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The brackets for the fifth Experimental Ordnance Cup have been generated and we are ready to go live!

High Bracket: Click here
Mid Bracket: Click here
Low Bracket: Click here

Round 1: 20:00 CET (cp_badlands)
Quarter Final: 20:45 CET (cp_gullywash)
Semi Final: 21:30 CET (cp_badlands)
Final: 22:15 CET (cp_gullywash)

The Details:

Please contact your opponents in #etf2l on IRC, so ensure at least one of your team is in there at all times. If you have any problems contacting your opponents, please talk to an Admin. There will be servers with SourceTVs (hosted by Multiplay) available for you to play on. Request them by talking to an admin.

• All teams must have at least 1 player ready on #etf2l (QuakeNet) to find their opponent and schedule the match.
• If your match starts more than 10 minutes late, please reduce the map time to 15-25 minutes, depending on how long you have left before the next round starts. Bear in mind that if the map finishes in a draw, there will be a golden cap period to follow.
• If your match finishes in a draw, you must play a golden cap round to decide the winner. Please reset the config and play a 5 minute golden cap round. The first team to cap in this round, wins. If neither team caps within 5 minutes, the team that holds CP3 at the end of the 5 minute period wins.
• Every teams medic has to use the new Quick-fix unlock, the only other unlocks that are allowed for this cup are the Ubersaw, the Crossbow and the Blutsauger.
• For most other issues the regular ETF2L Season 9 rules apply.
• Teams may use 2 mercs by default, multiple mercs are allowed if the opponent agrees.
• To disable the whitelist you just do rcon mp_tournament_whitelist “none” and then rcon mp_tournament_restart.

It might be summer already, but there are plenty of things going on! TF2 just went free-to-play, which means you can invite all your buddies from Counter-Strike and Call of Duty to the awesomeness of competitive TF2. Meanwhile, preparations for LANs like i43 and epic6 are in full progress and it’s still not too late to join in, just head over to the LAN forum quickly. The S9 finals and other great events will be coming up soon, but first we can announce the following:

Quick-Fix Experimental Ordnance Cups

The new Quick-Fix Medi Gun has caused quite some talk and discussion. Enough reason to settle things in some old-fashioned one-night cups. Next week, we will host not just one, but two cups for people to see what the Quick-Fix really is about. Next Monday the 27th, 20:00 CEST, Experimental Ordnance Cup #5 will be hosted with both teams being required to run the Quick-Fix. Three days later, on Thursday the 30th, 20:00 CEST, Experimental Ordnance Cup #6 will be hosted with all Medi Guns allowed to be used.

• Setup – Cups of 16, divided by skill levels
• Unlocks – EO#5: Quick-Fix use enforced, EO#6: Kritzkrieg + Quick-Fix + Equalizer limit 1
• Merc Rules – 2 mercs allowed by default.
• Bracket draw – EO#5: Monday 18:00 CET, EO#6: Thursday 18:00 CET in #etf2l
• Maps – EO#5: Badlands & Gullywash, EO#6: Badlands & Granary
• Sign-ups open – Now

And Other News

Team avatars should be working again! If the avatar of your team did not update yet, try changing the Steam group of your team to a different one (and then back to the original later).

Rosters will be unlocked after the Season 9 final. The playoff match between uV gaming and Dstm that was created as one of the repercussions of Danny getting banned, will be played at a later time.

We have created a HUDs & Configs forum for everyone who likes to customise their game to perfection. Be sure to update which forums you wish to track on the “recent posts” page at your profile settings.

We’ve had a fair amount of forum bans in the past few days, so much so that we feel balance is required. Without further ado, let’s have some league bans!

• Danny – Wallhack + Triggerbot – 1 year ban

That’s all for now.

Posters!?

While cleaning out the ETF2L broom cupboard, we came across 3 sets of TF2 posters given to us by Valve, to use as extra special prizes for Season 8. Unfortunately that season is archived, so we’ll just have to give them away as extra special prizes for Season 9 instead!

One set of posters will be given to the winner of the Fairplay Award, and one to the winner of a Division 2 playoff. We haven’t yet decided on how to award the third set, perhaps a thumb-wrestling tournament at i43? Suggestions welcome in the comments.

Playoffs!?

We are now one week into the playoff phase of the season, and at the time of writing 0 of 11 matches have been played. One has been conceded, so let’s call it 0 of 10. This vexes me. It will likely take 4 weeks (since the end of the catch-up week) to properly finish Season 9, playing around 15 playoffs. That equates to adding 40% of time to the season to play an extra 1% of games. The playoffs are there to provide teams with a “winner takes all” game, to play for pride, promotion and in some cases prizes, plus they give us valuable information for seeding teams next season. It seems like this description becomes less accurate year upon year, so we will consider alternate ways of concluding next season.

Please make sure your playoff matches are played before the June 26th deadline.

Panels!?

Over the course of the next week we will be contacting selected users to take part in the nomination phase of the Season 9 Awards. Once they have made their decisions (which they will be free to announce publicly), we can commence the voting phase!

PUNISHMENT! :D

As you probably already know, the following players will be banned:

• Blorg – Triggerbot. – 1 year ban
• 2k/Casual – Creating and supplying hacks to ETF2L players, using said hacks himself. – 1 year ban

Finally,  Huhy has announced that he is leaving the Anti-Cheat team, in order to focus on his duties as League Admin. We thank him for his continued efforts and wish him luck!

If you’d like to be part of the Anti-Cheat team, please send an application email to [email protected] with your details, motivation and experience in anti-cheat.

The catch-up week has finished! All catch-up matches must have their results submitted by midnight CEST tonight if they are to be counted. Tomorrow, outstanding matches will be dealt with accordingly.

Now that the main body of the Season is out of the way, we move on to Playoffs! There will be three tiebreaker matches, in Divisions 6C, 4E and 2B, which will take priority over the proper Playoff matches the winners of those tiebreakers will have to play. The other playoffs for Divisions 4 and 6 will go ahead as planned.

The Division 1 promotion Playoffs will be cancelled, since they aren’t necessary.

Tiebreaker Matches: (map elimination)
Schedule deadline: 12/06/2011
Match deadline: 19/06/2011

Playoff Matches: (map elimination)
Schedule deadline: 12/06/2011
Match deadline: 19/06/2011

Playoffs for Divisions 2, 4E&F, 6C&D: (map elimination)
Schedule deadline: 19/06/2011
Match deadline: 26/06/2011

Tiebreakers

• Div. 2B 2nd place: vier // red vs Dont Shoot the Medic
• Div. 4E 2nd place: Crucial Team vs PunchLine!
• Div. 6C 3rd place: [OOC]Team vs Lost in the sky

Playoffs

• Premier Div. Prize Playoff #1: K1ck eSports vs Team Thermaltake
• Premier Div. Prize Playoff #2: TCM-Gaming vs Winner of Prem. Playoff #1
• Div. 2 promotion Playoff: UV-Gaming EU vs Winner of Div.2B Tiebreaker
• Div. 4 promotion Playoff #1: LagTastic Gaming vs Unstoppable
• Div. 4 promotion Playoff #2: Elite nile Gunners vs BAd neWS
• Div. 4 promotion Playoff #3: Winner of Div.4E Tiebreaker vs Crack Clan // Blue
• Div. 6 promotion Playoff #1: That’s What We Want! vs Six Silly Somethings
• Div. 6 promotion Playoff #2: Winner of Div. 6C Tiebreaker vs True loboQ team
• Div. 6 promotion Playoff #3: Newunionists: Green ogc.hu vs Buy More
• Div. 6 promotion Playoff #4: No Toilet Breaks vs FAKE.tf2
• Div. 6 promotion Playoff #5: 9 Team vs Dutchnet Familiars
• Div. 6 promotion Playoff #6: Stage Team vs The Project

Season 9 Award Nominations

Around now, one would expect the Season 9 nomination threads to be appearing on the forums. This Season though, we thought about doing something a little different. While we obviously value your opinion very highly, this Season we will invite respected members of the ETF2L community to make nominations for each category. They will make their recommendations, then the official polls will be held here for you to vote on. More details on this will be available soon!

As a special treat, we are adding a new category to the Awards this Season: The ETF2L People’s Choice Award. This can be awarded to literally anything you like, be it a player, team, division, video, site, abstract concept, limb, weather system, anything, as long as a reason for their nomination is provided! As per the traditional nominations, we will put the top 3 nominations up in a poll to decide the winner.