Experimental HL Cup #2 Brackets

The brackets can be found here

A quick reminder of the schedule…

• 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 rules can be found here.

Please ensure that you are on time to every match and start promptly so that there are no delays. If a team doesn’t show after 15 minutes, or doesn’t have at least 8 players, request an admin in IRC to claim a default win.

Highlander Nations Cup Milestone

As the Highlander Nations Cup approaches we are going to be enforcing a milestone on June 17th. By this point all teams registered in the cup should have at least 12 verified players. The captain of any team that doesn’t have at least 12 players will be contacted by an admin to explain why. If a team leader hasn’t been putting in the effort to fill a roster then they will be replaced with another candidate. If a team can’t fill a roster due to lack of player interest, the country will be dropped from the cup! Therefore, please ensure that you have at least 12 players registered in the team by June 17th!

6v6 Nations Cup Captains

You had time until Saturday to send in your applications, we now picked a first round of captains. If your country is not in the list, it means that nobody applied to be captain for your nation and the spot is still vacant. The next round of captains will be announced next Sunday (June 10) which means the application should be in our mailbox at [email protected] by June 9 at the latest.

In case a National Team already exists for your country you may request leadership by contacting an admin. The following players have now access to the team captains forum to work out the schedule and rules together with the admins.

• Germany – Thy
• England – numlocked
• Winland – hocz
• Sweden – Zebbosai
• Lithuania – huhy
• Russia – Galant
• Egypt – WildEast
• Czech Republic – Rok0s
• Israel – matnuN
• Hungary – Luigi
• Luxembourg – Netsky
• Bulgaria – Hohen
• Portugal – t0dA
• Canada – spadez
• Slovenia – DruzeKus
• Denmark – F2
• Estonia – M2R
• Poland – Aez
• Romania – punct
• Spain – Erner0

Reminders

As you can see on our calendar, week 6 of our 12th 6v6 Season, powered by Tt eSPORTS, has begun. This season we are reminding you extra-early that there will be a catch-up week from June 17 to June 23. All unplayed matches will be set to 0-0 on June 24, with no exceptions. If you want to make use of the catch-up week you should contact an admin.

The premiership playoffs will start immediately after the catch-up week. We invite everyone, especially the high level players and casters/streamers, to discuss changes to the playoff format. You can find the thread here.

Our next standard reminder at the end of every season is that you are not allowed to use wildcards during the last week of the season. This means that you are not allowed to use wildcards after June 9. and have to contact an admin if your opponent used a wildcard anyway. The admin will then restore the old schedule.

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.