EU Not So Weekly Summary

A Catch up of Everything EU in TF2 this March:

Hey guys, it’s your favourite sell out back again with the return of my weekly summary series. Except this one is slightly longer because of the recent lack of activity in between season. Here is a copy of my latest article from MyGamingEdge:

European Team Fortress is picking up again with ETF2L week one being underway, the first round of Nations Cup qualifiers going ahead and the ESL preliminary seedings coming out too. Here is a quick catch up on everything that has happened in March:

ESH TF2 Rush Poker Challenge:

This €1,000 ($1,414) tournament gave everyone an early look at how teams will fair in the upcoming seasons. On the first day of the tournament back on the 13th Turbine_pro through up some surprise results as new boys Princess (now Blame!) beat reigning ETF2L champions Epsilon, British LAN champions Infused beat the now folded Yoyotech, and Byte’s new look TCM gaming started off their first tournament with an impressive victory over ButtonBashers.

Going into the second day of the tournament new teams Blame and TCM continued their runs beating Eternity and the restructured redCode, respectively. Along with this was a tight match between RaWr and Power gaming where Power where just able to edge it 6-5, with RaWr starting to show signs that they can hang with the big names of Team Fortress 2. Blame’s dreams of a place in the final were cut short when they encountered Thermaltake who completely shut them down as their Prem quality shone through. On the other wised of the Semi-final Power gaming again seemed to lack that killer edge as TCM had much superior middles on Granary and were able to continue that good early play to take Gullywash_pro 4-3.

Despite that loss Power were able to salvage something from this tournament as they took the Bronze final 5-0, 5-0 to get €100 ($140). As the finals kicked off it looked like Thermaltake could be in position to finally win something as they edged Granary, the map TCM was supposed to be stronger on. Byte, however, kept his team together and they brought it back to take Gullywash_pro 5-3 to force it to a decider map where they also won Badlands, winning the team their first prize money, €600 ($849), in their first tournament. Showing they are real competition for the other big teams already and they can only improve as the team play comes over time and their comms calm down.

MaxLAN:

Over in France during mid March then French Tf2 community came out in force, accompanied by ETF2L Champions Epsilon and LAN virgins ButtonBashers. The tournament followed the vast majority of predictions with a ButtonBashers and Epsilon final seemingly inevitable. After a very long and late first day the final took place early Sunday morning with BBashers going in with the advantages having won the upper bracket final. Marco’s men held it together on turbine_pro with much more solid strategies that just shut down most of what Epsilon could do and taking in comfortably in straight rounds. ButtonBashers continued to suppress Epsilon holding them to a draw on Badlands which was enough to secure them LAN glory at their first attempt.

ESL Nations Cup:

The nations cup kicked off with 3 spots in the grand final up for grabs. Going into the early rounds surprising results as Spain brushed aside Russia in 15 minutes who will need to seriously pick themselves up for the next side of qualifiers if they are to reach the grand finals as expected. Elsewhere Lithuania where able to push France to a golden cap and then with the quality of Extremer shining through they were able to complete the upset by knocking out one of the early favourites for this qualifying round. In the second round Spain felt some of their own medicine when Israel clinched Granary 3-2 to knock them out with particularly good play from matnuN and Retsh0ck.

In the semi-finals Israel’s quality shone through again as they outshone a much weaker Turkish team who had a relatively easy route to the final. Elsewhere in probably the match of the qualifiers Lithuania meant the surprise package that is Latvia. It may not of been a shining example of Team fortress 2 gameplay with many failed pushes and some sloppy play, presumably because of lack of experience together as a team. What clinched it in the end was the greater teamplay of the Latvian scout pair, bastardd and Kiborg4d from Division 3 team Casus Belli and Division 2 myRevenge, respectively, out playing the higher division off-class pairing of ups and mineral.

Latvia continued their dominance into the final with a very comfortable win over Israel who barely even turned up, which is hardly surprising when considering the irrelevance of the final having already earned their place in the Finals. The Bronze Final had more riding on it with the final spots in the Finals up for grabs and with Turbine_pro the map of choice, an upset was always on the cards. The opening round saw some dominating play from Lithuanian scout ups helping them take the opening round. Turkey pulled themselves together to draw the second round 1-1 to give them a chance going into the third and final round. This round saw the quality of Extremer shine through and they took the last round in a confident 5-0 display. Concluding what was a great qualifying round for the third world nations.

ETF2L:

A meagre two Premier games played in the opening week of ETF2L, following a couple of drops. The opening game saw the two new teams, Blame and TCM, meet up on a clash that saw TCM dominate badlands but then fall down and held to a 4-4 draw on Warmfront, forcing the golden cap. TCM won the Golden Cap in controversial style following server issues and disagreements over how the match should be restarted, with Blame believing they should have mid as they had it when the server issues started but TCM opting to completely restarted the Golden Cap. As it stands the extra point belongs to TCM but it is still currently under dispute.

The next match saw a complete reversal of Monster Munch and Crack Clan’s clash last season that saw Crack Clan put a dent in Monster Munches Division 1 winning campaign. Joske and Ghent’s fragging was too strong on Badlands giving them a 5-0 roll. CC where always going to face an uphill battle on Warmfront against Arx’s sniping and while his sniping was on the money again (Arx’s Warmfront POV Demo)I think the only thing it changed was the speed in which Monster Munch won the game. Crack Clan seemed like a shadow of their former selves, in particular star solly Jorman seemed out of sorts and out of sync with his team. A perfect example of a team on top form verses a team that is out of practice. Crack Clan will be hoping they can repeat their tricks of last season to turn around their form and avoid relegation.

That is all the action from March. Looking forward to upcoming events keep on the lookout for ButtonBashers against Monster Munch in ETF2L where with two sniper friendly maps a huge upset could be on the cards. Along with this the second round of Nations cup qualifying that will see the first appearance of Team Canada, Ireland, Portugal and USA. As well as a second chance for France, Russia and Spain to make up for their disappointing results from the first qualifying round. Both of these are scheduled to go ahead on Sunday (02/04). Stay tuned to VanillaTF2 and TF2TV for the larest updates on scheduling, STV info and casts/VODs of the big matches. Also the final ESL Divisions will be released soon as well, expect a run down of all the teams coming shortly.

Peace

CommanderX

Full List of Results

ETF2L

Premier

28/03 TCM 5 – 1 Blame – Badlands(5-0); Warmfront(5-4)(GC)

30/03 Crack Clan 0 – 6 Monster Munch – Badlands (0-5); Warmfront (0-5) Badlands STV Demo Warmfront STV Demo

ESL

Nations Cup Qualifier #1 29/03

Round 1

Turkey 4 – 3 Belgium – Badlands (4-3)

Spain 5 – 0 Russia – Badlands (5-0) Badlands TF2TV VOD

Israel 6 – 1 Austria – Badlands (6-1)

Poland 1 – 6 Latvia – Badlands (1-6)

Lithuania 5(GC) – 4 France – Badlands (5-4)(GC)

Hungary, Romania and Switzerland got a by to the next round

Esports Heaven TF2 Rush Poker Challenge

Quarter Finals

13/03 Blame (aka Princess) 4 – 3 Eternity – Badlands (4-3)

13/03 Infused 0 – 5 ThermalTake – Badlands (0-5)

13/03 TCM 6 – 2 redCode – Badlands (6-2)

13/03 Monster Munch 5 – 6 Power – Badlands (5-6)

Semi-Finals

15/03 Blame0 – 2 Thermaltake – Badlands (0-5); Gullywash_pro (1-6)

15/03 TCM2 – 0 Power – Granary (4-1); Gullywash_pro (4-3) Granary STV Demo Gullyash_pro STV Demo

Bronze Match

21/03 Blame 0 – 2 Power – Badlands (0-5); Gullywash_pro (0-5)

Grand Final

22/03 Thermaltake 1 – 2 TCM – Granary (4-3); Gullywash_pro (3-5); Badlands (2-4) Granary TF2TV VOD Part 1 Granary TF2TV VOD Part 2 Gullywash_pro TF2TV VOD Badlands TF2TV VOD Granary STV Demo Gullywash_pro STV Demo Badlands STV Demo

MaxLAN Grand Finals

20/03 ButtonBashers 2 – 1 Epsilon – Turbine_pro (2-0); Badlands (2-2) Turbine_pro TF2TV VOD Badlands TF2V VOD

Originally published on VanillaTV (vanillatf2.org) on 2011-04-02 by CommanderX.

Recovered from the Internet Archive (archived copy) as part of tf2esports.com's preservation of VanillaTV's TF2 coverage. The original site is no longer online. All rights remain with the original author; reposted for historical reference.