Season 9 is finished, wahey!

Last Sunday, ETF2L Steelseries Season 9 came to an end with an amazing Grand Final between Team Thermaltake and TCM-Gaming. The season and their winners have been added to the Hall of Fame, with all the precious pixel trophies handed out. Please make sure your team has the relevant trophy and take good care of it, if you feel there has been a mistake please contact an admin in IRC.

Season 9 Awards

The end of the season also marks the beginning of everyone’s favourite time: the Awards phase! This time we’ll have a few prizes waiting for the winners. As previously mentioned, this time nominees will be chosen by selected members of the community, before a public vote. Said community members will be contacted today and asked for their submissions.

We still have one award using the older nomination method – the People’s Choice Award!

Forum Contest: Guess the Admin

We’re running a little fun contest on the forum, where our dear users can view old pictures of us admins, and guess who is who. Make sure you check it out and make a submission!

PS. There are prizes involved!

Full List of Season 9 Winners

• Premier Division 1st place – Team Thermaltake (SteelSeries Siberia v2 headset)
• Premier Division 2nd place – TCM-Gaming (SteelSeries Xai mouse)
• Premier Division 3rd place – K1ck Esports (SteelSeries 4H headset)
• Division 1 – myRevenge (Ex-Concept) (SteelSeries 9HD mousepad)
• Division 2A –  The MIPC Organization
• Division 2B – BLAST (signed TF2 posters)
• Division 3A – SNSD
• Division 3B – Ace of Spades
• Division 3C – Team Versus
• Division 4A – Genocide
• Division 4B – Next Six Please
• Division 4C – Karma Clan of Games
• Division 4D – BblMneJl
• Division 4E – 2stronk
• Division 4F – 9 Men
• Division 5A – SERAPHSERAPHSERAPHSERAPH Fancy Dodgy
• Division 5B – Please Shoot the Medic
• Division 5C – Fragga`s fellas
• Division 5D – n2o is fancy!
• Division 5E – Team Ronnytech
• Division 5F – Audere Semper eSport
• Division 5G – semper idem
• Division 5H – Public Power
• Division 5I – El 7 de España
• Division 5J – PyRo|GEN ESPORT.TF2
• Division 6A – Les Princesses
• Division 6B – d-d-Did I Stutter?
• Division 6C – TouchMy’
• Division 6C – GLASGOW
• Division 6D – Team Colonslash: Fest!
• Division 6D – Team Gibus
• Division 6E – Excen Team
• Division 6F – High Fidelity
• Division 6G – who is?
• Division 6H – Foxhound
• Division 6I – BackDraft
• Division 6J – Insane Dutch Killers – Dragon
• Division 6K – CiC Core
• Division 6L – Deux bords

Bigfoot TF2 Challenge at excello

A lot happened in the last few weeks in the Team Fortress 2 community. Valve released several patches to fix their fixes and most importantly Team Fortress 2 became free to play for everyone and forever. One day later TF2 was the most played steam game and easily overtook Counterstrike and Counterstrike: Source.

We at excello want to take this opportunity to host our first ever Team Fortress 2 Prize Cup: the Bigfoot TF2 Challenge. A maximum of 32 teams enter the battle for six Bigfoot Killer 2100 network cards. Some of you might remember that even the Team Dignitas TF2 team uses this hardware. Some others might even remember the glorious swedish excello team featuring players like weqo, appe, Glufse, fette and sommie that took the second spot in ETF2L’s second season. This is the very same organisation.

For this cup the only allowed unlocks are the medic unlocks, excluding the Amputator Vita-Saw, the Solemn Vow and the Overdose. This means, that the Ubersaw, the Blutsauger, the Kritzkrieg, the Quickfix and the Crusader’s Crossbow are allowed to be used.

The map pool is a bit experimental as well. In the first round all teams have to play the latest version of the custom map cp_bazillion by Arnold. The second round hosts the all-time-classic cp_badlands followed by cp_granary in the third round. In the semi-finals we will see whose tactics for cp_gravelpit are superior in a best of 3 match.
UPDATE: By popular request, the finals will now be a best of 3 match with map elimination featuring cp_bazillion_rc4, cp_badlands, cp_granary, cp_gullywash_pro and cp_gravelpit.

The first four rounds of this tournament will be played on the 13th of July so do not waste any time and head over to excello.net and register your team! The finals will be played on a different day that can be decided by the finalists. The match can be scheduled until the 20th July.

If all goes according to plan, some matches will get coverage by VanillaTV (more on that later).

If this cup is a success the odds are very high that excello will host more prize tournaments for TF2 in the future.

In order to sign up for this cup, all of your players need to have an account at excello.net and need to enter a valid steam id in the format STEAM_X:X:XXXX on their profile page. The teamleaders can create a team and invite the players. Before the players join the team they need to confirm the invite in their inbox.
Please note that teams who signed up have to check in on the website from 19.30 to 20.00 CEST.

Admins for this cup are CanFo, Crasp and SonnyBlack. If any questions arise, feel free to contact one of them at #excello.tf2 on quakenet or answer the question in the IRC channel. We will get back to you a soon as possible.

ESL 1on1 Scout Whiskas Cup #2

After the success of the first Whiskas Cup Catman has decided to dust off the cobwebs from his wallet and host another 1v1 Scout cup, this time the winner will take home up to $1000 for first place!

All rounds will be played on Catman’s map dm_whiskas_reload.

Prize money available for first place will depend on the number of signups we achieve. If the playercount only reaches 500 then $500 will go to the winner, if it goes up to over 1000 signups then $1000 will be yours to play for.

Signups for the cup will start on 10/07/11 and run for 3 weeks. The ESL staff is still looking to add hardware prizes for 2nd, 3rd and a random give away for all those involved so even if you don’t reach the final you may still leave with something.

Player’s will be required to “check-in” once signups have closed to ensure their participation in the cup, so tell your friends and lets reach the 1000 player’s!

Of course, ESL Wire is mandatory to use.

Head over to the ESL newspost for more information and the sign up.

ETF2L Steelseries Season 9 Final Result

Last night’s Premier Division final between  TCM-Gaming and  Team Thermaltake proved to be one of the closest and most exciting matches seen in Team Fortress 2 for some time.

Unfortunately I missed the majority of the first map (badlands), but thanks to the miracle of technology and the wizards at VanillaTV, nobody needs to miss out on the action! You can watch and/or re-watch all of last night’s play at any time by going to their VODs section.

Read the rest of this entry »

Tonight brings us the end of the ETF2L Season 9, a dramatic season with a dramatic ending. Poetic justice. At 21:15 CEST, TCM Gaming will face off against Team Thermaltake to decide who will be the ETF2L Season 9 Champion, in a match that will hopefully mark the end of negativity and the start of something indicative of the now most played game on Steam.

Coming out of the first place on the bracket, TCM Gaming chose cp_badlands as their pick and cp_granary as possible decider map. Team Thermaltake opted for cp_gullywash as their map of choice. Tonight’s champions will each take home a SteelSeries Siberia v2 (White) Headset while the the runners up will all be rewarded with the SteelSeries Xai Mouse. Be sure to head over to Vanillatf2 for the latest news on this match. VanillaTV will be casting the match live with as their casters, none other then Admirable and TF2’s wise sage,  Torden.

Follow It Live!

• SourceTV: connect 145.92.203.100:27100
• Videostream: VanillaTV
• Shoutcast (mumble): 193.169.68.156:64738
• Live team communications (mumble): 193.169.68.156:64738
• Stream with  TCM comms: VanillaTV2
• Shoutouts: #vanillatv

LINE-UPS

Both competing teams are very familiar faces to competitive TF2. TCM Gaming and their lineups have been part of the top for many years, will they be able to add a second Season title to their list of trophies? They will face none other then the team formerly known as Fakkelbrigade, Team Thermaltake. Known for their great support through many TF2 projects but also for their great skill, will they take the title home? Compared to the previous season, both teams have also added some new faces to their lineup hoping to gain dominance over the other top teams. Check out the suspected lineups below!

TCM Gaming:

• Anty (Medic)
• Flisko (Soldier)
• Pena(Soldier)
• Byte (Stickytraps)
• Coinz (Scout)
• Skinnie (Scout)

Team Thermaltake:

• Mirelin (Medic)
• DrLeon (Soldier)
• Exfane(Soldier)
• Kaidus (Demo)
• Fisshu (Scout)
• basH (Scout)

Read the rest of this entry »

The 6th Experimental Ordnance Cup was played yesterday with many teams taking a shot at winning their bracket. The teams were allowed to use the new Quick-Fix Medi Gun as well as the regular Medi Gun and the Kritzkrieg. Check out the interview with winning team SNSD and their thoughts on things, at Vanillatf2. Be sure to leave your own thoughts in this forum thread.

Again, big thanks to the teams that participated and our huge congratulations go to the following winners of famed pixel trophies:

Highest Bracket
SNSD
Team Refuse
Dyslexics Untied
The Devils Rejects

High Bracket
Genocide
Unstoppable
BblMneJl
e-famous

Mid Bracket
Yummy Elite Sausages
SdX Gaming
Dont Shoot the Panda
Audere Semper eSport

Low Bracket
Perplex gaming
TouchMy’
Orange
Dubstep TF2

Experimental Ordnance Cup #7: sdnaldab & yranarg!

Are you tired of seeing new players running around cluelessly on the map? Then don’t worry, on Thursday the 7th, 20:00 CEST you’ll get the chance to see your experienced teammates wandering around cluelessly as well! Just sign them up for this special summer one-day cup that features Badlands and Granary, mirrored. Words can not explain this twisted format,  head over to this site for pictures and a download!

• Setup – Cups of 16, divided by skill levels
• Merc Rules – 2 mercs allowed by default.
• Bracket draw – Monday Wednesday 18:30 CEST in #etf2l
• Maps – cp_sdnaldab & cp_yranarg
• Sign-ups open – Now