctly.

Please remember to make sure your server has the correct ETF2L config installed on the server and executed for the match. You can find a list of all the configs here.

Excello presents: ZOWIE TF2 Challenge IV

Our friends from Excello are back after a short break with a new ZOWIE TF2 Challenge IV tournament!

The ZOWIE TF2 Challenge IV will be the seventh sponsored Team Fortress 2 tournament at Excello. ZOWIE Gear provides 6 ZOWIE Swift mousepads for the winning team.

The signups for the open tournament, held on Tuesday, June 5, are open from now on until the check-in starts. The maximum slots are 32.

For more info, head over to the VanillaTF2 article or the original article at excello.net.

Highlander Season 2 finally closed!

The completion of the final few play-off matches marks the end of another great Highlander season. We hope you enjoyed the season no matter where you finished in your division. A massive congratulations are in order for  SNSD who won the season without dropping a single map (again)! The top 3 are as follows:

1. SNSD
2.  27
3. May Contain Nuts

Not only do the top 2 teams get some snazzy pixel trophies, as well as the glory of being the best highlander teams in Europe, they also get cash prizes!  SNSD will receive a whopping £500 and 27 will receive £250!

The winners of each division can be found in the the Highlander Season 2 Hall of Fame. We have also added the pixel trophies to all teams that finished in the top 3 of their division, enjoy!

And finally we wish to give a huge thank you to all the players, team leaders and admins that made this season such a huge success, we’ll see you in Season 3!

Staff Changes

Spike Himself, our site coder, decided to quit the admin staff because he has lost interest in Team Fortress 2 (again) and with that also lost motivation to dedicate his spare time towards the league. We wish him all the best and are grateful for everything he did. You are welcome back at any time, buddy.

On the bright side, we are saying hello to no less than 3 (!) new admins:

• Miek, who will take over as webmaster
• Phife, who will mainly support our 6v6 staff
• Maniac, who has joined as a highlander admin

The best way to contact them (or any other admin) is through IRC.

Ban:

VAC has claimed another victim. As a result of general rule 6.5,  Thalash is banned for 1 year. If the VAC ban turns out to be false, the ban will, of course, be lifted.

6v6 Nations Cup

You waited long enough for this and it is now time to finally announce it: The third ETF2L 6v6 Nations Cup will kick off in July 2012. As usual, all players from all countries are welcome but please note that the matches will have to be played on European servers at European times. Here are some basic information for the team captains-to-be.

• For the eligibility to play for a country we are looking separately at every player on the rosters. We may ask for proof of the eligibility of a player when in doubt (e.g. a scan of the ID)
• The rosters have to be finalised about one week before the tournament starts and will be approved by the admin staff (more information on this when the exact schedule has been decided)
• Rosters will be locked during the tournament, adding new players is only possible with admin approval
• Mercs will not be allowed and all rosters need to consist of at least 8 eligible players
• If you have doubts if you are allowed to play for a certain country please ask an admin
• If a player does not have approval from the admin staff and is considered ineligible to play for a country he or she risks a league ban and disqualification of his or her national team

The setup is not final yet. All team captains will be invited to work out the details with the admins in a separate forum in early June. We have, however, given thought to some points already.

Team captains can apply from now until Saturday, June 2. We are aiming to announce all captains the day after, on Sunday, June 3. Only applications via email to [email protected] will be considered.

 Highlander Nations Cup Updates

Here are the last missing captains. They have now access to the Nations Cup Captain forum and are welcome to participate in the discussion on remaining issues.

•   Switzerland: octochris
• Latvia: atomic
• Norway: Bungle
• Poland:  Mikki
• United States of America:  sherman_gluck &  Br0nze
  
• Canada:  jabu69
• South Africa:  Pynklùùùnningen

 Highlander Admin Call

With Beef taking things a bit slower in the next weeks/months/years (he is not leaving, just switching to more of an “observer role”!) we are running a bit short of highlander staff. If you ever wanted to help maintaining and improving the Highlander competitions at ETF2L do not hesitate to apply via email to [email protected].

Your application should include the following information:

• Name
• Current residence
• Age
• Spoken languages
• Previous experience (optional)
• Short letter of motivation (Why do you want to be an admin?)
• ETF2L profile link

Claim your prizes!

There are still two teams that have not yet claimed their prizes for competitions such as the Saffron Cup and 6v6 Season 11, both sponsored by Tt eSPORTS. Namely, we are talking about  Crack Clan and  Perilous Gaming. They have time until June 3 2012 to send the shipment info (one name and address) via email to [email protected] or the prizes expire.

Season 12 powered by Tt eSPORTS Reminders

Just some reminders that we think are helpful and necessary, for both new teams and teams that are playing their 13th season.

• Teams will receive minor warnings for unplayed matches after the deadline unless they requested an admin on IRC for an extension.
  • The warnings can be removed if one team leader contacts an admin after the results are submitted and verified.
• Missing status screenshots are worth one minor warning at the first occurrence and a major warning if your team fails to add status screenshots to a match a second time.
  • These warnings can, again, be removed by adding a correct status screenshot and contacting an admin on IRC.
• Status screenshots need to be uploaded as jpg, gif or png but under no circumstances a bmp file. We suggest to use the command “jpeg” instead of “screenshot” and to set  jpeg_quality 85 before you take the screenshot.
  • Do not alter the screenshots (mark anything or cut out the steam ids). From the publication of this newspost on any status screenshot that can not be read by our parsing script will be punished with a minor or major warning.
• Missing screenshots can be added via the Add Screenshots tab in the admin panel.

S12 Prizes Update

Our anonymous donor has struck again, this time putting up £300 for the winner of the Premier Division playoffs this season!

Highlander Tie-Breakers

Congratulations to SNSD for winning the ETF2L Highlander League, again! Congratulations as well to the runners-up!

1. SNSD
2. 27
3. May Contain Nuts

Tie-breakers are needed in a total of five divisions to determine which team advances to the higher division or is relegated to the lower. The matches are listed below. Please play all matches within two weeks (Deadline May 26, 2012). Also, the coloured rows showin who is promoted and who is demoted have been added to the tables (better late than never, right?)

All tie-breakers are played in a best-of-three series. This means that if Badwater, Upward or Barnblitz are picked you only play these maps once as attacker and once as defender (best-of-one), not in a best-of-three series as during the season. The map pool for the map elimination process is:

• Badwater
• Foundry
• Lakeside
• Upward
• Barnblitz

Maps will be chosen using an elimination process. Both teams eliminate a map. Then both teams select 1 map from the remaining pool of 3 that they wish to play. The last remaining map will be the final map to be played.

Division 1

• colony vs Chior Tai

Division 4F

• WeWantFun vs haylander

Division 5D

• Division of Justice vs FUS RO DAH

Division 6D

• Derpalicious Mentalmen vs Ok, dobra.

Division 6P

• itsallgood vs mods.de Community-Team

Saffron Cup Final

After a lot of hesitation, the two finalists of the ETF2L Saffron Cup managed to play their match within the given deadlines. HmtraHreH`s won, and are now going home with six Tt eSPORTS MEKA G-UNIT Keyboards. Runners-up Perilous Gaming get six Tt eSPORTS Battle Dragon Bags. To claim the prize one representative of each team needs to send an email to [email protected], containing the shipment information (one name and address). The prizes for both finalists were donated to the cup by Season 11 winners  Team Infused.

Highlander Captains

The application deadline for the Highlander Nations Cup captaincies will be met on Saturday, May 19. If your country has no captain yet and you feel you are the right person to represent your team, make sure to apply until then to [email protected].

Just some quick news! Due to teams asking for a further extension in order to play their last Highlander Season 2 matches, we hereby extend the final deadline to Monday, May 7, at 06:00 CEST. This means that EU- and US-based teams can use their whole Sunday, May 6, to play their last matches. As usual, this extra day can only be used if both teams agree. Please ensure all remaining matches are scheduled, played and submitted before the final deadline!

All matches with a missing result after this deadline will be nullified.

ESH Action Tonight

The Velociraptor Challenge is nearing its final stages over on Esports Heaven. Tonight’s main game is the best-of-3 Upper Bracket Final between  Team Infused and  Crack Clan. As usual, our friends at VanillaTV will be casting the match, featuring  Comedian on the stream and fan favourites  Arx&Beta providing the commentary.

Tune in from 21.15 CEST onwards for what should be a thrilling encounter!