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.

Let’s get the most important issue in the history of competitive TF2 out of the way first: Yes, the Original will be allowed in Season 12.

Also, Valve listened to a combined call of the largest communities in Europe, North America and Oceania and finally created a subforum for competitive Team Fortress 2 in the Steam Powered User Forums. Check it out and start discussing our favourite game!

Playoffs

Now that that’s over with, let’s move onto the playoffs! As Season 11 draws to a close there is still one thing left to do for those who only just missed out on that precious guaranteed promotion spot (or dreaded guaranteed demotion spot).  The Premiership playoffs follow the trusted format where the top 4 teams fight for the title. The 4th placed team will play the 3rd placed team. The winner of that match will then have to play the 2nd placed team to decide who enters the grand final against the 1st placed team, and who goes home with the 3rd place prize.

Premier Division Championship Playoff

The schedule for the premiership playoffs is the following:

• Crack Clan versus Team Yoyotech – March 18th – March 24th
  
• Winner versus Epsilon eSports – March 25th – March 31st or sooner
  
• Winner versus  Team Infused – April 1st – April 7th or sooner
  

Tie breakers

All tie breakers need to be played until April 7. If you fail to schedule your matches until Thursday, March 28, a default date will be decided by the admins. Remember that all players that have been added during week 7 or later are considered as mercs and need approval by your opponent. Using an unapproved merc leads to a default loss and a minor warning.

Division 4b relegation

 Time 4 Fisting versus  Team Colonslash: Classy

Division 4g promotion

pgc Team versus WinNerds

Division 5a promotion

Green Elephant versus Quick Team

Division 5c promotion

8U Gaming versus Les Snobs!

Division 6c promotion

Bitches and Neep versus Chill it

Esports Heaven Cups

Esports Heaven is hosting two Team Fortress 2 cups in about two weeks.

• The Velociraptor Challenge – koth_maps only, 5v5, classlimit 1, all unlocks allowed, prizes are 5x 300GB SATA HDD’s and €250 cash for the first placed team by Western Digital
• Angel’s Cup – standard 6v6 setup, map pool inlcludes ETF2L Season 11 maps and cp_croissant, prize is 750 € for the first placed team by Angel

ETF2L Banner Competition

We have received an overwhelming lot of entries in the past two weeks, thanks to everyone who participated! We now had the unpleasant job of sorting out some images and present you the best 26 submission on the contest page. Every ETF2L user may pick up to two banners that he would like to see as the new header of the site. The admin staff will then pick the new header and the winner of a Tt eSPORTS SHOCK One headset out of the six most voted banners.

The poll is open until Sunday, March 25, place your votes!

Highlander Season 2 Tables

As some you may already know, we have published the preliminary tables for Season 2 here. These tables are NOT final, so teams still have the opportunity to request to change divisions by asking for an admin in our IRC channel (#etf2l @ quakenet.org). The deadline for requesting a division change is midnight on Saturday 17^th March.

On Sunday 18^th, tables will be finalized and teams must start scheduling their week 1 fixtures. Please note that a default dates will be set if the match is not scheduled by the Friday before the next week commences. Remember it is a lot easier to make an effort to talk to your opponents using the match comments, so that admins are aware of what days/times you can play on if your opponent fails to accept a schedule proposal.

VAC Bans

March 15th has been and gone, so our new policy on VAC bans is now in effect. If you receive a VAC ban that stops you from playing TF2, you will be banned from the league for 1 year. If you attempt to avoid this ban, you will be banned from the league for 2 years, with the length doubled further for each attempt made.

VAC bans that do not stop your account joining a VAC-enabled TF2 server are fine.

Premier Division VODs

We have been a little tardy with respect to delivering VanillaTV’s coverage of our Premier Division matches. Sorry! You can find links to all the latest VODs below:

• Infused vs Crack Clan – Map 1 Map 2
• YoYoTech vs Crack Clan – Map 1 Map 2
• YoYoTech vs Karnage – Map 1 Map 2
• YoYoTech vs Infused – Map 1 Map 2
• Infused vs TryHarders – Map 2

Banners

The deadline for entries into our Tt eSPORTS Banner Competition passed a few days ago now, and we’re happy to say we received well over 60 entries from over 40 different users – thanks!

We’ve spent the week looking over them all, highlighting the ones we like and making the tough decision of rejecting a few. Once we have the number of entries down to something more manageable, we will put those entries to a public vote. We will then pick the final winner from the most popular choices in the poll. Expect that poll to be out in the next few days!

Staff Changes

We are delighted to welcome 2 new admins to our Anti Cheat staff:

• schocky
• smZi

Who wants to be an admin?

There are not really any set periods of recruitment – we are always looking for new applicants to the admin team! If you think you have what it takes to be an admin, please drop us a line at [email protected]. We’ll do our best to reply to every application, whether it’s good or bad news.

• Your real name and/or ingame name
• Your spoken languages
• Why you want to be an admin
• Why you think you would be a good admin (any relevant experience or insight)

In particular, we would love to hear from any talented news writers and web coders out there!

Highlander Season 2 News

We are nearing the start of Highlander Season 2, with sign-ups closing tonight at 24:00 CET. All teams signing up after that will go straight to the waiting list. With 252 teams signed up at the time of writing, it looks like we’re heading for another excellent season of Highlander, with a level of play higher than ever before. So don’t hesitate to sign up!

Prizes

Apart from in-game medals to all participants, we will also be offering real cash prizes this season, thanks to a generous donation of £1000 earmarked for Highlander. We will distribute the prize as follows:

Division 1 first place: £500

Division 1 second place: £250

We are also setting aside £250 which will go to various prediction contests around division 1. Do you have any suggestions on what prediction contests we should run? Please share them in the comments.

Item bans

Due to the exploits associated with the High Five action item, we have decided to ban it for Season 2. Reported usages of the taunt will be judged from case to case, with punishment only being handed out if the item was exploited.

Where it goes from now..

As sign-ups close tonight, we will aim to release the seeding on Wednesday. If you think that your roster or your past results are not enough for you the be placed in the division you requested, please remember to send result screenshots from Highlander matches to [email protected], to prove that you do belong in that division (the screenshots from official matches like UGC league are very valuable and critically improve your chances). The deadline for scheduling your first-week match will be Thursday the 22nd of March, and you should play it before Saturday the 31st of March. After this, we will be on our usual ETF2L schedule of scheduling deadlines on Thursdays and play-weeks running from Sunday to Saturday.

BBall Cup News

The Fourth BBall cup has come to its conclusion. Over 128 teams competed against each other until only 4 teams were left. In the first semi-final Eliyahu Ha Navi took a clear victory over Get Good. The other semi-final saw Air Fary beat pinky.

Eliyahu Ha Navi (matnuN and Retsh0ck) took a convincing win against  Air Fary (Pescanova and HarryHook) in the final. Congratulation to them for defending their crown in the fourth ETF2L bball cup!

6v6 Season 11 News

Week 7

Week 7 will start on Sunday, March 11. As every season, the following rules are in place from now on:

• Rosters locked: Once week 7 starts all rosters will be locked, so no players can be added for the duration of week 7 and the play-offs. All new players are considered mercs and need to be approved by the opponent.
• No Wildcards: During week 7 using a wildcard is not valid. Rescheduling is only possible if both teams agree. If your opponent used a wildcard anyway, you should contact an admin on IRC to get the situation cleared with your opponent.
• Deadline: The deadline for all matches is Saturday, 17th of March, every match unplayed after that will be nullified!

cp_gravelpit

To avoid the usual confusion about cp_gravelpit: cp_gravelpit is played “best of 3”. “Best of 3” means, the first team to win two rounds wins the map. One round consists of each team attacking and defending once. Possible results are 2-0, 0-2, 2-1 and 1-2 – nothing else! Because you are playing at least two rounds you obviously need at least two screenshots of the scores. For a good example of the needed screenshots for cp_gravelpit take a look at this match page.

Playoffs

Premier Division Playoffs

Once again a reminder for the Premier Division Playoffs:

• 4th vs 3rd: March 18th – March 24th
• Winner vs 2nd: March 25th – March 31st or sooner
• Winner vs 1st: April 1st – April 7th or sooner

For possible placement decider playoffs etc. you will have to wait until all matches have been played.

Golden Cap Rule

The golden cap rule has been greeted with a lot of positive comments when it was first established in the highly successful AFS Season. Well, let us just say it was the best thing about that season! In the past weeks and months it has been criticised by some, demanding its abolishment. We started discussing this topic in the admin forum but we would like to hear the thoughts of the community as well. Feel free to discuss a possible change of the golden cap rule in this thread and give constructive feedback.

Excello News

On Wednesday, March 7 the Excello ZOWIE TF2 Challenge III Open cup took place. uV Gaming has been promoted early (moved to Invite, due to Karnage eSports not being able to play) but still a good load of division 1 signed up – that were good for quite a lot of surprises. The biggest surprise probably being Team Decerto losing 2-3 to the newly formed team WALE (now known as  Perilous Gaming) on cp_snakewater. In the end Quarantine and NITROSE managed to make it into the finals, where NITROSE managed to take a map off  Quarantine, but on cp_snakewater and cp_badlands they did not stand a chance.

The final list of invited teams:

1. Epsilon eSports
2. Team Infused
3. Crack Clan
4. Team Yoyotech
5. uV Gaming
6. Quarantine
7. NITROSE
8. Perilous Gaming

The invite cup will start on Tuesday, March 13 at 20:00 CET.