i43 Prizes Announced, Venue Changed

ETF2L Partners Multiplay have announced the details for the TF2 Tournament at this summer’s i43 LAN. The Lan promises to be a big one for TF2 and to show their support Multiplay have pledged a minimum of £5,000 in prizes, with up to £13,500 available depending on the number of signups!

In order to increase overall capacity, Multiplay have moved the LAN to Telford. Remember to check out our LAN forums for all information on travel and much more. Don’t forget to get signed up as soon as possible to show your support for TF2!

cp_grack_b9 Custom Map Cup Starts

Signups have now closed and the first round fixtures have been drawn and are viewable here. Remember to play your first round games on time at 20:00 CEST on Wednesday and submit the results as soon as possible to keep the night running smoothly. Each round lasts 45 minutes to allow for delays. We expect the final to be played at 22:15 CEST, delays permitting.

You should always have a member of your clan in #etf2l on irc.quakenet.org to assist in teams/admins contacting you and to let us know if you are running late. If you don’t have your own irc client you can join the channel through webchat here.

Reminder – This is a vanilla unlock tournament. Only the Ubersaw, Blutsauger and Kritzkrieg are allowed.

Ban – Melonz / Fearny

Regretably another former cheater has returned under a new account. Fearny’s original ban for will be extended for a year and the new account  Melonz will be banned for the same duration. Please do not attempt to circumvent ETF2L bans.

ESH: Tt eSPORTS Challenge Grand Final

This Thursday sees the latest ESH cup reach its climax with what looks to be a thrilling clash between Power Gaming and TCM Gaming! Both teams have performed exceptionally to reach the final, beating the likes of Anexis, Team Thermaltake and even Dignitas to guarantee themselves prizes.

The match will likely start around 21.15 CEST, with TF2TV providing coverage of every awesome minute!

ETF2L Public Server

It’s been gone for a while, but it’s back! The official ETF2L public server is now live for ETF2L members only!
You can find the server here:  217.23.9.184:20100
Play fair and enjoy!

Admin Changes

For various reasons, the following players will be leaving the admin team:

mvp.
mihalch

We would like to thank them for their efforts and hard work and wish them all the best in their future endeavours.

Subsequently, the following players have been added to the staff:

huhy – League Admin
Spike Himself – League & Site Admin
konr – Anti-Cheat Admin

We welcome them and wish them the best of luck!

Additionally, Dave and RaCio have been named Honorary Head Admins for the time being. This means anyone requiring a Head Admin should contact SnowiE. We hope to see RaCio back shortly and wish him and his family all the best.

League Bans

It is with great sadness that we announce the following bans;

WT -Triggerbot
Just you – Triggerbot / possible aimbot
/ Exteel– Second account of O_oPs* (the original ban will be extended by another year)

All league games involving these players will become Default Wins for their opponents.

One Night Cup – cp_grack

Update: There are still some empty spaces for this cup! You can sign up on the Competitions page.

As part of our continuing efforts to support map-makers, ETF2L is pleased to announce another One Night Cup on a community made map! These cups are a useful tool for map makers to see their maps played in a competitive environment and draw feedback from it.
This One Night Cup will be run on Wednesday 18th May, featuring cp_grack, a map created by Vince.
You can find more information about this map in the forum thread.
Signups are open now and close at the end of Sunday. The first round of fixtures will be announced before the end of Tuesday 17th May.

Please note: This cup will run under the vanilla ruleset. The only unlocks allowed are the Blutsauger, the Übersaw and the Kritzkrieg.

i42 LAN

Many thanks to those who attended i42, especially to  Tapley and the rest of the TF2 admin team there. The top 3 TF2 teams were:

Infused.Tt

Team Thermaltake

Children of Poop

Infused took a surprisingly comprehensive victory over their Thermaltake companions to win the top prize of £1,350. Other highlights included an incredible game on viaduct between Intensive Noobs and mixteam Flanks* and Gamesense, going right down to the wire. VODs of both of those games and more can be found at tf2tv.com.

Tickets are now on sale for the next Multiplay LAN, i43, set for August 26-29. Currently tickets are available at a 20% discount, though not for long! More details can be found here.

The latest offering from ESH

Signups are still open for the Tt eSPORTS TF2 Challenge, for a chance to win $500! Tt eSPORTS “went huge” at i42, with both of their sponsored teams reaching the TF2 final, now they want to give us some of their free money for free! Check out the rules page here, then go here to sign your team up! Do it!

General Reminders

SCHEDULE AND PLAY YOUR WEEK 5 MATCHES! It is in fact time to start scheduling your week 6 matches too! This newspost is so late that it’s even time to think about your week 7 matches!

Turbine rules reminder

We’ve noticed quite a few teams struggling with our rules for ctf_turbine_pro. These rules can be found in the General Rule 4.8

Turbine is not played in a “Best of 3, timelimit 10” format in ETF2L. The ctf ruleset for ETF2L has been designed to reduce the odds of a draw to a minimum.
The regular etf2l.cfg sets the server variable “tf_flags_per_round” to “5” and the timelimit to 30 minutes.

You need to capture 5 flags in one round to score a point. If a team scores 2 points, that team wins. In order to stop the game when one team scored 2 points, you can set “mp_winlimit” to “2”.

In case both teams have an equal amount of points on the scoreboard when the timelimit is reached, the team with more flag captures in the final round wins. In that case, you need to submit 2 screenshots: One of the scoreboard showing that the teams are tied and one where you can see the amount of captured flags.

In the rare case that the amount of captured flags in the final round is equal as well, you have to play a golden cap round. Set “mp_timelimit” to “0” and “tf_flags_per_round” to “3“. The first team to capture 3 flags, wins the golden cap round.
Only tick the golden cap box if the latter happened. You will have to submit 3 screenshots if you played a golden cap on turbine: One of the scoreboard showing that the teams are tied, one where you can see the amount of captured flags and one screenshot with the golde cap round score.

(Sadly) a Ban

The player Lukas will be banned from now until the end of the season for abusing the leader rights of another team.

We’d like to clarify further confusion regarding the ban of ForzaEagLE and co., which looked like it would expire this weekend. Their ban was for the whole of Season 9, so the bans will be extended up to that point.

Wildcarded/Unplayed Matches

Some of you may have noticed Default Dates appearing on wildcarded matches. We will add a Default Date to a wildcarded match one week after the wildcard was taken, if the match is still unscheduled. We hope this will reduce the number of matches left unplayed until the catch-up week.

We will also give warnings to any matches which haven’t been played or scheduled after the Match Deadline has passed. These warnings can be easily removed once the match has been played, provided you contact us at that point.

*Thanks ilike2spin!

After months of planning and waiting, our friends from across the pond over at Community Fortress have announced their very own Highlander tournament! This time, everyone is invited, pubbers and pros alike! There will even be separate conferences for European and American teams, meaning, we won’t be forced to wake up in the middle of the night to stomp on American gunboat soldiers.

Alright, let’s skip to the details:

• Sign-ups close on Saturday the 16th of April. Matches can start being played on the following day.
• Open to everyone regardless of division and experience. Everyone will play in the same bracket and the seeding will be completely random.
• There will be a North American conference and a European conference. They will stay separated throughout the entire tournament. This is done to avoid the ping issues that occur when playing between continents.
• It will be a double elimination tournament.
• Teams will play on servers provided through Community Fortress.

Be sure to check out the rule page for a full set of rules, maps and unlocks.

American matches will be casted by the guys over at eXtv, while TF2TV will be taking care of the European match-ups.

The maps will be played on a ‘1 map per week’ basis with a double elimination format, meaning that teams with a busy schedule should still find the time to participate. This also means that all teams will get to play at least two matches in total, since they will be moved to the loser’s bracket if they lose their first match.

But what would highlander be without prizes?! Our friends at Valve will be kind enough to provide the top 3 teams of each conference with some signed TF2 swag!

If you want a chance at winning these prizes or if you just want to play some highlander, head on over to the sign-up thread and join in on the fun!

In the build-up to the i42 LAN, ETF2L partners Multiplay have announced that they are running an online qualifier tournament. This will give teams the chance to win free tickets to i42, which runs from the 22nd to the 25th of April. Sign-ups are open now, if you have any questions or problems, please go to #insomnia-tf2 on QuakeNet.

Rules

Matches will be played on one map per round in the Vanilla+med format, until the grand finals where the winner will be decided in a Best of Three maps contest.

Sign-ups will be open until 2 hours prior to each competition’s start time.

UPDATE! Due to technical problems, the i42 Online Qualifier Tournament will be held one day later, on Wednesday! The sign-ups will close at 18:00 CEST on Wednesday. If everything goes as planned, the tournament will be finished at Wednesday, so it is shortened to a One-Day-Tournament! Optional, the remaining matches can still be played at the next day.

The new schedule is as follows:

Wednesday 6th of April:

Round 1: 20:00 CEST
Round 2: 21:00 CEST
Round 3: 22:00 CEST

Grand Finals: Decided by finalists (can be played at 23:00 CEST but is Best of Three, so the option to re-schedule is available)

For more details and to sign up, please see the Multiplay Website. Remember that there are limited spaces available so get signed up as soon as possible!