One Night Cup: Saffron Unlocks – Moved

The one-night cup will be moved from tonight to Tuesday April 10, due to the original schedule clashing with Angel’s Cup at Esports Heaven. We apologise for the short notice announcement but we believe this is for the better because all teams should have a chance to play in both tournaments.

But there is more news on this cup! Newly crowned Season 11 champions  Team Infused will generously sponsor their prizes to the finalists of this cup, which means that the winning team will receive six Tt eSPORTS MEKA G-UNIT Keyboards, and the second placed team wins six Tt eSPORTS Battle Dragon Bags!

This could have been the second chance for Season 11 runner-up  Epsilon eSports to grab the keyboards BUT there is another change to the ruleset of this tournament! All participating teams must not play with more than 3 players with division 2 (or higher) experience in ETF2L Seasons 10! or 11 (or respectively other leagues) and the cups are no longer separated into brackets of 16.

Currently there are about 40 teams on the waiting list so we expect a turnout of at least 64 slots. Teams that already signed up stay signed up (please check if you meet the new requirements). If you can not play at the new date please let an admin know on IRC. Grab yourself the upcoming talents and win some gaming gear!

Rules overview:

• ETF2L Season 11 rules apply (apart from the unlock ruleset)
• Setup – Cup of 2^n
• Merc rules – 2 mercs allowed by default if they are presented on the match page (experience requirements still apply)
• Bracket draw – Tuesday, April 10 at 19:00 CEST in #etf2l
• Sign-ups open – Now

Schedule for 64 or less teams:

• 20.00 CEST, Round of 64: cp_snakewater
• 20:45 CEST, Round of 32: cp_granary
• 21:30 CEST, Round of 16: cp_gullywash_final1
• 22:15 CEST, Quarter Finals: cp_badlands
• The semi-finals and the final are played “best of three” with map elimination (map pool + gravelpit) and are scheduled by the participating teams
• Deadline for the semi-finals: Sunday, April 15
• Deadline for the final: Thursday, April 19.

Season 11 Award Nominations

Season 11 is now over with the last match being played last night. As after every season, it is now time for the award nominations! Please visit the listed forums to nominate your favourite player/team/thing until April 9, the polls will follow shortly after in another newspost.

The following categories are listed in the nomination forum:

• Scout of the Season
• Soldier of the Season
• Demoman of the Season
• Medic of the Season
• Off-Classer of the Season
• Surprisingly Good Team of the Season
• Most Valuable Player of the Season
• Best Premiership Debut of the Season
• Upcoming Talent of the Season
• Fairplay Award
• People’s Choice Award

Badlands

Gullywash

Match Overview
Epsilon eSports vs Team Infused
Playoffs (Premier Division)
Monday, April 2nd 21:15 CEST

cp_badlands

3 - 4 (golden cap)

cp_gullywash_final1

4 - 5

OVERALL
Epsilon eSports [1:5] Team Infused

We have reached the end of our first season of 2012 and, as expected, Epsilon and Infused have reached the Grand Final! Perhaps it is a little surprising to find Team Infused finish the Premier Division in the top spot*, but few doubted that the two strongest teams in Europe at the moment would trip on their way to the conclusion of Season 11.

*thanks to  Karnage eSports,  Byte, cp_gravelpit and something called “LAWLSTICKIES”(?)

Tonight’s match will decide who goes home with a Tt eSPORTS MEKA G-UNIT Keyboard as well as a Tt eSPORTS Battle Dragon Bag, or who receives the Tt eSPORTS THERON mouse along with the Tt eSPORTS LADON mousepad.

Let us not forget Crack Clan (3rd Place, Premier Division) and uV Gaming (1st Place, Division 1), who receive Tt eSPORTS SHOCK headsets and Tt eSPORTS DASHER mousepads respectively.

Many thanks again to the wonderful Tt eSPORTS for supplying the prizes for Season 11!

Maps for tonight will be badlands and gullywash, with snakwater as a decider. Both teams have dropped just one of these maps throughout the season – Epsilon dropping snakewater to Crack Clan and Infused gullywash to Epsilon themselves. Will the teams have learned from their losses, or from their opponent’s? Will Infused’s loss of  Greg be a help or a hindrance to them? Tune in tonight to find out!

Coverage

The handsome chaps at VanillaTV will be casting the match tonight, with CUBE on the camera and Pledgmirable doing the commentary! We hope to have the live stream embedded on the site as the match plays, but you should check out the VanillaTV YouTube site anyway for their catalogue of casts from the best matches of 2012 so far!

For those who prefer watching matches in-game, the STV address is almost certainly relay.vanillatv.org:27100, with the Mumble cast found at mumble.vanillatv.org:64738!

Ban

The following players are now banned:

• Fawni – Triggerbot – One year ban

One Night Cup: Saffron Unlocks

On Thursday, April 5 at 20:00 CEST it is again time for our monthly one night cup! This time we will allow some unlocks to play with. Similarly to the past events it is also possible to enter this cup using a Fun Team which can be setup in the normal way using the page found here. The signed up teams will be divided into skill based brackets of 16.

The map schedule is as follows:

• 20.00 CEST, Round of 16: cp_snakewater
• 20:45 CEST, Quarter Finals: cp_granary
• 21:30 CEST, Semi-Finals: cp_gullywash_final1
• 22:15 CEST, Final: cp_badlands

The following unlocks are allowed:

• The Kritzkrieg
• The Blutsauger
• The Crusader’s Crossbow
• The Übersaw
• The Original
• The Overdose
• The Boston Basher
• The Bonk!
• The Gunboats
• The Degreaser
• The Flaregun
• The Gunslinger
• The Huntsman
• The Paintrain

***Get the whitelist for this cup here (etf2l_whitelist_saffron.txt)***

Rules overview:

• ETF2L Season 11 rules apply (apart from the unlock ruling)
• Setup – Cups of 16, divided by skill levels
• Merc rules – 2 mercs allowed by default
• Bracket draw – Thursday, April 5 at 19:00 CET in #etf2l
• Sign-ups open – Now

TF2 Mix-up partners up with Child’s Play

Donations for the TF2 Mix-up Match (which includes gaming personalities like Robin Walker, Freddie Wong, Yogscast and Notch) are coming to a close. On Monday, three community members will be randomly picked to play in the match and receive signed merchandise from Valve and Bethesda. All you have to do is donate to Child’s Play through the TF2 Mix-up site before Monday 09:00, and you have a chance of getting picked. So far more than 420 donors have raised a total amount of almost $9,000. So make sure you check out the TF2 Mixup homepage.

Configs updated

You might already have noticed one change. Some people found it hard to find the configs on our beautiful site. This is why we renamed the “Rules” tab to “Rules & Configs“. All config-related information can be found on that page. Furthermore, the 6v6 config is from now on named etf2l_6v6.cfg and the Highlander config file is named etf2l_9v9.cfg to avoid confusion. Please note that the etf2_9v9.cfg is still an addon for the etf2l_6v6.cfg so your server will need both files to be set up for league matches. The same applies to the whitelist files which are now named etf2l_whitelist_6v6.txt and etf2l_whitelist_9v9.txt. You can always find the latest whitelist version on this page, provided by  Dave.

Also, Chris updated his map configs with the Highlander Season 2 map pool. There is also a pack available that includes all map configs, the league configs and whitelists.

Additionally, our forum rules have been updated. Please familiarise yourself with them.

We have closed the public poll section of the Tt eSPORTS Banner contest. We are very grateful for the feedback you have given us, it will be very helpful in deciding the overall winner of the contest and the Shock One headset Tt eSPORTS have offered as a prize!

In total, 533 voters made 902 votes.

Top 6:

• Kallio
• Phife
• Knuck
• Oxy #2
• Supadupa #1
• Ryan Leitao #2

Congratulations to the top 6, these entrants make it through to the final selection stage. On top of that, they have all won Dota 2 keys, courtesy of Gamers United!

Now we will take some time to pick our overall winner. Part of that process might include a few temporary changes to the site, we will keep you up to speed with anything we decide in that event.

The Reddit Round Robin

The Reddit Round Robin is a one day Highlander tournament, founded by  JollyRanchers from Reddit EU, out of a desire to engage with other teams of a similar skill level, creating a fun atmosphere to practice for official league matches. It has now evolved into a tournament which aims to give newer and more casual members of the Team Fortress 2 community a chance to play in a more competitive structure, while still keeping a light and fun atmosphere. It is aimed primarily at less experienced teams, though all are welcome. You can find more details on how to sign up by clicking the image or clicking here.

Site change

The wonderful  SpikeHimself has made a funky little change to the site, which adds custom titles to certain users. We thought the old “Site Admin” tag was a little misleading, and was applied to admins of different levels, so we have added Head Admin, Senior Admin and Trial Admin to the list of possibilities. Thanks Spike!

Ban

The following player has been banned:

• ICEE – aimbot – 1 year ban.

As some of you may have noticed this week, the Highlander Season 2 tables are now final and teams have started to schedule their week 1 matches. Remember week 1 doesn’t officially start until Sunday, March 25, but of course we allow teams to play early. We would like to remind players that the week 1 schedule deadline has passed and any teams that haven’t agreed upon a date for their match have been allocated a default date. When we set a default date, we will always give a team a minimum of 48 hours notice before they play their match – this means that you may be given a default date on Friday and have to play the Sunday, so make sure you don’t get caught off-guard and check your match page regularly or you will find yourself ending up with a default loss! Rescheduling a match is still possible by proposing a new schedule and asking your opponent to accept, or by using a wildcard.

Map schedule

We have had some issues regarding incorrect maps for map weeks being played due to a bug with the default maps. Apologies if this caused any inconvenience. Just to remind everyone of the map schedule for each week so that we do not have any more confusion. The map schedule for Highlander Season 2 is as follows:

• Week 1: Badwater
• Week 2: Foundry & Lakeside
• Week 3: Upward
• Week 4: Lakeside & Foundry
• Week 5: Barnblitz

If your match page says the maps are different to the allocated map week, please ignore it and play the maps according to the Highlander rules.

Submitting results for Payload maps

This season we have changed the way the map rotation works for Highlander in order to experiment with a system that has some weeks with only 1 map and other weeks with 2 maps, ensuring you are able to get a satisfying game on all gamemodes without the match ending too quickly. However, there has been some confusion over how to submit scores correctly for Payload maps as well as explaining how we will allocate points for Payload maps. Remember that Payload maps like Badwater, Upward and Barnblitz are played best of 3 attack/defence rounds. If one team wins 2 rounds, you will win the map without needing a third round – this means you will gain 6 points and your opponents will gain 0. If both team win 1 round each, you have to play a third round to decide who wins the match overall. The winner of this third, deciding round will gain 4 points whilst the loser will gain 2 points. Therefore the only possible scores for Payload maps this season will be 6-0, 0-6,  4-2 and 2-4. If you have a different scoreline, please contact an admin. If you have any feedback on this new system then please let us know what you think using our feedback forum.

Here is a little guide below to help you submit the results:

1. To begin with, make sure you have taken a status screenshot when all players were on the server and got suitable scoreboard screenshots (ideally taken when it shows the MVP’s for the winning team – example). Forgotten scoreboard screenshots can be retrieved from your recorded demo. This is not possible for status screenshots. Forgotten status screenshots will entail a minor warning the first time and a major warning (including one point deduction) the second time so make sure you take it duing the match!
2. To submit the results, go to “My Matches” and select “Submit Results” for the correct match.
3. If the match was won 2-0, in the “result” box add ‘2-0’ for map 1 and map 2 – here is a screenshot example.
4. If the match was won 2-1, in the “result” box add ‘2-1′ for map 1 and map 2 and tick the golden cap box for both maps. Here is another screenshot example.

Notes: If you’re entering any other results, you did something wrong. If you still have issues submitting results, or you have submitted the results incorrectly you can contact an admin on IRC (#etf2l on Quakenet) by typing !admin in the channel.

Highlander Map Config pack & Whitelist updates

Better late than never, here is a link to the Highlander Season 2 whitelist file. Place it in the config folder of your server. Please note that the whitelist will have to be executed separately from the match config by using mp_tournament_whitelist “cfg/etf2l_whitelist_9v9” and mp_tournament_restart.

With many thanks to Selek, you can also download a map config pack here which will be automatically executed and set up the correct settings for the map or gamemode you are playing or use the one maintained by Chris.

UPDATE: The config- and whitelist names have been updated. The 6v6 config is now named “etf2l_6v6.cfg” and the Highlander addon (6v6 config needed) is named “etf2l_9v9.cfg”. The whitelists have been renamed to “etf2l_whitelist_6v6.txt” and “etf2l_whitelist_9v9.txt”. Please make sure to update the config files on your servers. Thanks!

Summer Time

Sunday morning at 02.00 CET the clock is shifted to 03.00 CEST. The ETF2L match times might be messed up during the next week. If you want to play on Sunday or later at e.g. 20.00 you should schedule the match for 19.00. To be completely sure, teams should specify if they mean CET or CEST in the match comments.