Highlander Season 18 – Wrap-up

The playoff games have ended and the winners have been crowned. The main season of Premiership was shown to be very promising and competitive, and in the end it was proven to witness former champions reclaiming their throne back.

We want to give big congratulations to   Strong Opinions as the winners of Premiership! With   Feila eSports slim shady edition proving themselves to be the best second place team for another season. And finally we see   inVision having a fantastic season placing 3rd.

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Staff Changes and an open position on the Anti-Cheat team: Apply now!

We’re glad to announce that  AlesKee has completed his trial and is now a part of the staff as a League Admin.

We’re also glad to announce that  Samus has been promoted to Head Anti-Cheat admin.

Now with the good news out of the way we are sad to announce that  Capu is leaving our Anti-Cheat team. We wish him all the best in his future endeavours.

This leaves an open position for anyone interested in working for a league free from cheaters. Anti-Cheat admins ensure fair competition in the league by analyzing submitted evidence for signs of cheats and issuing bans to confirmed cheaters. Submitted evidence is rarely clear-cut – most cases are challenging and involve a fair bit of “forensic work”.

Anti-Cheat staff need to have a good sense of trust and morality, additionally be excited by detective work and technical aspects of the source engine that come with demo viewing and cheats and such. It’s also important to have no bias and be respectful of the democratic process on voting.

Please don’t be intimidated to apply, it’s a position that you can really only improve on with real experience.

For more information on how to apply, click here.

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Season 33: Premiership Qualifiers

We’ve received a total of 9 applications for Premiership this season with 6 of them receiving a direct placement in Premiership, for both retaining their spot from Season 32 and getting directly invited. This will result in 3 teams playing through the Qualifiers in a single-elimination stage, with 2 teams playing from a higher seed and 1 team playing from a lower seed. Winners of these matches will receive a spot in Premiership for Season 33.

The following 6 teams will automatically get a spot into Premiership.

• Se7en
• ComedyShortsGaming
• SVIFT
• wer das liest ist doof – Promoted from Season 32 Division 1
• Ora Elektro – Invited
• top5rocket – Invited

While these 3 will be battling it out for the remaining 2 spots.

• Flush Agency Headquarters – Higher Seed
• ★★★½ – Higher Seed
• Coffin Clan – Lower Seed

Flush Agency Headquarters will be playing against ★★★½ first in a BO3 match, the winner will receive a spot in Premiership while the losing team will be playing a BO3 match afterwards against Coffin Clan for the remaining Premiership spot. The losing team of this match will be playing in Division 1. All teams have until 2nd of June to make sure both matches have been played.

Rule Updates

We will also be releasing a couple of fixes to some already existing rules, a thank you from us to whoever pointed these things out!

First off, we’re fixing a small issue with the newly modified Golden Cap rule, where if neither team has the middle point in control due to any possible round resets they must start a second Golden Cap with the first team to capture the middle point winning it.

4.1.3 Golden Cap: Decider round in case of a draw

If the score is tied after the timelimit has been reached, a decider round (golden cap) will have to be played. The golden cap will be played with winlimit 1 and timelimit 15, if neither of the teams manage to get a round in this time then the team to hold middle point will win the golden cap. The winner of a map that ended with a golden cap round gets 2 points, the loser gets 1 point. If the map timer runs out during the golden cap when neither team is controlling the middle point, teams must play a second golden cap round. Whoever captures the middle point first is then declared the winner.

Secondly we want to clarify what exactly counts to us as a valid status screenshot, due to the SteamID Parser bot on the site having been in effect since early 2009, before the OSX and Linux versions of the game were out and due to how it’s fixed to support only a specific font, Lucida Console, which is present by default in the Windows version of Team Fortress 2. This rule change will not change the way how SteamID/Status screenshots are taken and read, but more so make it specific on what is required to be done for the screenshots to be read by the bot.

3.2 Status & Scoreboard screenshots required

One member of each team has to take a status screenshot before a match is starting and after every player switch. A screenshot of the final score has to be taken at the end of every map/round. Please note that a scoreboard screenshot is not sufficient for all attack/defense maps as it does not show the winner – the screenshot explicitly declaring one team to be the winner is required instead. Screenshots can be uploaded while submitting the result or by either team leader at a later date.

If any map screenshots are missing after the match’s result deadline, and the result has not been verified by the teams, both teams will receive a minor warning. Missing status screenshots will be punished with a minor warning even if the teams verify the result. The second violation of this rule will be punished with a major warning.

For the screenshots to be readable by the SteamID parser bot, the screenshots are required to be taken on the Windows version of Team Fortress 2 with the default console font, Lucida Console, in use. Custom HUDs can potentially have different console fonts that cannot be read even when used on Windows OS, we recommend teams and players to ensure that the font required will be the same as Team Fortress 2 has by default. OSX and Linux versions have a different console font in use by default which cannot be parsed by the bot, therefore we recommend teams to have at least a single player running the Windows version of Team Fortress 2 to take the screenshots.

Warnings for missing screenshots can be removed by providing the missing screenshot and contacting an admin afterwards.

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Highlander Nations Cup #6: Captain Applications

This is an update to show you which countries have had captains apply so far and which have had none. In case you are contemplating to apply yourself. So far we have received applications from the following 25 countries:

• Algeria
• Belgium
• Czech Republic
• Denmark
• England
• Estonia
• Finland
• France
• Germany
• Greece
• Hungary
• Ireland
• Israel
• Italy
• Lithuania
• Netherlands
• Norway
• Peru
• Poland
• Portugal
• Russia
• Scotland
• Turkey
• Ukraine
• United States of America

Teams that played in previous Nations Cups that have not had a captain apply yet:

• Austria
• Belarus
• Bulgaria
• Canada
• Croatia
• Georgia
• Iceland
• Latvia
• Kazakhstan
• Luxembourg
• Romania
• Slovak Republic
• Slovenia
• Spain
• Sweden
• Switzerland
• United Arab Emirates
• Wales

That’s a potential of 17 additional teams. Keep in mind though, that we only have room to accommodate a total of 32 teams, therefore as always, first come, first served!

In case you have missed the announcement of the cup, we encourage you to take a look at the post we have made with all necessary details!

Edit: Updated with teams that have applied as of 23rd of May.

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Map Pool

The map pool for Season 33 will consist of the same maps played in the previous season, with cp_prolands making a comeback with the rc2t version, featured at Copenhagen Games 2019! Alongside that we have chosen cp_metalworks as the final addition to the map pool! Also koth_product has received an update and will be using the rcx version from now on.

However with this many maps in the rotation it forces some maps to be played only once in the season, with majority of them still getting played twice as usual.

Map Pool

• cp_granary_pro_rc8
• cp_gullywash_final1
• cp_logjam_rc10a
• cp_metalworks ¹
• cp_process_final
• cp_prolands_rc2t ²
• cp_snakewater_final1
• cp_sunshine
• koth_product_rcx ²

¹ Addition to the map pool for S33
² Updated map version

Map Rotation

• Week 1: cp_granary_pro_rc8 & cp_gullywash_final1
• Week 2: cp_gullywash_final1 & koth_product_rcx
• Week 3: koth_product_rcx & cp_sunshine
• Week 4: cp_logjam_rc10a & cp_process_final
• Week 5: cp_process_final & cp_metalworks
• Week 6: cp_metalworks & cp_snakewater_final1
• Week 7: cp_snakewater_final1 & cp_prolands_rc2t

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